Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 12th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

With the indulgence of the House, I intend to make some progress. I want to make sure that others have a full chance to speak in this debate.

The Bill sets out to Parliament and to the courts why Rwanda is safe for those relocated there. The treaty that I signed last week puts beyond legal doubt the safety of Rwanda. It provides the basis to end the merry-go-round of legal challenges that have second-guessed the will of Parliament and frustrated this policy, this House, and the desire of the British people.

Rwanda will introduce an even stronger end-to-end asylum system, stronger still than the one that underpins its relationship with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It will have a specialist asylum appeals tribunal—

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

I thank the Home Secretary for giving way. Since we last spoke in this House, it has been confirmed that the Government have given the Rwandan Government £240 million, with a further £50 million to come in April—all independently of anybody be being sent to Rwanda. Will he now confirm that the Government’s deal also means a further £50 million in 2025 and a further £50 million on top of that in 2026?

[James Cleverly]

The right hon. Lady is asking me to confirm figures that we have put in the public domain. Unsurprisingly, I am totally comfortable confirming what I have already said. Rwanda will introduce an even stronger—

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[James Cleverly]

The right hon. Lady has the chance to make a speech in just a few moments.

The system of specialist asylum tribunals to consider individual appeals against any refused claim within Rwanda will have one Rwandan and one other Commonwealth co-president and will be made up of judges from a mix of nationalities, selected by the co-president. To the point the right hon. Lady is making about the money spent by the British Government, as is the case with many countries around the world, the Government spend money capacity building with our international partners, and we have been working extensively with Rwanda to build capacity too.

The treaty makes clear that anyone relocated to Rwanda cannot be removed from Rwanda to another country except back to the United Kingdom. It is binding in international law and enhances the role of the independent monitoring committee, which will have the power to set its own priority areas for monitoring. The committee will have unfettered access to monitor the entire relocation process, from initial screening to relocation and settlement in Rwanda. Relocated individuals and legal representatives will be able to launch confidential complaints directly with that committee. It is that treaty and the accompanying evidence pack that enable the Government to conclude with confidence that Rwanda is safe. We will need to be certain that domestic and foreign courts will also respect the treaty, and that is why we have introduced this Bill.

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

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:

“this House, while affirming support for securing the UK’s borders, reforming the broken asylum system and ending dangerous small boat crossings, declines to give a Second Reading to the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill because the Bill will not work to tackle people smuggling gangs, end small boat crossings or achieve the core purposes of the Bill, will lead to substantial costs to the UK taxpayer every year whilst applying to less than one per cent of those who claim asylum in the UK, threatens the UK’s compliance with international law, further undermines the potential to establish security and returns agreements with other countries and does not prevent the return of relocated individuals who commit serious crimes in Rwanda back to the UK.”

I join the Home Secretary in expressing our sympathy for the family and friends of the asylum seeker who has apparently died on the Bibby Stockholm. I understand that the Home Secretary cannot say more about that at the moment.

This should be a debate about how we prevent lives being lost, about how we strengthen our border security, about how we stop dangerous boat crossings, and about how we fix the broken asylum system. Instead, we have just got total Tory chaos. What a fine mess this weak Prime Minister has got them all into, and got the country into as well. They are tearing lumps out of each other over a failing policy while letting the country down.

A Home Secretary has been sacked, an Immigration Minister has resigned, and the Tories have spent almost £300 million of taxpayers’ money on Rwanda without sending a single person. The Home Secretary seemed to confirm today that, in fact, it is £400 million without a single person being sent. More Home Secretaries have been sent to Rwanda than asylum seekers—that is about £100 million per trip. The climate Minister, the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), has been called back from the Dubai COP for the vote. Well, I guess the Government can say that at least one flight has taken off as a result of the legislation.

We have had the third Tory Home Secretary sent to Rwanda in two years, the third bilateral agreement with Rwanda in two years, and now the third Tory law on asylum and Rwanda in two years. And they are about to write their fourth cheque to Rwanda. It turns out that they set up a direct debit: hundreds of millions of pounds for a failing scheme that is only ever likely to cover a few hundred people—less than 1% of those claiming asylum last year—and has become a proxy for the deep civil wars in the Tory party.

