London Attack
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
The Prime Minister is dealing with this outrage in a calm and assured way. Does she agree that an effective counter-terrorism strategy designed to prepare, protect and pursue would be inadequate without the strand of prevent? In that vein, will she assure the House that across all 43 constabularies there will be neighbourhood policing teams visible to, and contactable by, the public, which is a crucial strand in feeding information on terrorism to the counter-terrorism organisations?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman is right. As he knows from his experience, our counter-terrorism strategy does indeed embody those four pillars, including the pillar of prevent. The action that is taken to prevent terrorism, violent extremism and extremism will come in many forms, but it is important that individuals within communities feel that they are able to give information when they are concerned about somebody within their community, or perhaps within their family, and what is happening to them. It is important that there are those opportunities for them. There will be a variety of means—some through policing and some through other opportunities—where people can go and give such information, not just only for the protection of us all but often to the benefit of the individual concerned.
Communications Data and Interception
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Mrs May
I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his comments. He is absolutely right that the Court made it clear in its judgment that retaining those data could be necessary. The question was about the regulatory framework in which the data are retained and whether the methods and various aspects of access to the data were proportionate. I am grateful to him and to all members of the ISC for the work they continue to do on these issues. It is worth noting that the work of the ISC is important for the House and for the wider public, albeit that much of that work, by definition, is never seen or heard because of the matters that it addresses. The Committee plays an important role.
My right hon. and learned Friend mentioned the criticisms raised in the ECJ judgment, and there were four key areas of criticism, on scope, duration, access and storage. We are addressing all those criticisms, in so far as it is necessary to do so over and above the regulations that we have in place. As I indicated in my statement, our current framework already addresses some of the issues that the ECJ raised.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
I support the Home Secretary’s statement and the legislation. Does she agree that restoring the status quo is necessary but not sufficient? She has told us that this information has been vital to uncovering every single terrorist plot against this country over the past 14 years, and she has told us that there are gaps in that information. Is it not a paradox that we are rushing through legislation in seven days to restore the status quo when we have wasted five years in which we could have addressed the gaps, thus leaving the security services less able to protect the citizens of this country?
Mrs May
The right hon. Gentleman will have heard me indicate in my statement that legislation of the type proposed by the Government is necessary. Indeed, when he was in government prior to the 2010 election, the Government considered the future capabilities that were necessary. That issue needs to be addressed, and I stand by the draft Communications Data Bill that I published and that was considered by a Joint Committee. Future capabilities will be for the House and the Government to discuss after the election. Today, we are faced with the very real necessity to act now in order to maintain our capabilities; future capabilities will be part of the review and subsequent action.
Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs May
I should have thought that the right hon. Lady would have been able to distinguish between the information given to this House about the passport of Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed and the question of whether the royal prerogative has been exercised.
Given the conflict in Syria, powers to disrupt terrorist travel are now particularly vital. The UK already has some of the most robust and effective legislation in the world to deal with suspected terrorists and those suspected of engaging in terrorist-related activity, both in the UK and abroad. We will not hesitate to use every power at our disposal. If a terrorist suspect is a dual national, I will consider deprivation of their British citizenship, and the Government are considering strengthening our legal powers in that area. If a suspect is a foreign national, the Government can exclude them from the UK. This Government have excluded more foreign hate preachers than ever before.
We will further increase our efforts to remove foreign nationals from this country where they threaten our national security. After this Government finally secured the deportation of Abu Qatada—who was, of course, one of the original Belmarsh detainees—we introduced the Immigration Bill to make it easier for us to get foreign terrorist suspects out of our country. The Opposition failed to vote for that Bill on Second Reading.
As well as tackling foreign terrorist suspects, we are doing more to stop home- grown extremism. This summer, we saw events that shocked the nation, with the horrific killing of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich and the murder of Mohammed Saleem in Birmingham. Last month the Prime Minister announced new measures to tackle extremism, with the outcome of the extremism taskforce, which was established in the wake of those tragic events. That built on the revised Prevent strategy, which we extended to cover all forms of extremism, including non-violent extremism. We have already had success in restricting extremist speakers. Many events with extremist speakers have been referred to the police, some have been disrupted, and in other cases, venues have been persuaded not to host speakers with extreme views.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
That does not answer the central point. In January 2011, when introducing TPIMs, the Home Secretary said:
“there is likely to be a small number of people who pose a real threat to our security, but who cannot currently be successfully prosecuted or deported...no responsible Government could allow those individuals to go freely about their terrorist activities.”—[Official Report, 26 January 2011; Vol. 522, c. 307-8.]
In relation to the five or six people who will be released, what assurance can she give to Parliament that they will not now go about their terrorist activity?
Mrs May
The right hon. Gentleman is correct in saying that there are some people whom it is not possible to deport or prosecute. That is the sentence I opened my speech with. That is precisely why we have the TPIM measures as possibilities to be used for certain individuals.
In addition to the other measures I have spoken about, more than 21,000 items of illegal terrorist content have been taken down from the internet. As I have mentioned, we have excluded more preachers of hate from this country than ever before. While some Labour politicians positively welcomed the likes of Yusuf al-Qaradawi to London, under this Government foreign hate preachers are not welcome here.
We are stopping terrorist suspects travelling abroad, we are depriving them of the option of coming back, we are deporting foreign terrorist suspects and we are doing more to tackle home-grown radicalisation.
EU Police, Justice and Home Affairs
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
The Whips will be pleased to know that I support the motion, but I do not have too much problem with the amendment. The problem is the timing of the amendment because it deals with generalities when we need to start talking about specifics, particularly if the Home Secretary’s pledge that this should be a matter for Parliament to decide is to be honoured. Truth to tell, the opt-out in article 10 to protocol 36 was negotiated as an insurance policy to give us the time and ability to look at all the measures. We must remember that police and criminal justice issues were not part of the European Union until the Maastricht treaty—which was agreed by the previous Conservative Government—introduced them, and even then there was no competency for the European Court of Justice. That was a big change, and if we could have negotiated the option to look at each individual policy and decide whether to stay in or out we would have done, but that was unachievable. No other country is subject to article 10 to protocol 36, and the transition we managed to achieve is exclusive to this country.
We are in a process of considering how we deal with this crucial matter. The Home Secretary mentioned that we were getting confused about the timetable. I heard no confusion about that from my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary, but the Prime Minister was certainly confused. On 28 September 2012 he said that the opt-out decision had to be made before the end of the year, and he added:
“We’ll be exercising that opt-out.”
Soon afterwards in October, the Home Secretary came to the House of Commons to clarify that and say that the Government’s “current thinking” was towards an opt-out.
In terms of a parliamentary process—remembering that Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate legal jurisdictions—there was no consultation whatsoever with the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Scottish Government, or the Northern Ireland Administration, let alone with Committees of this House, before the Home Secretary announced that Government thinking was to opt out. Given how the process started—the Prime Minister getting the deadline wrong, and the Home Secretary’s lack of any consultation before saying where Government thinking was leading—you will forgive us, Mr Speaker, for having a certain concern about how it is going.
In July last year, the Foreign Secretary announced a review of competencies between the UK and the EU. Again, we are concerned about how that process is being dealt with, and I struggle to think of the kind of competencies that such a review will address—indeed, there is a fair amount of suspicion that this is some kind of Wilsonian trick. Leaving that aside, one would think that such things would be relevant to the 130 measures to which we must opt in or out. However, the process for the balance of competencies will begin looking at police and criminal justice measures in spring or autumn 2014, after the deadline for the decision to opt in or out has passed. That, to me, is incomprehensible.
We are, therefore, left with extreme concern about how the current thinking came about and about the absence of proper input from Parliament. Nine months have passed since the Home Secretary’s statement to the House. Apart from a couple of minor points I picked up in her speech today, the position remains exactly as it was nine months ago.
The House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union has produced a splendid report, but without any information from Her Majesty’s Government on the measures they might seek to rejoin when they exercise the opt-out. Conservative Members make a valid point about the importance the Opposition place on the European arrest warrant. In a sense, the suspicion, which might be valid, is that the Opposition would accept the other 129 measures just to keep the precious EAW, and that we believe the EAW is that important. However, we have not heard from the Opposition Benches—[Interruption.] I am sorry, I should have said Conservative Benches. We have not heard from Conservative Members their equivalent to the EAW if they opt out completely. If they read the motion from Her Majesty’s Opposition, they will see that we think a number of measures are important. However, I do not get any sense of what measure is worth risking our being unable to opt back in to all 130 measures. Why is the Government’s thinking to opt out rather than to opt in?
Alan Johnson
My point is that the Government came to the conclusion that they are minded to opt out. We have no idea where that thinking came from—there was no consultation with anyone. It is just as valid for the Government to be minded to opt in, but we have no sense of what big issue prevents them from doing so.
The Home Secretary said in October and has repeated today that some of the measures are useful, some are less useful, and some are now defunct, but she has never defined which measures are useful. There was a small concession in her speech, but the House of Lords EU Committee—an important Committee of the democratic process—had to do its work completely in the dark, with no sense of what was useful, what was not useful or what was defunct. Eventually, she gave three examples to the Committee of defunct measures, but as my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary has said, if the measures are defunct, they are harmless, and we need not worry about them because they will be weeded out and tidied up. The defunct measures are not the important part of the debate; the important part is on useful or not useful measures.
In its report, the House of Lords Committee, which is not the Labour party—in fact, most members of the Committee have been hostile to the Labour party throughout their political careers—states:
“The most effective way for the UK to cooperate with other Member States is to remain engaged in the existing EU measures in this area.”
The Committee’s current thinking, therefore, is to opt in to those measures. It says that clearly and backs it up with strong arguments—it interviewed a cross-section of people, including the Home Secretary.
The Christmas quiz is this: what is the common theme to all 130 measures? They were all agreed by unanimity. They were all agreed under a system where the UK had the veto. They were all then brought before this House and were agreed by various Committees—my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) was the Chair of one of them—to be scrutinised. Not a single one of the 130 measures was foisted on the UK against our will by a hostile European Administration. Even if the Euro myth of creating a superstate with an integrated criminal law, as propagated by some of the swivel-eyed loonies, were true, nothing in the 130 measures would contribute towards that aim. In fact, the opposite is the case: the vast majority relate to a mutual recognition of the diverse systems throughout the European Union.
There is as good an argument for the Government to be thinking about moving towards opting in as opting out, but I am persuadable. I just want to know where the Government stand as we get closer to 2014. I want the Justice Committee and the Home Affairs Committee to consider the matter. I want the arguments to be revealed.
My main concern is the European arrest warrant. I overcame minor antipathy to the other 129 measures to keep it. If we pull out and try to renegotiate, we will be in a much weaker position. The case has been made not just in the House of Lords Committee, but in the Scott Baker report commissioned by the Home Secretary herself. There are things we could do to improve the warrant—a proportionality test was a major issue raised by Scott Baker. I have to say, however, that adopting the European supervision order that would allow British citizens to be supervised in the UK until the trial in the requesting member state is being held would go an awful long way to meeting the objections of Scott Baker and of others on both sides of the House.
Politics is about the personal more than anything else. The shadow Home Secretary mentioned the savage murder of Moira Jones. I met her mother Beatrice when I was Home Secretary. The current Home Secretary would have had the same difficult job to do. When I met Beatrice Jones, she pointed out to me that the murderer of her daughter fled this country immediately. A European arrest warrant was issued 14 days later. Two days after that, he was arrested in Slovakia and brought to justice. I promised Mrs Jones that I would do my best to ensure that the European arrest warrant remains. I plan to keep that promise.
Abu Qatada
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
Abu Qatada’s legal team have used the Human Rights Act 1998 to suggest that if extradition took place, evidence gained through torture would be used in a trial against him. Surely his team would have more success if it changed tack and argued that Abu Qatada might commit suicide, in which case they would have the support of the Home Secretary.
