Serious Violence
Rupa Huq Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One way the Government are trying to get that message out is through the #knifefree campaign, which I will come to in a moment.
From having all these conversations and meeting people, including the families of victims of knife crime, one message is loud and clear: there is no one single solution to stopping serious violence. To tackle it properly will require action on many fronts and joined-up action across Government. With our serious violence strategy, we are fighting on all fronts with all partners to try to stop this senseless violence. Our united approach is starting to see some progress. National crime statistics for the last year show that the rate of rise in knife crime is starting to slow. The most recent figures from the Metropolitan police show a fall in the number of homicides in the past 12 months, and the number of knife injuries among under-25s fell by 15% in the capital, with over 300 fewer young people being stabbed, but still far too many lives are being lost and I remain resolute in my mission to help end the bloodshed.
Allow me Mr Speaker, to update the House on some of the work that is already under way. First, we are empowering police to respond to serious violence. I have joined anti-knife crime patrols and met senior officers from the worst-affected areas. They are the experts, so I have listened to what they say they need. They told me they needed more resources, so we have increased police funding by almost £1 billion this year, including council tax. As a result, police and crime commissioners are already planning to recruit about 3,500 extra officers and police staff.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The Prime Minister told me at Prime Minister’s Question Time last week that £1 billion was going back in, after she had cut 21,000 officers. In Ealing, Acton and Chiswick, where the number of aggravated burglaries and muggings has rocketed, how many officers will we have at the end of this year, compared with the number now? If they like, the Home Secretary and the Policing Minister would be welcome to visit; senior officers in Ealing and Acton would be happy to host them. We have lost both our police counters, but we would be happy to sit down and thrash this out. Our door is always open.
Sajid Javid
My understanding is that this year the Met plan to hire at least 300 additional officers. I cannot tell her how many there will be in Ealing, because that will be an operational decision for the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, but that increase can take place because of the rise in funding—the largest cash increase since 2010.
Dr Huq
My right hon. Friend is making a moving and powerful speech. On the subject of party politics, does she agree that this is not even a political choice for councils anymore? Councils of all political complexions are cash strapped. Youth services in Labour Ealing have been cut by 50%, but in Tory Hillingdon, the borough of the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, youth services have been cut by 85%. This Government said austerity is over; they need to put their money where their mouth is and reverse those local government cuts.
Macpherson Report: 20th Anniversary
Rupa Huq Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making some moving points about bias and discrimination. Does he agree that unconscious bias can be something that people have not thought of, that it needs stamping on, in addition to the policies that he mentions, and that more training is needed at all levels of the police?
Douglas Ross
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s points. I say this to her gently, but she might be even more impressed when she hears some of my speech, now that she has entered the Chamber.
I agree with the point about unconscious bias, but the point I was coming to was about training. Whether training is for unconscious bias or to improve officers’ interactions or responses to racial incidents, it cannot simply be a tick-box exercise. We cannot simply say, “Go online, enter this portal, and at the end of it”—maybe five or 10 minutes later—“click the ‘submit’ button and suddenly you are racially trained,” or, “You are trained to deal with racial incidents,” or, “You are trained to deal with communities from BAME backgrounds.” I have a serious concern that those at the top of the police in all parts of the United Kingdom think that they are achieving what we want them to because they can say, “100% of our officers are trained in x,” or, “We have ensured that this is done at the policing training college,” in Tulliallan in Scotland or elsewhere.
If that training does not having a lasting impact among new recruits or officers, it is quite simply a waste of time, because we are not getting to the root of the problem and ensuring that we can enhance opinions. We have to look at the training element of all this, rather than trying to tick a box and saying, “It’s done. Move on and concentrate on the rest.” Again, we heard in evidence to our Select Committee that some tutors at those colleges were basically saying, “Do this bit and then we can get on to the exciting part of policing.” That is basically saying: “You don’t have to worry about it. You just have to do this to pass and then you move on to the rest.”
European Union (Withdrawal) Act
Rupa Huq Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Seventy-seven days to go and breaking up is hard to do—disentangling ourselves from 45 years of arrangements that touch every aspect of our lives. This is bigger than any piece of legislation, any Budget and anything that any of us has ever voted on. It is a big deal. This is existential stuff.
I will not be voting for this deal because it is the culmination of a string of calamities. This week I received 373 emails in one day asking me to oppose it. People cannot understand why we had the referendum at all. We then had the triggering of article 50 with no plan. Holding a general election in that timeframe did not work out very well either, did it? The abandoned vote of last year then added another 30 days of wasted time. Now we have this bastardised compromise before us, uniting a whole pile of departed ex-Ministers, every living former Prime Minister, the ideological purists of the ERG and every single Labour Member here today.
Never mind the backstop, my constituents—13,000 outraged EU nationals among them—are worried about their financial passporting rights or their carbon credits when the EU emissions trading scheme ends. We are now told not to make the perfect the enemy of the good. That is a mighty big downgrade from “the easiest deal in history”. It is a bit of a downgrade from, “They need us more than we need them.” But there is plenty of material for any student essay on “Can a minority Government ever behave like an autocracy?”
There are desperate measures from No. 10, including evenings of drinky-poos for Tory MPs and knighthoods for some. A meeting was even offered to the 218 cross-party MPs imploring the PM to rule out a catastrophic no-deal Brexit, which would be like jumping out of a plane with no parachute, without even a safe landing space. That is one in three of us who are concerned about just-in-time supply chains and rules of origin. Indeed, I ended up at that meeting myself. Alas, nothing new came from the Prime Minister—same old, same old. There comes a time when being resolute becomes being pig-headed and stubborn. Meanwhile we see the farcical scenes of a multi-million-pound ferry contract paid to a firm with no vessels. We see the stockpiling of drugs. We have become the biggest buyer of fridges—that is one thing we can revel in.
Layla Moran
Does the hon. Lady think it is farcical that it was revealed that we have spent £1 million on these fridges so far?
Dr Huq
I absolutely do. In fact, we must think of all the money that this is racking up—never mind the £39 billion just for the split.
We have seen the no-deal notices, one of them recommending that Britons should vary their diets to avoid bananas and tomatoes in future. There are 3,500 troops on standby. Our great nation has descended into a “Dad’s Army”-style farce. “Just getting on with it” is easier said done when all the “it” that we should be getting on with is so interconnected.
Last year, in the sixth-richest country on earth, we saw 600 deaths from homelessness, including one here on our very doorstep. We know from the UN report on extreme poverty that 14 million of our fellow citizens are in extreme poverty. The NHS is haemorrhaging EU staff. Hoarding insulin is now a thing—that never used to be the case. The Home Secretary has left now, but desperate people being washed up in dinghies on our shores underlines the need for international co-operation at a time when we are turning away from our neighbours. We have heard about the coarsened climate of “them and us”, not only “them” as the EU and “us” on this side, but in this debate—the leavers and the remainers.
As the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) pointed out, Brexit has cost us dear from the public purse. We have two new Departments, Brexit planning across the entire civil service, and costly experiments creating a dress rehearsal with motorways in Kent. That is even before we get to the £39 billion that perplexes some Conservative Members. Every Government analysis shows that this will contract our economy by 9%. The best deal, obviously, is the one that we already have as existing members with a seat at the table rather than paying out to remain aligned. We know that what was promised was always improbable; now we know that those outlandish policies were undeliverable and the process was illegal.
As D-day looms, we need a plan B to break this logjam, impasse, gridlock, deadlock, cul de sac. We must have the meaningful vote that has been so hard resisted by the Government so as to reassert the sovereignty of Parliament. Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your role in changing the relations between the legislature and the Executive as you have done. We all thank you for that—although it was nothing to do with the Conservatives; they resisted every drop of it.