In this carousel of Conservative chaos, we have the European Research Group, the Northern Research Group, the New Conservatives, the old Conservatives, the One Nation group, the implausibly named Conservative Growth Group, and if you thought that was an oxymoron, Mr Speaker, we also have the Conservative Common Sense Group. Seriously, there are so many fighting factions, but they all have one thing in common: they do not believe in the Bill.

The Prime Minister was forced into an emergency breakfast meeting this morning—less a smoked salmon offensive; more buttering up his MPs with bacon butties, and sides of briefing and backstabbing—promising his MPs amendments and then rowing back, telling them that he really wants to break international law but that the Rwandan Government will not let him. He is hiding behind the Kigali Administration because he is too weak to even defend his plan. Weak, weak, weak.

The Prime Minister says that his patience is wearing thin. Well, how do the Tories think the country feels when watching this chaos? He is hoping that his party will calm down over Christmas, but they all know who the Christmas turkey is, and he is sitting in No. 10.

[Mr Baron]

The Prime Minister has come up with a plan. He is committed to it. We have had assurances from the Dispatch Box that all steps will be taken to stay within international law. What is the official Opposition’s plan?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman hopes that his Prime Minister has a plan, but no Back Bencher on either side of the House seems to agree with it. We are clear that what we should be doing is using the hundreds of millions of pounds that the Government are wasting in cheques written to Rwanda for nothing—for a scheme that will send, at best, only a few hundred people—to strengthen our border security, go after the criminal gangs, and make sure that we clear the asylum backlog and save the taxpayer billions of pounds. [Interruption.] Actually, he has not. The Home Secretary likes to claim that he is doing that; he likes to claim that he is bringing down the number of people in hotels, but in fact that number has gone up to a record high of 56,000. Since the Prime Minister said he was going to end asylum hotel use, it has gone up by a further 10,000, because he is failing.

I welcome the new immigration Ministers to their posts, one of whom, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), has been an immigration Minister before. I think that during the time he was immigration Minister, net migration trebled and the number of boat crossings also trebled, but I am sure nobody will hold that against him. The Government have obviously appointed two immigration Ministers this time in case another one resigns because he thinks their policy is totally failing and too weak. In the words of the ex-immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), this new law will not work, “doesn’t do the job”, and is

“both legally and operationally fundamentally flawed.”

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the hon. Member if he can say whether he agrees with the previous immigration Minister or the current one.

[Paul Holmes]

I am grateful to the shadow Home Secretary for asking me questions; she overestimates my ability. Talking of Christmas turkeys, this morning the Leader of the Opposition gave an interview on Radio 4 that, typically, contained no policy whatsoever. Can she outline how she would reduce immigration and tackle the problems that she is castigating this Government for, given that everything she says she would do, the Government are already doing?

[Yvette Cooper]

The trouble is that they are not—they are just not. The scale of the Government’s operations to go after the criminal gangs is tiny. The £300 million that the Government have already committed to Rwanda is a third of the budget of the National Crime Agency. They are prepared to put that investment into Rwanda—into this tiny scheme that will affect only a couple hundred people—but are totally failing to invest sufficiently in tackling the criminal gangs, working with Europol and going after the supply chains. There are warehouses of boats across Europe that the European police forces are totally failing to go after, which our party has said we would go after. We would work with Europol and get new security arrangements in place, which again, the Government are failing to do.

Instead, we have the former Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman), who signed the last agreement and brought forward the last piece of legislation, saying that the Bill is fatally flawed and will not stop the boats. Yesterday we had Back Benchers saying that the Bill should have been pulled because it is partial and incomplete, and the Home Secretary—who privately called this whole thing “batshit”—is out to bat for it today, even though he knows it will not work.

This is the Tories’ asylum crisis. Five years ago, we did not have a major problem with dangerous boat crossings, but they let criminal gangs take hold along the channel. They failed to work with France at the beginning when they had the chance, and they let smugglers spread their tentacles along the coast, organising dangerous boat crossings that undermine border security and put lives at risk.

At the same time, the Tories let Home Office decision making collapse. They decided to downgrade the skills and experience of caseworkers, then shrugged their shoulders when productivity dropped. They failed to return people—they have let returns collapse, down by 50% compared with the last Labour Government. The next Labour Government, if we are elected, would set up a new major returns unit with, 1,000 additional staff to increase returns. Rather than the total number of returns collapsing and the Government failing to return people who have no right to be here, our party would introduce a new returns unit to make sure we have proper enforcement. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Just shouting at the shadow Home Secretary is not a good look. You should be listening to what she has to say.

