Protocol and Shadow Strategic Policing Requirement
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
A year from now the public within England and Wales will, for the first time, have been given a direct vote and say in how they and their communities are policed. The election of the first police and crime commissioners on 15 November 2012 will mark a step change in how policing is held to account. Communities will be able to voice their local priorities to a single, directly elected, individual; their police and crime commissioner.
Police and crime commissioners will be powerful local representatives, able to set the priorities for the police force within their force area, respond to the needs and demands of their communities more effectively, ensure that local and national priorities are suitably funded by setting a budget and the local precept, and hold to account the local chief constable for the delivery and performance of the force.
Strong and effective leadership will continue to be delivered by the chief constable and their command teams. Nothing within this step change of policing governance removes or calls into question the operational independence of the police service which remains the corner stone of all that is good about our way of policing by consent.
To provide future safeguard to this principle I have today laid for the approval of Parliament a protocol which sets out how the new policing governance arrangements will work. It clarifies the role and responsibilities of police and crime commissioners (PCCs), the mayor’s office for policing and crime (MOPC), chief constables, police and crime panels and the London assembly police and crime panel. It outlines what these bodies are expected to do and how they are expected to work together to fight crime and improve policing. The protocol will therefore fundamentally underpin the key working relationships within the new policing landscape.
Elections for police and crime commissioners for England and Wales will take place in November 2012. Within London, the mayor’s office for policing and crime will perform the equivalent role for the metropolitan police district. How these elected policing bodies work with, and interact with, chief constables and police and crime panels will be crucial to achieving success.
It is my intention to issue the protocol to all chief constables, police authority chairs, their chief executives, the chief executives of all local authorities within England and Wales and the Welsh Government in order to assist in transition planning. The protocol will also be made available to all potential candidates for the Mayor of London elections in May 2012. It will then be made available to potential candidates for the office of PCC within each force area in England and Wales ahead of the first elections in November 2012.
Within England and Wales, the changes in governance will take effect on 22 November 2012, with the exception of London. I am confident that with this protocol in place everyone will be able to work together effectively to drive down crime and to make our communities safer.
I am also today issuing a non statutory “shadow” strategic policing requirement which sets out my view, as Home Secretary, of the national threats that the police must address and the appropriate national policing capabilities I believe are required to counter those threats. It respects the operational independence of the police, advising what, in strategic terms, they need to achieve but not how they should achieve it. I have placed copies of the shadow strategic policing requirement in the House of Commons Library and an electronic copy can be found at:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/police/strategic-policing-requirement/
I am issuing this shadow strategic policing requirement now to inform police forces’ and police authorities’ plans for 2012-13. Although it will not, at this stage, have statutory effect, it is my intention that it should help to drive improvements during the transition period to police and crime commissioners. I will look to all forces and authorities to have regard to this shadow strategic policing requirement when exercising their responsibilities.
The shadow strategic policing requirement is a statement of the collective capabilities that police forces across England and Wales will be expected to have in place in order to protect the public from cross-boundary threats such as terrorism, civil emergencies, public disorder, cyber incidents and organised crime. It supports the development and maintenance of policing capabilities, often collaboratively between forces, and in support of the work of national agencies such as, in future, the National Crime Agency.
I have consulted with ACPO, the APA, and other policing bodies and relevant agencies to develop the shadow strategic policing requirement. I will consult further on the experience of forces and authorities in using this shadow strategic policing requirement, and will then issue the statutory strategic policing requirement next summer in time for the election of police and crime commissioners.
Both police and crime commissioners and chief constables will be required to have regard to the SPR from November 2012 in the conduct of their respective responsibilities.
I would like to thank all of those from the police and the other bodies and agencies that have contributed to the drafting of the protocol and the shadow strategic policing requirement—their work has been invaluable.
Misuse of Drugs
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I am pleased to announce that the final version of the joint Working Protocol, developed and agreed between this Government and the Advisory Council on the misuse of drugs, has been deposited in the House Library today.
The new Working Protocol sets out the framework within which the Government and the Advisory Council commit to engage in the provision and receipt of its expert advice to Government on drug-related issues; maintain the expertise and membership of the Council; and intend to work together under the new power under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to invoke temporary control of a new and emerging psychoactive substance to help prevent harm.
Hon. Members may wish to note that a draft of the protocol was made available (DEP2011-0598) to the House to help inform the scrutiny of related provisions in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011.
I am pleased to inform the House that the Government and the Council will continue to embed working practices in accordance with the Working Protocol. The Working Protocol will support the Council in the delivery of its work programme that addresses both the work priorities set by Government as well as work of its own volition. The Council has recently delivered a thematic report on new psychoactive substances, which I commissioned, and that will now inform a cross-Government strategic response to this problem. It is also working to provide expert advice to deliver recovery based support to dependent users, which is central to this Government’s drug strategy.
Professor Les Iversen, chair of the Advisory Council, and I welcome the protocol in supporting our respective roles and responsibilities. At the heart of the protocol is a shared commitment to ensuring that the best evidence-based advice is available to Government on drug misuse, working together with the common purpose of reducing drug-related harms in the UK.
Border Checks Summer 2011
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
May I first welcome the sudden interest of the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) in immigration and border security? It is a bit rich coming from the party that gave us 2.2 million total net migration, the foreign national prisoner scandal, Sangatte, a 450,000 asylum backlog, no transitional controls for eight eastern European countries, the Human Rights Act 1998, and a points-based system that failed to reduce immigration.
The Leader of the Opposition says that immigration was not too high under Labour; the shadow Home Secretary claims that the previous Government were reducing immigration; and now they have appointed a shadow Immigration Minister who says that public concern about immigration is “nonsense” and “huff and puff” generated by tabloid newspapers. None the less, I am willing to welcome any convert to the cause of controlling immigration.
Let me remind the House why we are here. As I said in my statement to Parliament on Monday, there are two separate issues. First, as I have explained, the Immigration Minister and I authorised a limited pilot this summer, which—in limited and specific circumstances—allowed the UK border force to use more intelligence-led checks against higher-risk passengers and journeys instead of always checking European economic area national children travelling with parents and in school groups against the warnings index, and always checking EEA nationals’ second photographs in the chip inside their passport. In normal circumstances, all standard checks would be carried out.
That was a perfectly reasonable thing to do—stronger checks on high-risk passengers aimed to achieve more arrests, more seizures of illegal goods and more stops of illegal immigrants. Far from weakening our border controls, those procedures were aimed at strengthening our border. The results of the pilot are not yet fully evaluated, but initial UKBA statistics show an almost 10% increase in the detection of illegal immigrants and a 48% increase in the identification of forged documents compared with the year before.
I therefore want to be absolutely clear to the House: my pilot did not in any way put border security at risk. That was my assessment, and it is the assessment of UKBA and security officials.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
Why was the Prime Minister not informed that those pilot schemes were being carried out?
Mrs May
The second and very separate issue is that senior UK border force officials, without my authorisation, ordered the regular relaxation of border checks, beyond what I had sanctioned, and not just in the limited circumstances that I had authorised. First, biometric checks on EEA nationals and warnings index checks on EEA national children were abandoned on a regular basis, without my approval. Secondly, adults were not checked against the warnings index at Calais, without my approval.
Mrs May
Thirdly, the verification of the fingerprints of non-EEA nationals from countries that require a visa was stopped on regular occasions, without my approval. Not only that, but checks on the second photograph in the biometric chip of passports of non-EEA nationals were also regularly stopped, again without my approval.
Let me say again: I did not give my consent or authorisation for any of those decisions. In fact, I stated explicitly in writing that officials were to go no further than what had been agreed in the pilot—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We want to hear what the right hon. Lady has to say. We want a debate on Home Affairs, so let us listen to what is said. If she does not wish for hon. Members to intervene, she will not give way. If she gives way, that is fine, but at the moment, we must listen to her.
Mr Blunkett
I am very grateful to the Home Secretary. Did any other Minister give their consent or, by indicating that they needed to clear the backlog at Heathrow, indicate that any measures should be taken to free up resources to do that?
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The Home Secretary says that she put something in writing. Is she prepared to put everything that she put in writing in the public domain in the Library of the House this afternoon, so that, instead of having to take just her word for what her pilot was, we can see the truth in black and white?
Mrs May
All relevant documents will be going to the relevant inquiries. That is entirely the right way to do it.
I remind hon. Members that last night, the chief executive of the UK Border Agency, Rob Whiteman, confirmed that Brodie Clark, the head of the UK border force, admitted to him that he went beyond ministerial instructions. That is why Mr Whiteman suspended Mr Clark immediately. He took that decision as chief executive of UKBA, and before he informed me of his meeting with Mr Clark. Subsequently, two other senior officials have been suspended and I have ordered three separate investigations, as I outlined to the House on Monday, and I have placed the terms of reference for those inquiries in the House of Commons Library.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Since 2008, warnings index checks have been suspended on 100 occasions. Has my right hon. Friend discovered whether those suspensions were authorised by previous Labour Home Secretaries?
Mrs May
That is a very interesting question. I note that the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford chose not to answer it when she was asked it during an intervention.
I am aware that Mr Clark has released a statement—it was referred to by the right hon. Lady—in which he made several allegations. Those allegations will of course be addressed by the inquiries, but as they relate to what I have already told the House, I would like to address them. First, he says that he did not introduce
“additional measures, improperly, to the trial of our risk-based controls.”
But let me read to the House the statement issued last night by Rob Whiteman, the chief executive of the UK Border Agency:
“Brodie Clark admitted to me on 2nd November that on a number of occasions this year he authorised his staff to go further than Ministerial instruction. I therefore suspended him from his duties. In my opinion it was right for officials to have recommended the pilot so that we focus attention on higher risks to our border, but it is unacceptable that one of my senior officials went further than was approved.”
Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)
The right hon. Lady’s case is that she agreed to weaken border controls in July—
Mr Denham
The right hon. Lady agreed to weaken border controls in July. She then tells the House that what actually happened went much further than she intended. Will she now tell us why she agreed to extend this policy of weaker border controls in September? Is it not the case that, had she asked the most basic questions of Mr Clark or anybody else about what was actually happening in ports and airports, she would have known that thousands of people were coming into this country unchecked?
Mrs May
I have already made it absolutely clear to the House that the premise of the right hon. Gentleman’s question is wrong. My pilot did not put border security at risk. That is not just my assessment; it is the assessment of UKBA and of security officials.
Mr Clark says that
“those measures have been in place since 2008/09.”
But if he is talking about the warnings index guidance, published in 2007, that guidance makes it clear that any relaxation of warnings index checks should be done in extreme circumstances for health and safety reasons. It does not permit the extent of the relaxations that were allowed. And if he thought that these measures were already allowed, why did he seek ministerial approval for new pilot measures this year? I gave no authorisation for the relaxation of checks beyond what we had allowed under the terms of the pilot. But, given that Mr Clark says that his relaxed measures were allowed since 2008-09, can Ministers from the last Government give the same assurance?
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
Could the Home Secretary tell us which ports or airports she has visited, from the instigation of the pilot in July up to now, and with whom she discussed the progress of the pilots on those visits?
Mrs May
I say to the right hon. Gentleman that I was willing to allow officials to make an evaluation—[Interruption.] I will come on later in my speech to the point about the information that was available to Ministers.
Mr Clark says that I implied that he
“relaxed the controls in favour of queue management”
and that he came under pressure from Ministers to reduce queues, but I have never speculated about his motives, and I have never told officials to reduce queues at the expense of border security. Finally, Mr Clark says that he had been pressing for the trials “since December 2010” and that he was pleased when I agreed to the pilot arrangements. He certainly was pressing for changes to border checks, including the suspension of automatic fingerprint checks of visa nationals, which I rejected. But now, of course, he says that such measures were already available to him, and have been since 2008-09. I stand by every word I told the House on Monday and yesterday and again today.
I now want to turn to the questions raised by the shadow Home Secretary. She said repeatedly that I had not yet answered them—
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I thank the Home Secretary for giving evidence to the Select Committee yesterday. When she did so, she made a profound statement about the future of the UK Border Agency, saying that the UKBA of today would be very different from the UKBA of tomorrow. What will be the main differences, once she has completed what appears to be a reform programme?
Mrs May
I pay tribute to the Home Affairs Select Committee for the light that it has shone, for some considerable time, on the UK Border Agency under this Government and the previous one. The precise shape of UKBA in the future is under discussion at the moment. The new chief executive has been in post for six weeks, and he is looking at what he thinks needs to be done. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, one of the issues that we are looking at is the question of establishing the border police command under the National Crime Agency and the relationship that it will have with the UK Border Agency.
Mrs May
I will not give way.
I was about to deal with the questions raised by the shadow Home Secretary. She has repeatedly said that I have not answered her questions. If she reads Hansard, she will find that I have, but let me answer them again. She asked for the precise terms of the pilot scheme that I authorised. I have just set out those terms. I authorised the pilot, under limited circumstances, to allow UK border force officers to use more intelligence-led checks against higher-risk passengers and journeys, instead of always checking EEA national children travelling with parents and in school groups against the warnings index, and always checking European nationals’ second photographs in the chip inside their passport.
The shadow Home Secretary also asked whether I, Home Office Ministers or Home Office officials signed off the operational instruction distributed by UKBA. The answer in all three cases is no. This was a regular operational instruction, and she should know that Ministers—neither under this Government nor under the last—do not sign off such instructions. UKBA operational instructions are signed off by UKBA officials. She asked whether the operational instruction distributed reflected Government policy, and I can tell her that yes, it did, in that it allowed for a risk-based assessment—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) should know better than to keep standing.