The last thing we need now is a blackmail Brexit with guns held to our heads. Increasingly, by the end of last year, good will, as well as time, was in decreasing supply. We have all this parliamentary game-playing when the functioning of our country, and people’s lives and livelihoods, is at stake. Given the magnitude of all this, it is time for calm action. We need a fresh assessment of the will of the people. It is 2019 now, not the middle of 2016, when circumstances were so different. Trump had not even been elected then, and it feels like he has been there for 50 years already.
We should extend article 50, given that there is only one deal on the table. As we have heard, “Nous n’allons pas renégocier le deal.” They have said it to us in every language. So that one deal has to be put to the people—to the electorate—for endorsement as to whether they think it is a good one. What are the Government scared of? We need a people’s vote with the option to remain, as we know what that looks like—to remain and reform, because we know it could be better. Now that is what I call taking back control.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Quite a few speakers in this debate referred to the toxic climate outside this place as a result of the entire Brexit issue, so I just wanted to seek your advice on a related matter. The brain injury charity Rehab holds an annual and very popular MPs versus journalists pancake race, in which the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), and I both participated last year. However, the event has been pulled this year over worries that the climate outside is so horrible that it is not worth running it; apparently Shrove Tuesday is very near exit day and the charity does not think it is worth the risk. I wonder whether you might know which parliamentary authority to raise this case with. Could we have some reassurance that it is still possible for the event to go ahead, because the event raises money for a great charity?
Mr Speaker
Clearly it is a magnificent cause, and I am very sorry to hear news of the postponement or cancellation, and the rationale for that decision. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order because it gives me an opportunity to say a very small number of words on the subject of security. She was very likely present in the Chamber earlier in the week when very grave concerns were aired about aggressive, threatening and intimidating behaviour towards Members and journalists. In response to points of order on that matter, I hope I gave sympathetic and understanding responses. More particularly, I committed to inquire further into the matter and to make appropriate representations.
On top of the letter sent to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner by well in excess of 150 colleagues, as I subsequently advised the House, I myself wrote to the commissioner in explicit terms underlining the extent and intensity of concern felt in this place about the threat to security. Further to that letter to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, I must tell the House that in Speaker’s House yesterday morning I hosted, with the Lord Speaker, a meeting with Commissioner Cressida Dick and her colleagues for members of the Commissions of both Houses and the consultative panel on parliamentary security. In the course of that constructive engagement, the police communicated plans for increased security in the period ahead, which they trust and we very much hope will enable Members, journalists and members of the public to go about their business unimpeded by aggressive, threatening or intimidating demonstrators.
In that context and flowing from that meeting, a detailed letter has today gone to all colleagues from Eric Hepburn, the director of security for Parliament, and Jane Johnson, the Chief Superintendent of the Metropolitan police based here, together with a short covering letter from me. I hope that is of interest and potentially of reassurance to colleagues. I am looking in particular in the direction of the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), who very eloquently raised his concerns, together with other colleagues, on the matter earlier in the week. I hope that its relevance to the event to which the hon. Lady has referred is obvious. That event is some distance in the future and the question of whether it goes ahead is not a matter for the Chair, but I very much hope that, as a result of the increased security that is now to be set in train, people organising events within the precincts of the Palace of Westminster, adjacent to it or in close proximity to it, will feel confident and comfortable that they can safely proceed with their plans. I hope that is helpful to the hon. Lady.
Leaving the EU: Women’s Rights
Rupa Huq Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered women’s rights after the UK leaves the EU.
As ever, Mr Hollobone, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. To start, I thank Gina Miller, and Nina, Tess and the other people from OFOC—Our Future Our Choice—who gave me the idea for this debate. Some of them are in the Public Gallery today.
On 23 June 2016, the UK took the landmark decision to exit the European Union by 52% to 48%. The pound immediately plummeted and, swiftly, there was a change of Prime Minister. Knowing what we know now, however, enacting Brexit will clearly not be as easy as we were promised. We were told that it would be a cinch, a doddle, a trade deal that would be the “easiest in…history”. It is also now coming to light that there will be a worse scenario for women—even though we now have a PM who is one.
Two years on from the decision, we still do not know exactly where we are headed in terms of the final deal. The Cabinet has suffered the high-level resignations of both the Brexit Secretary and the Foreign Secretary, and since 2015 a subject that never featured on a doorstep in my election campaign—that was never mentioned at all—has now become all that there is, taking up valuable parliamentary bandwidth. As the Minister—whom I respect and like very much—knows, we are meant to have a domestic violence Bill to consider soon, but this bloomin’ Brexit is taking up all the bandwidth. Brexit is all we ever see, and it dominates the airwaves.
We do know, however, that every Government impact study, for every region of the country and every sector of the economy, predicts that things will be worse. Above all, a multitude of factors add up to the inescapable conclusion that women will be the hardest hit of all by Brexit.
In recent months we have heard admonitions from farming, finance and fisheries, but females have been largely absent from that picture, whether among the voices leading up to the decision—the human face of the campaign was Nigel Farage—or the negotiating teams that we see on the news, with the exception of the PM, of course. Olly Robbins is, sadly, not Olivia Robbins, but one of the men in suits. All we saw on the news yesterday was dark-suited chaps engaged in Tory blue-on-blue warfare—internal party-management issues that are destroying our country. That is a massive oversight, especially as when one drills down to the gendered nature of the effects of Brexit—we have all heard about lost jobs, cuts to services and a squeeze on family budgets—women have the most to lose.
The scant progress in negotiations means that, all this time on, more than two years in, zero trade deals have been secured to date, and the Chequers plan has been rejected by the EU—personified in another man, Michel Barnier—so “no deal” is now seriously being talked about. If that ever came to pass, or even if our desperation to avoid it led to a bad deal, the UK would be put in a weak position to resist pressure from other countries to go for scenarios that would damage women’s rights at work, adversely impact them as consumers or undermine the quality of public service standards. I shall outline a couple of examples.
In terms of economic impact—Bill Clinton said, “The economy, stupid”, but the remain campaign was critiqued for a lot of its economic doomsday scenarios—the fall in GDP will most adversely affect sectors such as clothing and textiles, which have a majority female workforce and are particularly vulnerable to increased trade barriers. Despite people voting in good faith for £350 million every week of additional money for the NHS post-Brexit—that was plastered on the side of a big red bus—we now know that that will not happen. Instead, we face the prospect of opening up our NHS and other public services to overseas competition—that means grubby American insurance companies getting their mitts on our NHS.
The health service relies on a workforce from overseas and we hear that nurses from EU nations are already leaving in droves—we have not even left yet. There is also the ticking demographic time bomb of a worsening crisis in social care. We constantly hear about that, and it is the biggest spend in any local authority budget. It is the UK’s lowest-paid sector, where 80% of workers are women, but it, too, is hollowing out as EU staffers go elsewhere or home. The profession is one that UK-born people eschew. In such a situation—some analysis came out last week—women always, sadly, bear the burden as unofficial carers. They care for elderly parents and, as the sandwich generation, care for their kids at one end and their parents at the other. If they are forced to cut corners at work or even to depart employment altogether to do that, we will have massive gaps in our labour market.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. She mentioned social care and the preponderance of women in the sector. Through membership of the EU, women have also gained rights to part-time and flexible working, which are particularly important to the 6.2 million women who work part time because they have caring responsibilities. Does she agree that there is a double whammy of social care workers leaving and women with social care responsibilities unable to have their rights protected?
Dr Huq
I agree with my hon. Friend completely—she is also learned, as a distinguished lawyer for many years before she came to this place—and she makes a good point: it is not only the nature of the work, but the structuring of the contracts. Our party has argued against zero-hours contracts—we will ban such employment malpractices—and things such as part-time working directives have kept such women afloat so, as she says, they are being hit twice over.