Extradition
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Mrs May
I thank my right hon. Friend for his comment. As I said in my statement, I think that the UK-US treaty is, as Sir Scott Baker found, broadly sound. It is important that we have a robust treaty on extradition with the United States and that we ensure that extradition can take place both ways across the Atlantic. As I have said, there are a number of ways in which we need to change how we operate so that people can see that the extradition arrangements are fair and can take comfort and have confidence in them. The British people need to have confidence in our extradition arrangements.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
As the Home Secretary said, Gary McKinnon is accused of very serious offences. The US was perfectly within its rights and it was reasonable for it to seek his extradition. We now do not know whether Gary McKinnon will ever have to face justice on those accusations. Can the right hon. Lady confirm that US authorities were willing to allow him to serve any sentence in the UK? On the issue of High Court judges making these decisions, Lord Justice Burnton said in the High Court in July 2009 that Gary McKinnon’s case did not even “approach Article 3 severity”. He quoted all the precedents for this. What does the Home Secretary think she knows that Lord Justice Burnton did not? She has made a decision today that is in her party’s best interest; it is not in the best interests of the country.
Mrs May
I stand corrected. It was said that it was 2008, but I recognise that the right hon. Gentleman says 2009. As I said, I have given very careful consideration to the material, medical and otherwise, that has been available to me and I have come to the decision that extradition would not be appropriate in relation to Mr McKinnon’s human rights under article 3. That is the decision that I have taken on the material available to me.
European Justice and Home Affairs Powers
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Mrs May
I assure my hon. Friend that I and the Justice Secretary have every bit as much interest as he has in ensuring that prisoner transfers are made as quickly as possible. He is again trying to tempt me down a road that I will not go down. We have been clear that we will start to look at the individual measures in negotiation with the Commission and member states to see what process will be required and on what terms it might be possible to opt into the measures that we want to opt into. So far, that process has not started.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
The Home Secretary knows that she does not have to opt out of the European arrest warrant to seek its reform in areas such as proportionality. That work is already going on in Europe because many countries share our concern. She has the benefit of the report by Lord Justice Scott Baker, which she commissioned. Will she confirm that the Scott Baker report strongly recommended remaining in the European arrest warrant because it had made huge strides forward on justice and tackling crime in Europe?
Abu Qatada
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Mrs May
The Government have been absolutely clear in our view of the importance of maintaining human rights and, obviously, of having appropriate mechanisms to ensure that that is done. My right hon. Friend is right that we need to reform the European Court. One of the key issues that we have taken up as a Government is the efficiency of the Court. Another issue that we are taking up is subsidiarity and the relationship between decisions taken by national courts and the work of the European Court.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
In my experience as Home Secretary, the louder the cheers from behind, the deeper the mire the Home Secretary was in. [Laughter.] In my view, any ambiguity about the date should have meant that the announcement was made on Wednesday, rather than Tuesday. If the Home Secretary is right about her dates, I will be very pleased about that. If she is wrong, will she accept that she must take responsibility, not one of her officials?
Mrs May
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for sharing with us his experience of when he was Home Secretary. The Government are clear about when the deadline was, but as I also made clear earlier, this is a judgment that will be made by the panel of the Grand Chamber, which is the final arbiter of what the deadline was. Indeed, it is open to the judges on the Grand Chamber to decide that even if the deadline has been passed, they will accept a referral under their discretion. They will decide whether they accept that.
The right hon. Gentleman’s final point is absolutely valid. I of course take responsibility for decisions that I have taken. This is not a question of what officials have done; I take full responsibility.
Abu Qatada
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Mrs May
My right hon. Friend makes a very valid point. It is precisely those sorts of freedoms and rights that we have in this country—the ones that we value in our justice system—that Abu Qatada and too many others would wish to destroy. As I said, we should accept that one body above all others that should obviously abide by the rule of law is the Government.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
Is not the real issue in the case of Abu Qatada the fact that the Home Secretary has been engaged in a race against time as a result of her Government’s reckless decision to abandon control orders and replace them with measures that the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has said will weaken national security?
Metropolitan Police Service
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mrs May
My right hon. Friend talks about checks and balances. As he will know, we have strengthened the checks and balances that will be provided by the police and crime panels to the police and crime commissioners as the Bill has progressed through the House of Commons and House of Lords. We have made important improvements to those checks and balances.
As regards the senior leadership of the Met, it is entirely right that we move quickly to reinforce it. The additional resilience of bringing in somebody from outside in Bernard Hogan-Howe is important and the immediate step was to ensure that the counter-terrorism post is filled. I can assure the House that the work on the security and safety of the Olympics carries on under Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison, in particular, and he has been doing an extremely good job.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
If the allegations in relation to the hacking of the phones of victims of the 7/7 attack in London are true, the editor of the News of the World at the time was working in 10 Downing street, while his deputy, Neil Wallis, was working in New Scotland Yard, just at the time when the quest for the truth became more intense. I did not know, as Home Secretary, that Neil Wallis had been appointed. Did the Home Secretary know, did anyone at the Home Office know and did anyone in 10 Downing street know?
Mrs May
The first I knew of the appointment of Neil Wallis was when I heard from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan police and from the Mayor last Thursday that this had been brought to the Mayor’s attention. It was at that time that I wrote to the commissioner and expressed my disquiet and concern that this issue had not been raised earlier, at a previous stage. I indicated last Thursday that that was a concern, and it remains a concern.
Crime and Policing
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Alan Johnson
That is certainly an issue, particularly in the light of the HMIC-Audit Commission’s joint report. We must take a rigorous approach to its conclusion that, if the Government cut more than 12%, front-line policing will be affected. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the Audit Commission has been done away with; I hope that HMIC will not come next.
As police numbers reduce, so will their powers. I shall deal with DNA and CCTV in a moment.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Before the right hon. Gentleman moves on to other matters, may I tell him that I have been listening carefully to the points that he has made about cuts? He knows full well that his Government had pledged to make 20% cuts in public sector spending. If they were not going to occur in the Home Office, where were they going to be?
Alan Johnson
When we were in government, we decided to pick the priority Departments, and the chosen areas were health, education, international development and crime and policing. It is extraordinary that the present Government—[Interruption.] Hang on! I am answering the question. It is incredible that the present Government believe that international development, health and, to a certain extent, education must be prioritised, and that they are more important than crime and policing. Quite frankly, I can say as a former Health Secretary that we did not commit to increase the health budget above the rate of inflation. That budget was £110 billion. I went from the Department of Health, which had a £110 billion budget, to the Home Office, which had a budget of about £10 billion. We would have saved £73 billion; we would not have gone for a saving of £113 billion, which Boris Johnson described only yesterday as cutting too savagely and too deeply. It is a central feature of this argument that the Government are going too far with the cuts and that they are failing to treat crime and policing as a priority in the comprehensive spending review, even though it is a priority for constituents everywhere.
During the summer, the Home Secretary made a speech saying that we needed to “move beyond the ASBO”. I want to make two things clear. First, the antisocial behaviour order is the most serious of a range of civil powers introduced in 1998 so that the police, local authorities and other agencies could tackle the problem in a co-ordinated way. They needed to tackle the kind of behaviour that falls short of criminality but nevertheless destroys people’s lives. These powers are not driven from Whitehall, as the Home Secretary suggested, but through community safety partnerships that involve community groups and social enterprises.
The second thing that we need to be clear about is that, where those powers are used effectively, they work. I shall lapse into what I hope is uncharacteristic immodesty for a moment when I say that they worked particularly well during my year as Home Secretary, when an additional emphasis was placed on the victim and on intensified activity in localities where public perception of antisocial behaviour was above average.
The social affairs correspondent of The Guardian said recently that these measures had had no discernible effect, but they had a discernible effect in the one place where an effect can be discerned—namely, the British crime survey. The Home Office, under the current Home Secretary, stated on 15 July that, whereas previous reductions had been in one or two specific areas,
“the reduction between 08-09 and 09-10”—
the glorious year of Johnson—
“reflects falls in the proportion of people perceiving a problem with almost all types of anti-social behaviour that make up the overall measure”.
That refers to reductions in abandoned cars, noisy neighbours, drunkenness, drug use, youth nuisance, litter, vandalism and graffiti. Those are all issues for which there were insufficient powers prior to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. The statistical release went on to say that antisocial behaviour was now at its lowest level since records began, with, for the first time, a majority of the population agreeing that the police and councils were dealing with antisocial behaviour in their local area.
Alan Johnson
No, I will not give way again. It was tedious last time, and it would be tedious again. If the Government want to strike a blow against the surveillance state, they should sack Andy Coulson, not take away CCTV cameras.
We recently learned of another power that was due to be introduced, but is now held in suspended animation. This is a serious point. I refer to domestic violence protection orders, which received cross-party support earlier this year. They are designed to protect instantly women and children who are under threat. ACPO, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Women’s Aid and the Home Affairs Committee urged their introduction to close a major gap in public protection. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the Committee.
There was no dispute whatsoever about the need for that measure, but although the Home Secretary has said that her
“ambition is nothing less than ending violence against women and girls”,
she presides over a regime that is threatening the enormous progress that has been made in tackling domestic violence over the last 13 years. There has been a 64% reduction since 1997. I am pleased to see that the Attorney-General is present, because he, with rather more grace than the Home Secretary, has recognised the significant increases in successful prosecutions and the sharp fall in the number of discontinued cases, as well as the amazing reduction in domestic violence. However, as the Home Secretary will agree, there is much more to be done in this crucial area.
Thankfully, the Government were forced into a U-turn on anonymity for rape defendants—mainly, I have to say, owing to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), who pursued the issue tirelessly. I think that it is time to execute the same manoeuvre, and to get on with introducing domestic violence protection orders as quickly as possible.
Mrs May
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Domestic violence is an issue that should worry Members throughout the House, as, indeed, should all forms of violence against women. If the last Government were so concerned about it, however, can he tell me why it took them 12 years to produce a strategy to end it?
Alan Johnson
The answer is quite simple. The Home Secretary ought to do some research. From 1998 onwards we did not need a strategy, because we had introduced an action plan involving the changes that led to the reduction to which I referred. [Interruption.] The statistics that I quoted came from the Attorney-General and from the Home Office. If we had waited 12 years to introduce any measures to deal with this issue, we would not have reduced domestic violence by 64%.
As I said earlier, during the biggest global recession that we have experienced since the 1930s, crime fell by 9%. During the recession of the 1990s over which the Conservatives presided, it rose by 18%, and domestic violence doubled. That was the legacy of the broken Britain that we remember from those days. It is ridiculous of the Home Secretary to suggest that because we published a strategy to deal with domestic violence against women and young girls and then moved to the next stage, we did nothing for 12 years. We did nothing for 12 years except reduce domestic violence by 64%, and produce all the other statistics quoted so generously by the Attorney-General.
I have dealt with the reduced resources being inflicted on police forces with restricted powers. Let me now deal with the third part of the triple whammy: the imposition of elected commissioners to replace the hundreds of experienced councillors, magistrates and other citizens who sit on our police authorities. Here we see the “we know best” arrogance of the Government in all its depressing detail. The public did not vote for the abolition of police authorities at the general election, or for their replacement by an elected commissioner. This model is opposed by the police, by local councillors of all political persuasions, by ACPO, by the Association of Police Authorities, and by practically everyone who knows anything about policing.
The Local Government Association, under a Tory stewardship, says it does not believe that introducing directly elected individuals is the best way in which to strengthen police accountability. The association believes that such action
“will weaken the ability of the police, councils and other public services to cut crime.”