Mrs May
The operational instruction did reflect Government policy because it allowed for a risk-based assessment when opening the biometric chip of EEA passports and checking EEA national children against the warnings index when they were travelling with parents or as part of a school party.
Yvette Cooper
The Home Secretary has just made an extremely important statement. She said that the UK Border Agency’s interim operational instruction did reflect Government policy. That operational instruction says
“We will cease:
Routinely opening the chip within EEA passports.
Routinely checking all EEA nationals under 18 years against the Warnings index” .
If that is Government policy, it is little wonder that, across the country, people have been routinely stopping doing the biometric checks in EU passports and stopping doing the watch index checks. The instruction does not say “Only in exceptional or limited circumstances”. It says “We will cease routinely” to do those checks.
Mrs May
The whole point is that they were allowed, in certain circumstances, not to open the chip—[Interruption.] The whole point is that they were allowed, in certain circumstances, not to check children against the warnings index. And the whole point is that officers were allowed to exercise their discretion.
Where the instruction says that officers should escalate further measures, it refers of course to the warnings index checking policy put in place in 2007 under the Government of which the right hon. Lady was a member. I have to tell the right hon. Lady that the quotes she has been eagerly e-mailing around the Lobby come from a policy put in place by her own Government.
The right hon. Lady referred to staff numbers. What she failed to tell the House was that in April 2010 the Labour Government had already announced that they would cut the budget and the staff of the UK Border Agency.
Yvette Cooper
The Home Secretary has not answered an extremely important question. She has accused officials of going much further, of using routinely the reduced checks that she wanted in only limited circumstances. That is one of her main allegations—officials going further than her decision and her advice. The interim operational instruction that the Home Secretary says reflects Government policy and was her intention is described as “Trial of risk-based processes at the border,” and states:
“We will... Cease routinely opening the chip within EEA passports.”
The document goes on to talk about discretion, but the discretion is to go further, not to cease the process only in limited circumstances. Will the right hon. Lady now recognise that the document shows that her intention and her policy were substantially to expand the reduction of checks for EEA citizens across the country and to reduce controls at our border?
Mrs May
I answered that point on Monday, on Tuesday and this afternoon. The right hon. Lady knows full well what was in the pilot I authorised.
The right hon. Lady asked what information was given to Ministers when we decided to extend the pilot programme. As I told the Select Committee yesterday, Ministers were provided with four updates on the progress of the pilot prior to the agreement to extend it. The updates provided information about seizures of drugs and detection of illegal immigrants. They did not refer to unauthorised actions; in fact, they explicitly said that officials were sticking to the terms of the pilot and not going beyond them.
The right hon. Lady asked about child trafficking. I answered that question on Monday in the House and before the Home Affairs Committee yesterday. For the information of the House, in 2010, 8 million EEA-national children were checked against the warnings index. An alert came up for one child, and after further questioning the child was allowed in.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
Could the Home Secretary confirm to the people of Northern Ireland that the relaxations extended to Northern Ireland, especially at the ports of Larne and Stranraer?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We do not need advice from the Back Benches, especially from the back row.
Mrs May
The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford asked how many people Ministers expected would not be checked, and whether an impact assessment would quantify that figure. The answer is that under the terms of the pilot I authorised, all adults would be checked against the warnings index, as would all non-EEA nationals of any age, which, incidentally, was not always the case under the Labour Government of whom she was a member.
Let me reiterate: whatever the shadow Immigration Minister keeps saying, the only incident of which I am aware when passengers were waved through passport control without any checks at all did not occur during my pilot. It happened in 2004, at Heathrow, under the right hon. Lady’s Government.
Let me tell the House what this Government are doing to secure our border: a National Crime Agency with a border policing command and e-Borders to check passengers in and out of the country. We have tough enforcement: 400,000 visas were rejected last year and 68,000 people with the wrong documents were prevented from coming to Britain. We have policies to cut and control immigration: economic migration—capped; abuse of student visas—stopped; and automatic settlement—scrapped. There are compulsory English language tests, tough new rules for family visas and changes to the Human Rights Act. We have a clear plan to get net migration down to the tens of thousands.
What do we hear from the Opposition? Nothing. Nothing on the cap on economic migration. Nothing on the clampdown on student visas. Nothing on settlement. Nothing on sham marriages. No wonder, when the Leader of the Opposition’s policy adviser said that Labour lied to the public about immigration—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Nobody will be able to hear anything either in the House or on the television broadcasts. I am sure everybody on both sides of the House wants to hear the Home Secretary.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I remind the House that there is a six-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches.
Deportation with Assurances
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I am pleased to announce that on Saturday 24 September my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, and His Excellency Taieb Fassi Fihri, Moroccan Foreign Minister, signed a memorandum of understanding between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of the Kingdom of Morocco concerning the provision of assurances in respect of persons subject to deportation on grounds of national security.
Copies of the memorandum of understanding have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses and on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website.
There are a number of outstanding elements of the arrangement which UK and Moroccan officials are continuing to negotiate, along with a number of other judicial agreements and arrangements. We will publish further details when this process is complete.
The Government are committed to strengthening our bilateral relationship with Morocco across a range of fields, including measures to combat the shared threat from terrorism.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
16. What steps she is taking to strengthen the accreditation regime for colleges that admit foreign students.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Our fundamental reforms of student visas include a rigorous new inspection regime for private colleges. These tough new rules, coupled with robust enforcement action by the UK Border Agency, mean that more than 450 colleges have now lost their right to recruit international students under the points-based system. Only colleges offering a genuine, high-quality education will be able to sponsor international students in future.
Mr Evennett
I thank my right hon. Friend for her reply and commend her for the work she is doing in this area. Does she agree that the news last week that one in five colleges has lost its sponsor licence status shows that the accreditation scheme set up by her and her Department is working to stop the widespread abuse of the visa system?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and what I have announced today is just the start. All private colleges will have to go through that rigorous accreditation system by the end of the year and those that fail the system will no longer be able to bring in international students.
David Morris
I am pleased to hear that the Government are successfully shutting off immigration through bogus colleges with the accreditation scheme, and I was glad to hear the answer to the previous question.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend has mentioned the accreditation scheme for colleges, but of course we are going further in taking action against individual students as well as restricting their rights. We have introduced new rules on English language and we have restricted students’ rights to work and to bring in family members. Next April we will close the post-study work route that has allowed graduates two years’ free access to the labour market here in the UK. We want to make sure that those who come to study are coming genuinely to study and not to work.
Mark Pawsey
We do need to cut out the incentives for people who abuse the student visa route, but there will of course be cases when a mature student wishes to be accompanied by their spouse and children of school age. What are the Government doing to prevent abuse of the system by those who see this as a loophole through which they believe they can bring any number of dependants into this country?
Mrs May
As I indicated in my previous answer, we are taking action against students as well as against colleges. We are restricting the right for students to bring in family members. Only postgraduate students at universities can bring in dependants and we have changed the rules so that only those at universities and public colleges can work while they are studying. That means that we can continue to attract the brightest and best to our academic institutions while ensuring that we get rid of abuse.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I hope that the Home Secretary was not too busy at the weekend to read the report of the Select Committee on Home Affairs that was published on Friday—specifically paragraph 44, which expresses astonishment that the UK Border Agency has been unable to tell us how many students have been deported for breaching their leave and that it does not recognise the term, “bogus college”. Does she not think it extraordinary that the main agency dealing with these matters does not accept a term that she, I and the whole of Parliament have always used to describe such colleges?
Mrs May
I think that what matters is not the term we use but the action we take. That is why action is being taken to ensure that those colleges that have not been offering education to students are no longer able to bring in students and that we get rid of abuse in the student visa system, which has been a problem in this country for far too long.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I support any measures that root out any abuses in the immigration system, but what discussions has the Secretary of State had with universities such as the university of Warwick that have expressed concern about student numbers from abroad because they rely mainly on such students to exist?
Mrs May
Before we put our policy into place, we had significant discussions with representatives from the university sector. We continue to talk to universities about the impact of the student visa system that we have introduced, and that scheme ensures that institutions that are offering a genuine education are able to bring in the brightest and best students, but it is up to them and us to make it clear that students are still able to come and learn at our universities from overseas.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
2. What steps she is taking to address antisocial behaviour by gangs.
Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)
17. What steps she is taking to tackle gang culture.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
The Government’s approach to gang culture is set out in the “Ending Gang and Youth Violence” report, which I outlined to the House last week. This marks the start of a cross-Government programme of work based on five areas: prevention, pathways out, punishment, partnership working and providing support.
Karl MᶜCartney
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to addressing gang and youth crime. Does she agree that the problem cannot be solved by Government alone, but that parents especially and local voluntary and community groups have an important part to play? Will she tell me what is being done to support communities to fight back?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is essential that the Government recognise not only that this issue goes across various Government Departments, but that we need to work with the voluntary and community sector. In February I committed £4 million for the communities against guns, gangs, and knives fund. That is already supporting the work of more than 200 grass-roots projects across England and Wales that are working with young people, their families and local communities. In the report that I presented to Parliament last week I made a commitment that half of the £10 million of funding to tackle gang violence will go to the non-statutory sector.
Ian Swales
When a gang member leaves home armed with a knife, they do so with the ability to commit grievous bodily harm or even murder. What can the Home Secretary do to reduce the number of knives on our streets?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Obviously, we are tackling that in a number of ways. First, we have introduced changes in a new knife crime offence, which was introduced in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill last week to tackle it from that end. At the other end we have made money available to the Ben Kinsella fund, and Brooke Kinsella produced a very good report for the Government, going round and identifying projects that work with young people to stop them carrying knives and prevent them from being a danger to others and to themselves.
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
Everybody wants to see tough action to tackle antisocial behaviour and I welcome what the Home Secretary said a moment ago about the involvement of council, Church and community groups in providing youth services. I have just come from a meeting with young people from Dudley, some of whom are in the Gallery now, and one of them asked me about Dudley council’s decision to cut spending for youth services. Does the Home Secretary think that antisocial behaviour is likely to increase or decrease as a result of cuts to spending on youth services?
Mrs May
What I think is important is that in every local community decisions are taken that are right for that local community about what is going to work. The Home Office and the Government are providing funding to a number of communities throughout the country to ensure that in many cases they can do excellent work with young people to ensure that we can reduce the number of knives that are carried on our streets. This is just the start. Further work will be done to try and counter the gang and youth violence which, sadly, blights too many of our communities.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
In August the Prime Minister told me that the Home Secretary would meet social media companies to explore the role of the internet and technology in propagating gang culture. Will the right hon. Lady tell me what the outcome of those meetings was and what action will be taken?
Mrs May
I am happy to do so. I did indeed meet representatives of Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry. I met them with representatives of the Association of Chief Police Officers and from the Metropolitan police, and we discussed a number of matters—how the police can actively use social media networks, and how the companies can look at their terms and conditions to see when they might take people off the network because they are breaching those terms and conditions. Subsequent meetings have been held on a one-to-one basis between the police and the individual companies.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
In discussions with a very senior, experienced officer, one of the issues that he highlighted was the lack of effective communication channels between the police and young people. To what extent does the Home Secretary believe that the ending gang and youth violence teams will be able to pick up and run with that issue?
Mrs May
My right hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. There is some good work being done here in London, for example, with the Safer London Foundation, which is a charity backed by the Metropolitan police. That is an important aspect of the work that I hope the ending gang and youth violence team will be able to encourage at a local community level.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
3. What recent assessment she has made of the level of knife crime.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I welcome the increasing levels of collaboration between police forces and expect more forces to consider how to work together to bring improvements and save money. The Government provide funding to support regional collaborations to tackle organised crime and have strengthened the duty to collaborate through the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011.
Harriett Baldwin
I thank the Home Secretary for that reply. Does she agree that the collaboration between West Mercia police and Warwickshire police, through their human resources department, produces exactly the kind of saving that can be made without resorting to the compulsory mergers advocated by the previous Government?
Mrs May
Indeed, and I commend my hon. Friend’s police force for the work it is doing in collaboration. Many forces across the country are collaborating in a number of areas. We are able to ensure that we can get the benefits of collaboration without forcing mergers on police forces, which the Labour party tried to do when it was in government.
Tony Baldry
Thames Valley police is collaborating in various ways with no fewer than six other forces, and the work it is doing with the Hampshire constabulary alone is saving £9 million a year. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that demonstrates that it is perfectly possible for police forces to save money without that having any impact on front-line policing?
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
One area where collaboration between forces would be welcome is in dealing with metal theft, which is growing across the country. For example, a business in my constituency lost its industrial process, which meant that it then lost business. What will Ministers do to ensure that collaboration increases and, more importantly, when will they introduce legislation to deal with metal theft?
Mrs May
The hon. Lady has raised a matter of serious concern to a great number of Members, particularly given that we have seen not only the impact on the economy, but the appalling incidence of theft of metal plaques from war memorials, which I am sure has shocked everyone in the House. We are discussing with ACPO and others what legislative changes to the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964 might be needed and we are talking with the police about what action can be taken better to identify the rogue dealers in advance of any changes to the legislation.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
Nobody will oppose sensible collaborations, but with last week’s report of a 7% rise in theft and a 10% rise in household burglary reported, coupled with a projected loss of 16,000 police officers, it is incumbent on the Secretary of State to tell us the exact total savings from such collaborations nationally and the remaining national funding shortfall after those collaborations have saved some money—if only so that the Minister for Equalities, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), is able to stop her police cuts campaign quickly.
