Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

  Jadon Sancho, Marcus Rashford and Bukayo Saka are incredible players and part of an incredible team that has made us all proud to be English, but, while they are the best of us, they have endured vile racism from the worst of us. On their Instagram profiles right now, there is still vile racist abuse, which has been up there for 15 or 16 hours or more, visible to everyone, including to children and young people who are there to support their heroes. I have spoken to Instagram this afternoon to urge it to take much stronger action. Has the Home Secretary done so, and, if not, will she do so and now speak to the social media companies to urge them to take this action? Will she also take the opportunity to condemn those who stood up in our stadiums and booed our brave players for taking a stand against racism and call on them to show solidarity instead?

[Priti Patel]

First and foremost, as I have said already, there are no words to describe the appalling acts that have taken place. [Interruption.] Would the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) like to intervene? If she would be prepared to listen, she will hear that everything related to racism and hatred both across society and involving any individual is completely unacceptable. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) is right to point to Instagram, but all social media platforms, not just Instagram, are culpable. They are all responsible and it is right that we all take action against them. As I have already said, we in the Home Office are absolutely on top of those organisations. Of course, legislation is the way that we will go forward on this, but such acts are simply unacceptable. This matter will take determined effort by everyone. There is no place for booing. Individuals have a right to express themselves in whichever way—we live in a free country, and thank God we do—when it comes to tackling hatred, violence and racism. The fact of the matter right now is that what we saw overnight was completely unacceptable. It is right, both from a policing perspective and when it comes to social media companies, that there is no place to hide and that action is taken.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Court Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

I thank my hon. Friend, because had I had five minutes in which to speak and that was exactly the case I was going to make. What he says was proven in our inquiry. Sadly, the time allowed today permits me to give only one example of concern on these new public order powers. Clause 55 provides powers to deal with non-violent serious disruption. First, that should be stated in the Bill, not in secondary legislation. Furthermore, I am concerned that it will provide excessive powers to prevent non-violent disruption to business, in circumstances where the business concerned may not be the focus of the protest. Again, this shifts the ground towards making a presumption of illegality. In practice, working out to what extent a business can be disrupted will only make the job of the police tougher, not easier, and it will certainly make it more political in nature.

For instance, if protest that has until now been kept away from residential areas will also be removed from business areas, where does it go? Presumably, it will go to a place where it cannot be heard, but, as has been said, noise and disruption are integral to protest. As many commentators have pointed out, in practice, the police will increasingly be put under pressure from businesses to impose conditions, and they will be put under pressure from demonstrators, who will then go ahead in any case, as they did at Clapham common and in Bristol.

This clause could well undermine public confidence in the police and reduce public safety. That is why our inquiry recommended the production of guidance to help both police and organisers to understand their respective powers and obligations—that is what is in new clause 85. More fundamentally, we also need to question whether it is still appropriate that police both condition protest and enforce their own conditions. To that end, I am drawn to having something like the Northern Ireland Parades Commission, which has power to place conditions on public processions, thus leaving the police with the enforcement role that they know how to do so well.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Home Affairs Committee has considered many different aspects of this Bill and these amendments at different times and in different ways, but given the time I will focus on just a small number of areas.

I particularly want to address new clause 69, in my name. Its purpose is to get justice for victims of domestic abuse who are being timed out and take action against perpetrators who are being let off the hook. Many domestic abuse cases are prosecuted as common assault in a magistrates court where police and prosecutors may say that the threshold for the Crown court is not met. In these cases, there is a time limit on justice—most victims are not aware of this—of six months from the offence, even though in domestic abuse cases it may take many months, for good reason, for victims to feel able to go to the police. They may still be in an abusive relationship. They may be afraid. They may not be safe. They may have children and be worried about how to leave or where they will go. It may take them time to get the support that they feel they need to be able to talk to the police. There are so many reasons that are, in themselves, the essence of continuing crimes of domestic abuse. That is why the new clause increases the time limit so that there can be six months for the police to deal with the case from the point of reporting, rather than from the point of the offence itself.

Somebody I have talked to told me her story. She was assaulted while she was pregnant. She went to A&E but did not, at that stage, want to talk about what had happened. However, when the abuse continued after the baby was born, she left and gathered her courage to talk to the police, who started an investigation but before long told her that she had passed a time limit she never even knew existed and her ex would not be charged. There are many more such victims of domestic abuse who, for serious and obvious reasons, do not report it immediately, and the perpetrators go on to be free to commit more crimes.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the right hon. Lady for having raised her constituent’s case with me in previous meetings. We take this issue very seriously, and I can assure the House that we will return with a proposal at a later stage. I certainly do not rule out an amendment, if appropriate, in the Lords. This must be looked into and I am extremely grateful to her for raising it.

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome the Minister’s statement. I am keen to pursue this and to work with her on it, as we have cross-party support. I really do want to see progress and I hope we can achieve that in the House of Lords.

This is, once again, about the blind spot where the legal system does not recognise the reality of violence against women and girls. There may be many reasons why a six-month time limit is appropriate for summary offences about altercations between acquaintances in the pub or tussles in the street, but it is not appropriate for domestic abuse—for the experience of violence against women and girls that is, too often, being missed out in the criminal justice system, where thousands of cases a year may be affected in this way. We have support for changes in this area from the domestic abuse commissioner of Refuge, Women’s Aid, the Centre for Women’s Justice, and West Yorkshire police.