Consider plummeting GDP, which is likely to have the knock-on effect of further cuts to Government spending on services. We have a clever Conservative Government who have shifted a lot of the burden on to local government budgets, but women are more likely to work in the public sector and to need public services, so they are the worst affected. Analysis has shown that, as it is, austerity has hit women: I think 80% of the savings—a euphemism for cuts—has fallen on women.
Consider women as consumers: increased tariffs and a fall in the value of the pound will result in increased food prices, which hit the poorest hardest. Looking at wage differences, we see that women are more likely to be poor and, like it or not, in the traditional family unit women are more likely to be bearing the burden of managing the household finances and shopping for food. I do not want to use horrible stereotypes—“Hi, honey, I’m home!”—but that is the case. We have already witnessed rising prices and things such as the shrinking size of the Toblerone bar—it is diminishing before our eyes, even though we have not yet left the EU. Potentially, we might also be subject to diluted standards, if we mirror US ones and get imported hormone-injected beef. Chlorinated chicken, anyone? Mmmm! All that is bad news.
Hard-won rights of maternity and paternity leave and, indeed, against pregnancy discrimination all came from the EU. We have no guarantee that we will uphold them or that we will mirror future advances. In 2017, the Women and Equalities Committee—a Conservative majority Select Committee, so not my words but theirs—did a report on “Ensuring strong equalities legislation after the EU exit”. The report stated:
“At present, domestic legislation and EU legal structures together provide the UK’s strong equality protections. Stakeholders have expressed concern that the removal of the EU legal underpinning, including the court system, will lead to a weakening of equality protection in the future unless its full effects are understood. It is therefore important for the Government, during the process of leaving the EU, to ensure that robust equality protection is embedded at each milestone. The Government should ensure that equality protections—including but not limited to workers’ rights—remain to the fore as negotiations begin and throughout the leaving process.”
That was in 2017. Since then, we have had a general election that took up eight weeks of valuable negotiating time, in a time-limited process set by the Government. But that report still should prevail. Will the Minister tell us how many of the report’s 15 recommendations have been adopted? I have heard nothing since.
We are at a crucial crossroads. The Secretary of State for the Environment said that we could theoretically opt to exceed the existing gender equality standards when we leave. The Government could do that—it is technically possible. The existing stuff we have via EU frameworks could be bettered. But the omens are not good, going by the previous form of Conservative Governments dating back to Mrs Thatcher’s dislike of the social chapter, and going by the Brexit Minister Lord Callanan’s criticism of the pregnant workers directive and the agency workers regulations, which my hon. Friend referred to. When he was an MEP, Lord Callanan called them “barriers to employment” and made a speech advocating that they be “scrapped”. It is all very googleable. Never let it be forgotten that the UK tried to block the EU’s pregnancy discrimination directive, but was overturned by the European Court of Justice.
Whether we exceed what is there or go backwards, it is unclear what the enforcement mechanisms would be. We are to cut ourselves off from the additional layer of accountability and recourse provided by the charter of fundamental rights, as the Government have vowed to end the ECJ’s direct jurisdiction. There is nothing to guarantee that gender equality law will not regress to below the UK’s current level. Even though it was a Labour Government, I am proud to say, who introduced the Equal Pay Act 1970 before we were a member of the EU, equal pay was one of the establishing principles of the original treaty of Rome in 1957. Indeed, the UK’s weaker home-grown provisions in the 1970 Act were significantly strengthened by signing up to the European Economic Community equal pay directive on joining, as that obliged employers to pay women and men equally for the first time. The Equal Pay Act did not do that—it merely gave women the right to make equal pay claims.
Sacrificing workplace rights on which women rely, such as parental leave, equal treatment and rights for part-time workers, at the altar of increased flexibility and “competitiveness” could be easily done. It is easy to knock the EU—our leader gave it seven out of 10, but who would say 10 out of 10? We know the arguments against unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, but it has a good record on various equality measures. It enacted violence against women directives and the blue badge scheme, which is a European arrangement for parking for those with reduced mobility that is transferable among nation states. As MPs, I am sure we have all been asked to countersign the paperwork. Mobility features to accommodate wheelchairs and buggies on buses—I have been on many a bus with a buggy—originated from the EU. Red tape and EU directives have made life easier for women, by introducing anti-harassment laws and properly paid holiday rights, reducing hours worked and making it illegal to be dismissed for pregnancy.
I have a set of questions for the Minister—who I am usually quite a fan of, for a Tory—and I hope she will give proper answers and not just a gloss-over. What discussions has she had with colleagues from the Department for Exiting the European Union to ensure that Brexit does not disproportionately harm women, rather than just taking the Prime Minister’s word for it? The fact that we have a woman at the top does not enshrine continuity. What assurances will the Minister give to ensure that there is sufficient female representation during the remainder of the negotiating process? There is eight months to go, and there is the possibility of an extended article 50 process—it is not too late.
What steps are the Government taking to ensure that equality rights are not diluted after the UK leaves the EU, as per the Women and Equalities Committee report? What arbitration mechanisms can the Minister and her DExEU colleagues offer as a guarantor to hold future Governments to account? Will she reconsider the gender-blind approach to Government policy making and commit, like Labour, to gender-audit every policy and ensure action is taken now to avert disaster, and apply that to the Brexit deal so that we can evaluate the impact on women’s equality and financial well being?
Of course, women are people, and no Brexit scenario is a good scenario for anyone. Having entered the shady world of the reading room with the secret documents, I know that men, women and non-binary alike have all benefited from EU employment, environmental and consumer protections—things such as the European health insurance card, which entitles us to holiday healthcare, and the European arrest warrant, which protects us from criminals.
We will all suffer from the attempt to judderingly extricate ourselves unscathed from 40-plus years of progress, but women will most acutely feel the most adverse effects. Women also feature in the other block categories we hear about: EU nationals treated as collateral pawns in some sort of hostage situation, Brits abroad on the costa del wherever who will not be able to have their pensions paid into UK bank accounts. It is not only those people; the average Jo—that is not just Joseph but Josephine—suffers, too.
For both leavers and remainers, the opinion polls indicate widespread dissatisfaction at how it is going. Those who deem themselves to be satisfied are in single figures on every poll. Project fear has become project reality. Britain has slipped from the fifth-largest economy in the world to sixth, behind France. What a humiliation that we have been overtaken by those who Bart Simpson called the “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”.
Since 2016, new variables are coming to light all the time: customs arrangements for complex supply chains, rules of origin for car and aeroplane parts and the Northern Ireland border are all unresolved. More recently, we have heard of the contingency planning for no deal regarding food, medicines and fuel to be distributed by troops on the streets. That was never on the ballot paper. International firms are relocating European operations elsewhere: in the last week, Panasonic’s European headquarters went from Bracknell to Amsterdam and the London-based European Medicines Agency, which employs 900 people, has already upped sticks from Canary Wharf to the Netherlands. To add insult to injury, it is cutting Britain out of its contracts before we even leave, which is a body blow to pharmaceuticals.
With a £50 billion price tag of exit fees plus the Government’s undertaking to underwrite all structural and research funding, Brexit will not be cheap. In fact, it is unprecedented to leave an organisation that it took 12 years of negotiating to join in the first place, and which has potential applicants queuing around the block to get in. There are 27 of them and one of us. There is the prospect of returning to the dark ages—there are eight months to go and we are still in the dark about what happens next.