It could also “fragment local partnerships” and make a “place-based budgeting approach”—I am not sure what that is—“more difficult” to operate. Yet the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice has said:
“we are not going to consider other models, this is the model we are going to introduce, that is the coalition agreement.”
And so we have a rushed White Paper, “Policing in the 21st Century”. Incidentally, the Conservatives also produced one of these in 1993; it was called “A police service for the 21st century”, so the titles do not change much but the content certainly does. They published the more recent document on 26 July for an eight-week consultation period over the summer break. Helpfully, at the back of the document there is a code of practice on consultations, which includes the criterion:
“Consultations should normally last for at least 12 weeks with consideration given to longer timescales where feasible and sensible.”
Irrespective of where we stand on the political spectrum, the topic under discussion is a major issue about which there are deep reservations. To quote from the code of practice, it is “feasible and sensible” to have a longer consultation than 12 weeks; there is no argument whatever to curtail it.
The first objection to the proposal is its puzzling inconsistency in relation to the approach to elected mayors. While a referendum is necessary if a city or town might have an elected mayor, no such public consultation is proposed for the equally profound step of introducing a single commissioner to replace the collective and diverse wisdom of police authorities—and this, again, from a Government who preach localism.
There is, of course, an attraction in direct accountability; indeed, when we were in government we looked at the issue not once, but twice. However, the difference between us and the dogmatic zealots who now occupy the Treasury Bench—I excuse the Attorney-General from that—is that we consulted properly. Our 2004 consultation found overwhelming opposition to direct elections. Respondents pointed out the dangers of extremist groups succeeding on low turnouts, single-issue groups dominating, a move to a more short-term approach with re-election dependent on quick wins rather than long-term objectives, the politicisation of accountable bodies and the lack of public appetite for elections and the cost of running them. However, the case for directly electing the 17 members of the police authority—which is what we consulted on and which was Liberal Democrat policy at the last general election—is much stronger than that for the replacement of police authorities by a single elected commissioner. This is the most ill-considered and pernicious aspect of the proposal.
Sir Ronnie Flanagan looked at this issue in his 2008 review. He expressed the great fear about a single person with a political mandate exerting pressure that too readily conflicts with operational judgment. He pointed out that it may also be an impediment to collaboration—which, rightly, is a major part of the Government’s White Paper—since the vote for the post will be on localised issues rather than the largely unseen issues of cross-border collaboration.
Flanagan made a number of points from a policing perspective, but an even stronger argument concerns the loss of a body of people who are geographically diverse as well as diverse in terms of ethnicity, gender and background. The Government propose a new body—a police and crime panel—to oversee the commissioner. That is meant to provide the checks and balances. The body will, however, have no say on policing and no veto over the commissioner’s decisions. Therefore, we face the prospect of having an elected commissioner who, as the White Paper makes clear, will have a team of personal appointees, and a police and crime panel to overview the commissioner but not the police, whose overview will be conducted by a single commissioner whose decisions are final. Somewhere in all of this will be elected councillors—and in some places elected mayors. Chief constables will have to find their way around this maze, with all the additional costs involved, while trying to cope with the biggest financial upheaval the police service has ever faced.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:
“notes the appalling fiscal deficit left by the last Government and reiterates the urgent need to restore the nation to economic health; recognises that the police will need to play their part in reducing that deficit; and welcomes the Government’s proposed policing reforms, which will deliver a more responsive and efficient police service, less encumbered by bureaucracy, more accountable to the public and, most importantly, better equipped to fight crime.”
The text of the Opposition motion and the 50-minute speech that we have just heard from the shadow Home Secretary provide yet more proof, if any were needed, of the utter state of denial of the Labour party. From listening to the shadow Home Secretary and reading the motion, one would wonder how on earth Labour lost the election; it had such a perfect record on everything. Let me just remind the House of its record. Labour doubled our national debt and left us with the biggest deficit in the G20. As much as Labour Members might now like to pretend otherwise, if they had won the election, they would have had no choice but to take action to reduce the deficit. We know that they were already planning 20% cuts—they just did not have the guts to tell us where those would come from. This afternoon, however, we were told by the shadow Home Secretary that they were going to come from health, defence and local government—[Interruption.] Labour Members say that he did not say that, but I asked him where the cuts were coming from and he said, “Well, they weren’t going to come from policing and education” and that he would have taken—
Alan Johnson
The right hon. Lady really does need to follow the debate and to read the documents. Some £75 million was to come from police overtime, £400 million from procurement and £500 million from process. This was all set out in the pre-Budget report, the Budget and last November’s policing White Paper—£1.3 billion-worth of savings. The Government can keep parroting that we have never set all this out, but the trouble is that we have and it is available to look at.
Mrs May
I say to the shadow Home Secretary that the intervention that he has just made was not the answer given to the question that I put to him earlier about the cuts and on which I was just commenting. The Labour party went into the election promising 20% cuts. He claims that those would not have come from the Home Office budget. I asked him where they would have come from and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) has made clear from a sedentary position, the right hon. Gentleman made it clear that they would have come from health—that is what the shadow Home Secretary was saying.
If the shadow Home Secretary will not listen to me—he does not appear to wish to listen to me on the issue of cuts—perhaps he will listen to the following:
“When ... Alan Johnson”—
flails at—
“the coalition for protecting NHS spending against cuts being inflicted elsewhere in Whitehall, Labour looks as if it is indulging in opposition for opposition’s sake. Comfortable it may be. But it will not bring Labour back to power.”
Those are not my words, but those of the former Labour Cabinet Minister, Alan Milburn. So let us hear no more nonsense from those on the Labour Benches about police budgets and police numbers.
Labour’s denial is not just about police funding; it is also about its record on crime and policing. I had hoped that the shadow Home Secretary would use the freedom of being in opposition to get around the country and to be out there meeting people and finding out what they really think about what is happening. He might, thus, have learned about the booze-fuelled violence that takes place in too many of our town centres at night, and about the gang crime in our cities and the antisocial behaviour that makes so many people’s lives a misery. But judging by his speech today, and indeed by the motion, he has not bothered to find out what people actually think—
Mrs May
Wait a moment. That is a shame, because there are occasions when the shadow Home Secretary stops playing party politics and is a bit more candid about his record and about our policies. On licensing, for example, he has said:
“I regret not doing more to tackle the problems caused by binge drinking during my period in office. The Government”—
this coalition Government—
“is right to stop alcohol being sold below cost price. It’s something we should have done.”
Mrs May
The shadow Home Secretary listens selectively to one or two of the things that we say; I have just made the point that sometimes he is willing to put aside party politics and to make statements of that sort. Sadly, we did not hear any of those statements in the speech that he has just given. Instead, we heard the familiar rewritten history of the past 13 years. Let us examine some of the claims that Labour makes about that period. It hired a record number of police officers, but it bound them so tightly in red tape that they are available on the streets for only 11% of their time.
Alan Johnson
I shall say two things on this. Those on the Government Benches are deriding Michael Howard so, first, I should say that it was the White Paper called “A police service for the 21st century”, produced under Lord Howard, that introduced all of the target regime and suggested that the Home Office should be able to appoint the chairs of political authorities. Some of that was the right thing to do. I know that he is derided by those on the Government Benches, but Michael Howard was actually a very successful Home Secretary.
My second point deals with the HMIC’s figure on availability. HMIC talks about the percentage of the police who are available at any one time to be on the streets. The police work in shifts, and some police officers are sick, some have to be in court, some deal with counter-terrorism and some deal with child pornography, so that statistic is meaningless. Many police officers have been quick to point that out. There is no way in which under the previous Government that availability rate would have been any higher.
Mrs May
I say to the shadow Home Secretary that I am deeply disappointed in what he is saying. I will tell him who that statistic means something to—it means something to my constituents, and to those of other hon. Members, when they do not see police on the streets. They know the reality, but sadly the shadow Home Secretary is not willing to accept it. The reality is that because of things that his Government did we have seen that police officers have been tied up in bureaucracy and red tape, kept in police stations filling in forms when they could have been out on the streets, where people want to see them and where they want to be.
This is not just about the bureaucracy faced by police officers; the previous Labour Government passed a record number of laws, but left office with nearly 900,000 violent crimes taking place a year. They spent a record amount on criminal justice, but they left office with 26,000 victims of crime every single day. Labour Members might think that that is a record to be proud of, but we do not and neither do the British people.
Mrs May
Once again, the trouble with the Labour party is that it is making up things about what our policy is, purely in order to meet the arguments that Labour Members want to bring into this House. On CCTV, we have said that we want better regulation of it and automatic number plate recognition—ANPR—and it is right and proper for us to introduce that. If the Labour party thought that there was nothing to be done about CCTV, why did it start looking at introducing somebody to examine the regulation of CCTV? The regulation of CCTV is important and I suggest to the hon. Lady that she does not go around trying to suggest that the Government are going to get rid of CCTV cameras as a result of our policy to regulate those cameras better.
The hon. Lady has given me a welcome opening here, because I wanted to go on to discuss not only the record of the previous Labour Government, but what we are going to do— that is despite the fact that this is an Opposition day debate. I want to talk about how we as the new coalition Government will deliver effective policing that cuts crime in an era of falling budgets, because we on this side of the House are determined not only to tackle the legacy of debt we have been left with by the last Government, but to make sure we deliver high-quality public services even as we reduce public spending. If we are to succeed, the policing reforms I announced to the House before the summer recess, which were so derided by the shadow Home Secretary, will be vital.
Despite spending more on criminal justice than any comparable country, we remain a high-crime country—the chance of being a victim of crime here is higher than almost anywhere else in Europe—[Interruption.] Those on the Labour Front Bench are making lots of comments from a sedentary position, but that is again part of the denial. The idea that this country is somehow a wonderful world where people do not experience crime or antisocial behaviour because of the impact of the last Government is completely false. We remain a high-crime country and we need to do something about it. The complacency on the Opposition Benches about this issue is, frankly, breathtaking.
Alan Johnson
Will the Home Secretary confirm that the figure, which is in the White Paper, comes from the international crime victims survey, which was last carried out in 2004 and surveys 2,000 people—in comparison with the British crime survey, which surveys 45,000 people—and sometimes takes its statistics from those convicted, a very important point that was raised in an earlier intervention, and sometimes has nothing to do with the level of crimes? It is not a basis for saying that we have the highest crime rates in Europe. Will she confirm that?
Mrs May
What I will confirm is that yet again, in this debate, we have seen from those who made up the Labour Government an unwillingness to accept what people out there see and feel on their streets. It is about issues of crime and levels of crime in this country that are not acceptable. Whatever the right hon. Gentleman says about the figures, I think that figures such as those that I quoted earlier—26,000 victims of crime a day and nearly 900,000 violent crimes a year—are not figures to be proud of. They are figures that we need to deal with. We need to do more and that means unfettering the police and allowing them to get out on the streets and to do what they should be doing, which is dealing with crime.
Phone Tapping
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Mrs May
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. It is helpful of him to put before the House what happened in the Select Committee inquiry on the matter. As I have said, it is for the Metropolitan police to consider fresh evidence, if any comes forward, and I am sure that the Select Committee will be kept informed of any developments.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
Mr Justice Gross said in the case of Mulcaire and Goodman that it was not about press freedom, but about a
“grave, inexcusable and illegal invasion of privacy.”
Last year, I was assured that the Metropolitan Police Service had not received any allegations in respect of other News of the World journalists. I was also told that the Metropolitan police had taken all proper steps to ensure that where there was evidence of phone tapping, or any suspicion of it, the individuals concerned would be informed.
The Home Secretary will be aware of the claims by The New York Times to have spoken to over a dozen former News of the World reporters, and to at least one of its former editors, who say that phone tapping was pervasive. Furthermore the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), a very distinguished Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said:
“There was simply no enthusiasm among Scotland Yard to go beyond the cases involving Mulcaire and Goodman. To start exposing widespread tawdry practices in that newsroom was a heavy stone that they didn’t want to try to lift.”