On new clause 31, the Select Committee has conducted a detailed inquiry into violent abuse against shop workers. We have recommended a stand-alone offence because we need to strengthen the focus on this escalating offence and to have the police take it much more seriously. It is simply unacceptable that shop workers should face this escalating abuse over very many years. The new offence of assault against emergency workers has made a difference and increased prosecutions, and we need to increase prosecutions in other areas as well.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way? [Interruption.]

[Yvette Cooper]

No, because I am very conscious of Madam Deputy Speaker’s coughing to remind me not to.

I also hope that the Government will accept amendments that provide greater safeguards for freedom to peacefully protest and strengthen the law on kerb-crawling, but I particularly hope that we will continue to work on much stronger protection for victims of domestic abuse and those who suffer from violence against women and girls.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I have five new clauses in this group. New clause 64 would ensure more timeliness of investigations of complaints against police officers and allegations of police misconduct. On new clause 70, at the moment a police officer has the power to tell somebody to stop their car, but not to shut off the engine. My new clause 70 would give them the power to shut off the engine as well, because not having the power to do that can put police officers in a dangerous position, and this would deal with that anomaly. New clause 71 would remove the word “insulting” from section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986. People should not be guilty of an offence for using insulting language, in my opinion. It would still keep threatening and abusive language as an offence, but the word “insulting” really should have no place in the law. New clause 72 would criminalise commercial squatting and squatting on land. The Bill addresses the issue of trespassers on land, but misses the opportunity to expand the current residential squatting offence to cover village halls, churches, pubs and so on, and is much needed in many local communities. New clause 84 would mean that non-crime hate incidents could not be recorded on the national police database. The police should be focusing their efforts on tackling crime, not non-crime incidents. I hope, by the way, that the Government will respond in detail with why they are not accepting my entirely reasonable new clauses, because I would be very interested to know why they cannot accept them.

I also want to talk about new clauses 31 and 90. As somebody who spent 12 years working for Asda before I became an MP, I feel very strongly about the issue of violence against shop workers. These are often very low-paid people who are expected by the Government, in effect, to enforce the law—whether it is on age restrictions or, in recent times, about covid rules and restrictions, face mask wearing and social distancing—and the only thanks that many of them have had for keeping the nation fed during the covid restrictions, and for going out to work every single day to make sure that happened, was to see the number of assaults on them double over that period. It is an absolute disgrace.

The Government say that the courts can already use this as an aggravating factor if necessary, but the law to charge people with assaulting an emergency worker was introduced even though that could already be used as an aggravating factor if necessary. New clause 90 is better because it covers not just shop workers, but all people who are on the frontline and providing a service to the public. I hope the other parties will reflect on that and support new clause 90.

EU Settlement Scheme

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

In terms of the position we take as the Government today, anyone who is entitled to and deserves status under the EUSS will be granted it—there is no limit, there is no target and there are no quotas. It is interesting to note the number of applications we have received versus the impact assessments done back in 2004, but we have a new points-based system that allows us to better decide and better set in place what type of positions we want to have in terms of migration and ultimately judges people by their skills and talents and what they have to offer the UK, rather than fundamentally by what passport they hold.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Minister said that help was available on the phone. As of today, it still is not for most people; the phone line simply says, “There is no space left on the call queue”, because there are obviously not enough people able to respond, and I understand that was the case last week and the week before as well. May I just press him on the situation for children who may not have applied at this point? The guidance states:

“Where a parent, guardian or Local Authority has failed by the relevant deadline to apply…on behalf of a child…that will normally constitute reasonable grounds for the child…to make a late application”.

Clearly that is welcome, but why does it not say that that will always constitute reasonable grounds for a late application? For those children, it is clearly not their fault; somebody else should have applied for them. Will he strengthen that guidance and reassure them and say that will always be reasonable grounds?

[Kevin Foster]

I appreciate the question and how the right hon. Member has put it. My understanding is that we would adopt the approach that if it was someone who was under 18 or who was lacking mental capacity and was over 18—for example, power of attorney was in place and someone else should have made the application—we would accept that as reasonable grounds for a late application being made. I make it clear, as I have said before, that the guidance is non-exhaustive. People do not have to meet one of the many reasons listed; we will always look at the individual’s circumstances to see whether they had reasonable grounds. I am happy to pick up the point concerned, because our general principle is that if someone else should have made the application, whether due to someone’s age or mental capability, or for example because there is a deputyship in place or they were in the care of a local authority, we would usually see that almost certainly as reasonable grounds for a late application.

Daniel Morgan Independent Panel Report

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. The majority of our police officers will be devastated by the report and the implications for policing. The report is devastating in many ways. Our frontline police officers whom we meet every single day are incredible public servants who put the safety of our citizens and our country front and centre of their conduct every day. It is worth reminding the House that these are men and women who often run into danger to keep us safe and to protect us. My hon. Friend is right to say that I will return to the House with an update after looking at the recommendations, but equally importantly, this is about how we hold institutions of the state to account in order to stamp out some of the corrosive practices that have been outlined in the three volumes of this independent panel’s report. That is something that we are determined to do.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

This is a deeply damning and disturbing report, and all of us will need to consider its findings and recommendations. I welcome the Home Secretary’s commitment to come back with a further response and proposals. The corruption has led in this case to a lack of justice for Daniel Morgan and his family, and it undermines the valued work of so many police officers with integrity across the country. However, this has come to light only because of the determination of the family and the persistence of the independent panel. Most troubling of all is the failure of senior police leadership and of policing institutions to uncover what happened and the scale of the problem over so many years. Can the Home Secretary tell the House why she thinks there has been this failure to uncover that over so many years, and whether she will come forward with specific proposals on the duty of candour that has been recommended by the independent panel?