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[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way on the last point?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will.

[Layla Moran]

I am extremely grateful. Is this not just a fig leaf for a completely incompetent Home Office? I have a constituent who has exhausted his leave to remain and wants to go back to Fiji. He applied to the voluntary returns service in September and gave his passport to the Home Office in December—that was in 2022. The local church is going to pay for his ticket, yet he still cannot return. If the Home Office cannot deal with cases like that, how can we trust it with anything else?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Member is totally right. I have now heard of a series of failed asylum cases in which people want to return to their home countries and have applied to the Home Office to be able to do so, and the Home Office has told them that they will have to wait six months because it is so incapable of getting a grip. In the case that the hon. Member has raised, somebody has been waiting for 12 months to be able to return to their home country. There has been a 50% drop in returns compared with the last Labour Government, because the Tories always go after gimmicks and they never get a grip. There are 40,000 people whose asylum applications have failed and who have not been returned, and 17,000 people the Government have just lost—they do not even know where they are. It was their policy to let the backlog soar and put 56,000 people in hotels. This is the Tories’ asylum crisis, and they are failing to fix it.

The Prime Minister has made this legislation—this policy—the Tories’ flagship. It is extortionately expensive, and it is failing. Ministers have repeatedly tried to hide the cost: just 10 days ago, the Home Secretary was trying to suggest that it was only £140 million. It has already cost twice that for nobody to be sent, under a scheme that Home Office officials have described as unenforceable and at high risk of fraud. Those hundreds of millions of pounds could now be £400 million, and I would like whichever immigration Minister winds up today’s debate to explain whether this is now, in fact, a £400 million plan. That is hundreds of millions of pounds that could have been spent on thousands more police to boost our border security and smash the criminal gangs. It could have been used to clear the backlog entirely, end hotel use and save us a further couple of billion pounds, or train 1,000 doctors or 4,500 nurses.

Of course, if the Government manage to send people to Rwanda, they will have to spend further money, probably around £200,000 per person—perhaps the Minister could also confirm that figure. That is more than twice as much as it costs here in the UK, so can the Government confirm that by the time they have finished, close to half a billion pounds will have been paid to Rwanda for just a few hundred people, around 1% of those arriving in the country? The Court of Appeal has said that there is only capacity in Rwanda for around 100 people; even the judge who agreed with the Government said that talk of thousands is “political hyperbole”. The asylum system in Rwanda is also limited: it has only processed an average of 100 people a year for the past three years, so at most, it will be a few hundred people. Some 56,000 people are in hotels, 100,000 applied for asylum last year and 160,000 are waiting in the backlog, so potentially less than 0.1% of those people will be covered by the scheme. It is no wonder that the permanent secretary said yesterday:

“We don’t have evidence of a deterrent effect”.

The Government are now on their third new law in two years. The Home Secretary said that the Bill means

“if you enter Britain illegally, you will be detained and swiftly removed…to a safe third country, such as Rwanda”—[Official Report, 7 March 2023; Vol. 729, c. 152.]—

except that was not the current Home Secretary, but his predecessor, talking about the last Bill: the Illegal Migration Act 2023, passed four months ago. The main section of that Act has not actually been enacted, because the Government know it will not work. The Home Secretary has also said that the Bill will

“deter illegal entry into the UK”—[Official Report, 24 March 2021; Vol. 691, c. 922.]

and that anyone who arrives illegally will be sent

“to the country they arrived from or a safe third country”,

but that also was not this Home Secretary or this Bill: it was his predecessor but four, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), when she introduced the main provisions of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, passed 18 months ago. The main section of that Act has been revoked because it made things worse. The first Act was largely revoked because it made things worse, and the second one is not yet in force because the Government know it will not work, so forgive us for not believing a single word about the Bill that is before us today. We have heard it all before.