Does the Home Secretary agree that this stone has to be lifted, and that she must subject the actions of the Metropolitan police in this case to greater scrutiny in the light of this allegation and the new revelations from The New York Times? The original investigation, we are told, uncovered 2,978 mobile phone numbers of potential victims and 91 PIN codes. Can the right hon. Lady ascertain how many of the people concerned have now been informed?
When I was Home Secretary dealing with this case, there was nobody anywhere in Government who was implicated. Now there is. The Home Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister have lectured the House many times about their perception of the surveillance state created by the previous Government. It appears that they may have their very own expert on the matter in charge of Government communications. Can she assure me that Andy Coulson will not be involved in any way in the Government’s response to the latest allegations? Does she agree with her right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, who told Parliament last year that
“it is extraordinary that the Leader of the Opposition, who wants to be a Prime Minister, employs Andy Coulson who, at best, was responsible for a newspaper that was out of control and, at worst, was personally implicated in criminal activity”?
“The exact parallel”,
said the right hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne),
“is surely with Damian McBride. If the Prime Minister was right to sack him, should not the Leader of the Opposition sack Andy Coulson?”—[Official Report, 9 July 2009; Vol. 495, c. 1132.]
I agree with those sentiments expressed by the right hon. Lady’s Cabinet colleague—does she?
Mrs May
I will take first the issue that the shadow Home Secretary raised about the number of people involved who may or may not have had telephone calls intercepted. Assistant Commissioner Yates made it clear in his interview on the “Today” programme this morning that there are—[Interruption.] Labour Members may tut, but Assistant Commissioner Yates was interviewed on the matter this morning and made it clear that there is often a misunderstanding between somebody’s name appearing on a list and that person assuming that they have therefore had their phone intercepted. He made it clear—[Interruption.]
European Investigation Order
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(14 years, 4 months 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 draft directive for a European investigation order, and the Government’s decision to opt into that draft directive.
As people have become more mobile, so too has crime, and that has serious consequences for our ability to bring criminals to justice. To deal with cross-border crime, countries enter into mutual legal assistance—MLA—agreements. Those agreements provide a framework through which states can obtain evidence from overseas. MLA has therefore been an important tool in the fight against international crime and terrorism. It has been crucial in a number of high-profile cases. For example, Hussein Osman, one of the failed terrorists from the 21/7 attacks five years ago, might not have been convicted had it not been for evidence obtained through MLA.
However, MLA has not been without its faults. The process is fragmented and confusing for the police and prosecutors, and it is too often too slow. In some cases it takes many months to obtain vital evidence. Indeed, in one drug trafficking case the evidence arrived in the UK after the trial had been completed. The European investigation order is intended to address those problems by simplifying the system, through a standardised request form and by providing formal deadlines for the recognition and execution of requests.
The Government have decided to opt into the EIO because it offers practical help for the British police and prosecutors, and we are determined to do everything we can to help them cut crime and deliver justice. That is what the police say the EIO will do. We wrote to every Association of Chief Police Officers force about the EIO, and not one said that we should not opt in. ACPO itself replied that
“the EIO is a simpler instrument than those already in existence and, provided it is used sensibly and for appropriate offences, we welcome attempts to simplify and expedite mutual legal assistance.”
However, I know that some hon. Members have concerns about the EIO, and I should like to address them in turn. The first is on the question of sovereignty. In justice and home affairs, there are many ideas coming out of Brussels, such as a common asylum policy, that would involve an unacceptable loss of sovereignty. I want to make it absolutely clear to the House that I will not sign up to those proposals, and I have made that clear to my European counterparts. However, the EIO directive does not incur a shift in sovereignty. It is a practical measure that will make it easier to see justice—British justice—done in this country.
The second concern is about burdens on the police. At a time when we are reducing domestic regulatory burdens on the police, I agree that it would be unacceptable to have them re-imposed by foreign forces. That is why we will seek to ensure that there is a proportionality test, so that police forces are not obliged to do work in relation to trivial offences, and that forces will be able to extend deadlines when it is not possible to meet them. I want to be clear that the EIO will not allow foreign authorities to instruct UK police officers on what operations to conduct, and it will not allow foreign officers to operate in the UK with law enforcement powers.
The third concern is about legal safeguards. We will seek to maintain the draft directive’s requirement that evidence should be obtained by coercive means, for example through searching a premises, only where the dual criminality requirement is satisfied. Requests for evidence from foreign authorities will still require completion of the same processes as in similar domestic cases. In order to search a house, for example, police officers will still need to obtain a warrant.
The execution of the EIO must be compatible with the European convention on human rights. That means that there must be a clear link between the alleged criminality and the assistance requested, otherwise complying with the request would be in breach of article 8 of the ECHR, on private and family life.
By opting in to the EIO at this stage, we have the opportunity to influence its precise content. We know that the existing draft is not perfect, and we are confident that we will be able to change it in negotiations. My noble Friend Baroness Neville-Jones has already had discussions with her German counterpart, and we are confident that we will shape the draft directive so that it helps us to fight crime and deliver justice while protecting civil liberties and avoiding unduly burdening the police. That is why the civil liberties group, Justice, says that
“on balance it is better for the UK to engage in this area than be ousted onto the periphery of evidence in cross border cases.”
I ask hon. Members to remember this: the EIO will apply to both prosecutors and defence lawyers, which means that it can be used to prove British subjects innocent abroad, as well as to prosecute the guilty at home.
The EIO will allow us to fight crime and deliver justice more effectively. It does not amount to a loss of sovereignty. It will not unduly burden the police. It will not incur a loss of civil liberties. It is in the national interest to sign up to it, and I commend this statement to the House.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
I do not want to worry the right hon. Lady unduly at our daily meeting, but I broadly welcome this statement. I suspect that I am just a short preliminary to the real opposition on the matter, which is the Brokeback tendency behind her. [Hon. Members: “Bareback!”] Or bareback tendency, even, which adds a whole new dimension.
We supported the Stockholm programme in December, which included the decision that a comprehensive system for obtaining evidence in cases with a cross-border dimension, based on the principle of mutual recognition, should be further pursued, not least because as the Home Secretary said, the current framework consists of a whole series of instruments that are fragmentary and repetitive. They hamper cross-border investigation at a time when the international dimension, particularly of serious organised crime, is of increasing importance.
There is a clear need for a comprehensive, legally binding single instrument to provide a definitive framework for cross-border investigations. That should not be conflated with the European prosecutor proposal, which we were firmly against. Perhaps the Home Secretary can confirm that failure to opt into the current instrument would leave the UK with the existing unsatisfactory and fragmentary provision, thus putting us at a disadvantage in the fight against cross-border crime. In contrast, as she said, opting in will allow us to negotiate further safeguards. Does she agree that those should include greater consideration of the rights of the suspect, and should not that include judicial scrutiny at both the issuing and executing stage?
I agree with the Home Secretary that there should be a proportionality test, as with the European evidence warrant, which I believe the UK will no longer be obliged to implement if we sign up to the EIO. Can she confirm that that is the case?
The human rights organisation, Justice, has indeed urged the Government to opt into the instrument, but it has raised a number of concerns about the initial draft. What discussions have the Secretary of State or her Ministers had with that organisation, and does she agree with its analysis?
It is good to see that the Government have recognised that cross-border crime is a serious concern. The Home Secretary’s party opposed the European arrest warrant, principally, I believe, because it contained the word “European”. I am glad that she is not repeating that mistake, and in welcoming her statement, I hope that will rethink her approach on second generation biometric passports so that as with the EIO, British citizens are not left behind as security measures in the rest of the European Union become more effective.
Mrs May
I welcome the positive and constructive approach that the right hon. Gentleman has taken today. Sadly, we are about to go into recess, so he and I must find a means of meeting other than across the Dispatch Box in the coming weeks. He made a number of points and made a passing reference to the Stockholm programme. Of course, this Government did not support everything in that. We are treating each justice and home affairs issue on a case-by-case basis, so we will decide to opt in to some things, such as the EIO, and to opt out of others.
The right hon. Gentleman asked me to confirm the impact of a failure to opt in. Failure to opt in would indeed leave UK police and prosecutors in a very unfortunate position, because it would mean that they must rely on existing MLA agreements to obtain evidence from overseas. It is intended that forces from which evidence is requested will meet a timetable contained within the EIO. I suspect that because of that, the practical reality of opting out is that UK requests would go to the bottom of the pile. The figures are stark—70% to 75% of our MLA requests are with other EU member states—so failure to opt in would have a significant impact.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the European evidence warrant. The directive makes it clear that the EEW will be repealed and replaced by the EIO. He also mentioned the European arrest warrant. Of course, it is important that people should not get mixed up between the EIO and the EAW. We took a view different from that of the previous Government on the EAW when they signed up to it, but our review of extradition will include a review of the EAW.
The right hon. Gentleman talked about safeguards. As I said in my statement, it will be necessary in the case of certain requests—for example, for the search of premises —to have the safeguard of proper consideration, because a warrant will be required, as is the normal course of events if the UK police choose to search premises.
Policing in the 21st Century
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(14 years, 4 months 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 about a consultation paper that I am publishing today. Entitled “Policing in the 21st Century: Reconnecting police and the people”, it sets out the most radical reforms to policing in at least 50 years.
For this Government, police reform is a priority, not just because we inherited the worst public finances of any major economy, but because for too long the police have become disconnected from the communities that they serve, been bogged down by bureaucracy and answered to distant politicians instead of to the people. Crime remains too high, too many families and communities suffer from antisocial behaviour and barely half the public are confident that important local issues are dealt with. Meanwhile, the challenges that we face have changed. Terrorism, the growth in serious and organised crime and cybercrime all require new approaches that cross not just police force boundaries, but international borders.
First, we will transfer power back to the people. We will introduce directly elected police and crime commissioners by 2012. The commissioners will set the police budget, determine police force priorities and have the power to hire and, where necessary, fire their chief constable. To help the public hold their local police to account, we will publish local crime data and mandate local beat meetings so that people can challenge the performance of their neighbourhood policing teams.
Secondly, we will return professional responsibility to police officers. Front-line staff will no longer be form writers; they will be crime fighters, freed from bureaucracy and central guidance and trusted to get on with their jobs. We have scrapped the policing pledge. We have got rid of the confidence target. We will restore police discretion over charging decisions for particular offences. We will limit the reporting requirements for “stop and search” and we will scrap the “stop” form in its entirety.
Thirdly, we will shift the focus of Government. As the Home Affairs Committee noted during the previous Parliament, the previous Government tried to micro-manage local policing but failed to support forces effectively on national issues, so we will build on the work of the Serious Organised Crime Agency to create a more powerful national crime agency, which will tackle organised crime and protect our borders. We will phase out the National Policing Improvement Agency and scrap Labour’s plans for a statutory police senior appointments panel. We will discuss with the Association of Chief Police Officers the way forward in its role as a professional leadership body.
Fourthly, we will make the police more efficient at force, regional and national levels so that front-line local policing can be sustained. To this end, we are already consulting separately on police procurement regulations to get better value for taxpayers’ money.
Fifthly, we will unleash the power of community pride and civic responsibility, so that people can come together to cut crime. We will therefore look for a cost-effective way to establish 101 as a single police non-emergency number so that it is easier to report crime and antisocial behaviour. We will also do more to encourage active citizens to become special constables, community crime fighters and members of neighbourhood watch groups.
There is nothing inevitable about crime. That is why we are determined to press ahead with these reforms, which demonstrate our determination to undo the damage of the Labour years, put the people back in charge, and rid our communities of crime, antisocial behaviour and disorder. I commend the statement to the House.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
The statement should be entitled, “Policing in the 21st Century: How to make the job harder”. As usual, the Home Secretary trots out her infantile drivel about the last Labour Government, probably written by some pimply nerd foisted on her office by No. 10.