[Priti Patel]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her question. It is important that we spend some time considering the full report and its recommendations. Given that it has taken eight years to be published, we need to spend a great deal of time understanding the processes and why there was such slowness in sharing information, papers and evidence bases. That is why it is important that I hold the commissioner to account and ask the right questions, as I will do this afternoon. As I have said, it is important that, first of all, we seek answers to many outstanding questions, and that we question and find out what has happened in policing conduct over three decades.

On the right hon. Lady’s point about duty of candour, there is absolutely more to do here. When we look at accountability, institutions of the state and public conduct, we cannot shy away from asking some difficult questions, and reforming how we work and how our institutions are publicly held to account.

Napier Barracks Asylum Accommodation

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on the judicial review judgment on Napier barracks contingency asylum accommodation.

Happy birthday, Mr Speaker.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Chris Philp)]

Happy birthday from me as well, Mr Speaker. I made my maiden speech on your birthday when you were in the Chair as Deputy Speaker six years ago.

I am answering this question on behalf of the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), who has sadly suffered a family bereavement and therefore cannot be here this morning.

Covid-19 has had a major and unprecedented impact on the asylum system. We make absolutely no apologies for doing everything in our power to provide shelter to those in need during these exceptional times.

Between March and October last year, nearly 12,000 extra people needed to be housed as a result of the pandemic, nearly 10,000 of whom ended up in hotels, at huge public expense. Every accommodation option had to be considered.

Those accommodated at Napier barracks are catered with three nutritious meals per day, with options for special dietary or religious requirements. There is a recreational building with a library. Prayer rooms are available and scheduled activities now include yoga, English conversation and art. There is a nurse on site and access to a GP. All asylum seekers housed at Napier have access to a 24/7 advice service, provided for the Home Office by Migrant Help.

Napier barracks has been happily used for many years by Army and police personnel. The army itself has continued to use barrack accommodation around the country during the pandemic, when needed. While we are disappointed by some of the judgment, the High Court found in the Home Office’s favour in a number of areas. It rejected the claim that conditions at Napier amounted to “inhuman or degrading treatment.” The judge declined to rule that dormitories or barrack accommodation could never provide “adequate accommodation” for asylum seekers, and the judge rejected the claim that the expectation that residents would be back on site by 10pm amounted to a curfew or unlawful imprisonment.

Furthermore, the judgment was based on conditions in the past, before several significant improvements. These include a stronger cleaning regime, reopening of communal areas with staggered access times, limiting the period of residency and using lateral flow tests three times a week. The overall capacity of the site has also been reduced. At all stages, the Home Office believed it was taking reasonable steps to respond to Public Health England suggestions on public health, where possible.

We have published the suitability criteria that we use for assessing who is suitable to be accommodated at Napier. If it becomes apparent that someone is resident but unsuitable, a transfer is then arranged.

Through our new plans for immigration and the upcoming sovereign borders Bill, this Government are taking action to increase the fairness and efficiency of our asylum system but also to fight illegal and unnecessary migration, such as that by small boats coming across the English Channel. I hope Members will support that Bill when it comes forward, as it is sorely needed to support reform of the system.

[Yvette Cooper]

In January, there was a major covid outbreak at the Home Office centre at Napier barracks. Some 200 people got covid, both residents and staff, impacting on the local community too. Last week’s damning court judgment said:

“The ‘bottom line’ is that the arrangements at the Barracks were contrary to the advice of PHE…The precautions which were taken were completely inadequate to prevent the spread of Covid-19 infection, and…the outbreak which occurred in mid-January 2021 was inevitable.”

The Home Office put people in dormitory blocks, with shared facilities for up to 28 people, at the height of a pandemic.

When the Home Affairs Committee asked the Home Secretary about this, she said that

“the use of the accommodation was all based on Public Health England advice, and…working in line with public health guidance…so we have been following guidance in every single way.”

The permanent secretary told the Committee

“we were following the guidance at every stage”.

But the court judgment and the evidence from PHE shows the opposite is true.

An internal Home Office email from 7 September records PHE advice as

“advice is that dormitories are not suitable”.

Public Health England told the Home Affairs Committee they

“don’t know how dormitories can be COVID compliant.”

They told the Home Office to follow youth hostel guidance—single rooms only and dormitories to be closed, except for household groups. They and Public Health Wales advised that if the Home Office were going ahead, they should at least limit the number of beds to six, keep people in bubbles with clear isolation facilities and have strong cleaning regimes. None of those things happened at Napier.

Instead, the independent inspectorate and local health officials found poor ventilation in dormitories, inadequate shared washing facilities, a deficient cleaning regime and no proper arrangements for self-isolation, with those testing positive and negative all kept in the same large dormitories. The Home Office was clearly not following public health advice in every way or at every stage. The Minister has an obligation to correct the record, so will he now admit that the Home Office did not follow public health advice and apologise for the inaccurate information given?