Surely, in order to make any decision, one should be in receipt of the full facts. People voted in good faith, but increasingly they believe what they are presented with is not what they thought they were getting. To resolve what Danny Dyer so memorably called the “mad riddle” of Brexit, a people’s vote is imperative. To validate the final deal must be a decision not just for 650 MPs, because we have a population of 60 million. Give that decision back to the people. The final say on whatever comes back from the negotiations—or on no deal, if it comes to that—must be presented to the electorate, with an option to remain, because we know what that looks like. Now that is what I call the will of the people.
Victoria Atkins
I will ask the relevant Minister to write to the hon. Lady. We put EU law into domestic law through the EU withdrawal Act, which means that any debate about which EU laws apply and which do not will go through the House, so that will have the scrutiny of 650 Members of Parliament.
Victoria Atkins
I very much accept that point, which I thank the hon. Lady for making. As I said, I will not be drawn into the detail of that specific issue because I do not know whether primary legislation would be required to change that. In any event, statutory instruments are still open to scrutiny by the House, as I suspect we are all about to find out.
We are proud as a country to have long been a trailblazer on gender equality and tackling discrimination. Even after we joined the EU, Britain led the way on pre-empting protections that were later introduced through EU law, with legislation such as the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. We go beyond EU minimum standards in a number of areas, such as entitlement to annual leave, paid maternity leave and parental leave. We do not need to be part of the EU to have strong protections for workers or high standards in the workplace. We lead the world with our gender pay gap regulations. We would like the EU to follow our lead. For the first time, 10,500 businesses had to discuss at board level how they pay women. That groundbreaking work was led not by the EU but by the UK Government.
We are doing more to try to help women flourish in our economy and our society. It is not just through legislation that we can help advance the interests and participation of women across society. A record number of women are in work, which gives them the financial independence in their families and their home settings that we worry about so often in this place, ensuring that they can control the direction of their lives.
Of course, that does not affect our commitment to, for example, changing the personal tax allowance and higher-rate threshold, which means an estimated 700,000 women have been taken out of income tax altogether and 13 million women will see their income tax bill reduced. The hon. Member for Cardiff Central mentioned women’s income. Increases in the national minimum wage and the national living wage are expected to benefit more women than men. We have announced investment in childcare of around £6 billion every year by 2020—more than ever before—which will help women with their responsibilities in that field. We are encouraging employers to introduce flexible working, as well as trying to open up opportunities for women who perhaps left work because of caring responsibilities to get back into work and develop their careers.
At the other end of the spectrum, since 2010 we have strengthened the law on violence against women. We introduced new offences of domestic abuse and failing to protect a girl from female genital mutilation, and we want to do far more. I very much look forward to the introduction of the draft domestic abuse Bill this year. The Prime Minister herself set introducing the Modern Slavery Act 2015 as a personal priority. Sadly, in some parts of the world, women are trafficked to the UK or elsewhere to be used as sex slaves. All those measures have helped in the darker recesses of humanity. They are helping us improve the lot of women in this country. I look forward to tomorrow’s debate about upskirting, as well as to work on sexual harassment.
The hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton asked me a number of questions. I have already mentioned the transparency of equality statements. I will write to her about the other matters. This is a Government run by a woman for women, and I look forward to women flourishing in the future of this country.
Question put and agreed to.
Immigration Detention: Shaw Review
Rupa Huq Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Sajid Javid
It is good that the hon. Lady has visited Yarl’s Wood, because that is the kind of scrutiny that we need. [Interruption.] I have just heard her say that it took time to get permission. I am sorry to hear that. However, it is good that she has visited and seen the centre at first hand. That does not necessarily mean that I agree with her entire assessment following her visit, but I am very happy to listen to her experience and her thoughts. Although I said at the start of my statement that administrative detention plays an important role when done properly in our immigration system, I do think—this is where we could agree—that there should be more alternatives to detention so that people can be held in the community, rather than in a detention centre, while their cases are being looked at. I hope that she welcomes some of the announcements that I have made today, but I am looking to do more and would be happy to hear her ideas about alternatives.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I welcome this Home Office-commissioned review. I also welcome the Secretary of State’s words on the women in Yarl’s Wood, who often do not know what they have been detained for. I have a letter from the Home Secretary in which he rightly condemns harassment and intimidating behaviour towards women, but regarding a Home Office review into women seeking abortion healthcare he also says:
“I will…make an announcement before the summer recess”
and that he will do so
“with a view to making recommendations”.
That review was announced by the Secretary of State’s predecessor in November, and it closed in February. It took 160 Members from both sides of the House, including the Father of the House and the Chairs of the Select Committees on Home Affairs, on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs and on Health and Social Care, to get the undertaking in this letter. There are four hours left until the recess. Will the Secretary of State be able to deliver on his word for vulnerable women everywhere?
Sajid Javid
I am happy to write the hon. Lady about the issue that she raises, but I am afraid that it has nothing to do with the statement that I made today.
Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill (Seventh sitting)
Rupa Huq Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Neil Coyle
I have listened carefully to the Minister, but I am afraid that I am not reassured, for a number of reasons.
I have spoken to the Treasury about its plans and I am interested in having a discussion with the Minister with responsibility for charities, but I remain aware that JustGiving meets with charities in this country about the more immediate Disasters Emergency Committee-type approach to an international incident. It goes to the table with the charities, which are working out how best to support people through the immediate aftermath of a terror attack and the urgent need of communities affected. The fundraising platforms, however, are sitting at that table and they know that they can make a profit out of the incident and future events. Their involvement will guarantee them additional income and revenue on the back of a terror attack.
Precisely because the Bill covers terrorism, the charities issue deserves to be treated separately and can be drawn out uniquely. Terrorism, being so uniquely horrific, is clearly the reason why the public are so generous in their response. That is why the figures are so much higher after a terror attack, because people respond. The British public respond when they see children attacked in Manchester, because they want to be able to help. When they see innocent civilians enjoying a night out around Borough market, they want to donate. The large sums arising from those donations are the reason why there is more significant concern.
I had hoped that the platforms involved—JustGiving is the prime player, but there are others—would have done more to cap their own policies, but they have not done so. I do not accept the idea that they would no longer be there or that this would limit future donations, because others would always step in to fill that gap.
There is a unique opportunity with the Bill not to undermine the collective will of the British public who seek to help innocent civilians and their families. The ministerial mantra of terrorists not beating us or changing our way of life can be reflected in this new clause. It would mean that donations from the public that are designed to support the continuation of our way of life are not watered down through the profit margins of others. The Government are trying to take some action. The Minister suggests that we wait and see if that works, but we have a clause here that would do the job much quicker and better.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. Platforms such as JustGiving are behaving in a very uncharitable way. The Minister has an “It’ll be all right on the night” policy, but I am reminded of when in 2017—my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe was with us then—the same argument was made about the public register of beneficial interests. The Minister on that occasion said, “Let them do it on their own,” but public opinion forced the Government to climb down. I urge Government Members to join my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark. Even The Sun has backed this campaign—
Neil Coyle
As the Member with The Sun in his constituency—News UK’s head office is at London Bridge—I am definitely proud of part of the contribution it makes on this issue. Let us leave it there. In response to what the Minister said, there is no need to wait. The new clause would do part of the job by ending the profit from some of these platforms. It does not prevent admin or running costs being collected or those platforms from existing in future, but it sustains the trust that they rely on to continue to be the go-to point for people seeking to raise money after terror attacks or other incidents. Very simply, I urge the Committee to support new clause 5.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill (Fifth sitting)
Rupa Huq ExcerptsTuesday 3rd July 2018
(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I speak to clause 18, in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen’s plea for an independent review of the programme. As he said so persuasively, it is doing some good work out there, and nobody is arguing against safeguarding. However, we have to accept that in its current guise and its earlier incarnation of preventing violent extremism, Prevent has been dogged by accusations of feeding mistrust and harbouring suspicion against certain communities, who feel disproportionately targeted by its impact. I am speaking mainly about Muslims, who may already be feeling jumpy in this post-Brexit climate of the rises we have seen in hate crime. We do not want to be unwittingly pushing them into the wrong arms.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
What would the hon. Lady say to the counter-accusation, if we can call it that, that some within a variety of communities sought to undermine the robustness and work of the programme, by making such allegations? They did so not because they had any particular axe to grind against Prevent; they were just trying to divert attention away from their activities to create distrust in the agenda. What does she say about that, given that a canon of evidence seems to be building, which demonstrates that as a fact?