The Home Secretary said that she aims to undo the damage of the Labour years. That damage was recorded in the Home Office’s statistics on 15 July. Here it is: overall crime is down by 50%, violent crime is down by 50%, property crime is down by 55%, the murder rate is at its lowest level since at any time over the past 20 years, and the chance of being a victim of crime is at its lowest level since records began in 1981—21.5%, down from its peak of 40% under the Conservatives. That is the damage that she is seeking to undo—the kind of damage that any Government would be proud of.
The Home Secretary is about to have her budget cut by at least 25%.
Alan Johnson
It was our structural upheaval, I agree completely, but that is what occurs with any reorganisation. To put people through another structural upheaval four years later is simply madness.
In 2006, SOCA was wrongly described as replicating the FBI, and reports over the weekend gave the same description. Does the Home Secretary think it is accurate? She will be aware of Sir Paul Stephenson’s John Harris memorial lecture recently, which rejected the FBI option. Sir Paul set out a model built upon SOCA, not upon replacing it, and his national federated model has much to commend it. Why is the Home Secretary not pursuing that alternative?
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre does fantastic work. To build upon that work, we were moving it away from SOCA to be a non-departmental public body. Will the Home Secretary continue that process, and if not, why not?
Will the dedicated border force replace the UK Border Agency, and how many jobs will be lost as a result of these initiatives in SOCA, the UKBA, the National Policing Improvement Agency and elsewhere?
We have yet to hear a word from this Government about how they plan to cut crime. All we have heard is how they will cut officer numbers, prison places and police powers. Today, the Home Secretary has managed to reannounce at least three decisions that we had already taken in government. She says that she will mandate beat meetings to challenge the performance of neighbourhood policing teams, having scrapped the policing pledge drawn up by chief constables themselves to provide exactly that mandate.
The Home Secretary inherited the Department when crime had fallen substantially, public confidence in the police had never been higher and public concern about antisocial behaviour had never been lower. She says she is pursuing bold policies; in fact she is pursuing bad policies. I was pleased to see the Government’s U-turn on anonymity for rape defendants; elected commissioners need to go the same way.
Mrs May
I have to say to the shadow Home Secretary that I find his complacent attitude in relation to what has happened over recent years rather surprising. As far we are concerned, we do need to fight and cut crime, but our streets can never be too safe and we will not be complacent about the antisocial behaviour and crime that still blight the lives of too many people in this country.
The right hon. Gentleman talks about the damage that is being done, but I will tell him when damage is done to policing in this country. It is when, as Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary reported last week, at any one point an average of only 11% of police officers are out on our streets. It is when the average police constable is spending only 14% of their time on the streets and 22% in filling forms. The Labour Government did that damage over 13 years.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the DNA database. It is extraordinary that he is still willing to defend a Government who wanted to put innocent people’s DNA on the database, but were not willing to ensure that they had the DNA of all the people in prison on that database.
The right hon. Gentleman asks who supports the decision to have directly elected commissioners and elected representatives of the people. He will find some support from the following quote:
“we will legislate to strengthen the democratic link with the public by introducing local, directly elected crime and policing representatives.”—[Official Report, 17 July 2008; Vol. 479, c.435.]
Those are not my words, but those of the right hon. Gentleman’s predecessor as Home Secretary, the right honourable Jacqui Smith.
The right hon. Gentleman talks about the need to publish figures. Of course, we will in due course publish figures in relation to the police commissioners as well as the business case for the national crime agency. He mentioned its role and the need for it. Only two weeks ago in the Police Foundation lecture, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, raised the need for us to strengthen the tasking and co-ordination of response to serious organised crime. That is what the national crime agency will do. It will also deliver our commitment for a border police force and strengthen our ability to protect our borders.
On the shadow Home Secretary’s comments about cuts in budgets, I simply refer him to two things. First, he seems to have forgotten that, in the words of the former Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury, “There is no money left.” Secondly, it would be helpful for the House to know that yesterday, on Sky News, the shadow Home Secretary confirmed that, in a Labour Government, he would have cut police budgets.
Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Alan Johnson
I am not aware of that. In fact, the usual argument is that the common-law countries such as Australia, Canada and even the US do not have this system. Europe is the worst place for my hon. Friend to find his examples. Let me cite Norway, for instance. Good old, solid, Scandinavian, liberal Norway has provisions that allow people to be kept in custody—renewed by a High Court judge, who is involved in any detention beyond 14 days—for far longer than 28 days, or even 42 days. That was a helpful intervention, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend.
I think that the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds succinctly summed up the two issues I mentioned, but there is one further aspect that we have to consider in deciding whether to renew this legislation. It was rightly raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz). The issue is whether the very existence of 28-day detention leads to radicalisation in certain communities to the extent that it defeats the objective of reducing the terrorist threat. The Home Office community impact study published in March certainly found examples of UK Muslims having a strong negative perception of counter-terrorism legislation, but concluded that there was insufficient evidence on specific aspects, such as 28 days, to lead to any firm conclusions. I doubt whether anyone in this Chamber thinks that pre-charge detention of 28 rather than 14 days has of itself radicalised anyone to the extent that they would be prepared to engage in terrorist activity.
While I am dealing with this aspect, I hope the Home Secretary can refute the story in The Guardian this morning that she has decided to dismantle the Prevent strategy. She told my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) yesterday, as is recorded in column 802 of Hansard, that the strategy was being reviewed by the Home Department and the Department for Communities and Local Government. When I read the Home Office draft structural reform plan released yesterday, which is the source of the story in The Guardian, all I could find was the eminently sensible objective of keeping the “prevent” strand of counter-terrorism separate from the “integration” initiatives of DCLG. I would welcome clarification.
Mrs May
I am happy to give the right hon. Gentleman the clarification he seeks. As set out in the Home Office structural reform plan, we intend to look at the different strands of the Prevent strategy and to ensure that they are properly focused on the right aims. I believe that it is right and appropriate to separate out the part of the Prevent strategy that is about integration from the part about counter-terrorism. One problem with Prevent is that those two aspects have become intertwined in too many people’s thinking, which has, sadly, led to some of the Prevent work being rejected by those whom it was intended to help.
Alan Johnson
I am grateful for that clarification, and I completely agree with what the Home Secretary has said about Prevent.
As the Home Secretary said in her speech, the security threat is, if anything, greater today than it was a year ago. In the year since the last renewal, we have learned more, by means of Operation Overt, about the so-called liquid bomb plot, through the successful prosecution of those involved. We should remember that this involved the planned destruction of seven passenger planes all flying to North America, and is one case in which pre-charge detention beyond 14 days was necessary in respect of six people involved in that plot.
We also know now that Operation Pathway in Greater Manchester, which was a matter of speculation in the debate this time last year, is now understood to have been a serious and advanced terrorist plot. It was, thankfully, thwarted yet again by the security services. In the past year, two further organisations have been proscribed. The threat level, decided not by Ministers but by the experts in the security agencies, has been changed to “substantial” and then back to the second highest level, “severe”, which means that an attack is highly likely. As we meet today to make a decision based on the evidence over the coming year, that is the position in which we find ourselves.
On Christmas Day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian citizen who studied in the United Kingdom and was radicalised in Yemen, flew from Lagos via Holland with 80 grams of PETN explosive—which successfully circumvented aviation security—sewn into his underpants, in an attempt to blow up a passenger plane over Detroit. That demonstrated first the continuing ingenuity of our enemies, and secondly the international nature of the threat.
There has been one other important development over the year: the report of the all-party group of Privy Counsellors, under the chairmanship of Sir John Chilcot, on the crucial issue of intercept evidence. When I was Home Secretary, I briefed the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister separately in their previous roles. They fully understand—as, I know, does the Home Secretary—that the Privy Counsellors found that two of the nine principles that they themselves had established in order to ensure a practical way in which to meet our shared desire to use intercept as evidence were breached during the simulations that they conducted in the course of their work. They are doing further work to see whether they can find a way around the difficulties, but the issue is obviously integral to the whole question of pre-charge detention.
I ask the Home Secretary to reconsider the response that she gave yesterday to the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), who asked why intercept evidence was not being considered as part of the review. She rightly said that it was better to consider the issue over time, but that, I believe, is an argument for spending longer on the review. I fail to see how such an important component of the argument about 28 days—rehearsed in every annual debate, and also integral to the consideration of control orders, which is also part of the review—can be separated from the overall review.
Finally, there is the important question of whether the power is being abused in the legal framework. Some Members argue that we should abandon this measure because it is not used very often, but I would be more concerned if it were used other than sparingly. As the Home Secretary rightly said, it is an exceptional measure, as Lord Carlile has pointed out, the need for it is rare, and the Crown Prosecution Service is well aware that no one should be detained for a moment longer than necessary. There is no evidence that the power has been abused, but Lord Carlile made an important recommendation in his review of Operation Pathway, proposing the granting of conditional bail by a judge for a period up to the 28th day following arrest, which would enable restrictions short of custody to be imposed while the inquiry continued. That strikes me as worthy of consideration, perhaps during the review.
In my view, the evidence is overwhelming. The statutory instrument should be approved today, and the Government should tread very carefully if the purpose of their review is to arrive at a conclusion consistent with the Liberal Democrat manifesto commitment to reduce the 28-day pre-charge detention period for terrorist suspects regardless of the dangers and the overwhelming evidence.
Counter-terrorism and Security Powers
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(14 years, 4 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I shall make a statement on the review of counter-terrorism and security powers.
As I have said to the House before, the first duty of Government is to protect the public, but that duty must never be used as a reason to ride roughshod over our civil liberties—and that is what the previous Government did on far too many occasions. This Government are different. We have already introduced legislation to get rid of identity cards once and for all; we have already declared our intention to bring forward a freedom Bill later this year; and just last week I announced interim restrictions on the use of stop-and-search powers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
Today, as promised in the coalition agreement, I am announcing an urgent review of counter-terrorism and security powers. The review will consider six key powers: control orders; section 44 stop-and-search powers and the use of terrorism legislation in relation to photography; the use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 by local authorities and access to communications data more generally; extending the use of deportations with assurances in a manner that is consistent with our legal and human rights obligations; measures to deal with organisations that promote hatred or violence; and the detention of terrorist suspects before charge.
Those are the most controversial and sensitive powers. In particular, the issue of pre-charge detention has been the subject of considerable debate in the House, and tomorrow we will consider whether to renew the current detention limit for a further six months. That will provide us with sufficient time to look carefully at pre-charge detention in the review and to explore how we can reduce the period of detention below 28 days. The review will also help to inform us on what additional safeguards are needed in the proposed asset freezing Bill, which the Treasury will introduce shortly.
The Government’s work on the use of intercept as evidence in court and the modernisation of our interception capabilities will be done separately and will not form part of the review. The review will be conducted by the Home Office with the full involvement of the police, security and intelligence agencies and other Government Departments, including those in Scotland and Northern Ireland. I want the review to be conducted as openly and transparently as possible. I have asked Liberty to contribute to the review, and it has said that it would be delighted to do so. I am keen to involve other civil liberty and community organisations and, as with other reviews, I would urge anyone with an interest to submit their views to the Home Office.
To ensure independent oversight of the review, I have asked the noble and learned Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, to make sure that the work is conducted properly, that all the relevant options have been considered and that the recommendations of the review are not only fair but seen to be fair. That role is distinct from the excellent work that is already being undertaken by the noble and learned Lord Carlile of Berriew in his statutory role as independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. The proposals made by Lord Carlile will be fully considered as part of the review and I know that he welcomes the additional independent perspective that Lord Macdonald will provide on these issues. Any legislative amendments that result from the review will of course be subject to review by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. I have ordered that the review should be completed as quickly as possible, because it is important that the police and the security and intelligence agencies are able to do their vital work with certainty and confidence. I will report back to Parliament on the outcome of the review after the summer recess.