Mrs May
Discussions are taking place between police forces on exactly how much money can be saved by such collaborations, and better approaches to police procurement and to IT, for example, will help to save £380 million. But I am very sorry because it sounds as if yet again the Labour party opposes action to save money while ensuring that the police are able to maintain their services.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
5. What steps she is taking to prevent abuse of the family migration route into the UK.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
18. What financial support she is providing to London boroughs to tackle gang-related issues.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
The police, local government and voluntary groups in London currently receive Home Office funding to tackle gang, gun and knife crime as part of the communities against guns, gangs and knives programme, which was announced in February. Further support will be available next year for local areas across the country to implement sustainable approaches to tackling gang violence.
Meg Hillier
In Hackney, the integrated gangs intervention unit has overseen a major reduction in gang violence. It is funded from the base budget of the council, but that might be more challenging in future years. What work is the Home Secretary doing to ensure that boroughs across London are working together and providing funding for similar initiatives so that we do not see gangs being tackled in one area only for them to bubble up in another?
Mrs May
The hon. Lady has made an important point about the importance of tackling this problem across the board. In talking to the Metropolitan police and in the work that will be done by the ending gang and youth violence team that the Home office is setting up at a local community level, we will incorporate the need to ensure that this work does not simply move gangs on to other parts of London. Funding is being focused on areas where there are particular problems. Hackney is in receipt of several amounts of funding for such projects. I fully take on board the hon. Lady’s point and we will look at it in our further work.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
19. Whether she plans to reassess the police funding settlement for 2012-13.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
A number of hon. and right hon. Members have referred to reports in the past few days on the UK border force. As the Home Office has already said, a senior official at the UK border force, Brodie Clark, has been suspended for acting without ministerial sanction, but I will make a statement to the House later today.
Philip Davies
Of all the people who were arrested and convicted as a result of the riots across the country in the summer, what estimate has the Home Secretary made of the number who were arrested and charged through the police use of CCTV and DNA?
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s decision to instigate an inquiry into border control this summer, which we will discuss shortly, but let me ask her a security question: what is her estimate of the number of people who passed into Britain through our ports and airports this summer under the reduced security and passport regime that the UK Border Agency was operating?
Mrs May
As the right hon. Lady knows, I will make a full statement to the House later this afternoon, and will have a full opportunity to answer her questions then, but I should like to make a few things clear. In the past, under the last Government, some security checks were lifted at times of pressure on the border, including one instance when local managers at Heathrow terminal 3 decided to open controls and no checks were made—not even cursory checks of passports.
To prevent that from happening again and to allow resources to be focused on the highest-risk passengers and journeys, in July I agreed that UKBA could pilot a scheme that would allow border force officials to target intelligence-led checks on higher-risk categories of travellers. We have since discovered that Brodie Clark, the head of the UK border force, authorised the wider relaxation of border controls without ministerial sanction. As I said, I shall make a statement to the House later today and will answer questions on this matter fully then.
Yvette Cooper
The Home Secretary did not answer my question on how many people went through under the reduced security regime, and I am concerned that she does not know. As she will know, previously, both Labour and Conservative Ministers have committed to the roll-out of e-Borders so that proper screening could be available for everyone entering and leaving the country. She seems to be rolling that system back, not forward. When describing the rolling back of checks for EU citizens this summer, a UKBA staff member told me, “We were told not to check children travelling with family groups. That was ridiculous. Supposing a man…had taken them away from their mother and they were wards of court, they would pass through undetected. I have detected many wards of court simply by running them through the warnings index.”
The Home Secretary took the decision to reduce the checks for EU citizens this summer. Why did she do so?
Mrs May
As I have indicated to the right hon. Lady, I shall set out exactly what decisions were taken in my statement to the House later today. I indicated in my first answer to her that we were looking at targeting intelligence-led checks on higher risk categories of travellers. She referred to e-Borders, but this has nothing to do with e-Borders. When we took office, we had to stop the contract with the contractor that the last Labour Government agreed for e-Borders because it was significantly behind schedule in putting it in place.
Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
T2. What steps is the Minister taking to alert parents to signs of grooming being forced on to innocent children by either their family or close friends, which is completely unacceptable?
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
T7. When does the Home Secretary intend to review the definition of an “air weapon” under the Firearms Act 1968?
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
T4. Organised crime costs the British economy £40 billion a year and affects families, businesses and local communities. What action is my hon. Friend the Minister taking to recover criminal assets and the proceeds of crime?
Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)
T9. I know that the Home Secretary is reluctant to answer any questions on the UK Border Agency in advance of her statement, but does she accept that 18 months into this Government, the decisions taken on Britain’s borders are hers and hers alone, and that she should make no attempt to blame the previous Government for the mess that we see now?
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
T6. Please listen carefully; I will say this only once. In the future assessment of police numbers and funding formulae, have any discussions taken place with the Ministry of Defence about the huge cuts in the MOD police? In the case of the Colchester garrison, the last Labour Government managed to cut its 30 officers to three, which has affected the Essex police.
Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)
The Prime Minister promised that all legitimate claims made under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886 following the recent riots would be paid. I understand that a commitment has been made to ensure that the Metropolitan police will see its money, whereas Greater Manchester police authority is still struggling to get an answer from the Home Office. Can the Home Secretary or one of her Ministers give an answer today?
Mrs May
I am happy to answer the hon. Gentleman on that point. We will indeed cover claims made under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886, but as I am sure he will appreciate, it is necessary to check and verify those claims. We have been generous with the definition that we have used, but there is still a necessary process to go through—for example, to identify the exact value of the property lost.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
Further to the Home Secretary’s reply about the Riot (Damages) Act 1886, if insurance companies are successful in pressing claims for the cost of business interruption, will those costs also be included in the financial settlement?
Mrs May
I do not think that business interruption is being looked at, but I am happy to write to the right hon. Gentleman and set out exactly what we are doing in relation to the Riot (Damages) Act 1886 and what criteria are being followed to ensure that police forces and others are paid the necessary sums.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
T10. My constituent Joanne Bryce, whose sister Claire Oldfield-Hampson’s murder was uncovered in Cambridgeshire in December 1998, has worked tirelessly to find out why the case has been so appallingly mishandled by the local constabulary, but she and I have been frustrated at every turn. Will the Policing Minister meet me to discuss the issue with my constituent?
Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
The Home Secretary has recently launched a consultation on the disclosure of previous convictions of serial perpetrators of domestic violence, following the tragic murder of Clare Wood in my constituency and the courageous campaign by her father, Michael Brown. Will the Home Secretary tell me whether there will be early legislation following the consultation to implement the scheme and prevent further tragic deaths like that of Clare Wood?
Mrs May
It is certainly our intention to act as soon as possible on the basis of the consultation. The right hon. Lady will be aware that certain powers are already available to the police to make disclosures to individuals. The consultation will look at whether further powers are necessary. I, too, pay tribute to Michael Brown for the campaign that he is running. He is very brave to do so in the face of such tragic circumstances.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
One of the worst forms of antisocial behaviour that my constituents tell me about involves people’s lifestyles and actions having a really detrimental effect on their neighbours’ quality of life. What proposals are the Government bringing forward to help the police and local authorities to deal with this problem?
Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
What mechanisms, if any, are being put in place to ensure that staff and their representatives are given an opportunity to express their concerns about problems with the functions of the UK Border Agency?
Mrs May
I can assure the hon. Lady that we are always willing to hear from members of staff about any concerns that they might have, and about any proposals for the better operation of the UK Border Agency. Indeed, I was in Turkey only a matter of days ago, listening to those who were making visa decisions in the embassy there, and hearing directly from them their concerns and their ideas for making things better.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Following an illegal encampment of 13 caravans in Harlow town centre at the weekend, Essex police have refused to be the lead agency in removing the trespassers because they are following Association of Chief Police Officers guidelines. Will the Minister confirm that ACPO guidance is no substitute for the police enforcing the law, rather than forcing Harlow council to go through a lengthy court process?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend raises an important issue. First, however, may I commend Essex police for the action that they took alongside Basildon council in the operation at Dale Farm? We are looking at whether we need to give the police extra powers in relation to the clearing of encampments and other incursions on to land. Currently, assuming that the incursion is not stopping the normal life of the community, the landowner has to take legal action. If it is stopping the normal life of the community, the police do have some powers. This matter concerns a great many people, and we are actively looking into it.
UK Border Force
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the UK border force, an operational division of the UK Border Agency. The border force is responsible for ensuring that only legitimate travellers and goods are allowed to enter and leave the UK, while reducing threats including illegal immigration, drug smuggling and terrorism.
Border force activities include verifying the immigration status of passengers arriving and departing the UK; checking baggage, vehicles and cargo for illicit goods; and searching for illegal immigrants. Border force officers confirm the identity of passengers arriving at the UK border; check passengers against a watch list known as the warnings index; and undertake a visual inspection of passengers’ passports. Where a biometric passport is held, the biometric chip, which contains a second photograph, is opened and verified.
Non-EU passengers undergo additional checks. Officers establish whether a visa is required and whether a visa is held. If the passenger has a biometric visa, a fingerprint database check can be made, and officers decide whether the passenger should be granted entry to the UK.
In the past, under the previous Government, some of those checks were lifted at times of pressure on the border. In the summer of 2008, warnings index checks were suspended on European economic area nationals—children and adults—on Eurostar services. At Calais, warnings index checks were suspended on European economic area and UK car passengers—again, adults as well as children were not run against the index. Since 2008, at various ports and airports, that happened on more than 100 occasions.
Officials tell me that once, in 2004, local managers at Heathrow terminal 3 decided to open controls and no checks were made. To prevent that from happening again, and to allow resources to be focused on the highest-risk passengers and journeys, in July I agreed that the UK Border Agency could pilot a scheme that would allow border force officials to target intelligence-led checks on higher-risk categories of travellers.
Initial options had been put to the then security Minister and the immigration Minister in January, who agreed them as a basis for further work. That resulted in proposals for a risk-based strategy coming to me in April. After further work, I agreed an amended and limited pilot scheme in July, which meant that, under limited circumstances, EEA national children, travelling with their parents or as part of a school group, would be checked against the warnings index—designed to detect terrorists and serious criminals—when assessed by a border force official to be a credible risk.
The pilot also allowed, under limited circumstances, border force officials the discretion to judge when to open the biometric chip, which contains a second photograph and no further information, on the passports of EEA nationals. Those circumstances were that the measures would always be subject to a risk-based assessment, that they should not be routine and that the volume of passengers would be such that border security would be stronger with more risk-based checks and fewer mandatory checks than with more mandatory checks on low-risk passengers and fewer risk-based checks for high-risk passengers. The advice of security officials was sought and they confirmed that they were content with the measures.
I want everybody to understand what was supposed to happen under the terms of the pilot. In usual circumstances, all checks would be carried out on all passengers. Under the risk-based controls, everybody’s passports would be checked; nobody would be waved through; visa nationals’ fingerprints would be checked; all non-EEA nationals’ biometric chips would be checked; all adults would be run past the warnings index; all non-EEA nationals would be run past the warnings index; and border officials would be free to use their professional judgment to check the biometric chips of EEA passengers and to check EEA children travelling with parents or a school group against the warnings index.
The pilot was extended on 19 September and was due to end last Friday. The results are not yet fully evaluated, but UKBA’s statistics show that, compared with the same period last year, the number of illegal immigrants detected increased by nearly 10%. Last week, John Vine, the independent chief inspector of UKBA, raised concerns with Rob Whiteman, the chief executive of UKBA, that security checks were not being implemented properly. On Wednesday, the head of the UK border force, Brodie Clark, confirmed to Mr Whiteman that border controls had been relaxed without ministerial approval.
First, biometric checks on EEA nationals and warnings index checks on EEA national children were abandoned on a regular basis, without ministerial approval. Biometric tests on non-EEA nationals are also thought to have been abandoned on occasions, again without ministerial approval. Secondly, adults were not checked against the warnings index at Calais, without ministerial approval. Thirdly, the verification of the fingerprints of non-EEA nationals from countries that require a visa was stopped, without ministerial approval. I did not give my consent or authorisation for any of these decisions. Indeed, I told officials explicitly that the pilot was to go no further than we had agreed.
As a result of these unauthorised actions, we will never know how many people entered the country who should have been prevented from doing so after being flagged by the warnings index. Following Mr Clark’s conversation with Mr Whiteman, the latter carried out further investigations and on Thursday morning he suspended Mr Clark from duty with immediate effect. The Home Office permanent secretary, the immigration Minister and I were notified of his decision that morning. The pilot scheme, which had been due to end the next day, was suspended immediately, and on Friday two other border force officials, Graeme Kyle, director of operations at Heathrow, and Carole Upshall, director of border force south and European operations, were also suspended from duty on a precautionary basis.
There is nothing more important than the security of our border, and because of the seriousness of these allegations I have ordered a number of investigations. Dave Wood, the head of the UKBA enforcement and crime group and a former Metropolitan police officer, will carry out an investigation into exactly how, when and where the suspension of checks might have taken place. Mike Anderson, the director general of immigration, is looking at the actions of the wider team working for Brodie Clark; and John Vine, the chief inspector, will conduct a thorough review to find out exactly what happened with the checks across the UKBA, how the chain of command in the border force operates and whether the system needs to be changed in future. For the sake of clarity, I am happy for Mr Vine to look at what decisions were made and when by Ministers. That investigation will begin immediately and will report by the end of January. I will place the terms of reference for the inquiries in the House of Commons Library.
