Angiolini Inquiry Report

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and James Cleverly

Thursday 29th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. When I talk about that cycle of confidence, women need to see that when these crimes are reported, they are investigated and the perpetrators are brought to justice. Only then will they feel confident in coming forward. These are serious offences; they are not trivial. She is right to say that not everyone who is a flasher, not everyone who has made unwanted and inappropriate sexual advances to women, goes on to become a rapist or a murderer. None the less, the more people who are dissuaded from that behaviour because of swift and professional criminal justice, the more people we can prevent from getting to those later stages. That is why this is so important. That is why that cultural change needs to be driven through the whole system. A number of the Angiolini recommendations are for Departments other than the Home Office and for public bodies outside Government—all of us have to take this incredibly seriously. This is a whole of society approach, and that will remain the fundamental philosophy that I use to underpin the work of the Home Office in this area.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I associate myself with the comments for the Everard family and with Lady Elish Angiolini. Her report today is a continuation of her reports that have highlighted failures in our criminal justice system.

In the Home Secretary’s statement, I noticed mention of funding for the National Police Chiefs’ Council for the flagging of police officers in the vetting system. My own experience in the police service is that IT system improvements take a long time and are complex, so I suppose my first question for him is: what timescales do we have in mind for those improvements? Secondly, what engagement is happening with Police Scotland, because police officers transfer to forces in and outwith the UK? Finally, if today a serving police officer were found in a concerning situation that requires input into the intelligence system and they do not identify themselves as a police officer, are we confident that they would be dealt with accordingly?

[James Cleverly]

The hon. Lady makes a number of points about the implementation of the changes that we are making. I cannot give precise timescales at the moment, because this piece of work is ongoing and recently initiated, but my desire is for these things to happen as quickly as possible. She is absolutely right that IT and systems changes are not instant, and I am impatient to get improvement, which is why I keep saying that we are not waiting for these things to go forward. They are amplifiers and accelerators of what should be a fundamental change that we are looking to drive through immediately. The earliest conversations that I had when appointed as Home Secretary were on this issue with the College of Policing and with Lady Elish herself. One of those first meetings I had on my appointment was with Lady Elish about this report and the work that we could do to get ahead of the findings that she has put forward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and James Cleverly

Monday 15th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

15. What steps he is taking to reduce the backlog of asylum applications.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Cleverly)]

Last year we cleared the equivalent of 90,000 legacy claims and processed a total of more than 112,000 claims—the largest volume in two decades. The total asylum backlog is now at its lowest point since December 2022. The improvement of processes continues, and we will continue to review and improve them to accelerate the decision making from hereon in.

[James Cleverly]

My hon. Friend made an important link between the speed of asylum processing and the need for asylum accommodation in various forms, including hotels. We are moving away from using hotels as that type of accommodation, thus reducing the cost to the public purse, and we will maintain recruitment levels and improve processes so that the speed of processing that we are seeing now can be continued. Although I cannot make commitments about the specific hotels in my hon. Friend’s constituency, he should rest assured that we are seeking to drive down the number of hotels on which we rely.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

My constituent arrived in the UK 15 months ago and was interviewed, but has been waiting for more than a year to receive a final response. He is not alone: according to the Refugee Council, 33,085 asylum cases have been lodged in the last six months alone, putting ever more strain on a broken system. The Home Secretary said that the legacy backlog was going down, but what about those more recent cases? What is being done to deal with them?

[James Cleverly]

The improved processes and the increased number of Home Office officials working on this issue mean that not only the legacy cases but the current ones will be dealt with more quickly, which will reduce the need for asylum accommodation of all types. I cannot comment on individual cases because the circumstances are different in each one, but the hon. Lady should rest assured that the lessons we have learned about the increased speed of processing will benefit those who are already in the system. Of course, we are also determined to drive down the number of people who come here in the first place, reducing the pressure on our asylum processing system in doing so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and James Cleverly

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will wear that sanction designation as a badge of honour, because the point that he has made in standing up for the voice of the Iranian people who are being oppressed by their own regime is an important one. We take the protection of people here in the UK, whether British nationals or Iranians, incredibly seriously, and I will work with the Home Office to ensure that that protection is meaningful and strong.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

We know about the draconian restrictions faced by women and girls in Afghanistan. The new all-party parliamentary group for Afghan women and girls, which I co-chair, has written to the Foreign Secretary and looks forward to his response. Will he commit that in any conversations or negotiations that he has with the Taliban, the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan will be prioritised?

[James Cleverly]

The protection of women and girls remains an absolute foundation stone of Britain’s foreign policy. We look upon the images we see coming out of Afghanistan, with humiliation and abuse meted out against Afghan women, and take our response incredibly seriously. I assure her that that will always be a firm point when we raise things with the Afghanistan Government.

FCDO Staffing

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and James Cleverly

Thursday 16th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I thank my right hon. Friend and predecessor for that point. Diplomacy and the nature of international relations are changing. We have to invest in future-facing resources, which means things like IT, most obviously, as well as ensuring that we have a network of experts across a wide range of fields, including commerce. In response to his former point, we already see a very close integration in London and around our overseas network of trade, development, aid and diplomacy. I can only assume that that will continue to be the case when it comes to our people.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I thank the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), for securing this urgent question. It is more than a year since my urgent question when the merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development was announced. Despite what the Minister says about this being seamless, we are hearing lots of reports that it is not going well at all, and surely that must create a degree of inefficiencies. Although we have maintained the International Development Committee, we have seen further cuts to aid. In my urgent question last year, I sought an assurance that there would be no forced redundancies. The Minister may not be willing to give us a number or a percentage of cuts, but can he assure us that the review in the spring will not involve compulsory redundancies?

[James Cleverly]

As I have said a number of times, the decisions about the future structure, prioritisation and orientation of the Department will be made by Ministers in due course and the details will come out in the new year.

I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Lady’s point about the merger: some of the most successful ODA-donating countries have merged Foreign and Development Offices. Prior to the merger of the Departments, I was a Minister across both of them, and I have found it easier to work with one set of civil servants in one Department than I did working across two sets of civil servants across two Departments. Our commitment is to retain our standing as a top-tier donor country, in respect of not just the scale of what we give but the sophistication of how we do it, and that will be enhanced through the merged process.