Before I finish, I want to make one thing absolutely clear. In correcting the mistakes of the previous Government, we are doing just that. We are not criticising or castigating members of the police or of the security and intelligence services. They do their work with bravery, patriotism and a strong sense of duty, and I know the whole House will want to join me in paying tribute to them. The review will enable this Government to put right the failures of the last Government and, in so doing, restore the ancient civil liberties that should be synonymous with the name of our country. I commend this statement to the House.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving me early sight of her statement. It is important to recall that when the Terrorism Bill received its Third Reading in November 2005, it had all-party support, so both parties to the coalition Government supported the bulk of the legislation that will now be reviewed. Two things characterised that debate, which came a few months after the horror and carnage of 7/7. The first was the realisation that no change in Government policy would remove the UK from al-Qaeda’s firing line and that the only response to the threat was to contest and then defeat it. The second was the extraordinary lengths that were taken to proceed on the basis of consensus, not just with the then shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), and the Lib Dem spokesman Mark Oaten, but with the Select Committee on Home Affairs and the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
The threat that was faced then has not diminished. The Prime Minister put it succinctly in his statement of 6 July, when he said:
“As we meet in the relative safety of this House today, let us not forget this: as we speak, al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen are meeting in secret to plot attacks against us; terrorists are preparing to attack our forces in Afghanistan; the Real IRA is planning its next strike against security forces in Northern Ireland; and rogue regimes are still trying to acquire nuclear weapons.”—[Official Report, 6 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 178.]
Can the Home Secretary confirm that the review is not being held to scale down the powers needed to address a diminishing threat, but is far from that? What is the latest estimate of the number of terror suspects actively engaged in complex plots and can she tell us how many such plots have been disrupted since 7/7?
The review must surely be held in the context of how those powers are working on the ground. In that context, will she provide information, if necessary on Privy Council terms, as Charles Clarke did in 2005, to allow Her Majesty’s Opposition to be fully conversant with the backdrop to this review? Will she ensure that the same spirit of consensus-seeking takes place in reviewing anti-terrorism legislation that characterised the approach to the Terrorism Act 2006?
The Home Secretary’s statement contained the immature and partisan attacks on the previous Government that are becoming rather tiresome and that are unworthy of a debate of this seriousness. Will she tell me in what way she considers the previous Government to have ridden roughshod over civil liberties on control orders, deportation with assurances, dealing with organisations that promote hatred or violence, or on the detention of terrorist suspects before charge?
On the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, and in relation to some of the most widely spread myths about RIPA, is she aware that the interception of communications commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy, concluded his latest annual report by saying that
“no evidence has emerged from the inspections which have been conducted during the last three years to indicate communications data is being used to investigate offences of a trivial nature, such as dog fouling or littering”?
What are the terms of reference for the review? They are not in the statement. Is it to be held purely in the context of civil liberties, or will it have a wider remit? We believe that it should. Does the Home Secretary think the time scale long enough to do justice to the issues under review? Given the fact that the Olympics are fast approaching, will they be a factor in the deliberations?
Given our joint desire to overcome the practical difficulties that prevent the use of intercept as evidence in our courts, given that 28-day detention has to be reapproved by Parliament each year and given that control orders are subject to annual report by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, what further safeguards does the Home Secretary believe may be necessary? I would on this occasion appreciate some answers, given the importance of the subject.
I worry about the Government’s position on counter-terrorism. They admonish senior counter-terrorism police officers for daring to discuss in a closed meeting with colleagues the implication of a 25% cut in their funding. They refuse to give the police and the security services the same assurances on funding as they provide for the Department for International Development. They plan to diminish important weapons in the fight against crime and terrorism such as the DNA database and CCTV. The balance between collective security and individual freedom has to be carefully struck under the ever-changing and constantly evolving threat of international terrorism, but this review appears to be about one side of that balance.
Liberal Democrats should remember the words of John Stuart Mill, who said:
“All that makes existence valuable to anyone depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.”
The Government should remember that the slow creep of complacency is a phrase often used to describe the erosion of civil liberties. It is equally applicable to our vulnerability to terrorist attack.
Mrs May
Of all the things that I have seen in the couple of months since I became Home Secretary, the thing that has most struck me and surprised me has been the complete unwillingness of the Labour party to recognise what much of the counter-terrorism legislation that it introduced, and on occasions the misuse of that legislation, have done to civil liberties in this country. It has surprised me because I hoped that, in opposition, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) and his colleagues would have taken the opportunity to sit back and look at their records in government and wonder why in the past few years so many people, including the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, have been raising questions about the counter-terrorism legislation that the previous Government introduced. I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman has not seen fit to use the time in opposition so far to undertake that exercise.
In the counter-terrorism review, we are looking at precisely the balance that the right hon. Gentleman talks about between collective security and individual freedom. We want to ensure that we strike the right balance between collective security and individual freedom and not the wrong balance that we believe the previous Government introduced in a number of areas.
The right hon. Gentleman asked for some statistics. I can tell him that 235 people were convicted of terrorism-related offences between 11 September 2001 and 31 December 2009, and a further 22 defendants were awaiting trial as at 31 December 2009. For the 28 terrorism-related trials completed in the 12 months to the end of last year, 93% were convicted, with just over half pleading guilty, and convictions included six life sentences. At the end of December 2009, 131 people were in prison for terrorism, extremist offences or charges relating to terrorism or extremism.
I am certainly not making light of the threat that exists in this country and, as the right hon. Gentleman acknowledged, nor did my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister when he came to the House to make his statement on detainees and the publication of guidance to our security services. We recognise the level of threat in the United Kingdom, but I say to the right hon. Gentleman and members of the Labour party that our fight against those threats is not aided by legislation that is misused or that people feel encroaches on civil liberties.
The right hon. Gentleman asked whether I could suggest legislation in which the Labour Government had ridden roughshod over civil liberties and then said they had not done so in relation to the detention of terror suspects before charging. I have to say to him that trying to introduce 90 days of pre-charge detention was indeed riding roughshod over our civil liberties. The review will look to ensure that our counter-terrorism legislation is appropriate to the level of threat and provides our police and our security and intelligence agencies with the powers that they need to combat that threat, while ensuring that we can enjoy our ancient civil liberties.
Terrorism Act 2000 (Section 44)
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(14 years, 4 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on stop-and-search powers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
On Wednesday last week, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that its judgment in the case of Gillan and Quinton is final. This judgment found that the stop-and-search powers granted under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 amount to the violation of the right to a private life. The Court found that the powers are drawn too broadly—at the time of their initial authorisation and when they are used. It also found that the powers contain insufficient safeguards to protect civil liberties.
The Government cannot appeal against this judgment, although we would not have done so had we been able to. We have always been clear in our concerns about these powers, and they will be included as part of our review of counter-terrorism legislation.
I can, therefore, tell the House that I will not allow the continued use of section 44 in contravention of the European Court’s ruling and, more importantly, in contravention of our civil liberties. But neither will I leave the police without the powers they need to protect us.
I have sought urgent legal advice and consulted police forces. In order to comply with the judgment—but to avoid pre-empting the review of counter-terrorism legislation—I have decided to introduce interim guidelines for the police. The test for authorisation for the use of section 44 powers is, therefore, being changed from requiring a search to be “expedient” for the prevention of terrorism, to the stricter test of its being “necessary” for that purpose; and, most importantly, I am introducing a new suspicion threshold. Officers will no longer be able to search individuals using section 44 powers; instead, they will have to rely on section 43 powers, which require officers reasonably to suspect the person to be a terrorist. And officers will only be able to use section 44 in relation to searches of vehicles. I will only confirm these authorisations where they are considered to be necessary, and officers will only be able to use them when they have “reasonable suspicion”.
These interim measures will bring section 44 stop-and-search powers fully into line with the European Court’s judgment. They will provide operational clarity for the police. And they will last until we have completed our review of counter-terrorism laws and taken any relevant action arising from that review.
The first duty of Government is to protect the public. But that duty must never be used as a reason to ride roughshod over our civil liberties. I believe that the interim proposals I have set out today give the police the support they need and protect those ancient rights. I commend the statement to the House.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for early sight of the statement. The fifth anniversary of 7/7 yesterday reminded us all of the threat to this country and the tremendous work of the security services and the police in protecting our citizens from harm. The Prime Minister pointed out on Tuesday—very eloquently, I thought—how real those threats continue to be.
The Home Secretary will be aware that the European Court’s judgment was based on the way that section 44 powers were used by the Metropolitan police some years ago, and that the previous Government, together with the police authorities, reviewed and improved their procedures in the intervening period. Will she confirm that the number of stop and searches under section 44 has reduced considerably over the last two years? She will also be aware that all the UK courts, including the High Court and the House of Lords, rejected the argument that the Gillan and Quinton case represented a breach of article 8. In particular, the Law Lords were doubtful whether an ordinary, superficial search of the person could be said to show a lack of respect for private life. Even if article 8 did apply, they said the procedure was used in accordance with the law and it was impossible to regard a proper exercise of the power as other than proportionate when seeking to counter the great danger of terrorism.
The Home Secretary will also be aware that the Select Committee on Home Affairs examined this issue thoroughly in 2005, when the current Prime Minister was a member of that Committee, and rejected the allegation that the Asian community was being unreasonably targeted by the Metropolitan police in its use of section 44 powers. She will also know that while the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Lord Carlile, had concerns that section 44 powers were being used too often—this was before the changes in 2007-08—he stated clearly that
“the power remains necessary and proportional to the continuing and serious risk of terrorism”.
Given all those facts, I am amazed that the Home Secretary would not have pursued an appeal, given that every court in this country rejected the argument in respect of Gillan and Quinton.
Nevertheless, we are where we are in terms of the legal avenues in Europe, and it does seem to me sensible to change the test for authorisation from “expedience” to “necessity” and to use a test of “reasonable suspicion”, but I am deeply concerned about the Home Secretary’s intention to restrict section 44 powers to searches of vehicles. That quite clearly restricts the powers of the police.
Was the Police Service of Northern Ireland consulted, given the current dissident threat in Northern Ireland? We sometimes say that there have been no terrorist murders in Britain this year; but there have been in the United Kingdom: there have been terrorist murders in Northern Ireland. What is the view of the Association of Chief Police Officers, and in particular the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, on this restriction? Were they consulted? Was Lord Carlile consulted, and if so, what is his view?
Does the Home Secretary accept that section 43 does not require ministerial authority, and why does she believe it is necessary to go this far, by restricting section 44 to searches of vehicles only, in responding to the European Court’s judgment? Is she saying that nothing less will suffice? Did she explore other legislative options, and will she publish for consultation other options for amending section 44, so that the House can see the alternatives and debate them fully?
We have the prospect in this country of the police being asked to continue to protect us with fewer officers, diminished resources and restricted powers. The Home Secretary needs to understand that it is not the coalition agreement that will keep the public safe—it is the security services and the police. The statement today will undoubtedly make their job more difficult.
Mrs May
First, may I echo the comments that the shadow Home Secretary has made about the important work that is done by the police and by our security services? That, of course, was made absolutely clear by the Prime Minister in the statement in relation to detainees that he made in the House earlier in the week, and I echo those comments. Our police forces do sterling work for us and they go out there every day, dealing with difficult circumstances and are—we should never forget this—prepared to put their lives on the line for our safety.