Border security is fundamental to our national security and our policy of reducing and controlling immigration. The pilots run by the UK border force this summer were designed to improve border security by focusing resources on passengers and journeys that intelligence led officers to believe posed the greatest risk. The vast majority of those officers are hard-working, dedicated public servants. Just like all of us, they want to see tough immigration controls and strong enforcement, but they have been let down by senior officials at the head of the organisation who put at risk the security of our border. Our task now is to make sure—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise for interrupting, but the Home Secretary must be heard. I know that these are matters about which Members rightly feel extremely strongly, although in fairness we might note in passing that on Friday Members of the Youth Parliament felt extremely strongly about the five motions on which they spoke, but they listened to each other with courtesy.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement and welcome her agreement to establish an independent inquiry. That inquiry must get to the truth, but it should do so considerably more rapidly than by January.
Reports have already reached me from the UK Border Agency today that the shredders are on and that there is a ban on internal e-mails. Will the Home Secretary look urgently into those allegations, and into what documents perhaps are being shredded and what e-mails deleted in the Home Office and UKBA on this issue? It is also important that the inquiry has access to all communications between Ministers, the Home Office and UKBA. The scope must cover the resource pressures facing UKBA. We now know that 6,500 staff are being cut from the agency, including 1,500 from the border force. We need to know what pressures officials were put under to cut corners as a result and keep queues down with reduced staff.
We also need some answers from the Home Secretary now. In questions earlier and in her statement, she could not tell the House how many people came through our ports and airports this summer without proper checks. On average, 100,000 foreign citizens enter Britain every day. UKBA staff have claimed that reduced checks were in place almost daily from August, lasting at least half of the shift. How many people were not checked against the watch list? How many people did not have their biometrics checked? What is the Home Secretary’s estimate of whether anyone from the watch list entered Britain at that time? Did any convicted criminals or security suspects enter? The truth is that the Home Secretary does not know. She says that we will never know. Even now, she seems to be doing nothing to find out and assess who has entered the country and what the security risk might be.
The Home Secretary has admitted that she took the decision to reduce checks for EU citizens in July—not checking under-18s against the warnings index or doing biometric checks on EU passports—yet she will know that cases have been identified by border officials involving EU citizens, including people involved in organised crime, people trafficking, falsifying passports or removals of children who are wards of court. She made that decision—not Labour Ministers in the past: this Home Secretary—and that decision is her responsibility. She cannot run away from it or hide behind cases from 2004, long before new systems were introduced. She knows that the intention of Labour—and, we had assumed, Conservative—Ministers was to roll out e-Borders and to put the technology in place so that everyone could be properly screened entering and exiting the country, and not only at quiet times. In fact, the immigration Minister claimed in May that 90% of non-EU flights and 60% of EU flights were covered, but it turns out that he meant 90% of flights in the winter or at quiet times in the afternoons.
The truth is that instead of strengthening the checks year on year, as all previous Ministers had committed to do, this Home Secretary decided to water them down, as official Government policy, even though she never told the House. She has blamed officials for relaxing the checks further than she intended, yet she gave the green light for the weaker controls. She claimed in her statement that she did not intend it to be routine not to check the biometric chip in EEA passports, yet I have a copy of the interim operational instruction that she has refused to publish, which states:
“We will cease routinely opening the chip within EEA passports, checking all EEA nationals under 18 against the warnings index”.
It adds:
“If for whatever reason it is considered necessary to take further measures, local managers must escalate to the Border force duty director to seek authority for their proposed action.”
So the Home Secretary gave agency staff the green light to go ahead and experiment to meet the pressures from queues, and look how far they went. A member of the Border Agency staff said this morning:
“Every day I let in 10 people who I think there would be a good case against”.
How on earth did Ministers not know about this? How on earth could there be continual complaints from staff for months without the immigration Minister or the Home Secretary knowing what was going on? At best, they were deeply out of touch; at worst, they were complicit in a loss of control at our borders.
This Home Secretary is presiding over growing chaos and corner cutting at our borders: Raed Salah was banned from this country by the Home Office, yet he was allowed to waltz in at Heathrow; 100,000 asylum cases have been written off as just too difficult to deal with; Ministers have now given the green light to an experiment to water down, rather than increase, border controls; and the Home Secretary does not even know how many people entered Britain without proper checks this summer. Thousands of people entered without proper checks, and without the Home Secretary having a clue what was going on. It is no good blaming the previous Government, or blaming officials. This is happening on her watch, these are her decisions, and this is her Government’s mistake. She needs to get a grip and stop passing the buck.
Mrs May
I must say that I regret that response from the right hon. Lady. There is no more serious issue than border security, but, instead of engaging with the facts, she has chosen to play party politics. She knows that the checks that I approved and the relaxation of checks, which I did not approve, are two very different matters.
Let me take her points in turn. She alleges that the pilot scheme and the unauthorised actions were the result of cuts. I explained the basis for the pilot scheme in my statement. I would remind her that the last Government were planning to cut the UK Border Agency and that it remains the stated policy of her party in opposition to cut the Home Office budget. She mentioned in passing that the House had not been informed about the pilot programme, but it has never been the policy of any Government to notify the House of operational matters such as those. Her own Government did not notify the House when they introduced a risk-based warnings index policy, or when they let passengers through Heathrow without even looking at their passports.
The right hon. Lady suggests that the problem was related not to unauthorised official actions but to the measures that we piloted in July. Let me remind the House again that, as I said in my statement, these measures allowed greater intelligence-led checks to be made against higher-risk passengers. Does the right hon. Lady think that was wrong; if so, why did the last Government introduce a warnings index policy that allowed risk-based checks back in 2007?
Let me remind the right hon. Lady of what I said. The pilot allowed officials in limited circumstances to use their discretion whether to check the biometric chip of EEA nationals and whether to run EEA nationals’ children travelling in family groups or school groups against the warnings index. Under her Government in similar circumstances, adults were not run against the warnings index, and on at least one occasion at Heathrow the border was opened up, so no checks were made against inbound passengers. She says that officials at UKBA are telling her that they were suspicious about individuals, yet they were being let through. It was clear in the guidance on the policy that for any EEA national or EEA national child against whom suspicion was felt, the officer should do the necessary biometric chip checks or warnings index checks.
The right hon. Lady asked whether the inquiry should include the decisions of Ministers as well as officials. I have already said that I am happy for John Vine’s investigation to look at what decisions were taken by Ministers and when. She asked about the publication of paperwork between Ministers and officials. We will certainly make all the relevant paperwork available to the investigations. I can assure her and the House that the paperwork will show without ambiguity that the relaxation of checks that occurred was not sanctioned by me.
The right hon. Lady asked whether any dangerous individuals had managed to come to Britain. That is a very serious issue; that is why I addressed it in my statement. I made it clear to the House that we are not in a position to be able to say how many people entered who should have been prevented after being flagged by the warnings index. We would have known, however, if anybody had tried to enter the country during the pilot, as the pilot was due to operate, because all adults were run past the warnings index and all non-EEA passengers were checked against that index. It was only EEA nationals’ children travelling with their parents or in a school group who were not automatically run against the warnings index. That is more stringent than the controls put in place by the last Government, who in similar circumstances did not check all adults against the warnings index.
I have said on a number of occasions that there is nothing more important than the security of our border, and I made clear in my statement the measures we are taking to address the lapse. In addition, we are reforming every route to the UK to reduce net migration; we are clearing the asylum backlog; we are improving removals; we are addressing the problem of article 8; and we are creating a border policing command in our National Crime Agency to improve our border security in the long term.
I will take no lectures, however, from the party that gave us a total net migration of more than 2.2 million people, the foreign national prisoners scandal, Sangatte, widespread abuse of student visas, the botched e-Borders contract, a 450,000 asylum backlog, no transitional controls for eastern Europeans, the Human Rights Act and a points-based system that failed to reduce immigration. My task now is to make sure that those responsible for this lapse are properly dealt with and to make sure that border force officials can never take these risks with border security again. That is what I am determined to do.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
The shadow Home Secretary used the phrase “deeply out of touch” and “complicit in a loss of control at our borders”, which is, of course, a perfect description of Labour policy for the last decade. The Home Secretary made a decision on 22 July this year which only she could make, simply because she is the only person with advice from the security agencies. Can she tell us in broad terms what that advice was?
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
No one is asking the Home Secretary to take lectures. What she is being asked to do is take responsibility for the shambles over which she is presiding, 18 months into the Government’s term of office. Will she now answer the question posed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper)? How on earth did it come about that neither her immigration Minister nor she spotted that—as she claims—her instructions were not being followed? Does she never talk to immigration officers, or go to a port or an airport?
Mrs May
I do indeed go to airports and I do indeed talk to immigration officers, and I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I find my discussions with immigration officers very fruitful because of the ideas they advance about better measures that we could take to improve security at our borders and reduce immigration, which is, of course, what the Government intend to do. Last week, during a period when the pilot was due to be operating, the chief inspector spoke to the chief executive of UKBA to express his concerns. As a result, conversations were held with the head of the UK border force, which led to the action that is now being taken.
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
I warmly welcome the approach that my right hon. Friend is taking, including the inquiry that she has instituted. Can she confirm that anyone who has illegally entered the UK as a result of these events will not benefit from an amnesty instituted by Ministers, as happened repeatedly under the last Government? Can she also confirm that such cases will not be allowed to pile up in a backlog of 500,000, as earlier cases did, including the 100,000 to which the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) had the gall to refer?
Mrs May
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding the House of that point. It was the actions of the last Government that led to the build-up of more than 450,000 asylum cases, which has only just been cleared. We are now able to operate a much more efficient asylum system. I can also assure my hon. Friend that this Government are not in favour of allowing an amnesty to illegal immigrants.
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
Last year the Government announced the abandoning of second-generation biometrics; we had not expected them to abandon first-generation biometrics quite so quickly.
I realise that we are dealing with a ministerial graveyard —as some of us know very well—but what monitoring and reporting mechanisms were introduced by Ministers so that they could be informed of the progress of the pilot programme and whether it was being eroded at the edges?
Mrs May
We ensured that there would be a proper evaluation of the pilot programme. The point of making it a pilot programme was to establish whether it would indeed be possible to target those who constituted a higher risk in terms of border security, and whether there would be benefits from such action. As I have said, the pilot ended last week, and the full results of the evaluation have not yet been made available.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
The Home Secretary read out a litany of occasions on which rules had been relaxed under the last Government. Is she aware of the guidance that was given in each of those cases, and does she believe that that relaxation may have contributed to a laxity in the system which has led officials to feel they need not always follow the rules to the letter?
Mrs May
I am aware of some of the guidance that was published at the time, which stated, for instance, that details of EEA nationals arriving on services that had been assessed as low or very low risk should be checked only on a targeted basis. Various relaxations were introduced at the time. I have asked the chief inspector of the UK Border Agency not only to assess what has been happening across the board in terms of checks, but to examine the processes for ensuring that Ministers’ decisions are properly undertaken, recorded, passed down and acted on, and that no one goes further than that.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I welcome the appointment of John Vine. I also thank the Home Secretary for agreeing to give evidence to the Select Committee on Home Affairs tomorrow, when we will probe her further on these matters. She will know that successive Select Committee reports have told successive Governments about the culture of complacency that exists at the highest levels of the UK Border Agency, yet senior officials were paid £90,000 in bonuses last year. May I urge her to turn this crisis into an opportunity? If the Vine report suggests a root-and-branch change to the way in which the agency is operating, will she please accept those recommendations—along with the recommendations of the Select Committee—and implement them?
Mrs May
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. I was, of course, looking forward to appearing before his Select Committee in any case, and as that happens to have fallen at this time, I will, indeed, look forward to answering questions on this matter. There have over the years been reports that have rightly raised concerns about the operation of the UK Border Agency and what has been happening at our borders. I have made it absolutely clear to the chief inspector that I look forward to him not only reporting on what has happened, but bringing forward recommendations on how we can in future better ensure we are maintaining our border security.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Does the Home Secretary expect any of the reviews that she has initiated to recommend that retrospective checks be carried out on any people who got into the UK over the period in question and on whom partial information had been captured, and what would such retrospective checks involve?
Mrs May
I do not expect the investigations by Dave Wood and Mike Anderson to come up with such a recommendation, because they are specifically examining what happened in relation to certain individuals. Chief inspector John Vine’s report will tell us in more detail what has happened over the period in question across the board, rather than at just a number of ports. I have to say, however, that I doubt that he will come forward with specific recommendations on any individual.
Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
From the Home Secretary’s very defensive responses, we know who she is blaming in advance of her inquiries, but those who know the people at the top-end of the border force, and who know how that body works, say it is unthinkable that they would have taken these actions without the knowledge and approval of Ministers. That is right, isn’t it?
Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)
Evidence to the Home Affairs Committee showed that while the agency was truly chaotic under the last Government, significant problems remain in respect of its ability to protect our borders properly. It is clear the agency is in need of urgent and real reform. As a start, can the Home Secretary assure me and my constituents that the Government will swiftly press ahead with the creation of a border policing command?
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for her question. We will, indeed, be pressing ahead with the establishment of a border policing command inside the National Crime Agency. I am also pleased to be able to tell the House that the new chief executive of UKBA, Rob Whiteman, who has been in place for five weeks, has already done a lot of work in assessing what changes are required to ensure UKBA staff operate the maximum level of security.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
Can the Home Secretary confirm that all airports, including Manchester, were included in the pilot? If so, can she confirm whether those who run Manchester airport and the airlines that operate there were made aware of the pilot?