When he responds to the debate, the immigration Minister should explain what is going to happen about clause 2 of the Illegal Migration Act, which requires the Home Secretary to remove everyone to Rwanda or elsewhere if they arrived after July. The Government have put that provision on hold, apparently until after Rwanda gets off the ground, but even if they do manage to do that quickly, more than 15,000 people will have arrived in the country on small boats since then, all of whom the Government have now promised to send to Rwanda. If Rwanda is only going to take a few hundred people a year, it is going to take the Government over 100 years to send those 15,000 people who have arrived since they passed the last law. It will take them 10 years to send everyone who has arrived in the last fortnight alone. In the meantime, while they focus on this gimmick, they are failing to get a grip and they are failing to bring down the backlog. Instead, we have people in asylum hotels at the taxpayers’ expense at the astronomical cost of £8 million a day.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I have listened with interest for almost 15 minutes to hear what the shadow Home Secretary’s solution is to this incredibly difficult problem. She rightly refers to the fact that we have asylum seekers in hotels at considerable cost, and to the considerable difficulty when it comes to their distribution to our local authorities for all of us as constituency MPs, but I have not heard a single word about recognising that the Government are coming up with a solution that, while it may not work completely, may have a deterrent effect and may be a welcome step in a series of steps to help reduce illegal immigration into our country. Does she not recognise that?

[Yvette Cooper]

Well, £400 million for a failing plan is a hell of a lot of money. What we need to do is clear the backlog, and Labour has set out a proposal for 1,000 new caseworkers to clear the backlog and for a new returns unit to make sure that, instead of this 50% collapse in returns, we actually return people who have no right to be here. Do that—clear the asylum backlog and end the asylum hotels—and that will save the taxpayer £2 billion. Instead of throwing away hundreds of millions of pounds, it will save the taxpayer billions of pounds.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to my former colleague on the Home Affairs Committee.

[Rehman Chishti]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady, and we did indeed work together on the Home Affairs Committee. I am a Kent Member of Parliament, and we need to make sure that we take firm and decisive action to deal with illegal migration. I am open-minded in looking at this Bill to see whether it delivers that. Does she agree—I tried to intervene on the Home Secretary on this point—that there are a number of people in the UK who have lost their asylum claims, yet are still in the UK? What are we going to do, and what is the Opposition’s plan to ensure that those people are removed, which would be a deterrent? I have not been given the numbers of how many of those who have lost all their claims have been removed in the last year, over the last two years or over the last three years, but if we want a deterrent, we need to look at that as well as at this Bill.

[Yvette Cooper]

I totally agree with the hon. Member. That is why I hope there will be cross-party support for a plan to have a major new returns unit to turn that around. We have 40,000 people here who have had their claim rejected and should be returned, and they are not being returned. There has been a 50% drop in returns under the Conservatives over the 13 years of the Conservative Government, and a further 17,000 people have just disappeared into the system altogether, where there should be proper enforcement. However, the Government are not taking action on any of those things. There is no grip on the system, so Labour would set up a major new returns unit, with 1,000 staff, to make sure that we have proper enforcement in place. The combination of that and the caseworkers will save the taxpayer £2 billion.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will make some progress first.

On the treaty and the Bill before us, the treaty says that numbers are limited by Rwandan capacity. The number of vulnerable refugees sent here, of course, is not limited. The treaty says Rwanda can terminate the deal at any time and does not have to take anybody. The treaty also says the UK will fund support for asylum seekers and people granted refugee status for five years. That includes accommodation and three meals a day for five years, which is more than here in the UK. It says that people cannot be sent anywhere else, but can be sent back to the UK, and the immigration Minister—or one of them at least—has confirmed that if someone commits a terrible crime in Rwanda, the Rwandan justice system does not have to deal with them, but can just send those criminals back to the UK. You could not make it up: we have trafficking and torture victims and Afghans who helped our armed forces and fled the Taliban sent to Rwanda, but convicted criminals sent back here.

The Bill before us is a total mess, which is why all sides of the Conservative party do not like it, even though most of them will still vote for it because they are in such a mess. Some of them want to stop all court challenges. Actually, I think some of them probably want to stop all courts, because they have long ripped up being the party of law and order or of the rule of law. Some of them want the UK to pull out of the European convention on human rights, no matter the consequences for the Good Friday agreement, the Windsor framework or the prospect of any future security or returns agreements with other countries. Then we have the really astonishing scene of the British Prime Minister claiming that somehow the Rwandan Government’s commitment to the ECHR is the reason why he cannot possibly breach it, and that they are keeping the British Prime Minister on the straight and narrow, even though the Rwandan Government were found by the British Supreme Court to be in breach of international law. This is kind of through the looking glass now.