Dr Huq
What I would say is that the hon. Gentleman needed to bear with me and hear what I was going to say as I developed my argument. I had barely finished my first sentence. If he bears with me, I will give examples of other communities, too—not just Muslims, of course. We do not want this to be a cover for people to do their illicit deeds. If he will bear with me, I would like to continue.
I would like to give two observations from the coalface to the Minister. Both the Minister and the shadow Minister go and see these projects all the time, I am sure. In the last week and a half, without my trying, I have come across two examples in our Prevent team at Ealing Council—the London borough of Ealing gets quite a lot of funding for this. The first example was the week before last. I had convened an interfaith meeting at our town hall. I go to a lot of civic services, because we have two synagogues, two mosques, loads of churches, Baha’is and all sorts of faith groups, and they all talk to me, but they do not talk to each other. My idea, therefore, was to bring them together in a room to see what sort of things they are doing—food banks and other services—but it is not a theological group. I had the Prevent officer there, but she was rounded on by some Muslims from one of our mosques, who said that Ealing council is getting a reputation for being Islamophobic. One group, MEND—it stands for Muslim Engagement and Development, and I have met some of its members in Parliament—had wanted to hold a meeting at the town hall, but had been banned by the Prevent team because red flags had been raised about it after a Channel 4 “Dispatches” documentary. I think the programme was called “Who Speaks for British Muslims?”
Banning the group was seen as an overreaction, because the programme was just a bit of shoddy and sensationalist journalism. There are always bad apples in any group—as in any political party, because we can be umbrellas for different interests—but people felt that it was a bit much to ban the group MEND, whose aim is to combat Islamophobia. People from MEND have been in this building, Portcullis House, to see me. They gave me a whole dossier, and were anticipating the attack, saying, “We’ve got a point-by-point rebuttal of the programme, which is coming out next week.” Again, that gave Prevent a bad name.
Sometimes these groups form an alphabet soup of acronyms, and some of them are a bit voguish and flavour of the month. The poor Prevent officer at my meeting had all these people saying, “Ealing council is Islamophobic”, and, although Channel and all the other bits deal with the far right and so on, perhaps Prevent falls disproportionately on Muslims. That is why a review is a good idea, and that is all my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen is asking for—a sensible review to take stock and to see whether the strategy is working.
My second example is from this weekend when I was at the Somali Advice and Development Centre which was celebrating receiving a Queen’s award. This SADC group in my constituency, which actually operates borough-wide, channels people away not only from extremism but from criminal activities generally—at the weekend the group was talking about knife crime a lot. Again, the Prevent officer was at the celebration. A young Somali girl said to me, in hushed tones, that Prevent did not trust them at all, not as far as it could throw them. She even works for the local authority in another guise, so she is a public servant, but she mentioned another group, Cage—the one that deals with prisoners—and said that she would rather deal with it than Prevent any day. Cage dealt with Moazzam Begg. Again, the Prevent officer’s face dropped, saying, “No, that’s on our banned list.”
Mr Wallace
I have listened to and understand the hon. Lady’s case. Much of what she says is genuine, but before she goes down the Cage line, she is right that there are groups and groups. I do not want her to wander inadvertently into thinking that Cage is some small representative of prisoner groups. The leadership of Cage praised Jihadi John as an individual before a Committee of this House. If there is one group that seeks to undermine Prevent for the wrong reasons—there are people who oppose Prevent for perfectly valid reasons—it is Cage, which would take the view that it is anti-state. Cage wants nothing from the state, including Prevent. It is one of the groups, similar to some of the far-right groups, that would like us to have a less integrated society and less of a common-values platform. She is perfectly right to express other concerns, but she should be cautious about Cage. I would never say that I would rather deal with Cage than Prevent. It would be a slippery slope.
The Chair
Before I call the hon. Lady to resume her remarks, I remind the Committee that at the beginning of the sitting I said that if comments were wide ranging, we would not have a clause stand-part debate. Given that she is ranging quite widely from the wording of the amendment, I shall probably not have a separate clause stand part, so she should be mindful of that as she carries on with her remarks.
Dr Huq
I am grateful to the Minister for flagging up that one should be cagey about Cage. I have never encountered Cage directly, but am reporting verbatim what someone said to me. That is my point: if people feel they are being alienated, we do not want to radicalise them and drive them into the arms of the wrong people.
The Somali girl said she had undertaken training at the London borough of Hillingdon. She had been shown a video that said that the tell-tale signs for spotting that someone is becoming radicalised include going to a mosque and having a beard. She said that that covers most of the people she knows. Again, it may be that some of the training materials are a bit defective. She said that after her niece’s schoolteacher had been on training in Feltham in the London borough of Hounslow, the kid—a primary school child who sometimes wears a hijab and sometimes does not—was called in with her parents. Again, perhaps we should have a review of the materials that are being put out there. Her point was that the video would make anyone feel a bit mistrustful of Muslims, but would not have done the same for far-right activists. Although the video gave an example of far-right activism, it was not on a par.
The vast majority of referrals come through schools, and there are figures on that. Academic papers from the law department at Oxford—I went to Cambridge, so I intrinsically mistrust anything from Oxford—
Dr Huq
Sorry. The law department at Oxford said that referrals come through schools. Getting flagged by some over-enthusiastic teacher who has watched the shoddy training video can be a black mark against a schoolkid’s name forever.
The Somali girl said that everything was on condition of anonymity. She said, “I’ll talk to you, but I don’t want to be named.” She said, “It makes you scared to say anything ever.” People might have legitimate concerns, but what does it stretch to? If a kid has a Koran in the corner of their bedroom, or if there is a campus meeting to discuss Israel’s policies, could that be among the things to look out for in the Prevent video?
It is not just me saying that having a review of Prevent would be a good idea. David Anderson, the former independent reviewer, who has been mentioned by the Minister and the shadow Minister, called for a review and said that Muslims are being made to feel “under siege”. There is a sense that the net is being cast too wide. Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber, was not caught, although people at Didsbury mosque reported that he was saying some dodgy things. Sometimes it is not catching people, and sometimes it is too wide.
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
It is extremely dangerous in debates like this to talk about the Muslim community as if it has a single viewpoint.
Julia Lopez
I am sorry that I addressed the Chair. I apologise.
Prevent deals with extremely delicate issues, and it is about building trust in the community, so we cannot talk about the community as though it is singular. For instance, groups of mothers who are extremely worried about their children leaving for places such as Syria want to engage with Prevent. Saying that Prevent is divisive and breeding mistrust is misplaced and dangerous in the circumstances.
Dr Huq
I completely accept the hon. Lady’s point about the differences within Islam. There are many denominations; I would be the first to agree with that. I am sorry if I was giving that impression. That is what a review would bring out. She makes a good point and illustrates why we need a review. Our Prevent officer in Ealing pointed out that Rafał Ziemkiewicz—a Polish holocaust denier and anti-Semite, who wanted to come and speak in Ealing—was banned. I had a hand in having him banned from coming to speak in Acton.