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
My constituency contains the nation’s second-busiest air gateway, and a majority of my constituents are deeply concerned about immigration. Will the Secretary of State say whether Gatwick was part of the pilot? If so, when her investigations are complete, will she tell us how many people came through during that period? Will she also confirm that national security will always be a greater priority than the length of the queues in immigration halls?
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Does that mean that the airports in Scotland were included? If there are issues for the airports in Scotland, what discussions has the Home Secretary had with Scottish Ministers on this issue?
Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)
Lord Glasman, a close adviser of the leader of the Labour party, told us:
“Labour lied to people about the extent of immigration”—
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
On Friday, while in my constituency, I received a phone call from someone who had been in the country illegally since 1965. This person had left the country, had been prevented by border officials from coming back in and then recently—on that very day—had been given six months to stay here. It is a question not just of checking these people, but of doing something about them when we see them.
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
Given the UK Border Agency’s reputation for mishaps and inefficiency, and the sensitivity of this issue, why did the Home Secretary bring this pilot into force without making arrangements for checking at regular and frequent intervals how it was actually working in practice? Why did it take three months before this failure emerged?
Mrs May
As I indicated in my statement, the pilot was for a limited period of time. It was exactly what it said: a pilot to test whether the operation was going to ensure that we could target higher-risk individuals, rather than routinely checking everybody in certain categories. The evaluation of the pilot would have led to a decision as to whether or not it was appropriate to continue that in any further way. This was for a limited period and the full evaluation was to take place at the end.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
Does the Home Secretary agree that it is perfectly in order to give very well-paid, high-level senior officials some common-sense discretion, but if they go further than their discretion—further than is authorised by Ministers—and weaken our borders, it is appropriate to look at criminal sanctions for any misconduct?
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Will the Home Secretary consider the question of staffing levels throughout the UK Border Agency? I am talking about the effect they have in respect of enormous queues at Heathrow and other airports, which become a deterrent to legitimate travellers; the inability of that agency to respond to written inquiries from people, including MPs; and the situation where the agency apparently cannot cope with its work load.
Mrs May
As I made clear in my statement, this was not an issue about staffing levels; this was a pilot that was intended to help us understand whether it was possible, with different arrangements, to make more intelligence-led checks on higher-risk individuals. We have made it clear that it is going to be possible to improve the border operations through the use of greater technology—the use of e-gates is an important element in that. The hon. Gentleman refers to letters written by MPs, but I must say to him that my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration is responsible for signing— dealing with—about 60,000 letters on immigration matters each year.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
There has been a catalogue of problems in UKBA for many years, as was shown in a recent Select Committee report before this case took place. We had seen the disasters of the asylum backlog, which has not quite gone away; poor decision making; cases being dropped; and a huge number of successful appeal rates. Fixing this has defeated many previous Home Secretaries, so how can we be sure that this one will resolve it?
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He is right to say that over the years—this is the point I have been making—successive Governments have come across difficulties in the operation of UKBA, or its predecessor organisation in the Home Office, in relation to security checks and border controls. This coalition Government are taking the right steps, by establishing the border police command, to strengthen our ability to deal with controls at our border. But, as I indicated in my answer to the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), it will of course be for us to look at any recommendations that come from the chief inspector’s investigation in order to see whether further action is necessary to put in place what we all want: a system to ensure that UKBA can maintain the security of our borders in the way we wish.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
In her statement, the Home Secretary said that the controls had been relaxed without any ministerial approval, but she did not mention knowledge. Will she confirm whether the Prime Minister, No. 10, she, her Ministers, the permanent secretary at the Department or her private offices had any knowledge whatever of those relaxations and controls?
Chris Kelly (Dudley South) (Con)
I thank the Home Secretary for her statement. Will she tell the House which months, on previous performance, saw the most interceptions and whether they were the same months as those we are talking about today?
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
Is it not a fact that under this Home Secretary’s watch, something like 100,000 people, possibly including terrorists, have vanished into the undergrowth with nobody knowing where they are? When the Home Secretary said again and again in her statement “without ministerial approval”, was she not admitting that she does not have a grip on her Department? The responsibility ends with her.
Mrs May
I have been perfectly clear with the House that I take responsibility for the decisions I have made, and I have done that this afternoon. In the circumstances that have been set out, what we have seen is a pilot that was agreed, and actions going beyond that—unauthorised actions—taking place at our border.
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
The Public and Commercial Services Union is alleging that staff cuts and staff shortages caused the relaxation of these rules. Will my right hon. Friend take this opportunity completely to reject those allegations?
Mrs May
Yes, I will take that opportunity. It was clear when the proposals for the pilot were presented to me that the desire was to ensure that more risk-based checks could be made and therefore that we would target resources on higher-risk individuals. In doing that, it could well be possible to improve security, but, of course, evaluating whether that was the case was the purpose of ensuring that this was only a pilot.
Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)
Having served as a full-time official in the civil service trade union movement for 26 years, may I say that if a civil servant under the senior civil service had wilfully disobeyed an instruction he would have been guilty of gross misconduct and would have been summarily dismissed? If the matter is as clear-cut as the Home Secretary suggests, will she tell us why Brodie Clark is not facing the same sanction?
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
I trust my right hon. Friend to sort out the sloppy and lax management culture that has prevailed at this agency for too long. May I ask about her excellent idea for a border police command? When will it be introduced and how many police will be detailed to it? What the public want now is even more reassurance that our borders are going to be safe.
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?
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
In her statement, my right hon. Friend said that border officials were free to use their professional judgment to check the biometric chip of EEA passengers. Given that biometrics are meant to speed things up and provide greater security, I and my constituents would want every passport holder with a biometric chip to have their passport checked.
Mrs May
Perhaps I should repeat what I said about the biometric chip. The biometric chip holds within it a second photograph. That is all it holds within it. The decision was taken under the pilot to allow discretion to be operated in relation to EEA nationals and the opening of the biometric chip on a risk-based approach. I am sure my hon. Friend would want a border force that ensures it is targeting those who place most at risk individuals living in the United Kingdom.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
Is not the real issue that any pilot that relaxes security and immigration checks at our borders is a disaster waiting to happen, and that is what we have—a disaster that has happened?
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)
Government figures show that by 2010 illegal immigration had reached an all-time high of more than 700,000 in our country. Does my right hon. Friend believe that the UK Border Agency is solely responsible for this shambolic state of affairs?
Mrs May
The UK Border Agency is the body responsible for putting in place the policy that is agreed for dealing with immigrants at the borders. The UK Border Agency does very good work—I have seen it for myself at Calais—in intercepting illegal immigrants who are trying to enter this country. It is doing that work on a daily basis to try to ensure that we reduce the number of illegal immigrants. This Government are trying to do something to reduce immigration into this country, to reduce net migration, and also to improve the removal of illegal immigrants so that those who come here with no right to be here are removed from this country.
Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)
The House rightly takes seriously the issue of child trafficking. Can the Home Secretary advise me what evaluation was carried out on the increased risk of child trafficking as a result of the pilot and the increased risk of child trafficking that has occurred as a result of this scandal?
Mrs May
The evaluation of the pilot’s impact was intended to demonstrate that. In relation to the possibility of increased child trafficking, I come back to a point that I made earlier. It was clear to officers that it was at their discretion to check children who were coming in, either in family groups or in school groups, and they could follow up any suspicions that they had in relation to that by undertaking those checks.
Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)
We know that the radical Islamist Sheikh Raed Salah walked past UK border controls this summer, despite being on a Home Office banned entry list. Was this connected to the news that we hear today, or was it simply a case of someone not checking his passport?
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I would like to return to the issue of who knew what when about the pilot. Did the Prime Minister sanction the pilot going ahead?
Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend recognise that under the previous Government the public lost confidence in Labour’s ability to manage immigration and border controls, and that that drove a significant number of people into the hands of the far right? Does she agree that we should not let the people down in such a way?
Mrs May
I agree with my hon. Friend. Sadly, the immigration policy of the previous Government led to significant concerns among members of the public. This is an issue that matters to members of the public. It is this coalition Government who are taking action that I believe members of the public want us to take to reduce net migration into this country, to get rid of the abuse of student visas, and to deal with some of the other issues that led to the significant numbers of people coming into this country over the past 13 years under a Labour Government.
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
The right hon. Lady knows more than almost anyone how uniquely serious the security situation is in Northern Ireland. Can she please confirm that Belfast International was not included in the wave-through amnesty?
Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that she will not quadruple the number of work permits for non-EU residents, that she will not preside over the growth of hundreds of phoney colleges that bring in phoney students, and that she will not plan a large-scale amnesty?
Mrs May
I am happy to confirm all those points. Indeed, far from doing any of those things, this Government are getting rid of the abuse of student visas by ensuring that colleges that have been bringing people in to work rather than to study can no longer do so. It is this Government who have brought in an annual limit on non-EU economic migrants.
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
Given the concerns about the UK Border Agency, can we be clear about why the Home Secretary did not arrange to monitor this sensitive pilot or, given her wide range of responsibilities, why the Immigration Minister did not do so? Can we also be clear what he signed up to and what he was told? Let us not wait until January for those answers. Will the Home Secretary issue a statement to that effect this week?
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
We heard suggestions earlier that documents were being shredded and e-mails were being deleted. What powers will the three inquiries have to ensure that documents are available to them and witnesses can be called to give evidence?
Mrs May
I can assure my hon. Friend that the internal inquiry has been ongoing since the first information on the matter was available on Thursday and is continuing. I expect it to be a relatively quick inquiry. The inquiry by the chief inspector is starting today, and I saw him and one of his assistant chief inspectors this morning. They have already started the necessary work for conducting the field work at various ports around the country and will have the full powers available to the chief inspector in normal circumstances.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
We have been rather disappointed by the Home Secretary’s answers on Manchester and Belfast airports and the number of people coming into the country. Will she make available to us as soon as possible all the details about the ports and airports involved, the times they were involved and the number of people who came in, rather than waiting until January for an inquiry? She should make it her business to find these things out.
Mr Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South) (LD)
I hope that the Home Secretary will not mind me saying so, but she sounds today like she is more on autopilot than anything else. Does she recollect being given a report about the pilot at the end of September? If she did not see it, which of her Ministers did?
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
If the Home Secretary agrees that every aspect of this issue should be investigated, will she confirm that the inquiries will consider the resources that are made available to UKBA?
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Will the Home Secretary congratulate the front-line UKBA officers who do a brilliant job around the country, including in Dover, and is she aware of Phil Woolas’s comments that his efforts to tighten our borders were opposed by Treasury and Foreign Office Ministers?
Mrs May
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I will indeed pay tribute to the work that is done by UK Border Agency officers at our ports, including those who are at Dover. As I made clear in an earlier answer, they do very good work on a daily basis to stop people coming into this country illegally and to seize goods that should not be coming into this country. As I say, those who operate at Dover should be commended for the work that they do on a daily basis.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
If the pilot was to be evaluated, someone must have been collecting information on how it was working. Can the Home Secretary tell us where that information was held, and can she now answer the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) about whether any Minister or ministerial private office knew what was going on?
Mrs May
Yes, we were looking at the operation of the pilot, as a full evaluation, at the end of the pilot taking place. Opposition Members have asked on several occasions whether during the course of the pilot it became clear to Ministers that it was being operated not just as requested and authorised, but in another way, and the answer to that is no.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
Brodie Clark was governor of Whitemoor prison when five IRA men escaped, yet he was promoted to be the Prison Service head of security and then to head the UK border force. The Home Secretary explains that things will improve under the NCA, but does she agree that confidence in the agency would be bolstered if its head were subject to a parliamentary confirmation hearing?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is an assiduous member of the Home Affairs Committee, and I suspect that it may choose to return to that issue. As he will know as a member of the Committee, in due course the head of the National Crime Agency will be available to appear before the Committee and to talk about his proposals for the agency, which will include the border police command.
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
Was there a specific incident that caused Mr Vine to raise his concerns only last week with Mr Whiteman, or did he have concerns during the previous four months? Did he raise them with anyone? Did such individuals raise those issues with the Home Secretary or anyone in her office?
Mrs May
The chief inspector had carried out an inspection of a Heathrow terminal, and during that inspection he developed a concern about the consistency of the controls being operated. It was that issue that he raised, and it was following discussions about that issue that what had happened has come out.
Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
Earlier this year I hosted a delegation of Chinese business men and investors, who very politely told me that they felt they had undergone excessive security screening and delays at Heathrow airport. When the Home Secretary introduced this shambolic pilot, did she not consider the message that it might send to legitimate and well-meaning trading partners from other parts of the world, who have undergone a far more rigorous examination?
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
This summer, returning from holiday at the end of August along with thousands of others, we arrived at Heathrow, where we were actively discouraged from using the modern technology that the Home Secretary has talked about so frequently in her answers. Will her pilot study indicate exactly what percentage of passengers arriving used the new machines, what percentage went through officials and what percentage of people caught trying to enter illegally went through either the machines or officials?
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
The Home Secretary says that she discussed the pilot with the Immigration Minister and the Minister responsible for security, but did she consult ministerial colleagues and security officials at the Department for Transport? If so, what was their advice?
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
I am appalled that the Home Secretary set up a pilot at Manchester airport and did not know she had done so. That is extraordinary. Will she now answer without any ambiguity the question that has been asked four or five times: did information come from those pilot schemes into her or any other Minister’s office in the Home Office—yes or no?