Will the Minister tell us what is happening now? Leading local health professionals have warned that the site still cannot be considered safe, and the Home Office’s own documents show local health professionals saying that another outbreak is inevitable. Charities have told me that there are still 12 to 14 people in a room and 28 people in shared blocks. Is that true, even after a damning inspectorate report and a damning court judgment, and even after 200 people caught covid on the site? The Home Office has a responsibility to keep people safe. Why has it been ignoring public health advice in the middle of a pandemic and putting public health at risk?

[Chris Philp]

First, the Select Committee Chair should take into account the context that pertained last September: 60,000 people needed to be accommodated in the middle of a pandemic—an increase of 12,000 people in just the space of a few months. With the best will in the world, it is operationally extremely difficult to accommodate 60,000 people in a pandemic—an extra 12,000 people at a matter of a few weeks or a few months’ notice.

The reality is that in the middle of a pandemic outbreaks in some places occur. We have had outbreaks in the hotels that have been used. In other parts of Government—in prisons and other places—there have been covid outbreaks. We have had covid going around Parliament as well. I have caught covid myself; in fact, 5 million people have tested positive for covid. The virus knows no boundaries, and it is very difficult to manage 60,000 people in those circumstances. The measures taken to combat covid on site included rigorous cleaning built into the contract, hand sanitisers, social distancing, personal cleaning equipment provided to service users, isolating and cohorting arrangements. They have now been enhanced further, with more cleaning, staggered access to communal areas and, three times a week, lateral flow testing. We have also reduced the numbers currently on the site.

Public Health England wrote to the Select Committee Chair on 1 June. I have the letter in front of me. In the second paragraph, it says:

“PHE has been in a positive ongoing dialogue and working collaboratively with Home Office (HO) colleagues on a range of COVID-19 related issues since spring 2020.”

Moreover, public health guidance published on gov.uk on 15 December 2020, which she will be aware of, said that ideally accommodation providers would

“identify single-rooms with en suite bathroom facilities”.

That is difficult to do for 60,000 people. However, it then said that

“if single occupancy accommodation is not available”—

thus acknowledging that that will not be possible in all cases—

“accommodation where cohorting is possible should be provided”.

We have maintained a close dialogue with Public Health England. Where possible we have followed its guidelines, and a number of improvements have been made in recent months.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. When I asked the Home Secretary in February whether she followed public health advice when putting people in large dormitories in Napier barracks in the middle of a pandemic, she told our Committee that it was

“all based on Public Health England advice”

and that

“we have been following guidance in every single way”.

Last week, however, a damning court judgment said:

“The ‘bottom line’ is that the arrangements at the Barracks were contrary to the advice of PHE… The precautions which were taken were completely inadequate to prevent the spread of Covid”.

It stated that the outbreak was “inevitable”. Will the Home Secretary now correct the record and explain why she did not follow public health advice in the middle of a pandemic, thus putting people’s health and lives at risk?

[Priti Patel]

First, let me be very clear to this House that at every single stage I have been clear about the need to protect public health and to stop the spread of the virus, and that is in relation to Napier barracks, which the right hon. Lady is referring to. Of course we will study the judgment and, in the light of that, look at various measures we may need to bring in. However, the Department did work fully with Public Health England—I have maintained that, and I still maintain that point. When it comes to delivery and putting in place the wide range of covid-compliant measures that were in place—everyone in this House and across the country would expect that of the Home Office—we were absolutely dealing with the pandemic in the right way, working with PHE and other stakeholders. For the benefit of the House, let me say that that also included rigorous cleaning, hand sanitiser, social distancing and a range of healthcare provisions and welfare provisions that were put in place at Napier. So I come back to the point that at every stage I was clear about—

Criminal Justice Review: Response to Rape

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I had the pleasure of watching a talk that my hon. Friend gave last night to a think-tank about these issues, and she was very thoughtful and interesting on this subject. Across all crime types we see that specialism pays, both in apprehending the perpetrator, but also in getting a conviction. We must ensure that the police and CPS can develop those specialisms. All prosecutions are currently charged by specialist RASSO prosecutors, but a collective expertise must be a key mission for us. Alongside that, we must ensure that victims have specialist support, and expertise is key to that.

My hon. Friend is right to say that this is a particularly difficult, evidential situation, where often it is one word against another, and other circumstantial evidence may or may not lead to a conviction. I want to concentrate on the key area of recent reporting, and on encouraging people to report as soon as possible. As she will know, there is a short forensic window in such situations—normally 7 to 10 days—and there are sensitive forensic facilities where evidence can be gathered. We know that in such circumstances, the likelihood of conviction is much greater. For historical offenders it is even more difficult, which is why expertise is even more important.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Government know that rape prosecution and conviction rates have always been too low,

but they have plummeted over the last four years, dropping by 60% to 70%. Ministers were warned several years ago about the impact of cuts to specialist rape prosecutors and to specialist sexual violence teams in the police. Has the Minister done an assessment of what the reduction in some of those specialist policing teams has been, what the impact has been, and what additional capacity is now needed in those specialist teams, in both the CPS and the police, to turn this awful situation around?

[Kit Malthouse]

I thank the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee for her question, but it would be a mistake to point to one particular issue driving the drop. We know, for example, that the significant fall from 2016-17 was down to difficulties with disclosure that arose from particular cases, and the impact that that has had on both the police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

I think it is sometimes a mistake to give the impression that somehow a decision was made that this should happen. It was not. There has been a pattern of decline over a number of years. Part of the reason that we instituted the rape review, admittedly 24 months ago, was to try to diagnose exactly what has gone wrong—exactly why these cases are failing to get to court, why so many witnesses are falling out before they get to court, why we are seeing difficulties with disclosure, and what we can do to improve, for example, our operation of digital forensics, in terms of both capacity and capability. All that will be contained in the review. I understand people’s impatience; there is not much longer to wait now.