Do the Rwandan Government suddenly care about the European convention on human rights, or did the Prime Minister ask them to say that they wanted the European convention on human rights to be complied with, because he was too weak to tell his Back Benchers that he actually thinks our great country should abide by the international laws that we helped to write and that we currently urge everyone else to follow?

[Sir Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

The shadow Home Secretary will understand the passion and anger that many of our constituents feel—in my own constituency, we have four hotels full of people waiting for their asylum determination—and they want this sorted out. The Government have come forward with a plan, and she is eloquently explaining her reservations about that plan and committing to cancel it. She is also explaining what she would do if she were charged with responsibility for this policy in the Home Office. We have 12 months until the country has to face a general election. What timeline would the right hon. Lady put on ending the boats if her policy was enacted, and will she give that date to the British people from the Dispatch Box today?

[Yvette Cooper]

I think the right hon. Member is just highlighting the failure of those on his Front Bench. All of us should want to stop these dangerous boat crossings. They are undermining border security and they are putting lives at risk. We should be seeking to smash the criminal gangs and we should be seeking to strengthen our border security. We should be seeking to return people who have no right to be here, and we should be seeking to fix the chaos in the asylum system. Most people want to see both strong border security and a fair, effective and properly controlled and managed asylum system, which we do not have at the moment. That means clearing the backlog, setting up a new returns unit and seeking to work with France and Albania. We actually agree with the Government on that and support the work the Government have done, but the work with France, Albania and other countries should be going much further so that we have European co-operation in place. All of us should be seeking to do that, instead of having this total chaos on a gimmick that is not about getting a grip.

[Sir Simon Clarke]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will make some progress, and then I will give way to the right hon. Member.

The problem is that, even as the Bill stands, it risks breaking international law, and that makes it harder to get further returns agreements and to get the further security co-operation that we need with our nearest neighbours. It is also why, if the One Nation group supports it, that puts its members in a pretty impossible position. Clause 1(5) says that a safe country is

“a country to which persons may be removed…in compliance with…international law”.

Clause 2(1) says:

“Every decision-maker must…treat…Rwanda as…safe”,

even if it is not. So even if Rwanda does what it did over the Israel-Rwanda deal and breaches international law and sends people back for refoulement, even if Rwanda introduces new policies to send people abroad, even if there is a coup in Rwanda, even if Rwanda fails to stop organised gangs moving people to the border, even if asylum seekers are shot at in Rwanda—all things that the Supreme Court found had happened in the past—and even if the treaty is designed in good faith, if it fails, the Government are still saying that British courts cannot consider the facts.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way. I did promise to give way to the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke), and I will come back to him in the moment.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

Is there a fundamental difference between the Government deeming Rwanda safe and the Labour Government, as they did in 2004, deeming a whole list of countries safe in precisely the same way and with precisely the same legislative technique?

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows that that is not the case, because what the Government have done is both to deem and to remove any capacity for the courts to consider the facts.

We can see how absurd even Government figures think this is. The Home Office’s legal guidance, published yesterday, quotes legal judgments. One says that

“the court should not shrink from applying the fiction created by the deeming provision”.

Another states:

“The statute says that you must imagine a certain state of affairs; it does not say that having done so, you must cause or permit your imagination to boggle when it comes to the inevitable corollaries”.

The mind does indeed boggle. The problem for the Home Secretary and the One Nation group is that, even as it stands, the Government are effectively admitting that they are creating legal fictions. They are saying that rather than following the facts, the courts will have to follow those fictions instead, for the sake of a tiny scheme that costs not just £300 million, but possibly £400 million. It also sets a precedent.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

rose—

[Sir Simon Clarke]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, as I said I would come back to him, and then I will come back to the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox).

[Sir Simon Clarke]

There are two points to correct in the right hon. Lady’s narrative about what Labour would do that the Government are not doing. The first is that the Government are already doing much of what she lists, and I can attest to that, having funded it in various different capacities. She also misses the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) made a moment ago. We are dealing in this instance with the consequences of large numbers of people coming to this country, not with the cause. Rwanda seeks to address the incentives driving this evil trade. It is only by getting Rwanda to work that we change the calculus not only for the people making the crossing, but for the people expediting it, who are the criminal gangs. Does the right hon. Lady not recognise that that is why this scheme is so important?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Before I call the right hon. Lady, I stress that when people make interventions, not only should they be fairly short, but having done so, it is important to stay for the rest of the speech. Some people have been wandering out, having made an intervention. Anyone who is thinking of making an intervention, please bear in mind that you then have to stay for the entirety of the speech.