I am not saying that this affects only one community, but the polling shows that there is mistrust, and some of the teaching materials are not good. The groups wax and wane. One minute the Muslim Council of Britain was Tony Blair’s favourite Muslim group, and the next minute it was cast into darkness, so sometimes these groups can feel a bit voguish. A review would be an eminently sensible idea.
Only this week, a review into bouncy castles was called for after the tragic death of a young child at the weekend, so reviews are never a bad thing. The Prevent strategy has been going for some time now, so it is time to take stock. Freedom of information requests from the Association of Chief Police Officers show that a disproportionally large number of referrals by teachers are for things that kids have done, which turn out to be nothing.
Thehon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) flagged that Northern Ireland has not been dealt with. The Minister said that different groups have different threats, but we never know what is going on and it is good to remain vigilant. The Home Office’s wording is about hearts and minds. That should not mean kneejerk reactions, which this programme can be susceptible to. I agree with my hon. Friend that we need a review, because in some aspects of this programme we could do better.
Mr Wallace
We need a Prevent strategy on wine gums. The importance of publishing the data is to indicate how Prevent fits into broader safeguarding, putting it into perspective and challenging a number of the myths. How it fits into broader safeguarding is in the simple numbers: 7,000 Prevent referrals a year, of which just over half are youths under the age of about 25, I think, compared with 621,000 safeguarding referrals every year from teachers, social workers and health clinicians when dealing with everything from sexual and domestic abuse to a wider range of other types of safeguarding. So it is not the mass spying exercise that some critics allege it is.
Dr Huq
Taking on board the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark that those categories were stratified, taking account of some mental health issues, the Exeter Giraffe would-be nail bomber Nicky Reilly had quite serious Asperger’s syndrome. The inquest has not been done, but he has since died in Manchester prison. He was a convert, and that is something else that concerns me. The point has been made to me that a lot of these famous cases involve converts, including Richard Reid the shoe bomber; and Khalid Masood, who attacked us here in Westminster, was born Adrian. Converts and mental illness are an issue.
Mr Wallace
I would be happy to talk to the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton afterwards about the details of terrorists’ profiles rather than the Prevent element, but I would be ruled out of order if I wandered into that. The main issue about the Prevent duty was that within the numbers, we obviously see a significant number of young people. We see more people who are vulnerable, depending on the type of attack in which they are involved. To answer part of the point that the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton made, there is a higher number of significant mental health issues in lone wolves than there is in complex attack planners. Going back to the point about being vulnerable and radicalised and groomed in streaming: they may be loners, they may be on their own, and they may not have a wide friends network. We certainly see that.
The other reason I wanted to publish the data was to counter some of the myths, including the myth of there being a widespread spying operation. Clearly, Prevent is not that, if you compare it with the wider safeguarding of hundreds of thousands. Another part of the Prevent programme was to show that some of the myths peddled are the enemies of the myths themselves. They get repeated time and again, and people say, “Well there is a perception problem and we have to have a review” or, “There’s something wrong with it.”
Two of the big current myths doing the rounds are: “I live in a terraced house”, about a referral in Lancashire. It was not a Prevent referral; the statement was in fact, “I live in a terraced house and my uncle beats me”. It was a domestic abuse referral and it never went near a Prevent officer or a police officer, but you will hear the likes of CAGE peddle that every single week and month, as well as some people who do not want to check their facts. Another myth refers to a child in Bedford caught playing with a toy gun, the mother arrived and apparently there was a great Prevent operation. That was not a Prevent referral at all. One of the strongest myths—I am afraid the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton repeated it—is that the Prevent guidance issued by the Home Office includes things like someone going to a mosque and someone with a beard. That is categorically not part of the training package, and not part of the Home Office information at all. It is however part of the propaganda spouted by CAGE in reference to what Prevent is about.
Mr Wallace
The first step was to publish the information, discuss it with whomever we liked and ensure the Prevent statistics are all out there. They show that a large number of referrals into the Channel programme came from the far right and that this is a safeguarding policy for the benefit of us all, whether Muslim, middle class, in a community or diaspora. We know that the way people are being radicalised and the groomers doing it have no worries about following traditional routes. They will go wherever they can to groom victims.
The important thing about publishing that is to show those communities, to ask the hon. Gentleman to say to the MCB or others, “Look, here are the statistics. Here is what Prevent is doing in the north-east of England to prevent the extreme right wing dividing our community. Here are the actual numbers.”
That is the first step. The second step is broader engagement. I met the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton last week when he raised the issue of the MCB and others. I am open to examining some of the suggestions about how much we engage with many of those groups. I represent north Preston but, in a sense, I am not fussed where people come from; I am interested in where people are going.
There are some groups I am aware of—I have named CAGE—to which I do not want to give the credibility of a meeting, so that they can spout what they do. I know their agenda and it does not benefit the communities they say they represent. That is the way it is. There are other groups I would be happy to meet; I know some of them are taking strong steps. Going back to the Prevent review requirement, it is interesting that when many of those groups espouse their “Prevent”—what they would do—it is the same. It might not be called Prevent but it is the same; it is safeguarding.
I said the reason we do not review is because Prevent is always evolving; we are always reviewing it in a sense. There are measures in the Bill to broaden Prevent to include more input from local authorities. It is not just a police-led initiative. It would allow local authorities to be part of the process. We have to start the process by saying communities are often and strongly represented by their local authorities and the local authorities should be able to shape that.
That goes to the observation of several Opposition Members that Prevent is working in some parts though not so well in others. That is all about the characteristics of the community, how it has approached Prevent and its background. I find more settled Muslim communities much more engaged in Prevent than very new communities, which are worried about any kind of state because they have probably come from a state that oppressed them.
In Kirklees, Lancashire, where I was not long ago, they are very happy to be engaged. In Scotland, they have done some amazing stuff around broadening delivery of community safety. We should all learn from the knife crime work they have done in Glasgow. Budgets have been just as restricted and tough but they have managed to deliver successes. We want that to evolve.
I spoke to Andy Burnham not long ago. He is doing a review that is out soon on effective community cohesion and that impact. Appointing a reviewer of something that is moving and evolving, on a subject that is working the vast majority of the time, is not what is required at this moment. Yes, we should all do more work in separating the myth from the reality, for example, the myth I have heard that if someone has a beard they will be referred to Prevent. I believe if we do that we demonstrate the success: 500 people have come through Channel. People go into Channel when there are serious concerns about them and, out the other end of Channel, in two years, they are no longer of concern. That is 500 people who were a real threat to our safety and security on the streets. Those were not peripheral people but ones we had real concern about. It took one person to attack Westminster bridge; think of the impact that had.
I understand the position about having a review. I am delighted we no longer hear much, “Let’s get rid of the Prevent duty.” Some 12 months ago, that was the call from a lot of people; now we are talking about review.
Dr Huq
I am listening to what the Minister is saying about the statistical evidence to counter the myths and all that stuff. If he is dead set against an independent review, does he accept the point that if some of these Muslim groups felt they had a hand in the design, they would feel less that they were being picked on? The ones I have spoken to feel that there are a lot of converts who are all being tarred with the same brush, and it is not them.
Simon Hoare
I do not wish to detain the Committee for long, not least because all the copious notes I took from the meeting that the hon. Gentleman alluded to seemed to go missing in the lunch recess. Perhaps we should be more concerned about our security and counter-terrorism than anything else.
I want to support the probing nature of what the hon. Gentleman just said. The licensed vehicle fleet is very large and represents a significant percentage of new car sales in the UK. We know full well the huge importance that the automotive sector has for our UK economy.