Daniel Morgan: Independent Panel Report

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Ways and Means resolution & Programme motion
Monday 24th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

Sadly, the hon. Gentleman asks me to speculate about a document that the Home Office has not yet received. We cannot publish the report until it has been received. If I may, I wish to correct one point that the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) also made in his contribution. The panel may well have conducted its own checks, and quite rightly so—it is bound to do so—but the Home Secretary, of course, has her own responsibilities that she cannot transfer to anyone else. That applies to every Home Secretary.

In relation to national security concerns, I hope Members will understand that the Home Secretary has access to information that very few people in this country have access to. She must discharge her duties in accordance with her wider responsibilities as Home Secretary. I underline again the fact that the Home Secretary, the Home Office and the Government want this report to be published. We want the review’s findings to be in the open so that some of the questions that have been posed over the years are answered. We hope there will be some sense of justice for those most closely related to Mr Morgan.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

The failure ever to prosecute anyone for the terrible murder of Daniel Morgan and the continued allegations in respect of police corruption and media collusion make this an immensely important report. I do not know whether the Minister understands that the way she is talking about the report—reviews by the Home Secretary and the Home Secretary having access to additional information she has to review the report against—serves only to increase distrust and unease in what is already, clearly, a distrustful process that should never have become so. To restore trust for the panel and, crucially, for the family, will the Minister commit that the report will be published before Parliament rises for the Whitsun recess, if the Home Office receives the report this week?

[Victoria Atkins]

The right hon. Lady sets out the seriousness of the situation, and I do appreciate that, as I hope was apparent from my earlier comments, but I make the point again that I cannot commit to a publication date if the Home Office has not yet received the report. Please, give us the report and we can then publish it.

Safe Streets for All

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am hugely grateful to you for not bringing in the four-minute limit straight away, otherwise I would have been gabbling particularly fast to get to my final points.

The purpose of the Queen’s Speech should be to help the country to recover from covid, to rebuild, to heal the scars, and to help people to get back on with their lives, building a fairer, stronger and safer country. I do not believe that this Queen’s Speech does that. For the Home Office, the particular priority is to make sure that we can come through the covid crisis in the first place, to reflect on the way in which the public health border measures simply have not worked in this crisis, and to look at what new framework we ought to have in future, so that lessons can be learned and that the same mistakes are not made again.

Looking back over the past 12 months, we had a period at the beginning of the crisis where for months on end there were no public health border measures in place at all and an estimated 10,000 people with covid came into the country, accelerating the pace and scale of the pandemic in a very damaging way. In summer, the mix of different controls in place still meant that there was a surge in autumn, because they simply did not work effectively. Now, despite all the huge amount of work that everyone has done supporting the vaccine programme and following restrictions, we have the deeply frustrating situation in which progress has slowed and been put at risk by the failure of the Government’s border measures to prevent the spread of the Indian variant across the country. Throughout all of this, we have seen a pattern. We have seen confusion over which Department is in charge of public health border measures. Is it the Department of Health and Social Care, the Home Office or the Department for Transport? It has been somebody different each time. We have also seen a lack of transparency. In particular, the Joint Biosecurity Centre has still not published any detailed assessments of India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh—the countries where red list decisions have been taken. We still do not know what data or evidence was drawn on to make those decisions, so all of us think that they were based on the timing of the Prime Minister’s trip to India. We need a new system that has proper transparency, proper accountability and proper clarity in place in order to make improvements for the future.

The Government have an opportunity in the Immigration Bill, which will be scrutinised by the Select Committee and in this place, to address public health border controls, and I urge them to do so. We cannot make the same mistakes again.

Let me briefly touch on some of the other Bills in the Queen’s Speech. We have had a full Second Reading debate on the Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill. I simply highlight that I hope to discuss further with the Home Secretary’s colleagues this week potential issues around the failure to have proper domestic abuse prosecutions under the common assault system. There is also a wider problem with the drop in the number of prosecutions. There has been a 30% drop in the number of prosecutions over the past five years at a time when recorded crime has gone up by 40%, which means that victims are not getting justice and that more criminals are getting away with it. I am really worried that, unless action is taken, there could be a crisis in the criminal justice system, because I do not see the measures being taken as part of this Bill to address the matter.

I welcome the possibility of the victims Bill. I hope that we will see that and be able to support it on a cross-party basis. The same is true of the online harms Bill. We have waited a long time for this Bill, so I urge the Home Secretary and her colleagues to get on with the legislation and accept that we will need to amend it. We will not get the perfect framework for regulating on online harms at the outset, but if we wait until we get that, we will be overtaken by events, with the scale of online extremism and online harms.

I am very worried about the voter ID Bill. Nearly half of women over 70 do not have a driving licence—I think those figures are higher in my constituency—and the additional hurdles that many of those women will face to be able to vote will not only make the whole system hugely discriminatory, but disadvantage people who have a right to vote and feel very strongly about it. Not since the suffrage have we seen the clock potentially being turned back on inequality in this way.

[Anthony Mangnall]

Does the right hon. Lady therefore disagree with the 2014 Electoral Commission report that suggests that we should have voter ID?