Mrs May
As I have made clear, an evaluation of the pilot was going to take place at the end of the study, so that we could look at how it was operating and whether it was doing what it was expected to do. As I said in my statement, a decision was taken in the middle of September to extend the pilot until November in order to ensure that there was a fuller period of time to make the evaluation.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
How often did the Home Secretary get reports and updates on the progress of the pilot, and how often did she update the Prime Minister on it?
Terrorism Legislation (Anderson Report)
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I am pleased to announce the publication today of the Government’s response to Mr David Anderson QC’s report on the operation in 2010 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and part 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006, which will be laid before the House today.
I am grateful to David Anderson QC for his detailed report and I have considered his recommendations fully. Following consultation within my Department and with other relevant Departments and agencies, I am pleased to lay my response to David Anderson’s recommendations before the House today. Copies will be available in the Vote Office.
Police and Crime Commissioners Salaries
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I have received the Senior Salaries Review Body report and recommendations on police and crime commissioners pay.
On 20 January 2011 I wrote to the chair of the Senior Salaries Review Body requesting that he consider the role and functions of police and crime commissioners and make an independent recommendation to me as to what the SSRB considers to be a suitable salary, or salary range, for this new office. The report, which today I am placing in the House Library and is available to the general public through the Senior Salary Review Body’s website, sets out clearly the important and powerful role that PCCs will play in delivering policing services from November next year when they will be first elected.
I am grateful for the work undertaken by the SSRB and will reflect on its advice and recommendations. The SSRB has recommended a salary scale for PCCs of £65,000 to £100,000 with each police force area within England and Wales being weighted against this scale. I intend to give this and the other recommendations thorough consideration and report my final decision in due course and in good time to allow potential candidates to be clear on what they can expect their salary to be.
PCCs are established in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 within each force area as powerful individuals, and charged with responsibility for the totality of policing within that area; each force area faces a huge range of policing and social challenges which vary from force area to force area and each PCC will seek to ensure that these challenges are met in the interests of the our local communities.
PCCs will need to be highly motivated, determined to deliver the best for the communities that they serve, and above all be focused on making our communities safe. How PCCs work with and interact with chief constables, police and crime panels and local partners will be crucial to achieving success.
The election of police and crime commissioners will further strengthen the relationship between the public and the police, and allow us to replace bureaucratic accountability to Whitehall with democratic accountability to local communities. As a result the police will have greater freedom and discretion to fight crime as they see fit within a rebalanced and strengthened governance structure. I am keen to ensure that suitable and proportionate remuneration is achieved for such a challenging and rewarding role.
Gangs and Youth Violence
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(14 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the cross-Government report into ending gang and youth violence. Following the shocking scenes of disorder over the summer, the Prime Minister asked me to lead a review, alongside my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, of gangs and youth violence. Today’s report is not the end of that process. It is merely the start of a comprehensive, long-term programme of work to tackle the violence that blights too many of our towns and cities.
We have visited front-line projects; we have analysed youth violence and street gangs; we have met local authority chief executives, senior police officers, voluntary organisations and former gang members; and we have hosted an international conference of experts. Using this research, we have identified what can be done by Government and other agencies to stop the violence and to turn around the lives of those involved. Today’s report is an important first analysis of the problem, and of the interventions that work. It provides a platform for the intensive support we will provide to the most affected areas.
If we are honest with ourselves, we need to accept that not enough was done over the years to deal with a problem we all knew existed and we knew was not being addressed. But the riots brought home to the whole country how serious a problem gang and youth violence has become. The statistics show that one in five of those arrested in connection with the riots in London were known gang members. Similar figures were recorded by West Yorkshire police, and Nottinghamshire had only a slightly lower proportion. Most other police forces identified fewer than 10% of all those arrested as known gang members, so gangs were not the sole cause of the riots, but they were a factor. The fact that so many young people who are not involved in gangs were still willing to carry out such serious acts of criminality merely reinforces the urgent need for action.
Gang members and young people engaged in violence do not appear out of the blue. Analysis of their life stories shows certain common factors: parental neglect early in life, often linked to drug addiction or alcohol abuse and violence in the home; a history of poor discipline at school, truancy and exclusion; early brushes with the law for more minor offences; and exposure to older gang members, often based around their local estate. Those factors come up time and again, and during the review we heard powerful real-life examples. Our analysis also showed that gang membership itself can be an important driver of criminality and violence. In London, for example, almost 50% of shootings and 22% of serious violence are committed by known gang members.
Our considered and evidence-based approach is designed to deal with each and every aspect of gang culture and youth violence. It will be based on five areas: prevention, pathways out, punishment, partnership working and providing support.
Preventing young people from becoming involved in gangs and youth violence means starting at the beginning. Research shows that early intervention is the most cost-effective way of reducing violence later in life, so we are recruiting 4,200 extra health visitors and doubling the capacity of family nurse partnership schemes, to help 13,000 young mothers. We are providing £18 million to identify and support domestic violence victims and their children, who are at particular risk of turning to violence in adulthood.
In schools, the pathway for young people into crime is all too clear: from low-level absence, to persistent absence and truancy, to low literacy and poor attainment. That is why our education reforms are focused on: early intervention in the foundation years; taking a rigorous approach to eliminating illiteracy; improving behaviour and discipline; and ensuring that every young person is taught in a way that inspires them and prepares them for the world of work.
If prevention fails and young people are drawn into gangs and youth violence, we need to ensure that we provide viable pathways out. Moments of crisis in a young person’s life, such as arrest, exclusion from school or attending an accident and emergency department offer vital opportunities to intervene, so we will work with A and E departments and children’s social care providers to help young people who may be affected by gang violence.
For those who are arrested, we will expand schemes to help young offenders with mental health and substance misuse problems, and we will look to provide ways out of gangs for those who have been convicted and served their time. We will therefore improve education provision in young offenders institutions and ensure that all young people who leave prison and claim jobseeker’s allowance are referred immediately to the Work programme.
We will also establish a new ending gangs and youth violence team of community activists, NHS experts and police officers. It will offer intensive support to gang-affected areas to help them understand their problem and develop their own solutions, which could include rolling out schemes to re-house gang members who want to exit the gang lifestyle and mediation schemes to prevent retaliatory violence.
Our review found some excellent police work to identify and manage the highest-risk gang members through a combination of targeted surveillance, enforcement and arrest for any offence, however minor, and positive offers of training, employment and drugs treatment for those who want a different life. However, those not prepared to break away from violence will face harsher and tougher punishments. That is why we will consult on making a new offence of possession of an illegal firearm with intent to supply, and on whether the penalty for illegal firearm importation should be increased. We are also consulting on whether the police need additional curfew powers. It is why we are extending the new gang injunctions to 14 to 17-year-olds, for example, to stop gang members entering rival territory, prevent them from being in public with dangerous dogs and require them to undertake positive activities; and it is why we are strengthening our laws on weapons possession so that anyone, including offenders aged 16 or 17, convicted of using a knife to threaten and endanger others will now face a mandatory custodial sentence. Any adult who commits a second very serious violent or sexual crime will now face a mandatory life sentence.
This is not, however, solely a police and criminal justice programme. All the agencies that young people deal with, from teachers to health service workers and social services, need to develop better systems for identifying high-risk individuals, sharing information and working together. Simply throwing more money at the problem is not the answer. We need a more intelligent approach.
We know, for example, that there are families on whom multiple Government agencies spend hundreds of thousands of pounds each year, yet their problems persist. That is why Louise Casey is today starting her work as the head of a new troubled families team to drive forward our commitment to turn around the lives of 120,000 troubled families. We will also deliver our commitment that all hospital A and E departments should share anonymised data on violent assaults with the police and other agencies. Sharing information and taking a multi-agency approach might not sound very exciting, but they work.
Finally, to support local areas, we will target Home Office funds on those places where the most serious gang and youth violence problems exist. We will therefore provide £10 million in funding next year to support up to 30 local areas and invest at least £1.2 million of new resources over the next three years to improve services for young victims of sexual violence in our major urban areas, with a new focus on the girls and young women caught up in gang-related rape and abuse.
For too long, communities have lived in fear of gangs. Many young lives have been ruined; many young lives have been lost. The summer showed that it is time for society to take a stand. It is time for a long-term programme, with intervention at each stage of vulnerable people’s lives; it is time for a locally led approach, with agencies working together and sharing information; and it is time for tough enforcement to be backed up by work to address the root causes of gang and youth violence. That is what our programme will deliver and I commend this statement to the House.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I thank the Home Secretary for early sight of her statement and the Government report.
The Opposition agree with the Government’s aim of tackling gang culture. The Home Secretary is right to point to the devastating impact on the victims of gang violence and intimidation and to be concerned about the damage that gangs do to those who get sucked into them, sometimes even in the search for protection. The violence is horrifying; the long-term scars for young people and society are severe. She is right that gangs played a part in the riots, but also that they have played a part in problems such as knife crime that affect some of our major cities.
The Home Secretary also recognises that the overwhelming majority of young people do not get involved in gangs. Indeed, youth crime fell over the course of the previous Parliament as fewer young people were drawn into criminal activity, but we want youth crime to fall further, not to go back up. That is why action on the pernicious effect of gang culture is so important.
I therefore agree strongly with the Home Secretary that effective action requires prevention, early intervention, working in partnerships, tough action and crackdowns on persistent gang activity, and punishment. Effective action needs to involve the NHS, schools and councils as well as the police. We also need action on domestic violence and to consider the impact on women and girls. She should also consider increasing the focus on housing and on the victims of gangs.
I welcome the Home Secretary’s work to build on Labour’s approach in government, including the family intervention projects and implementing the extension of gang injunctions to 14-year-olds, for which the previous Labour Government legislated before the last election.
I agree with the Home Secretary that we need to go further. I, too, am impressed by some of the work that police and local councils are doing in some areas to target gang members by offering them a way out, but rightly getting tough on them if they will not take it, but I am deeply concerned that the reality of the Government’s policy does not live up to the rhetoric. For a start, there is still complete confusion about sentencing policies. Last week, the Home Office told the papers that there would be longer sentences for gang members; yesterday, the Home Secretary told them that there would not be. Her plans on powers are also confused. She will know that many police forces and councils find that ASBOs are one of the most useful tools in disrupting gang activity, yet her policy still is to abolish them and replace them with weaker injunctions, so she is making it harder and not easier for the police to crack down.
We welcome the emphasis on early intervention in the report, but that sits badly with the 20% cuts to Sure Start and well over 20% cuts to the youth service. We welcome the learning of lessons from successful work in places such as Strathclyde, but here is the real problem: the work in Strathclyde alone required an additional £5 million, but she has announced only £10 million for the country as a whole, and the Home Office has already said that that funding is not new. At the same time, she is halving the local community safety budgets, which councils and the police use for gang prevention work right now—£44 million of cuts over the next two years alone, on top of the cuts to community safety funding in the emergency Budget.
Before the election, Haringey, where the riots started, received £2.2 million for community safety, including the action it was taking, with the police, to target gangs. By next year, that figure will be £200,000—a 90% cut in one borough alone. In Liverpool, the youth offending service, which works with gangs and young offenders, is facing more than £2 million of cuts—an overall reduction in its budget of 34%. All that comes on top of 16,000 police officer cuts, nearly 6,000 of which are in the forces that face the biggest problems with gangs.
The Government are cutting too far, too fast, hitting not only the criminal justice system, but our economy, which risks costing us more. Higher unemployment and higher crime will cost us more. Ministers are right to be concerned about gangs and youth crime and to want action, but what does this really add up to on the streets of Lambeth or Liverpool or for the young people of Birmingham or Brent? Given that the Government are pushing up youth unemployment to nearly 1 million, cutting 16,000 police officers, ending ASBOs, slashing youth services and cutting crime prevention, can the Home Secretary put her hand on her heart and tell the House that during this Parliament the youth crime rate will fall, as it did in previous Parliaments?
We agree with much of what the Home Secretary said today, but when we look at the reality behind the rhetoric—the reality behind her words—we see the truth, which is that the Government are still making it harder, not easier, for the police and communities to tackle gang violence and cut crime.
Mrs May
We have heard a typical response from the right hon. Lady. I shall start with the statements where she agreed with what we were doing, with the need to do more to draw young people out of gangs and reduce youth violence and with the point that this is not just about the police, but about how the NHS, schools and a variety of other agencies need to be involved. As I said in my statement, that is the basis of this first truly cross-Government report. She mentioned good projects by the police. There are a number of very good projects out there in parts of the Metropolitan police, Greater Manchester, the west midlands, Merseyside and, of course, Strathclyde. Those projects are already starting to make a difference.
Sadly, however, having said that she agreed with a lot of what I said, the right hon. Lady then, as she did in August when we were talking about the riots, chose to be party political. I am sorry that she chose to do that, but I shall address her various points. She said that we should not scrap ASBOs, but what good have ASBOs done, given that, as she said, gang culture has been getting worse? We are getting rid of ASBOs and replacing them with measures that will actually deliver for local communities, deter antisocial behaviour and put communities back in charge. She mentioned funding for Sure Start. That funding is provided through the early intervention grant, but, crucially, we are ensuring that Sure Start is focused on the very families it was set up to help in the first place—the very families that most need our help and support.