It is also an important part of our UK tourism sector. Lots of people live in our big towns and cities because there is good transport and they do not require to run a motorcar. However, they want to go on holiday in the United Kingdom with their kit, their kids and everything else, so they hire a car. We also want to ensure that foreign tourists who are here on a UK-only destination or as part of a wider European tour have access to a vehicle.
As we know, insurance is a pivotal measure that vehicle rental companies must have. The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark alluded to the huge problems that that can create when trying to find insurance. That seems to be a difficulty not just for the larger players in the sector but smaller business. Businesses large and small create a significant number of jobs.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the ongoing consultation on the vote. One hopes that that will address the issue. As the Bill progresses towards Report and processes in the other place, I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister that it is a timely trigger for a more intragovernmental conversation about how our mature and well respected insurance sector considers altering its products and remit, and how it looks at requests for insurance in sectors that are prone to claims, which are themselves hard to define. Vehicles would obviously be one of those. There seems to be a time lag between the mindset of the insurance sector and what today’s modern business requires.
A constituent is having to claim on his domestic insurance for loss of possessions as an indirect result of terrorist activity. His insurer has told him, “Terribly sorry; you are not covered.” Lots of other sections, be it Government, police, security and so on, have had to recalibrate a lot of what they do in order to face these new challenges. That is what we are trying to do in the Bill. There is a time lag in some elements of the insurance sector, so I support the hon. Gentleman.
The Chair
Order. Before I call the hon. Lady, I was about to make the hon. Gentleman come back to motor vehicle acts of terrorism. I would rather that did not involve wider discussions of insurance. If it is not on a wider discussion of insurance, I call Rupa Huq.
Simon Hoare
I was drawing my remarks to a close. I am not going to speak to all of the amendments, conscious of your injunction, Mrs Main.
Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill (Second sitting)
Rupa Huq ExcerptsTuesday 26th June 2018
(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Q
The Chair
Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank Mr Hill for his evidence. Perhaps you might be my first port of call in the next session, Dr Huq.
Examination of Witness
Michael Clancy gave evidence.
The Chair
If there is a moment left, I will come back, but I am conscious that Dr Huq would like to ask a question before we run out of time.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Q
I wanted to ask you about, first, the issue of thought without action and secondly, the difference between lone wolves and proscribed organisations. The case I wanted to raise was the first ever person convicted under the Terrorism Act, in 2007, the 23-year-old “lyrical terrorist”—the person writing extremist poetry about beheading people. That resulted in an Old Bailey conviction that was later overturned by the Court of Appeal. What are your thoughts on that and this Bill? How would they apply? Have you heard of that case? Nobody this morning had, and I was surprised by that.
Peter Carter: No, I am afraid I have not. It was not one I acted in.
Dr Huq
It was all over the news at the time in 2007 and it was overturned in 2008.
Peter Carter: The difficulty with section 58 is that it is not about terrorist material; it is about
“information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”.
If it was about terrorist material, as identified by the Minister, I think there would be very little problem with it.
The difficulty of extending the definition of “material” in section 58 of the 2000 Act, as this clause does, is to take it into thought. We are at risk of getting close to a heresy idea. It would be trying to stop what is genuine interest in political issues of extremism and people being able to inform themselves about extremism in order to engage with the debate and to defeat these views. Unless we engage in a debate with those views, we will not defeat them. There has to be a capacity for ordinary people to be able to understand what extremism is and why these views are so dangerous that we must engage with them and overcome them.
Dr Huq
Q
Peter Carter: I was involved in training the counter-terrorism command when the Prevent policy started. I was an enthusiastic supporter of it, because it was subtle and very effective. It has gone slightly off track and lost the support of some communities. That is a great shame, because it really needs to be supported.
I shared a panel recently at the Law Society with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner; I am glad to say that she and I agreed about just about everything. One of those things was the importance of the Prevent strategy and of getting back the confidence of the communities, because their engagement in it is vital. As a concept, it is a vital part of fighting terrorism.
Abigail Bright: A very specific part of the community is the family doctor—the general practitioners. One only needs to look at The BMJ to see the concern expressed by medical practitioners about the Prevent programme. In principle, there is no resistance to it among the medical fraternity, but how it is executed and how it risks trespassing on medical confidentiality and trust between doctor and patient is a very discrete part of how it is problematic in the community.
Mr Wallace
GPs are not covered by the Prevent duty.
Abigail Bright: On another view, much training of general practitioners goes into how to deal with Prevent.
Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill (First sitting)
Rupa Huq ExcerptsTuesday 26th June 2018
(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
Q
Gregor McGill: That would depend on the particular circumstances of the case and the particular evidence put before the prosecutor. If you went straight to a very criminal—if I can use that word—part of the streaming, that could constitute one. Just a very brief look could constitute one click.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Q
Gregor McGill: That is a very difficult question to answer without seeing the precise evidence. The section 12 support offence is there to deal—sorry to come back to it—with the threat of radicalisation, and the charismatic speakers who stop just short of inviting people to become involved in terrorism but make it clear that they support that activity. That is what this clause is there to deal with.
Dr Huq
Q
Assistant Commissioner Basu: I do not remember that case, but in the circumstances as you describe them, it would be easy to see why that was a weak case. Mr McGill has said it already, but prosecutors look in the round at whether it passes an evidential threshold and whether it passes a public interest test, long before we get to the point where they advise us that we can charge somebody. So there is a significant period of time in which we would look at the full circumstances of the case. Just on what you have said there, I am not sure that is one that we would have been putting forward under today’s—
Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)
Q
Gregor McGill: There is a statutory defence, so that would give some safeguards. As I suggested earlier, prosecutors have to apply the code for Crown prosecutors, which means that they have to ask themselves whether there is sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of a conviction and, if they are satisfied that that test is met, whether it would be in the public interest to prosecute.
In certain circumstances, if a person was suffering from a mental health issue, that could be a reason for not prosecuting. In certain circumstances it could be a reason for prosecuting. A prosecutor has to look at the particular aspects of each case and make a decision based on what the evidence shows, but I think that there are sufficient safeguards in the legislation and the core process.
Of course, all court proceedings are overseen by independent judges. They are very independent and have an overriding duty to ensure that any court proceedings are fair. That is their overriding duty, and they are very active in ensuring, through the management of criminal cases, that criminal proceedings are fair at all stages. I would say that there are sufficient safeguards within the legislation, and in the wider way in which cases are investigated, prosecuted and tried, to ensure that the rights of everyone in the proceedings are protected.
Assistant Commissioner Basu: The spectrum for mental illness is huge. If people do not have the mens rea, they would not be charged. There would be alternative ways of dealing with that individual. If they do have the mens rea, it depends where they are; we have charged people who have got mental illness issues. Having low levels of mental illness does not mean that someone cannot consciously commit an atrocious act. The investigative process as it stands today, and always has, is that you have to be fit to be detained, fit to be interviewed, and fit to be charged. There is a lot of medical advice before it gets to a charging decision and a prosecutorial process in front of an independent judge. Again, there would be court measures around someone’s fitness to plead or stand trial. I think that there are sufficient safeguards.
Just to be clear about who is drawing vulnerable people in, it is not legislation or the investigative process or the Crown Prosecution Service; it is radicalisers, who rely on the fact that some people are vulnerable and need safeguarding. We have measures within the police to try to prevent those radicalisers getting to those people. That is called Prevent, and we do not talk about that great work enough. It is about trying to stop someone being criminalised in the first place. I and my statutory partners have a lot of people working on doing precisely that—stopping people getting drawn into this and becoming subject to any of the legislation in the first place.