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[Yvette Cooper]

I am really concerned about voter ID—I am. I do not think that it is the right way forward, because it will disenfranchise people. The differential impact on older women has not been properly taken into account or considered. Women could end up having to produce ID in order to get a free ID card. Where will they get that ID from? From my constituency, they will have to travel all the way over to Wakefield—we are talking about older women over 70—to meet the electoral returning officer to try to get an ID card. All sorts of additional hurdles will be put in the way of their right to vote.

Finally, I am surprised to find myself in partial agreement with the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) and the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) over the planning Bill. There are concerns about taking power away from local communities.

I hope that the Government will come forward with proposals on social care, particularly on valuing social care workers who have been on the frontline of this crisis and who are, too often, undervalued and underpaid. To do something positive about those workers would be an important way to take forward the legacy of the covid crisis.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

A comprehensive programme of work is in place to deliver a step change in the protection of vulnerable women, and men, from domestic abuse perpetrators. First, we will update and strengthen the MAPPA statutory guidance so as to include sections on domestic abuse. That will ensure that all agencies involved take the necessary steps to identify offenders who are domestic abuse perpetrators whose risk requires active multi-agency management, and to put in place an action plan that reflects the risk. We will ensure that domestic abuse perpetrators captured under category 1 and category 2 are included in the threshold guidance being developed. That will assist relevant agencies in making decisions on the appropriate level of MAPPA management needed in individual cases.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Will the Minister clarify what she just said? At the moment, repeat domestic abuse cases and stalkers will often not be included in categories 1 or 2 because the offences are not treated as serious enough in the way those categories are listed. Category 3 currently involves a tiny number of people. Will the Minister include all repeat domestic abusers and high-harm stalkers—all of them—under MAPPA in future?

[Victoria Atkins]

As the right hon. Lady will know, category 1 perpetrators have to have committed a specified sexual offence under the legislation, and for category 2 they have to have been convicted of a violent offence and received a sentence of imprisonment for at least 12 months. If they are domestic abuse perpetrators, they will be included in the threshold guidance. This is very much about drawing out in the guidance the factors that local agencies should be concentrating on.

Although domestic abuse is already mentioned in section 6 of the guidance, we have listened to concerns that at local level the preponderance and patterns of behaviour are not necessarily being picked up in offenders in categories 1 and 2, as well as category 3. That is why, in discussions with Baroness Royall, we have been clear that we want to better capture those people under the existing framework. We will consult MAPPA responsible authorities on the draft revised guidance by the summer recess, and we will inform Parliament when the updated guidance is promulgated. Today, Baroness Williams of Trafford has written to Baroness Royall to confirm that past patterns of behaviours will be explicitly referred to in the guidance.

[Yvette Cooper]

There are countless serious repeat domestic abuse cases that are not sexual offences. There are also countless very serious repeat domestic abuse offences that do not pass the 12-month threshold. All the Minister is saying is that she is going to try to include little bits of lines about domestic abuse in categories 1 and 2, which we know will not include huge numbers of repeat domestic cases, so she has actually gone backwards on some of the things that Baroness Williams was saying.

[Victoria Atkins]

I do not accept that. The point is that category 3, as we have always said, is the flexible category. It is meant precisely to fit those cases that the hon. Lady has described. These offenders do not fit in category 1 or 2, but because they are considered to be dangerous offenders—they may, for example, have received a sentence of imprisonment of less than 12 months—they are in category 3. We want to join up that understanding in the guidance across all three categories.

We will consult with MAPPA authorities and will also invite views from across the House, but we have been working closely with Baroness Royall to try to address some of the issues that were rightly raised in the other place about past patterns of behaviour and so on. We give that undertaking today: we will look at that phrasing within the statutory guidance that is being drafted to help address some of the concerns in both Houses.

[Yvette Cooper]

Will the Minister give way?

[Victoria Atkins]

One more time, then I have to make progress.

[Yvette Cooper]

I am very grateful to the Minister, who is being very generous with her time. May I specifically ask about category 3? There are only around 300 offenders in that category, compared with the thousands or nearly tens of thousands of people that we are talking about. Will she undertake to include all convicted serial domestic abusers in category 3?

[Victoria Atkins]

The flexibility of category 3 means that that is already possible, if there has been a conviction. I gave the example on 15 April of criminal damage, such as if somebody kicks down a door. On the face of it, a criminal damage offence would not fit into category 1 or category 2. That is where the professional curiosity of professionals on the ground—police, probation and prison officers and so on—comes in. If someone has been convicted of that offence, he or she may not be in category 1 or category 2, but if those professionals believe that it is part of a pattern of past behaviour, on which Baroness Royall has rightly focused, that is how they will be put on to the system under MAPPA. We very much want the concerns that have been raised to be reflected in the guidance as well as the national framework.

I have already announced that we need to be sure that action is taken when there are indicators of escalating harm for those who are managed under the least intensive level of MAPPA—so, level 1. To that end, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service will issue a new policy framework setting out clear expectations for the management of all cases at MAPPA level 1 by the National Probation Service. This includes domestic abuse perpetrators. That will further help improve the quality of information sharing, the consistency and regularity of reviews, and the identification of cases where risk is increasing and additional risk management activity is required.