Yes, I can confirm that the number of stop and searches made under the section 44 and section 43 powers has reduced significantly over time. That should not, though, leave us under any illusion that there are not still concerns, not just in relation to the European Court judgment but concerns more generally in the UK about the use of those powers; that is why, as a coalition Government, we were committed to reviewing those powers in any case in our review of counter-terrorism legislation. I believe it is absolutely right to do so.
The shadow Home Secretary asked about other options that were being looked at. Those will be considered within the counter-terrorism review. The purpose of making this statement today was to ensure that police forces have the operational guidance that they obviously need, so that they know what they should be doing now given the European Court judgment. I remind the shadow Home Secretary that I have responded to that judgment, which is clear about the two points—that these powers should be used only when they are necessary rather than expedient, and that there should be a degree of suspicion in order for the powers to be used. It is exactly that which I am now implementing in the statement and in the changes that are being made.
The shadow Home Secretary asks about restricting the use of section 44 to vehicles rather than individuals. Section 43 allows for the stop and search of individuals already with the reasonable suspicion attached to it. He mentioned Northern Ireland. I certainly do not in any way underestimate the importance of these powers in relation to Northern Ireland. I have been in contact with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and consultations have taken place in Northern Ireland on the use of these powers, but I remind the shadow Home Secretary that there are various other powers that can be used, as set out in the Northern Ireland-specific legislation. For example, under the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007, the PSNI can stop and question individuals to ascertain identity and movements, and can stop and search people in vehicles for munitions and transmitters, and there are a variety of other powers that can be used by the PSNI.
Finally, the shadow Home Secretary said to me that I, as Home Secretary, need to understand. I think what the shadow Home Secretary needs to understand is the degree of concern that there has been about the use of these section 44 powers under the Terrorism Act 2000—the degree of concern that did arise, not just initially from the way in which they were being used by the police, but a continuing concern about the impact on our civil liberties. I make no apology for the fact—[Interruption.] I believe the shadow Home Secretary was looking at a Liberal Democrat, the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), and muttering about “their obsession”. I have to say to the shadow Home Secretary that a desire to protect our civil liberties is not an obsession; it is something that we throughout this House should want to do, regardless of political party. I believe it is the duty of Government to balance the need to give the police the powers they need to protect us, with the need to defend our civil liberties, and I believe that is what the statement does.
Limits on Non-EU Economic Migration
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(14 years, 4 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Immigration has enriched our culture and enhanced our society. Britain can benefit from immigration, but not uncontrolled immigration. The levels of net migration seen under the previous Government—an annual figure of almost a quarter of a million at its peak in 2004—were unprecedented in recent times. It is this Government’s aim to reduce the level of net migration back down to the levels of the 1990s—tens of thousands each year, not hundreds of thousands.
Of course, it is necessary to attract the world’s very best talent to come to the UK to drive strong economic growth, but unlimited migration has placed unacceptable pressure on public services and, worse, severely damaged public confidence in our immigration system. Our over-reliance on migrant labour has done nothing to help the millions of unemployed and low-skilled British citizens who deserve the Government’s help to get back to work and improve their skills. The coalition’s programme for government confirmed the Government’s intention to introduce an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants admitted into the UK to live and work. We have always said that we will consult on the implementation of that limit. It is important that the Government take full account of the views of business and other interested sectors. We want to ensure that we can properly weigh the economic considerations against the wider social and public service implications.
I am therefore launching a consultation today on the mechanisms for implementing that annual limit, including questions about the coverage of limits, as well as the mechanics of how they will work in practice. The consultation also recognises the need to attract more high net-worth individuals to the UK through the routes for investors and entrepreneurs, which will not be covered by limits, and we ask for views on how that can be achieved. At the same time, I have commissioned the independent Migration Advisory Committee to provide advice to the Government on the levels at which limits should be set for the first full year of their operation, which I intend should be from April 2011.
I am sure that all Members of the House would agree with me that the Migration Advisory Committee has an excellent track record in this area, and I want to take this opportunity to record my thanks to David Metcalf and the rest of the committee for taking on this critical piece of work. The consultations will be complete by the end of September, and I intend to make final announcements about the first full annual limit before the end of the calendar year.
It is important that today’s announcement does not lead to a surge of applications during this interim period, which would lead to an increase in net migration, undermining the purpose of the limit and putting undue strain on the UK Border Agency. I am therefore also taking a number of interim measures, and I have laid a statement of changes to the immigration rules in support of those measures. First, I am introducing an interim limit on the number of out-of-country main applicants to tier 1 (general). For 2010-11, this route will be held flat from the equivalent period for 2009-10. The tier 1 routes for investors, entrepreneurs and the post-study route are not affected. Secondly, to ensure that those who do come through this route are the brightest and best, I am raising the tier 1 (general) pass mark by five points for all new applicants.
Thirdly, I am introducing an interim limit on the number of migrants who can be offered jobs by sponsor employers through tier 2 (general). This route will be reduced in the interim period by 1,300 migrants, the equivalent of a 5% reduction across the relevant routes of tiers 1 and 2. The tier 2 routes for intra-company transfers, ministers for religion and—I am not sure whether to say this, given the comments at the end of the Prime Minister’s statement—elite sportspeople are not affected. These interim measures will take effect from 19 July.
It is vital that we restore public confidence in our immigration system. Our plans to do that extend much further than the measures I am announcing today. We support e-borders and the re-introduction of exit checks. We have said that we will create a dedicated border police force to enhance national security, improve immigration controls and crack down on the trafficking of people, weapons and drugs. We have committed to improving our asylum system to speed up the processing of applications. We have said that we will end the detention of children for immigration purposes, and the UK Border Agency has already launched a review engaging a wide range of experts and organisations on how to achieve this.
Our commitment to reduce net migration will require action, as I am sure the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) will indicate in a moment, beyond the economic routes. It may assist him if I tell the House now that I will be reviewing other immigration routes in due course and will be bringing forward further proposals for consideration by the House. And, of course, unlike the previous Government, we are committed to applying transitional controls for all new EU member states.
The commitment to introduce limits on non-EU economic migration is a major immigration commitment of the coalition Government. Today’s announcement is a key step towards the delivery of that commitment, and I commend this statement to the House.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
I thank the right hon. Lady for a copy of the statement. I am pleased that she has come to make the statement to the House. However, I had already seen the statement she has just made because it was handed to me by a journalist this morning at 11.15.
Obviously, the Home Secretary originally intended to lay a written ministerial statement today. Indeed, the title was laid last Friday. This morning I sought that written ministerial statement. I was told that the Home Office was having a press conference prior to issuing the written ministerial statement—something unknown in my time as a Minister. Therefore, I sought the written ministerial statement again. At 11.15 am a journalist who had been to the press conference handed to me a written ministerial statement that is almost precisely the statement that the right hon. Lady has just made.
I hope the Home Secretary takes the matter seriously. As I am sure you will agree, Mr. Speaker, Members of the House have a right to see written ministerial statements before they are circulated to the media.
The Home Secretary’s announcement represents nothing more than a small adjustment to the points-based system. It was spun to the media over the weekend as a profound adjustment to net migration. Migration to this country has gone up. If the Prime Minister were talking to his French and German colleagues, he would know that there were 4 million migrants in Germany, 4 million in France and about 1.5 million in this country. Since the 1990s, the last time the Conservatives were in power, there has been a huge explosion of migration around the world, as the UN has detailed.
Yes, migration has gone up since the last time the Conservatives were in power, but will the right hon. Lady confirm that net migration has fallen substantially over the past three years? Will she confirm that tier 1 migration—the most highly skilled—fell by 44% in the first quarter of this year? What is the problem with skilled migration that she seeks to resolve? Will she also confirm that the number of asylum seekers has fallen to the levels last seen in the early 1990s—a third of their peak, and the same peak everywhere else in Europe? We are 15th in Europe regarding the number of asylum seekers per head of population.
Will the Home Secretary continue to support the points-based system that we introduced, which ensures that no unskilled worker can come to this country—the door has been closed on tier 3 for the past two years—and that skilled workers under tier 2 can come to this country only if their sponsoring employer has advertised that job in Jobcentre Plus for four weeks prior? Can she confirm that she intends to continue with those measures, which we introduced?
How many skilled workers will be denied entry to the UK under that temporary cap, and what percentage of total net migration will that represent? What makes the Home Secretary think that the UK can avoid the problems the US experienced when President Bush introduced a quota on skilled migrants, with disastrous consequences and a whole series of readjustments 10 years ago? Can she give an example of the problems caused to our society by skilled migrants coming to the UK under the current flexible arrangements?
What effect does the right hon. Lady think her announcement today will have on population growth? Over the weekend I heard Government Members speculate that this morning’s announcement—this trivial adjustment —will somehow ensure that our population avoids reaching 70 million. Does she believe that? If so, how does she think that that will happen?
Given that this measure has been Conservative policy since the less progressive “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?” days of their 2005 manifesto, why have they as yet failed to come up with a figure for their pre-determined quota? Does the right hon. Lady intend to implement fully Labour’s tough measures to deal with the abuse of tier 4, the student route, which, along with spousal visas and EU migration, will be totally unaffected by the cap she has announced today?
Today’s announcement will affect fewer than one in seven migrants to this country, and those whom it will affect are the migrants our economy needs the most. If the cap is set too high, it will be meaningless; if it set too low, it will damage our economy. At best it is a gesture; at worst it is a deceit. The Home Secretary knows that a cut in her Department’s budget of one third, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies—25%, according to her right hon. Friend the Chancellor—will have disastrous consequences for border control. Is that not the real reason for controlling immigration, rather than this artificial and unnecessary tinkering at the edges?
Mrs May
Let me first address the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the written ministerial statement and my coming to the House. He is absolutely right: I had intended to make a written statement, and the title was indeed placed before the House so that Members could be made aware of it. Over the weekend I spoke to the Government Chief Whip about the possibility of changing that statement into an oral statement, because at the time I felt it more important to come to the House to make an oral statement, which is precisely what I have done. The right hon. Gentleman said, “Will I take this issue seriously?” Government Members have taken Parliament seriously over the past 13 years, so I shall take no lessons from him or any of his colleagues about taking it seriously, given how they bypassed Parliament for 13 years and reduced the House’s powers to hold the Executive to account.
The right hon. Gentleman talked about migration figures, but immigration actually tripled under the Labour Government. It is our desire to get the number down from the hundreds of thousands a year that it has reached under Labour to tens of thousands a year. If he wishes to look at numbers, he should look no further than the past comments of the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), who said that there was “no obvious upper limit” to immigration. It is this Government who are taking the issue seriously, who promised that they would do something about it and who are taking the action that is necessary.
The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle made a number of comments about technicalities and the issue of jobs being advertised for four weeks in a jobcentre. Currently, immigrants can come into the country if the resident labour market test or the shortage occupation list requirements are met. We are consulting on whether they should be combined so that a tier 2 migrant is able to come in if both tests are relevant and met. That would be a significant tightening of the current rules.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the wider social impact, as opposed to the economic impact. He has only to go out and talk to people about the pressure in some areas on public services, hospitals and schools. Another issue that his Government failed to get to grips with over the years is the significant number of unemployed people in this country. Some of those people do not have the necessary skills to get into the jobs that are available, but the job of the Government is to ensure that they do have those skills and to give them the support they need to get into those jobs, rather than simply thinking that the answer is to pull in migrant workers from elsewhere.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to students. If, instead of commenting on the statement he thought I was going to make, he had listened to the statement that I made, he would have heard me say that we would indeed be looking at other immigration routes in due course and bringing further proposals to this House. I recognise that this is one part of the job that we are doing as regards immigration, and other measures will come forward in due course.
