UK Extradition Arrangements

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raab]

The fundamental question is the difference between reasonable suspicion and probable cause. As paper tests, I do not think there is an enormous amount of difference between them, but as Alun Jones QC, whose article in The Daily Telegraph I commend, has spelled out, the practical operation—the judicial scrutiny that is available in the US because of the US constitutional guarantees—is higher. That is the key difference.

For all the talk of the evidential burden and the question of reciprocity, in my view, the critical issue in the US arrangements is forum. That is the label for how one decides where, in cross-border cases, the appropriate jurisdiction lies. The Gary McKinnon case is the leading case attracting great controversy at present. At root it is about the injustice in dispatching someone with Asperger’s syndrome hundreds of miles from home on allegations of computer hacking when he was apparently searching for unidentified flying objects. Gary McKinnon should not be treated like some gangland mobster or al-Qaeda mastermind.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his efforts to secure the debate. Does he agree that whatever the outcome of the debate tonight, it would be helpful if the Government Front-Bench team gave us an update on the Gary McKinnon and Babar Ahmad cases, given that they have been so closely involved in them in the past?

[Mr Raab]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. It would certainly be useful to have an update on the cases that have attracted so much limelight and controversy.

More generally, we ought to have some discretion in this country to prosecute such cross-border cases here. Jurisdiction ought to be decided transparently, by independent courts, according to clear legal rules, not by prosecutors haggling behind closed doors. That is why the idea of guidelines for prosecutors does not go far enough. Of course, the legislation is already in place under the Police and Justice Act 2006. Let us bring it into force and take the political heat out of these cases, which I respectfully suggest would be in the interests of both countries. The previous Government enacted that legislation, so it is difficult to understand why Labour Front Benchers might seek to block it by opposing the motion.

Border Checks Summer 2011

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

The issue before us today is not what Mr Brodie Clark did or did not do—although I hope that before the end of the debate we will hear from the Front Bench that the Government will put no obstacle in the way of his attending the Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday. Today we need to focus on the arrangements for which the Home Secretary has now admitted she was responsible. She claims that she authorised a pilot to establish a risk assessment approach. It was evident from her statement to the House on Monday that she was more than a little shaky on the details of the pilot—a secret pilot—which was actually a scheme to relax border controls at every airport and port of entry in the country. From the end of July to the beginning of November, literally millions of people passed through our borders without being subject to normal controls. By her own admission, she has no idea how many drug couriers, terrorists, people traffickers or gangsters got through.

A pilot is where we trial a new activity and assess it against the conventional approach, but the Home Secretary did it everywhere. She told us that a risk-based assessment was used, but we know that staff were advised that the measures were to deal with summer pressures. Far from being a pilot, it was a sleight of hand. She wants us to believe that the first she knew of the problem was last Thursday, but there is an operations log that is reported to the Home Office weekly. From July until September, when she authorised a further extension, she had weeks of information at her disposal. Why did she not look at it?

The Home Secretary came to the House on Monday and attempted to deflect the blame for the fiasco on to Mr Brodie Clark. That is a smokescreen designed to blind us to her negligent and inept behaviour. She is responsible for our borders and the security of the British people. As I put to her then, her colleague the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) dispatched Charles Clarke, the former Home Secretary, on the basis that he was culpable for putting the security of the British public at risk. Sadly, I had to accept that the right hon. Gentleman was right; and, for exactly the same reason, his words are right today. Not only has this Home Secretary failed to protect our borders; she has sought to deflect blame, dump on others and throw a smokescreen over Parliament, rather than admitting that she is guilty of a gross dereliction of duty.

I of all people understand the efforts of Government Whips and the pressure that will be brought to bear on Tory Back Benchers today to speak up for the Home Secretary. I understand the sense of personal loyalty that some will feel, just as I felt it to Charles Clarke. However, if the Home Secretary cannot be relied on to protect our borders, if she cannot be relied on to give a straightforward account to Parliament and the Home Affairs Committee, if her instinct is to blame others when she is caught red handed, and if she puts fear of queues above fear of terrorists, then she is no longer fit for this great office and she should go now with dignity. She can make a clean break today and agree to make available all the information requested in the motion, or we can prise the details out a bit at a time. I doubt that it will save her. I call on her to do the decent thing. This House is good at persuading people to do the right thing. She should do it now.