Thirdly, as I announced on 15 April, we are bringing in the new multi-agency public protection system, or MAPPS, which will be piloted from next year. All category 3 offenders will be on MAPPS, which will have much greater functionality than the violent offender and sex offender register, or ViSOR, which is the existing database. That will enable criminal justice agencies to share information in real time and improve their risk assessments and the management of MAPPA nominals, including domestic abuse perpetrators.

Fourthly, we are legislating in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to clarify the information sharing powers under MAPPA. For example, GPs and domestic abuse charities can very much be part of that data sharing. That is the intention of the clauses in the Bill, and I hope we will be able to persuade Opposition Members to support us on that.

Fifthly, we are committed to bringing forward a new statutory domestic abuse perpetrator strategy as part of our holistic domestic abuse strategy to be published later this year. Our revised amendment makes it clear that the strategy will address the risks associated with stalking. We will also include a perpetrator strand in our complementary violence against women and girls strategy, which will cover stalking that does not take place in a domestic abuse context.

Sixthly, we are investing new resources, with an additional £25 million committed this year, to tackle perpetrators’ behaviour and to stop the cycle of abuse. Finally, more broadly, I can assure right hon. and hon. Members that this Government are committed to supporting vulnerable victims. Having published a new victims code to guarantee victims’ rights and the level of support they can expect, we will consult over the summer on the victims’ law, which will enshrine those rights in law.

The other place has asked the Government to consider again these four issues. We will do so in the next hour. We have listened carefully to their lordships’ concerns and responded with a substantial new package of commitments, both to strengthen this groundbreaking Bill and to further our wider programme to protect and support victims of domestic abuse and their children and bring perpetrators to justice. It is time for the Bill to be enacted and implemented, for the sake of the 2.3 million adults and their children who are victims of domestic abuse each year. Let us agree to the Government amendments in lieu, let us pass this Bill, and let us help victims.

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Just this weekend, a woman in my constituency came to me, terrified of somebody who was stalking her—and, yet again, faced with police inaction. How will that change under the Minister’s proposals? It is not clear that it will. In the absence of that, let us go the extra mile and introduce all these amendments to ensure that the Domestic Abuse Bill will truly be something of which we can all be proud.

[Yvette Cooper]

I also welcome the progress that has been made on the Bill and the cross-party consensus that exists on many of the important measures, but I want to take this opportunity to pursue further the issues around stalking and repeat perpetrators of domestic abuse, and to discuss what more needs to be done to keep other victims safe from those whose violence escalates and who pose some of the greatest threats.

I welcome the Minister’s commitment now to a perpetrators strategy. It was one of the issues that we raised previously through these amendments, so it is very welcome. I hope that she or her colleagues in the other place will be able to give more clarity about how stalking will be included in the perpetrators strategy. The wording is slightly constrained, which I assume is partly about reflecting the scope of this particular legislation, but it would be helpful to have some clarification of the Government’s commitment to including stalking and repeat patterns of behaviour as part of the perpetrators strategy. I am still very concerned about lack of strong underpinnings to the commitment to take action against these most dangerous perpetrators whose abuse continues and escalates.

The Minister spoke about being able to change the interpretations of categories 1 and 2 to include domestic abuse among perpetrators already included in those categories. That is fine and it will be welcome in order to take account of their domestic abuse threats, but it will not include the thousands—if not tens of thousands—of repeat perpetrators of domestic abuse, stalkers and high-harm perpetrators who will not be included in either category 1 or 2. As a result, they will not appear on the register or be included in the MAPPA arrangements.

The Minister says that those people will, in the future, be included in category 3, but there would need to be a massive shift in the way category 3 currently operates—not a minor tweak to the guidance, not a few tweaks and changes, not a bit of adjustment here and there; we need a massive change. At the moment, there are only 330 people on that category 3 list. That is half the number there were 10 years ago, and we know that awareness of stalking and of repeat perpetrators of abuse has increased.

That 330 includes a whole load of other offences, not just domestic abuse or stalking. It is tiny in proportion not just to the more than 80,000 people who are already on the high-risk offenders register, but to the number of stalkers and repeat-convicted domestic abuse perpetrators who go through the courts every week and every month, but do not make it on to these registers so that a proper assessment can be made and proper action can be taken to prevent them from committing more crimes and putting more lives at risk.

That is what we seek reassurance from the Minister about. That is why we wanted this to be in legislation, not just tweaks to the guidance. We need legislation in order to deliver a substantial shift in the response from the police, from probation and from specialist agencies. We are just not doing enough. We have talked many times before about how two women a week lose their lives as a result of a partner or an ex. It was two women a week 10 years ago. Not enough has changed. Why is anything going to change now?

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

It seems like an age since I spoke on Second Reading, and I commend those involved in the massive amount of work that has been done on both sides of the House and in the Lords. I spoke at that time because, unfortunately, the rates in Bristol South are double the national average and the highest in the city. It is no coincidence that it also contains some of the most deprived areas of the country. That link between poverty and abuse, and particularly the impact on children, must be addressed. Although the Bill is welcome, it does not go far enough in some of those areas.

I shall speak briefly about Lords amendments 42D, 42E and 42F. As we have heard, we all agree on the outcome, but I defer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who all, while recognising the Minister’s personal commitment and intent, eloquently expressed concerns about how we will hold the Government to account on behalf of the women we all know and represent if legislation is not brought forward on these things.

I know from speaking to women who are expecting a more defined register and legislation that they do not really understand why serial abusers and perpetrators are not more easily registered and tracked. Those are stories that we all know come before us repeatedly. If those amendments are not accepted, I know that the Minister will continue to do this work, but it will be incumbent on her and her Government to prove to those women that these measures are remotely enough.