[Yvette Cooper]

The problem for the right hon. Member is that he has a scheme that is likely now to cost £400 million and that is only likely to cover less than 1%, and perhaps less than 0.1%, of the people arriving in this country. That is why the permanent secretary has said that there is no evidence of a deterrent. We need the practical measures to take action to go after the criminal gangs and to work with our neighbours. He says that the Government are doing that already, so how come there has been a drop of 30% in the number of people convicted for people smuggling? If they are really going after the criminal gangs when we know that people smuggling across the channel has rocketed, how come convictions for people smuggling have plummeted by 30%? That is the evidence that the Government are failing to do the basics to tackle those practical things.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The right hon. Lady is making a powerful case that seeking to legislate by assertion that Rwanda is safe is as dangerous as it is ridiculous. Does she agree that those who claim that this is about parliamentary sovereignty, and that that is why this sinister attack is justified, are wrong, because Parliament can be meaningfully sovereign only within a functioning legal and constitutional system, which this Bill totally undermines? Without the courts being able to interpret law, the legal system does not work, and it undermines this place, too.

[Yvette Cooper]

We have constitutional roles for Parliament and the courts. It is right for Parliament to respond to court judgments, to adapt and to change policy, but this Bill instead puts at risk the compliance with international law that we need to be able to make further agreements.

I do not think that, in the end, all of this is about Rwanda; it is about the deep divides in the Conservative party. It is about their chaos. It is about the Prime Minister’s inability to show leadership. It is about the fact that they just want to tear lumps out of each other. They are creating chaos while letting the country down.

The former Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark, has said that the Government are now aiming for just

“one or two symbolic flights off before the next election with a handful of illegal migrants on them”.

That is not the same as stopping the boats, strengthening border security or fixing the asylum chaos.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way, because I know that the right hon. Member likes to think of himself as the leader of the Common Sense Group of Conservatives.

[Sir John Hayes]

The right hon. Lady is right; I am the very personification of common sense, as she has just acknowledged. The real divide is between those people, very largely on the Opposition Benches, who believe that international law trumps the supremacy of this place, and those who believe that the reason this place is supreme is that our legitimacy is derived from the people. For that reason, only a polity can make law. International treaties matter, but they do not matter as much when it comes to this kind of legislation and the people expressing their will through those they elect to speak for them.

[Yvette Cooper]

I say to the right hon. Gentleman that we are discussing this legislation not because of a European court, but because of a decision by a British court: the Supreme Court. It made a decision based on British laws. I know that there are Members on the Government Back Benches who want to make everything about the European courts, and that is the heart of their dilemma. They want to get rid of the European convention on human rights. The Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have all said that they do not and they will not. That is at the heart of the Conservatives’ divides and chaos. That is what their row is all about. It is not about having a workable solution to the serious problem of our border security being undermined, of dangerous boat crossings that are putting lives at risk and of criminal gangs whose profits have soared as a result of effectively being allowed to let rip along the channel, because the UK and France have failed to work together sufficiently to stop them.

[Marco Longhi]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will, and then I will have to conclude my remarks.

[Marco Longhi]

I will quote article 21 of the ECHR, which clearly the right hon. Lady likes to support in so many ways:

“The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government”.

I do not understand how the will of the British people is being expressed within the European convention on human rights and through European courts—perhaps she can explain.

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Member’s problem is with those on his Front Bench. His problem is with his own Home Secretary, his own Foreign Secretary and his own Prime Minister. He wants to make all of this about Europe, rather than about our having a proper border security plan, a proper plan to clear the backlog and a proper plan to fix the asylum chaos that the Tories have created.

Instead of wasting taxpayers’ money, instead of these performative rituals and instead of all the deeming, boggling and scheming, we should be trying to build cross-party consensus on what needs to be done. [Laughter.] The Tories cannot even build consensus within their own party, so I accept that that is particularly hard for them at the moment. We should be trying to build a cross-party consensus on what needs to be done to stop the boat crossings that are undermining border security and putting lives at risk.