The right hon. Lady talked about police cuts. She never misses a chance to demonstrate her fiscal irresponsibility, and I knew that today would not be any different. She attacked cuts in police spending, but she did not say that it was the stated policy of her party to cut police spending. On her comments about police numbers, let me tell the House what she said about gangs and police numbers in August:
“Boots on the streets are not enough to sustain safe communities”.—[Official Report, 11 August 2011; Vol. 531, c. 1151.]
I wonder why she has changed her mind.
The right hon. Lady also talked about other spending cuts. Let me tell her what Jacqui Smith, the former Labour Home Secretary, said just this morning:
“You need to be much better at measuring the impact of the money we spend as well as simply spending it.”
I suggest that the right hon. Lady take a lesson from her. The shadow Home Secretary seems to think that gang problems have been caused by this Government and did not exist under the previous Government, but let me remind her what she said in August:
“I agree that more needs to be done about gang culture, which has been getting worse.”—[Official Report, 11 August 2011; Vol. 531, c. 1151.]
Yes: getting worse under the Labour Government. Just this morning, Jacqui Smith said that Labour “hadn’t done well enough” in tackling gang violence”. She has been straight about her record; it is a shame that the shadow Home Secretary cannot bring herself to be straight too.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Does she agree that the best way of getting young people off the conveyor belt to crime is to target early years and ensure that young people have access to education and community projects such as the Prince’s Trust and the college in my constituency, and organisations such as Catch22? Given that the previous Home Secretary has said that in the past money was not always spent as it should have been, does my right hon. Friend agree that spending money on projects such as those that I have described is the right way forward?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that early years intervention is key, and it is part of the work to prevent young people from getting involved in gangs in the first place. Early intervention might be needed at a very early age indeed, with toddlers, to ensure that they do not go down that road. That is why it is so important to ensure that money is spent in the right way, on projects that will make a difference and really work.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s proposals and the appointment of Louise Casey to head the new unit. The right hon. Lady will have noted the evidence of Bill Bratton, one of the guests at her international conference and round table, who said:
“You can’t arrest your way out”
of gang problems. Early intervention has been a theme of the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) for a number of years. What worries me is who will co-ordinate the various initiatives. A number of Departments are involved and monitoring will be crucial, so will it be her, as Home Secretary, or another Department?
Mrs May
I thank the right hon. Gentleman. I pay tribute to Louise Casey for the work that I know she will do and to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who has appointed her to the troubled families unit, as part of his Department’s work. Let me also record our thanks to Bill Bratton, whom the right hon. Gentleman mentioned. He came over and visited a number of projects in the UK, participating in our round table and international forum on gang and youth violence. Crucially, he also gave hope from the projects that he had seen that it is possible for the UK to turn the problem around. The right hon. Gentleman is right to focus on monitoring, and, as I said, this is the start of the process. The inter-ministerial group that I chaired alongside my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will continue and will oversee the work currently being undertaken.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
The Home Secretary will be aware of the problems with gangs and knife crime that my constituency faces. My constituents will warmly welcome her announcement, but does she envisage a role for volunteer organisations, which already do a lot of work, in delivering the strategy on the front line?
Mrs May
Yes, I can absolutely reassure my hon. Friend that I see a significant role for voluntary organisations. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and I attended a round table set up by the Centre for Social Justice, at which we met people from a number of voluntary groups, including some ex-gang members who are doing excellent work. Indeed, it is often voluntary groups that can make a difference to young people involved in gang membership, or to those about to get involved, and that can turn them around.
Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
The Home Secretary might be interested to know that at 5 o’clock this morning 24 people across Salford and Manchester were arrested in connection with incidents during the disturbances in the summer. Much of the evidence was gathered using CCTV and DNA, a message that I am sure the right hon. Lady will take away. The family intervention projects will be essential to ensuring that our young people do not follow that path. Will she assure me that some funds from the Home Office and the family intervention projects will be targeted on Salford, to ensure that we keep our young people away from these problems in future?
Mrs May
I was aware of the work being done by Greater Manchester police, who have been doing excellent work following the riots, as have a number of other forces across the country. It is absolutely the case that, among the variety of amounts of money that are going to be made available for various aspects of this scheme, some will be focused on the Greater Manchester area. We will identify 30 areas for which £10 million from the Home Office will be available next year, and we are working with the Association of Chief Police Officers, which is mapping the gangs at the moment, to identify those areas. We have already identified Greater Manchester as one of the three areas—alongside the west midlands and London—into which specific Home Office funding is going in for the guns, gangs and knives project.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I welcome the analysis that underlines the fact that parental neglect, violence at home, truancy and exclusion are factors that can lead to gang membership. I also welcome the five areas on which the Government are focusing, especially pathways out. On that point, what support can the Government provide for suitable role models and mentors who can steer young people away from gangs and towards a more positive future?
Mrs May
My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point. One aspect of the way in which we intend to operate involves ensuring that people are able to identify at local level what will work in their area. In looking at various projects, I have seen that the people who are the most effective in persuading others to leave gangs are often former gang members. They have been through it, they know that a different life is possible, and they can give others the benefit of their personal experience. I have seen that happening in a number of areas, and I believe that a number of local areas will want to follow up on that aspect.
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
My constituency is served by two boroughs: Brent and Camden. In both, the funding for the safer communities and youth offending teams has been slashed. In Brent, it has been slashed by almost 18%, and in Camden by more than 27%. I agree with the Home Secretary that we can tackle gangs only through a multi-agency approach, but every other agency to which she referred in her statement is suffering from similar cuts, so how can that intensive support to which she referred be delivered?
Mrs May
One of the points that the hon. Lady is missing is that, sadly, over the years, significant sums have been spent on projects that are not as effective as they should be. There are families out there on whom hundreds of thousands of pounds are being spent by various Government agencies, often not working together, and this is not effective. The problems still persist. The work that has been done in Waltham Forest, however, shows that if we bring together agencies such as the police, the local authority and others to tackle gang violence, yes, we spend money on those individuals, but we end up saving money by turning their lives around. Often, the effective intervention is not the expensive intervention.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement, but a short prison sentence of two months for youths convicted of knife crime does not offer the opportunity for complete rehabilitation. Does she agree, however, that it might offer a vital opportunity to diagnose previously hidden conditions such as communication delay, which could be a key factor in people entering pathways to crime?
Mrs May
I commend my hon. Friend’s work on this issue. I know that he takes it very seriously, and that he has looked into the impact of communication delay on young people. In relation to sentencing, it is important to send a clear message about the importance that we attach to doing something to reduce and stop knife crime. We also need to look at the interventions that take place when young people are undertaking custodial sentences, to ensure that we can rehabilitate them and take the opportunity to turn their lives around.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
Youth unemployment in my constituency is higher than it has ever been, and this is directly caused by Government cuts—[Interruption.] It is directly caused by Government cuts. Educational opportunities have been blighted by the abolition of education maintenance allowance, and a youth club in my constituency is in jeopardy because of Government cuts. What option is the Home Secretary going to provide for young people in my constituency apart from the streets? Will she provide direct funding for organisations such as Reclaim and Trinity House in my constituency, which combat the effects that this Government have created?
Mrs May
As I have said, specific funding will be available, which will be targeted at projects in those areas of the highest violence and those areas with the most significant problems. We are working with the Association of Chief Police Officers to identify those areas. I also say to the right hon. Gentleman that he really should not try to rewrite history: youth unemployment was going up for six years under the last Labour Government.
Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
To view this issue from a purely financial perspective is prosaic. From my experience, one reason why many young people join gangs is that they are seeking a surrogate or substitute family. This is particularly the case among young men who are often looking for a positive male role model. I welcome my right hon. Friend’s initial response on role models. Will she elaborate on how positive male role models could play a role in this issue?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend has identified a very important issue. As I said earlier, it is absolutely the case that, sadly, all the Opposition only ever want to talk about is the amount of money being spent rather than about how it is being spent and how we can act intelligently to make a real difference. Ensuring that there are positive role models—particularly male role models—available to young people in these gangs is an important part of that. My hon. Friend is also right that, sadly, for too many young people involved in these gangs, the gang effectively substitutes for a family. When I met a former gang member, I was struck when he told me that when he was out in the streets with the gang, his mother was lying at home dead-drunk.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
The Home Secretary states that agencies must work together to focus on the early intervention in the foundation years. What responsibility does she feel the family has in that area of intervention and how do we harness family and parental responsibility?
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman has made an important point. In helping a young person either to come out of gang membership or to prevent him from getting involved in the first place, it is often important to look not just at that individual but at the whole family. As I indicated in my answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal), the problems sometimes lie in the family, and it is that family background that is a significant cause of what is happening to the young person. Work that is being done—for example, early intervention work by health visitors, family nurse partnerships and so forth—is important in providing essential support within a family.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
I wonder whether the Home Secretary would recognise that there is a significant role for local authorities and housing associations in taking firm action against families that commit criminal activity or antisocial behaviour. Moving those families on by evicting them not only gives the community around them a respite but gives the family a chance for a fresh start somewhere else.
Mrs May
That is absolutely right. In fact, moving families on can help in two ways. One is where the family are creating particular problems on an estate or in an area, and the housing association or local council can take action that can relieve the rest of the community. Another is in circumstances where in order to get a potential gang member away from the area in which the gang is involved it is necessary to move that gang member and the family. There can be a positive move as well as a negative one, so to speak.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Everybody abhors gang violence and the cultures that go with it, but does the Home Secretary recognise that some young people are attracted by a perverse sense of glamour towards gangs as an escape from overcrowded housing or as an escape from the lack of job opportunities or youth facilities? Because they cannot develop themselves in those ways, they see a gang as something worth looking at. Should we not instead invest in jobs, housing and communities as much as in all the other palliative measures that the Home Secretary has suggested?
Mrs May
A great many young people live in difficult circumstances but do not turn to gangs. Of course it is important for us to look at gang membership and youth violence in the round rather than arresting our way out of the problem, because it is not possible for us to arrest our way out of it. As I said earlier, young people coming out of prison who claim jobseeker’s allowance will go straight on to the Work programme. We must make a real effort to deal with problems such as unemployment, and to help those young people to find a different route through life.
Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Con)
I am sure that the Home Secretary was as impressed as I was by the work of Nottinghamshire constabulary, many of whose central Nottingham stations came under sustained and potentially lethal attack by petrol bombers during August. I accept that prevention is better than cure, and I note the Home Secretary’s strictures about knives and firearms, but what is being done, and what will she do, about the carrying and preparation of petrol bombs?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend has raised an important issue. We have not addressed it in the review, but I shall be happy to consider it. I pay tribute to the work done by Nottinghamshire police in defending both people and premises. As he says, they came under significant and sustained attack during what was a very difficult time.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
It is the judgment of Slough’s local police commander, Richard Humphrey, that the reason there was not more serious violence in the town that I represent, despite the risks posed by such factors as gang membership, was the contribution of Aik Saath and other youth organisations. What help is the Home Secretary offering youth organisations that can prevent problems of this kind?
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
I welcomed the statement, although I am not sure whether it was necessary for all five of the areas that my right hon. Friend mentioned to begin with a P. As she knows, many gangs carry knives. What preventive measures are being taken to prevent young people from carrying knives in the first place?
Mrs May
The Home Office was very pleased when Brooke Kinsella did an important piece of work for us last year, which resulted in a report that was published earlier this year. It concerned projects around the country that involve working with young people to deter them from carrying knives. The Ben Kinsella fund, which is being administered through the Prince’s Trust, has received funds from the Home Office to support such projects. Meanwhile, the Department for Education will be considering what materials can be made available to schools to help them get the message across to young people about the problems and dangers of knives.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Has the Home Secretary taken a good, close look at the efforts of Strathclyde police to tackle gang violence? Does she believe that they have been successful? Unlike her Government, the Government of the Scottish National party have increased the number of police on the streets of Scotland by 1,000. Will she also take a look at today’s proposal by the Scottish Government to introduce minimum alcohol prices, which will deal with the alcohol problems that fuel so much youth violence?
Mrs May
I am aware of the alcohol-related problems in Scotland that have led the Scottish Government to introduce their minimum pricing policy. I have spoken to Strathclyde police, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has also done so on a number of occasions. When representatives including Karyn McCluskey made a presentation to our inter-ministerial group, they made it very clear that although effective policing was necessary, it was not just a question of policing, but also a question of working with others. When I was in the area I was able to talk to some former gang members, and also to a gang member who is trying to leave the gang. They too made it clear that while policing is part of the process, it is not the only element. Working with other agencies is what really makes the difference.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
Does the Home Secretary agree that tackling gang behaviour in prisons is vital if we are to tackle such behaviour, including violence, when those people are eventually released on to the streets?
Mrs May
Yes, and one of the things we will be doing is looking at the support that is available for young people in young offenders institutions. The Metropolitan police are already doing work at Feltham to ensure both that there is no gang violence in the institution and that gang members are helped and given the support they need to leave the gangs.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
I was pleased to hear the Home Secretary mention the London borough of Waltham Forest. It has a pioneering anti-gang strategy that has used resources properly, as I am sure will be confirmed by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith). However—the right hon. Lady can probably guess what’s coming next—many of the budgets that feed into that strategy are facing the squeeze. The Home Secretary talks about resources that she hopes will be available in the future, but we must have access to them fairly quickly. How might that be done in the near future?