UK Border Force

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The intention is that the National Crime Agency will be established in 2013. It will be necessary for legislation to go through the House to establish the NCA, and the border police command will be part of the national crime agency. I am not able, at this point, to say how many police will go to the border police command. I am sure that my hon. Friend will appreciate that, given what has taken place, it is now necessary for us to have another look at exactly what we intend to do with that border police command.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

When the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) told Charles Clarke

“because of this culpable failure to protect the safety of the public,”

your

“position is now untenable”—[Official Report, 26 April 2006; Vol. 445, c. 575.],

I am afraid he was right. Why is that remark any less right for this Home Secretary today?

[Mrs May]

I think I have explained in my statement and in answers to questions exactly what happened.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

Both those points are right: such an approach is not just for the benefit of the individual; it is absolutely for the benefit of the community that they enter. That is why last November we introduced requirements that spouses and partners must demonstrate a basic knowledge of the English language before they are granted a marriage visa. It is reasonable that anyone intending to live in the UK should understand English so that they can integrate fully and participate fully in life in this country.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Given the passport control fiasco exposed over the past few days, does the Minister seriously still expect us to accept, as he said seven days ago:

“The Government is doing more than ever before to protect the UK’s borders”?

[Damian Green]

Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman knows that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is going to make a statement on that matter later, when it can be dealt with in detail, but in his honest moments he will accept that one of the biggest problems—one of the biggest shambles—that this Government inherited was the immigration system that the previous Government left us, and that is what we are getting to grips with now.

Gangs and Youth Violence

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I think I have answered the point about resources several times now.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

The Met has said that gang association is one of the most difficult things to prove evidentially. How will the Home Secretary be confident that those who benefit from all the incentives that she is offering people to give up gang membership are genuinely gang members and not just the dispossessed who have had all other avenues closed down and have to claim to be gang members to get some help?

[Mrs May]

As I said, we are working with ACPO in particular to map incidence of gangs and gang memberships. Obviously at local level that will rely on information that is available to the police and other agencies. We are focusing not just on gang membership but on gang and youth violence. So in some areas work will be undertaken on a broader remit than simply looking at gang members.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, because how that system will work is unclear. I cannot get my head around the updated procedures. What consent will need to be given? What information about employees or volunteers will be made available to employers or voluntary sector groups? When will barring information be made available? If someone is barred while they are employed, will that information be made available readily to an employer? The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point, which illustrates the fact that information on how the system will work needs to be made widely available.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that the current system has its faults? There are too many examples of the wrong person being identified, and of information that is not pertinent to them being attributed to them by a false CRB check. Would it not make more sense for the Government to try to streamline the system, so that we have a more efficient system designed for the purpose, rather than adding to the complexity, therefore increasing the chances that such errors will take place and devalue the checks?

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

Let me address the amendments in the name of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle and others. As we have heard, the amendments return to the question of how long we should retain the DNA and fingerprints of innocent people. They would replace the Government’s provisions, which meet our coalition commitment to adopt the protections of the Scottish model, with the core of the previous Government’s Crime and Security Act 2010.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[James Brokenshire]

I will, because I know that the hon. Gentleman has taken a close interest in these matters for some time.

[Steve McCabe]

The country’s police chiefs have rather helpfully told us that large numbers of those who were arrested following the summer riots were arrested because of matches against the existing DNA database. Has the Minister undertaken any work to ascertain how many of those would have escaped justice under his proposals?