We should be strengthening border security, smashing the criminal gangs that have spread their tentacles and going after the supply chains, instead of ignoring these warehouses and these lorryloads of boats crossing Europe unchallenged. We should be getting real-time security information, instead of carrying on with the ludicrous situation where we do not even know when suspected smuggler operatives are flying into our country. We should be getting prosecutions and convictions for the smuggler gangs and their vile trade. We should be clearing the backlog, not making it bigger, and ending asylum hotel use. We should be doing more of the things we support, such as the co-operation with France, the deal with Albania and getting more workable deals in place. We should be working together across this country and with other countries to stop dangerous boats, to smash the gangs, to strengthen our border security and, ultimately, to save lives. It is time to end all this chaos, time to ditch the gimmicks, and time for the Government to get a grip.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Tomlinson]

May I give the hon. Gentleman this commitment: I will continue to work with him on the points that he has raised? I need to be careful about legal advice, as a former Law Officer. What has been published is a Government legal position statement, and that is different from legal advice. He will understand the differences in relation to that position. He has heard what I have said, and I was grateful to him for welcoming the points I made in response to the specific concerns raised.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) mentioned the House of Lords Constitution Committee, which gave me flashbacks to my grilling by that illustrious Committee, when I was sitting alongside my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General in my former role as Solicitor General. We followed that very report mentioned by my hon. Friend.

Turning to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), and the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), I make the simple point that I cannot address each and every one of the points made by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North here. However, I know she is looking forward to asking me some specific questions tomorrow afternoon when I attend her Committee with my hon. Friend the Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery.

We then had from a former Law Officer-fest, as we had the pleasure of hearing from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox), my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who now chairs the Justice Committee, and from my illustrious predecessor, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland). I am pleased to say that I am now a former Law Officer as well. We therefore have a joint endeavour and interest in making sure that this legislation works.

I have mentioned my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham and her important point about Rwanda and the rather patronising tone sometimes raised by Opposition Members when it comes to our international partners who have signed up to an internationally binding legal treaty with this country.

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome the immigration Minister to his place. Is he aware that while he has been speaking the New Conservatives, the European Research Group, the Northern Research Group, the Conservative Growth Group and the Common Sense Group have all said that they cannot support the Bill and are going to abstain tonight? Does he accept that this looks like the Prime Minister’s breakfast meeting was a total failure? And does he accept that this is just complete civil war in the Conservative party?

[Michael Tomlinson]

The answer is: no, no and no. [Interruption.] I am here; I have been in the Chamber.

Turning to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Sir Conor Burns), I thank my constituency neighbour for his delivery of a powerful and compassionate speech, as he always gives. My right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) asked me to work with him, to be open-minded and to look at ways to make the Bill more effective. In contrast to my response to the previous intervention, my answer is: yes, yes and yes. He and I have worked together before and I commit to continuing to work again with him during the rest of the passage of this Bill.

UK-Rwanda Partnership

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of the statement.

There is total chaos in the Government and the Conservative party. These are the desperate dying days of a party ripping itself apart. It is clearly totally out of ideas and has lost any sense of leadership or direction. We have the Home Secretary making a statement, but there are rumours that the Immigration Minister has resigned. Where is he? Perhaps the Home Secretary could make that the first question he answers: does he still have an Immigration Minister in place? The Conservatives have open warfare on their Back Benches, the starting gun has been fired on the next leadership election and, once again, the whole country is paying the price for this chaos.

This is the third Home Secretary to go to Rwanda with a cheque book and come back waving a piece of paper making grand promises. This is the third piece of new Tory legislation on channel crossings in two years. Each time, they have told us that new laws would stop all the boat crossings and send everyone who arrived to another country, but they had to partially revoke the first law because it was making things worse and they have not implemented the second one because they know it will not work. Now, they are on their third new law. Forgive us for not believing that this one is going to solve anything, either.

The previous Home Secretary seems to agree with us, because she is already saying tonight that the Bill is “fatally flawed” and that it will not stop the boats. One side of the Conservative party is warning that it does not come close to meeting Suella’s test; the other side is appalled that the Home Secretary, who used to wander round the world promoting international law, just boasted in his statement about a new British Bill that tells the courts not just to ignore international law, but to ignore the facts. What kind of party have they become?

What of the view from No. 10? The Prime Minister has just met his Back Benchers, and the official briefing from that meeting says that he has told MPs that the Government have gone as far as possible, but Rwanda did not want to be part of anything that broke or disapplied international law. The statement from the Rwandan Government says:

“Without lawful behaviour by the UK, Rwanda would not be able to continue with the Migration and Economic Development Partnership.”