The right hon. Gentleman asked why we did not yet have a figure for the annual limit on immigration, despite the fact that this has been a Conservative policy for some time and was in the coalition agreement. I can tell him why not: because we have, for some time, been committed to going out there and consulting those who will be affected—businesses, public service providers and others—about what the limit should be. As I said, the Migration Advisory Committee will be advising the Government and recommending what that annual limit should be. Of course, this is in sharp contrast to the approach of the previous Government, who, in one consultation exercise after another, merely paid lip service to consultation because they had already decided what they were going to do. People then got fed up with being asked to give comments and finding that Government took no notice. We are genuinely consulting people and will be listening to the responses that we get.
Identity Documents Bill
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs May
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She does indeed have an honourable record of maintaining opposition to identity cards. I will make reference to this point later, but I can tell her now that we will not be offering refunds to all those who chose to get an identity card. [Hon. Members: “Outrageous!”] Labour Front Benchers shout “Outrageous”, but we made it clear that we were opposed to identity cards. The Liberal Democrat party made it absolutely clear that it was opposed to identity cards. People knew well before the election what would happen if a Conservative Government were elected.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
Does the Home Secretary recall that the Labour party’s manifesto in 2005 had a commitment to introduce a voluntary ID card scheme? Does she recollect that it was the Labour party that won that general election? In what way was it illegitimate—or, indeed, “stupid”, to quote my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey)—for people then to buy a card that was legitimate and had been set out in the manifesto of the winning party?
Mrs May
I must make a confession; I did not study the 2005 Labour party manifesto in any great detail because I was too busy promoting the 2005 Conservative party manifesto—[Interruption.] I am not trying to rewrite history; the right hon. Gentleman and his party won the 2005 election and introduced the identity card scheme. Let us remember; the scheme was not introduced in the very early stages of the Government’s term, but we made it clear from an early stage that if the Conservative party came into government, ID cards would be scrapped. That was clear to people, and the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling)—
Alan Johnson
I will not give way because I am about to conclude.
My final point is that the Government intend not only to stop issuing cards, but to make the 15,000 already in circulation illegal. I find that despicable, and I do not think that that is too strong a word. How can any Government seek to punish hundreds of thousands of its citizens for having the temerity to take advantage of a scheme that was pledged in a manifesto, supported in law and introduced in an entirely legitimate way? [Interruption.] The Home Secretary is chuntering from the Front Bench, but I will gladly take an intervention.
Alan Johnson
Fifteen thousand is a significant number of people—[Interruption.] On Monday, the Deputy Prime said that he had made a slip of the tongue when he told one of my hon. Friends that the Government will certainly campaign for a yes vote in a Welsh referendum to devolve powers to Wales, and I think I am entitled to make a similar slip of the tongue. Of course I am talking not about hundreds of thousands of people—it would have been if the scheme had gone on a few months longer—but thousands, and 15,000 is a significant number of people.
Those in possession of identity cards ought to be able to continue to use them as a legitimate form of identification, and to travel in Europe and access services. At the very least, they should receive a refund, or the Government should take up the suggestion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) and offer a discount off future purchases. The Government should be ashamed of themselves for even thinking that they could treat people with such off-hand arrogance, and they must look again at that aspect of the Bill.
The Opposition remain unconvinced by the Government’s arguments for scrapping ID cards. The money saved will not pay for 3,000 extra police officers, as the Lib Dems claimed. In the long term, the proposals will cost us more money, hamper the efforts of the police to tackle identity fraud, and weaken rather than defend civil liberties. Illegalising cards that have already been issued will penalise those who bought them in good faith, including pensioners and students. Scrapping second generation biometric passports will threaten our borders and encourage illegal immigration, because our passport technology will lag behind that of our European neighbours. I urge the Government to rethink this expensive, misguided and spiteful little Bill.
Constitution and Home Affairs
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs May
The Government and the Conservative party will take no lessons from Labour about being tough on crime. I remember that when I came into the House in 1997 the Labour Government had been elected on the slogan, “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.” What did we see? Criminal justice Act after criminal justice Act, new offence after new offence, and nothing to do with the causes of crime.
Alan Johnson
Will the Home Secretary please confirm—now she has seen the statistics, now there can be no ambiguity about it—that crime has gone down by 41 per cent. since 1997? Violent crime is down, burglary is down, theft is down, domestic violence is down, murder rates are down. Will she confirm that that is the case?
Mrs May
I was rather amused by the right hon. Gentleman’s reference— [Hon. Members: “Yes or no!”] I was rather amused by his reference to the fact that, as an incoming Home Secretary, I was inheriting the best legacy that had been left. I have to say to him that, of course, figures produced by the House of Commons Library have shown that it is wrong to say that violent crime has gone down. It has not. It has gone up. The Home Secretary who left a good legacy to his successor was in fact the former Member of Parliament for Folkestone and Hythe, the right hon. Michael Howard, under whom crime did indeed go down.
A number of hon. Members have referred to the Identity Documents Bill. As I am sure every Member of the House is aware, the new Government have made a commitment—
Cumbrian Shooting Incident
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Alan Johnson(14 years, 5 months 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 shootings that took place yesterday in Cumbria. My right hon. and noble Friend Baroness Neville-Jones will make this statement in the other place.
I know that the whole House will want to join me in sending our heartfelt condolences to everybody touched by yesterday’s tragic events. In particular, our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of those who were so senselessly killed and injured in the shootings. We also send our thoughts to the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed), who is in Cumbria today, in his constituency. He represents communities that have been touched by tragedy too many times in recent months—but they are strong communities and I know they will bear these sad events with dignity and fortitude.
I would also like to pay tribute to the police and emergency services. In my short time as Home Secretary I have been struck by the bravery, professionalism and sense of duty that police officers demonstrate every single day. Yesterday, the men and women of Cumbria constabulary—aided by the civil nuclear constabulary, neighbouring police forces and the other emergency services—showed these qualities in abundance. They have the support and admiration of the whole House as they go about rebuilding the lives of the people of Cumbria.
I spoke yesterday to Chief Constable Craig Mackey, and we talked again this morning. He has told me that his force is now conducting a full and thorough investigation to find out exactly what happened, how and why. More than 100 detectives have been assigned to the task. Their investigation will look into Derrick Bird’s history, his access to firearms and the motivations for his actions.
As I said yesterday, while the police investigation is ongoing, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on any details beyond what has been released by Cumbria constabulary, but I would like to tell the House what I can.
Twelve people were killed yesterday, in addition to Derrick Bird. There were 11 casualties who were being or have been treated in hospitals in Whitehaven, Carlisle and Newcastle. Of those, four are stable, four are comfortable and three have been discharged. The police are confirming the identity of those who died, and names are being released by Cumbria constabulary as and when formal identification is confirmed and immediate family have been informed. More than 30 family liaison officers have been working throughout the night to identify formally the 12 people who were killed and notify their relatives. The police investigation is being led by a major incident group from the police headquarters in Penrith, and there are 30 different crime scenes.
Derrick Bird’s body was located in woodland near Boot at around 1.40 pm yesterday. No shots were fired by police officers. At this stage, the police believe that he took his own life. Two weapons were recovered by police and are being examined by forensic experts. They are a shotgun and a .22 inch rifle fitted with a telescopic sight. Derrick Bird was a licensed firearms holder. He had held a shotgun licence since 1995 and a firearms licence for a .22 inch rifle since 2007. I can now tell the House that the police have confirmed to me that his licences covered the firearms seized yesterday.
I will visit Cumbria tomorrow, together with the Prime Minister, so that I can meet Chief Constable Mackey and other senior officers in person and make sure that they have all the support that they need to complete their important work. I can also announce today that I will, if necessary, provide additional funding for Cumbria constabulary through the police special grant facility.
I spoke this morning to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who has asked his Department’s emergencies management team to contact the local authorities involved to see what support and assistance they need. The Minister with responsibility for civil society, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), will talk to charities working in Cumbria and is looking at ways to provide them with extra support at a time when their work will be vital in helping the community to recover.
Undoubtedly, yesterday’s killings will prompt a debate about our country’s gun laws. That is understandable and, indeed, right and proper, but it would be wrong to react before we know the full facts. Today we must remember the innocent people who were taken from us as they went about their lives. Then we must allow the police time to complete their investigations. When the police have reported, the Government will enter into, and lead, that debate. We will engage with all interested parties and consider all the options, and we will make sure that hon. Members have the opportunity to contribute. I will talk to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House about the best way to ensure that Members have such an opportunity before the summer recess.
Mass killings such as those that we saw yesterday are fortunately extremely rare in our country, but that does not make them any less painful, and it does not mean that we should not do everything that we can to stop them happening again, so where there are lessons to be learned, we will learn them, and where there are changes to be made, we will make them. But for now, let us wish the injured victims a speedy recovery, remember the 12 innocent lives that were taken, and pray for the families and friends left behind.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
It seems perverse to welcome the Home Secretary to her first outing at the Dispatch Box, given the awful and tragic circumstances that have led to this unscheduled appearance, but we wish her well in her demanding job, and I thank her for providing me with a copy of her statement in advance. I join her in sending condolences to the families and friends of those killed yesterday, and we send our heartfelt hope that those who have been wounded recover from their injuries. As she says, the police and the emergency services have performed magnificently, and on behalf of those on the Labour Benches, I, too, pay tribute to the dedication and skill of those involved.
I appreciate that the Home Secretary’s ability to answer questions at this stage will be limited, given the ongoing police inquiries, so I will limit my remarks to a few areas on which I believe it may be fruitful to concentrate attention. As the Home Secretary said, my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) is quite rightly with his constituents and cannot be with us in the House. I spoke to him yesterday and again this morning, and he makes the point that while we should not rush to change firearm laws, we should at least review them in the light of this case. Does the Home Secretary agree?
In particular, we may need to focus on the question of follow-up checks. Does the Home Secretary think that they are adequate, and does she agree that there may be a need for a greater role for GPs and the NHS? She will know that while there is a role for the applicant’s family doctor before a firearms certificate is issued, there seems to be little involvement thereafter to ensure that the certificate holder’s mental health, in particular, is not deteriorating.
Cumbria constabulary is, I know, an excellent force achieving excellent results. I am sure that it will be examining the whole question of response times and whether there was anything more that it could have done in the dreadful circumstances with which it was presented yesterday. As the Home Secretary says, such incidents are thankfully rare, but she will know that since the Mumbai massacre, our counter-terrorism capability has put in place strategies to deal with such an eventuality. Is she happy that the expertise and knowledge being assembled in this area is being disseminated across all forces, so that it can apply equally in a non-terrorist related incident, which is what the incident in west Cumbria appears to be? Does she think that a small, rural force such as Cumbria is properly equipped to deal with events that are more often predicted to happen in urban areas?
I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister’s comments yesterday about doing anything that he could to help Cumbria police, who have had to deal with a series of tragic events. The House will recall the death of PC Bill Barker last year in the dreadful floods that badly hit the area. I am pleased to hear about the help that the Home Secretary will provide through the special grant facility; that is indeed good news. Presumably, she is confident that it will cover all that Cumbria police need for the ongoing investigations, and indeed what they may need for counselling for those officers directly affected.
The Prime Minister also rightly praised the work of the NHS, and in particular West Cumberland hospital. My hon. Friends the Members for Copeland and for Workington (Tony Cunningham) have today written to the Secretary of State for Health—who, I am pleased to see, is present—about the uncertainty over future funding for that hospital. That needs to be resolved quickly; the hospital’s work is difficult enough at this time without those continuing problems.
Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland has asked me to express his thanks, on behalf of the community that he represents, for all the expressions of support that he has received from across the House. These are dark times for a strong and close-knit community, renowned for the beauty of its surroundings and the warmth and friendliness of its people. They will recover from these recent tragedies, but the help and support of everyone in this House and of those whom we represent will be essential to that process. The Home Secretary can certainly be assured of our support as she seeks to find answers to the questions raised by these tragic events.