[James Brokenshire]

The hon. Gentleman highlights a key issue—the retention of the DNA of those convicted of offences, with which I absolutely agree. Some 75% of those who were engaged in the rioting—or, at least, those who were brought before the courts—had committed prior offences. That clearly makes the point that there is a need to put the DNA of those who are guilty of crimes on the database, rather than keeping those who are innocent of any crime on it, which is the approach of the Opposition and was the approach of the previous Government. The Labour party persists in its approach of keeping the DNA and fingerprints of innocent people for many years, no matter what those people have been accused of and no matter how little evidence was ever uncovered in relation to them.

It is worth putting these issues into context. Of course, DNA is important. I fully recognise the scientific breakthrough of being able to take DNA to search against the database and, most importantly, to retain crime scene DNA evidence in a cold case database against which matches can be made. However, the collection of DNA is part of a process of investigation and is not a panacea in itself. I think that if the Labour party could have its way, it would continue with the previous approach of simply trying to put more and more data on the database regardless of people’s guilt or innocence. However, it is interesting to look at what has been the result of adding many more people on to the database. In 2004-05, 2.8 million people were on the national DNA database and in 2009-10, the figure was 4.8 million people. Now, let us look at the number of detections in those years. In 2004-05 there were 35,605 and in 2009-10 there were 32,552, so when there were 2 million more people on the database, there were 3,000 fewer detections. I therefore challenge the suggestion of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle that the more people’s DNA is on the database, the more effective it is. The figures do not necessarily equate in that way, as the historic evidence shows.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

First, I note that the right hon. Gentleman confirms that the Labour party is committed to reducing spending on police forces by more than £1 billion—but, of course, they did not deliver those savings when they were in government; it cannot be done without reducing the work force. We have identified additional savings, including those that will accrue from pay restraint, and indeed the £350 million a year that will accrue from better procurement of goods and services. In fact, the total savings are well over £2 billion a year.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Does the Minister welcome the news from Birmingham that officers are being taken off the street to answer the phone and deal with other administrative tasks? Is that the kind of efficiency that the Government are striving for?

[Nick Herbert]

The hon. Gentleman should know that, in police forces generally, a third of human resources are not on the front line. Well over 20,000 police officers are in back and middle-office positions, with a higher than average proportion of them in the West Midlands constabulary. It should be possible to drive savings while still protecting the front line. That is what we ask and expect chief constables to do.

Public Disorder

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I simply disagree that when we were in government we failed to back our troops in difficult situations. We were very clear always to back the troops in the very difficult job that they did.

It is right to back the police and be very clear that we will support them when they have to take very difficult and robust decisions, but some of the briefings to the newspapers suggested that the police did not have the powers to use water cannon or baton rounds, and that they had them only because the Prime Minister had stepped in to authorise them and to encourage their use. This issue needs to be carefully handled. The police have always had those powers and it is right that they should use them in operational situations where that is appropriate and they judge that they are needed. We should back them in such circumstances, but I caution that we should be clear that it is an operational judgment for those police officers, not a matter of direction by politicians.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. If these horrendous events were to occur in the era of police and crime commissioners, is she confident that chief constables would have the power to make such decisions should a baying public demand different action from the commissioners? Would chief constables be able to withstand that pressure?

[Yvette Cooper]

Senior police officers whom I have spoken to are concerned about the possibility that their activities will be constrained or inhibited by inappropriate intervention by American-style police and crime commissioners in operational decisions. It is important to note that the operational independence guidance has not yet been agreed between the police and the Government.

Metropolitan Police Service

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. She reminds the House that our prime duty and responsibility is to restore confidence in the police so that people feel that the police are doing their job appropriately and properly. There are thousands of honourable policemen and women who are continuing to do their job and we should support and encourage them. We need to get to the bottom of these allegations so that the public truly can have full confidence in what the police are doing.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Given the Home Secretary’s fulsome praise for Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison, should I assume that she will back his call for a delay in cuts to specialist posts, particularly public order posts, until after the Olympics?

[Mrs May]

Of course we have reviewed the requirements for Olympic security, and we did an audit of it when we came into government. In the run-up to the Olympics we will continue to ensure that the resources that are available and the measures that are taken will provide a secure and safe games.