Mrs May
Sources of funding are available, such as the innovation fund, for which authorities can bid, and which will have a specific role in making funding available for gang-related projects. The chief executive of Waltham Forest and local Metropolitan police representatives came to speak to the inter-ministerial group, and they made the point that the amount of money they were spending effectively on families was often lower than the amount that Government collectively might have been spending on them in the past. There is therefore a significant reduction in the amount of money that needs to be spent to deal with this issue.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
The Home Secretary is right to highlight the benefits of partnership-working. Last week, I visited the newly formed Quedgeley youth centre, which replaces the local authority’s former Echoes youth club. It has been created by an innovative partnership led by local Conservative councillors and financed by Prospect Training Services, other businesses and the Quedgeley Community Trust. Early indications are that the new youth centre is proving even more popular with the young, and that it will be very successful. Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating all those involved in this local initiative, which shows the benefit of partnership-working, at zero cost to the taxpayer?
Mrs May
I am very happy to welcome the opening of the Quedgeley centre, and I am sure from what my hon. Friend has said that it will do excellent work locally in helping young people and providing the support they need. He also makes the valid and interesting point that dealing with these issues is not all about Government spending money—sadly, a message that Opposition Members seem to have failed to understand.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The Government have cut 60% from community safety budgets, including £10 million from London alone. Will the right hon. Lady clarify the position in respect of the £10 million she has announced today? Is it the same £10 million she announced back in February for early intervention? If it is, will she undertake to write to Members to explain what has been cut today as a result of her announcement?
Mrs May
I can confirm that we were making a further £10 million available next year for the early intervention fund. We will be ensuring that that money is specifically spent on projects related to gang and youth violence projects. [Hon. Members: “Ah.”] Well, Opposition Members say “Ah,” but—[Interruption.] I have never been able to imitate the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), so I shall not attempt to do so. I simply make the point I made earlier to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller): we are talking about a new approach, and about working across the whole of government—[Interruption.] Opposition Members are making the mistake of thinking that the only thing that matters is the amount of money that is available to spend, when what matters is how we spend it—a lesson that, sadly, the Opposition failed to learn during 13 years in Government. That is why they wasted so much taxpayers’ money and we are now paying the price.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
When I watched the police videos of what happened in Beckenham and Bromley, I was aghast to see families arriving in cars and then getting out and going on organised looting trips, and those family members were not the usual suspects. Is there anything we can do to stop this opportunist thievery?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes the point that we did see some opportunist criminal activity during the riots, but I remind him that just under three quarters of the people involved in the riots who have been identified so far had a previous criminal record of some sort and that 25% had 10 or more criminal offences on their record. So what we saw was sheer criminality on our streets.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Crime in my borough of Hackney is at its lowest for 12 years and Hackney’s integrated gangs intervention unit has seen a drop in gang violence of 59% in the 18 months that it has existed. I hope that the Home Secretary will place in the Library the details of where the £10 million will be allocated and that she will seriously examine the issue of gang injunctions. My local police and the integrated gangs intervention unit say that there are real challenges in getting gang injunctions to stick. They and I plead with the Home Secretary to re-examine antisocial behaviour orders and keep them until she is sure that gang injunctions work. Will she tell the House how many gang injunctions have been issued to date?
Mrs May
The hon. Lady raised a number of issues. The amount of money made available to Hackney from the early intervention grant allocation in the current financial year was, of course, about £20 million. We will be identifying the areas that the Home Office funding will be going to. As I said in response to the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), we have also already put money into Greater Manchester, the west midlands and London—the three areas where most knife crimes are committed—in looking to work with projects to tackle those knife crimes. So that funding has been available.
Only a small number of adult gang injunctions have been introduced so far. As the hon. Lady will know, the injunctions were introduced only earlier this year, but their use is increasing. I am aware that there were some issues in the early days in relation to their implementation, but we are getting through those teething problems and the gang injunctions have been used in areas where they have been effective.
Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. Yesterday, two gang members from my constituency were found guilty and sentenced, one to an indefinite term for firing a double-barrelled shotgun in a drive-by shooting. Does she agree that violent criminals must be given the most serious sentences to stop them bringing fear and destruction to our towns, and that this Government will relentlessly pursue these individuals?
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
The Home Secretary has said that she has reallocated £10 million-worth of early intervention money to focus on gangs and serious youth violence. However, her Government will spend five times that sum on the elections for police and crime commissioners. I say to the Home Secretary: why not take that £50 million and put it instead into the local projects that are already saving lives and of which she has already spoken so highly?
Mrs May
The hon. Lady seems to have failed to notice that this Act has actually passed and the police and crime commissioners will be introduced. They will be carrying out a very important task—that of being a directly elected local voice for local communities to determine policing in their area.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I welcome today’s statement and commend the work of the Met police in combating gang cultures across London. That work is very expensive. It is also time-consuming and takes many years to come to fruition, and once the police do it and break the gang, a vacuum is created into which another gang can move. What actions can be taken to prevent new gangs from being formed where an old gang has been eliminated?
Mrs May
This is why we are absolutely clear that this is merely the start of a process and that what we are doing is putting in place sustainable, long-term work. It is necessary not just to bring certain individuals out of gang membership, but, sadly, to ensure that we prevent other young people from becoming part of new gangs that would replace those existing gangs. That is why preventing people from getting into gang membership in the first place is a key element of what we want to do.
Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)
The Home Secretary will know that the success in Greater Manchester in reducing gun crime has been through this type of multi-agency working, so what she describes is the application of common sense. However, resources do matter because many of the agencies involved are under financial pressure. Will she introduce an independent element of monitoring to ensure that we can see that the issue of money will not stop the effectiveness of these programmes?
Mrs May
I commend the work of Greater Manchester police, which has done excellent work in its Excalibur project. As the hon. Gentleman says, cross-agency working has made a very real difference to what it has been doing. I come back to the point that has been raised by many Opposition Members about funding and money. The issue is about how we spend the money that is available and about making sure that it is targeted on the right people and on interventions that are going to be effective. Over the years, Governments have spent so much money on dysfunctional families and on individuals who are gang members, but often to no effect. We must change that.
Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
Does the Home Secretary agree with the comments of Jacqui Smith this morning that Labour had not done well enough on tackling gang crime?
Mrs May
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding us what the former Home Secretary said this morning. Her comments are in stark contrast to those from Opposition Front Benchers today, showing real recognition that there was more to be done and that Labour did not have all the answers, as well as, I am sure, supporting the work we are doing.
Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)
The response of local safeguarding children boards to the recent investigation by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre into the extent of child sexual exploitation has been very disappointing. Will the Home Secretary ensure that directors of social services who have a statutory responsibility for child protection respond to any request for evidence regarding children who are vulnerable to gang-related violence in the preparation of her cross-departmental report?
Mrs May
The hon. Lady raises a very important point. The issue of child sexual exploitation is also being looked at by the Children’s Commissioner, who has undertaken research in this area. It is right that we should get the right response when an individual has been identified as being vulnerable and I shall certainly draw the hon. Lady’s comments to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s comprehensive statement. Communities such as mine will welcome her honesty in accepting that Governments of both persuasions have not done enough to tackle this problem in the past. May I press her on one point? Is it not the case that the police and Government agencies on their own are not going to solve this problem and that working with the communities who are affected and getting them to turn against gang members within their community is a key element?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. This is an area in which the Government do not have all the answers and cannot achieve the necessary results by working on their own. As I indicated in response to an earlier question, what is often going to be most effective at helping young people to come out of gang membership or at preventing them from getting into a gang in the first place is groups in the voluntary sector and operations such as Kickz through which the Premier League and the Football Foundation are working to provide alternative activities for young men on a Friday or Saturday night.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
The Home Secretary has praised the Strathclyde project greatly. That project cost about £5 million over two years, so how can £10 million being spread over 30 areas get anywhere near the success of the Strathclyde project?
Mrs May
I have commented favourably on the Strathclyde project but it is not the only project that is working across the UK. The Matrix project in Merseyside, the Excalibur project in Greater Manchester, and the work of the Met in certain parts of London have also been effective, and in Birmingham, the West Midlands police are also doing very good work in this area. I come back to a point that I have made on a number of occasions in response to questions from Opposition Members—this is about ensuring that money is spent in a way that will be effective. Sadly, in nearly an hour of questions, no Opposition Member has sought fit to recognise that the cuts in spending taking place across the public sector are because of the financial deficit left by the previous Government.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
May I welcome the cross-government approach to solving this problem? Does the Home Secretary agree that the most important thing in relation to resources is that they are genuinely devolved to the local areas and communities that are best placed to tackle difficult underlying problems?
Mrs May
We are taking a different approach. It is important to recognise that there is no one-size-fits-all model that can be imposed on every local area. Local areas will need to come to an understanding of what is going to work in their particular communities. That is why it is important that responsibility is devolved and that funding is available at the local level. It is also why the ending gang and youth violence team that we will be setting up will be available at a local level to work with the agencies to ensure that they are getting the answers that are going to work.
Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
I can assure the Home Secretary that money spent by Lewisham council and the police has been very effective, but since the right hon. Lady has been in power cuts to the community safety and youth offending team budgets have been of the order of 20% and the number of victims of knife crime has risen by almost 40%. Does she honestly believe that those two things are not connected?
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
I have seen personally the wraparound support provided by voluntary mentoring in my constituency, especially by the Lighthouse Foundation supported by the Methodist Church. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on what role voluntary mentoring can and will play in tackling gang violence and family breakdown?
Mrs May
Voluntary mentoring of individuals can have an incredibly important role to play in tackling both gang membership and youth violence. There are many projects out there in which voluntary and charitable groups provide necessary support to families that helps them to bring up their children in a way that prevents them from going down the route of gang violence. I commend the project that my hon. Friend mentions. I am sure that it is doing excellent work in his constituency, as it does elsewhere in the country.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
The Home Secretary has on several occasions emphasised the importance of partnership working between the statutory agencies and the voluntary sector, not only to divert young people from joining gangs—I hope that we do not see all young people as a potential problem—but to bring out the talents that they have inside them. Even if the right hon. Lady does not like what Opposition Members are saying about resources, does she accept that youth workers and voluntary groups are also saying that the resources are not enough? What assurances can she give them, if not us, that she is listening to them?
Mrs May
Of course the vast majority of young people are not involved in gang membership and violence. We should recognise that all too often the only stories that people read about young people are bad stories, not good ones. The House should perhaps do more to recognise that the vast majority of young people do not get involved in this sort of activity.
I have seen across the country that what makes a difference is how you spend the money that is available, targeting those who are most in need, and targeting money effectively. Sadly, over the years money has been spent that has not led to a change. We want to change young people’s lives.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
We did not witness riots in Newcastle over the summer thanks in large part to significant investment and partnership work supporting engagement with young people in the city. Does the Home Secretary share any concern that cutting 544 police officers, 185 community support officers and 60% of community safety funding has the potential to undermine that good work?
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.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
The Home Secretary has rightly emphasised the importance of community leadership in tackling and addressing gang violence. She will of course be aware that there is a risk that the community can become alienated if public agencies get the relationship wrong. How will she ensure that the good will of communities, which is so essential to the success of her proposals, is secured and monitored?
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
The point has been rightly made already that, on their own, police boots on the ground are not the solution to gang and youth violence; there has to be a much more joined-up approach. Does the Home Secretary share any of the concern about the loss of something like 1,900 police from the Metropolitan area? Will it have no impact whatever on the strategy that she has outlined today?
Mrs May
As I have said in the House on many occasions about the cuts in police spending that are taking place, we know from evidence from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and from other factors that it is possible to make cuts in police spending while maintaining front-line services.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
The single most important thing that we can do is to create sustained trusting relationships between young people at risk of gang violence and responsible adults, whether volunteers in voluntary youth organisations or workers in statutory youth organisations. May I make a plea to the Home Secretary that we break with recent tradition and do not just make interventions that last 12, 20 or 30 weeks, which disrupt those relationships and often cause more damage than they prevent, but make sure that the interventions are there for years—for the duration? That is the way in which we shall disrupt the dysfunctional relationships of the street, and sometimes in families, that have led to the crisis.
Extradition Review
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(14 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I am today announcing the publication of an independent review of the UK’s extradition arrangements, a copy of which has been placed in the House Library. The review was announced to Parliament on 8 September 2010.
The coalition’s Government’s “Programme for Government” document, published on 20 May 2010, stated that:
“We will review the operation of the Extradition Act—and the US/UK extradition treaty—to make sure it is even-handed”.
There are a number of areas of the UK’s extradition arrangements which have attracted significant controversy in recent years. The Government understand that these are longstanding concerns and I accordingly asked the independent panel to consider the following issues:
the breadth of Secretary of State discretion in an extradition case;
the operation of the European arrest warrant, including the way in which those of its safeguards which are optional have been transposed into UK law;
whether the forum bar to extradition should be commenced;
whether the US-UK extradition treaty is unbalanced;
whether requesting states should be required to provide prima facie evidence.
The review panel has reached the following conclusions:
Improvements to the EAW can be made to ensure it functions more effectively through both legislative amendments and enhanced dialogue and co-operation at EU-level;
The forum bars to extradition should not be introduced; however, guidance for prosecutors on shared jurisdiction should be agreed and published;
The UK’s extradition arrangements with the US are not unbalanced. There is no practical difference between the information submitted by the UK and the US;
Requesting states should not be required to provide prima facie evidence when making a request to the UK; however, the Government should periodically review the designation of extradition partners;
The breadth of the Home Secretary’s involvement in extradition should not be extended. Instead the panel recommends that cases in which a supervening event occurs after the end of the extradition process should be considered by the High Court rather than by the Secretary of State.
The Government will carefully examine the review panel’s report and will announce what action is to be taken in due course.