Gavin Newlands
Q
Richard Atkinson: I will take a moment to gather my thoughts around that. As far as other matters go, specifically going back to—although we did not quite touch on it—legal professional privilege, there is the issue of seizure of material and its examination. Again, it concerns me that, where legally privileged material is seized, it can be both examined and seized, even though it is legally professionally privileged material. I understand that the concern is that there will be those who falsely make the claim that the material is privileged—either that they themselves are lawyers and are privileged, or that the documentation and material they are carrying is in some form privileged and therefore should not be viewed by investigators.
In order to maintain privilege, which I think is so important, there are safeguards that can be imposed, which would mean that privilege is maintained but that the objectives are met. It has to be borne in mind that legal professional privilege does not extend to agreements to carry out illegal acts. If someone comes to me and wants to plan some illegal activity, it is not a privileged conversation and material. If there is material that is claimed to be privileged at the time of the seizure—bearing in mind that when he gave evidence to the Joint Human Rights Committee, Max Hill said that he saw this being a handful of cases, so we are not talking of hundreds of cases here—it would be perfectly legitimate to seize that material, bag it immediately and then put it in front of an independent counsel—lawyer—who would then be able to assess whether or not that material is privileged. If it is privileged that is the end. If it is not privileged, that material goes to investigators to be dealt with. It can be dealt with in a very short time, because lawyers are very adept at making themselves available to deal with urgent situations. When we are talking about a small number of cases to protect the fundamental right of legal privilege, that would be, in my view, an adequate and proportionate safeguard for dealing with that situation.
To your wider question—whether there were any other concerns—I suppose I could say three clicks et al. We have some concerns that the three clicks provision could potentially be restrictive or undermining of those with legitimate cause, such as journalists or academics making research into areas where they may find themselves falling foul of the legislation. I understand the statutory defence of reasonable excuse, but that is none the less relatively vague. The timings—you spoke about this in the earlier session and about having no time limit on this—are also vague.
To leave the law in the hands of prosecutorial decision as to whether or not it meets the public interest is a step too far. I think there is a need for greater definition around what is being sought to be prohibited. I understand the rationale for it and the need to prevent radicalisation, but we also need to ensure that we do not inadvertently criminalise those who are undertaking legitimate tasks. Although I was unaware of the specific example that one of your colleagues raised, of the worker in WHSmith, that shows the risk of simply relying on prosecutorial discretion as to whether matters should be prosecuted. In that case, clearly, a discretion was exercised to prosecute, and from what you have said—I do not know the case, so I am relying on the information given here—that was later found to be wrong.
The Chair
Order. You need to speak through the Chair.
Richard Atkinson: That was an example where prosecutorial discretion was not aptly relied upon. When drafting legislation, where there are obvious potential concerns, it would be beneficial if that was better spelled out.
Dr Huq
Q
My question is about to what extent you think that clause 3 could risk criminalising thought without action—people may not have to do anything. That is what that case hinged on.
Richard Atkinson: If I am honest, I am not sure I have a view on that at the moment. I think that is the most honest answer I can give.
Nic Dakin
Q
Richard Atkinson: It is an area of concern for us because, clearly, it is right that individuals’ data is not routinely withheld, and we have looked at that in the past. I do not think I am qualified to answer on the need to extend the period, but your question very much enunciates our position, which is that any extension of time periods needs to be justified by objective evidence. I know the Committee were asking for examples of that from the two earlier witnesses. Before one could be satisfied of the need to extend periods of retention of biometric data, there would need to be a case made out. I certainly have not seen it. It was not something that could readily be articulated this morning, and great caution needs to be expressed before extending the periods of the retention of that data without an evidential base.
Refugee Family Reunion
Rupa Huq Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Caroline Nokes
I think it might have been the second time it had cropped up for me this afternoon. However, some important points have been made, and I thank him and my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) for their poetic contributions, which brought some real thoughtfulness and passion to the issue.
A number of Members raised the issue of the scheduling of parliamentary business, which is of course a matter for the Leader of the House, but she and I will have taken note of the representations made today.
I want to briefly reflect on some of the comments made about asylum seekers and their ability to work. They are of course allowed to undertake volunteering opportunities, but we must carefully bear it in mind that those voluntary opportunities should not amount to unpaid work or job substitution, because we certainly do not wish to see them taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers. I have heard the concerns of many Members about delays in the asylum system. It is in fact stabilising, but we have an ambitious plan to reduce the number of outstanding decisions and the length of time people wait for a decision, which is very important.
We are on track to resettle 20,000 refugees from Syria and a further 30,000 children and families from the wider middle east and north Africa—MENA—region. Under our resettlement schemes we deliberately target those in the greatest need of assistance, including people requiring urgent medical treatment, survivors of violence and torture, and women and children at risk. We work closely with the UNHCR, as it is best placed to identify people living in formal refugee camps, informal settlements and host communities who would benefit most from resettlement.[Official Report, 5 July 2018, Vol. 644, c. 1MC.]
We are also enabling civil society to play a greater role in refugee resettlement. I was very pleased this Monday to be at the organisation Reset, to which the Government have awarded £1 million of funding to help community groups with sponsorship schemes. I often use the phrase that they are well placed to wrap their arms around resettled families and help them on the road to reintegration. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough and others across the House about the importance of integration and of language teaching, and of ensuring that we as a society do more to enable those who have resettled here to integrate. That is very important.
Caroline Nokes
I apologise for not giving way; the hon. Lady has not been in her place for the entire debate, and I have very little time.
The Green Paper on integration that has come forward from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government is crucially important, and I have pushed with both officials and Cabinet colleagues the importance of people having the language teaching they need to enable them to integrate as best they possibly can, and I absolutely hear the calls for how work should be a part of that.
My hon. Friends the Members for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) and for Dudley South (Mike Wood) and a number of Opposition Members rightly mentioned perilous journeys. We do not wish to see children in the hands of traffickers. From my earliest days at the Home Office I have been struck by the links between organised crime, people trafficking, modern slavery and violence against women and girls, and we are determined to do our utmost to tackle trafficking. Breaking the smugglers’ business model and their trafficking rings remains a key priority for this Government. Under Operation Sophia, our commitment is to work hard to its full mandate through to the end of December 2018. Our naval assets have destroyed 182 smuggling boats and saved 13,400 lives since the operation began, but we are of course conscious that we continue to see boats come across the Mediterranean and children and families making very dangerous journeys.
I have little time left, but I would like to lapse somewhat into the anecdotal. This week I met a group of students from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. They had spent some time in Europe over the past few years and had come to the British Parliament for a tour, and had the opportunity to spend a few moments talking to me. I was not quite sure how to begin my comments as Immigration Minister on the day that I had watched footage of children crying in cages and had listened to the terrible audio recordings, so I kicked off with some trepidation, recognising that my audience included US citizens who had perhaps had a vote in the last presidential election. I said that I sought in our refugee and immigration policies to ensure that I chose not to model myself on their President. I was not sure how that message would go down, but it was welcomed by this group of US teenagers. They told me that what they had found most moving during their time in Europe over the past few weeks was meeting individual refugees and hearing their stories, and we have had a little of that this afternoon from individual Members who have highlighted the excellent work being done in their constituencies. Indeed, that work goes on in my constituency, and I spent the Friday before last with the Southampton & Winchester Visitors Group, where many of the issues, including the right to work and legal aid, were raised with me. I have to thank the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, because his private Member’s Bill and this afternoon’s debate give us the opportunity to reflect carefully on such issues.
This Government recognise the need for a fair and humane immigration system and, within that, the importance of policies that work for individual asylum seekers and those granted refugee status. We are currently reviewing our policy on refugee family reunion in the context of our wider asylum and resettlement strategy, and I look forward to continuing my productive discussions with hon. Members and key NGO partners on this complex, sensitive issue.