We all know that we need better action across a range of service providers. Again, that needs much greater support from the Government. Finally—I am conscious of time—I touched last year on the nature of domestic abuse among older women. That is often a much-neglected area, and it would be good to see changes to the Bill that reversed some of the perceptions about the abuse that older women face and made them feel more empowered to come forward, safe in the knowledge that their experiences will be justly dealt with too.

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[Victoria Atkins]

I thank hon. and right hon. Members across the House for the constructive tone they have maintained not just tonight but throughout. I am particularly moved by the comments the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has just made. He speaks of the constituents he meets in his office. He knows they are sitting next to their perpetrators and he tries to distract them. I am sure many of us can understand and sympathise with that. It is precisely those people we are trying to help with the Bill.

I will try to deal with some of the issues raised but I am very conscious of time, so forgive me if I am not able to. My noble Friend in the other place will have more time tomorrow and will try to deal with some of the points that will no doubt be raised then.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) asked questions about the code in respect of the firewall review. We are very much in listening mode. We have not yet drafted the code and will consider the consequences she raised. I draw her attention to the fact that in the new clause we have said we will consult the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and the Information Commissioner’s Office. I very much hope that the fact that we have thought about the point she makes about accountability and so on, and included it in the new clause, gives her some comfort.

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) for raising Clare’s law. We have not talked about it in the context of recent debates. The right to ask and the right to know is an incredibly important tool for victims and the police. We can spread the message across our constituencies that if someone is worried about a new relationship they can ask the police whether there is something they should know about their new relationship, or if the police are worried about a serial perpetrator and want to warn the new partner, then this facility exists. Again, this is why it is so important that the Bill is passed.

The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) rightly and understandably raised questions about our approach to the point on MAPPA. I know this is an issue to which she has given a great deal of attention and consideration during the passage of the Bill and previously. If I may, I just want to clarify something. I do not know whether there has been a misunderstanding in translation, but I am aware of my duties at the Dispatch Box. I think she said that I had said that category 3 will include all serial perpetrators in future. I hope I have not misquoted her. To clarify, categories 1 and 2 will include domestic abuse perpetrators by definition of the qualifying offences under categories 1 and 2.

We very much hope and expect that the updated guidance we are issuing as a result of the discussions on the Bill and the improvements we will make to data sharing, not just in terms of guidance and framework but also, importantly, through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, will see an increase in category 3 offenders. We want local agencies to be applying the system in the improved way we all want. Of course, domestic abuse protection orders will also include notification requirements. I just wanted to clarify that. Perhaps there has been a misunderstanding in translation, as it were, or in debate.

[Yvette Cooper]

I think the confusion is that I was asking whether it would be possible to include all repeat domestic abusers and high-harm stalkers in category 3. That is what we were trying to achieve. Can the Minister include all of them through the change to guidance to include them on category 3?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Lady for clarifying that. This is the nub of it: through the framework that already exists—improved guidance, the national framework that I described, and the wording in guidance and so on that has been discussed recently—we want those offenders whom local agencies judge to pose a risk to be assessed as such. They will either already have been automatically included in category 1 or 2, or assessed under category 3. That is the point of this—it is the professional curiosity that I talked about. We want this framework to work better, in addition to the work in MAPPS, which is being piloted next year.

I know that this is incredibly technical. I have spent the past three years trying to de-jargon—if that is a word—some of this very technical language so that we may all communicate with the victims whom we are desperately trying to help in our constituencies. This is one of those instances that is very technical. I have tried to de-jargon it as much as I can, but it is incredibly technical. We have to look to local agencies and professionals using their best endeavours to protect our constituents across the country.

The hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) asked the question—which I might have just answered—how we reassure women in her constituency that we are, first, acting with the best of intentions and, secondly, being held to account. I make this point, not just to us but to Members of another place: this is not the end of the road for our work on domestic abuse. We have been very clear that the Bill is a landmark one, but it is setting up a whole programme of work, locally through things such as our specialist services for people in safe accommodation, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and all the measures we have put into local family courts.

This programme of work will, I hope, outlast many of us and our time in this place. By virtue of that, I point the hon. Lady to things such as our announcement that we want to publish a VAWG—violence against women and girls—strategy later this summer, looking at some of the behaviours that we have discussed during the passage of the Bill. Later this year, we will publish a domestic abuse dedicated specialist national strategy to tackle abuse. The momentum that the Bill has created will be continued through both those strategies. This is very much the start of the journey as far as I and this Government are concerned. We very much look forward to listening to ideas and suggestions from across the House as we take through those strategies and other pieces of legislation.

To return to the people to whom the hon. Member for Strangford referred, those constituents whom he faces in his office to help—as we all do—I have talked before about my commitment to helping victims of domestic abuse. This is not just about those victims whom we are trying to help today, or in the future; for me, this is about the women, the victims, I could not help when I was working in the criminal courts at the very beginning of my career. In that day and age, it was all too inevitable that the victim would hand in her withdrawal statement, because the abuser had got to her before she had been able to give her evidence and to put her case forward. It is for those victims, as well as victims now and in the future, that this Bill is so critical. I very much hope that the Lords will help us to pass this piece of legislation as quickly as possible this week, so that we can start to help those victims as soon as possible.

Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 9B.