You could not make this up!

Our Supreme Court says that the Rwanda scheme is a problem because of evidence that Rwanda is not complying with international treaties on the treatment of asylum seekers, but the only thing stopping the British Government ignoring international law completely is the Rwandan Government. It is the Rwandan Government keeping us on the straight and narrow. The Prime Minister is too scared to defend a policy in its own terms and too scared to tell his Back Benchers what he really thinks—too scared to take a view. Instead, he is hiding behind President Kagame. Weak, weak, weak. He does not deserve to be running the country if he cannot even sort out the issues and the divisions on his flagship policy in his own party.

And all of this for what? For a scheme that will likely cover less than 1% of the people who arrive in this country to claim asylum and will cost hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. Will the Home Secretary tell us about the cost? In 2022, the UK taxpayer paid Rwanda £140 million, but the permanent secretary has said that there are additional payments each year. Will the Home Secretary tell us, on top of that £140 million, how much more has already been sent as an additional payment this year? Is there a secret commitment to make annual payments under the migration and economic development partnership even if no asylum seekers are sent to Rwanda? Will he confirm that the British taxpayer will also have to pay additional millions to sort out the problems in the Rwandan asylum system, even though the Government are totally failing to sort out the problems and delays in the British asylum system, which the Conservatives broke? Will he also confirm that the UK is paying costs for people sent to Rwanda for five years? Will he tell us how much that will cost? Will he confirm that it will be at least twice as much as dealing with those cases here? Will he also tell us, instead of trying to hide the information, the total sum that he will be paying to Rwanda?

Will the Home Secretary tell us how many people are going to be covered? The treaty says that it is limited by capacity in Rwanda, and the Court of Appeal said that it would be 100 people and that talk of thousands of people was “political hyperbole”. Will he now admit that even if he ever gets this failing scheme off the ground, it will cover less than 1% of the people who applied for asylum last year? Will he tell us how many Rwandan refugees the UK is going to take, and who is going to pay for them?

The Home Secretary has a treaty and a law that he knows will not stop dangerous boat crossings. We should be taking action to stop those crossings, to go after the criminal gangs and to clear the asylum backlog, and he knows that Labour’s plan to set up a new cross-border unit would have far more effect than the things that he has been talking about today. He says Rwanda is not the “be-all and end-all”, but his Back Benchers think it is do or die—that is why he is in so much chaos. He thinks—he has said it privately—that this whole thing is “batshit”. That is nothing on what he has had to swallow to come forward and make this statement today.

This is total chaos. The Government are arguing about full-fat, semi-skimmed or skimmed options—it is a full-on milk war in the Tory party, which sums up this failing Government. They cannot solve their own Tory boats crisis. They cannot defend our border security. They cannot solve their broken asylum system, and they cannot hold their party together. They do not deserve to run the country. Britain deserves better than this.

[Hon. Members]

More!

Legal Migration

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of the statement.

Today’s statement is an admission of years of total failure by this Conservative Government—failure on the immigration system and failure on the economy. It is another example of the total chaos at the heart of this Government. Net migration has trebled since the last election, when the Conservatives promised to reduce it, as a result of their policies on the economy and on immigration, including the Prime Minister’s policy decisions. In a chaotic panic, the Prime Minister now opposes the policies that he introduced and thinks that the Government’s own decisions are a problem. Who does the Home Secretary think has been in charge for the past 13 years? More chaos, more veering all over the place.

Net migration should come down. Labour has called for an end to the 20% unfair discount, for increased salary thresholds to prevent exploitation and for the inclusion of advice from a strengthened Migration Advisory Committee. Most of all, we have called for a proper plan, with clear links between the immigration system, training and the economy, and workforce plans, none of which are in the statement, because the Government have no grip and no proper plan. This is a chaotic approach.

Immigration is important for Britain, and we have rightly helped Ukraine and Hong Kong. We benefit from international talent and students. That is why the immigration system needs to be controlled and managed, so that it is fair and effective, and why net migration should come down from record levels. But there needs to be a proper plan. It was this Conservative Government who brought in the 20% wage discount that allowed employers to recruit at less than the going rate, even though the Migration Advisory Committee warned against it, and even though it is completely unfair. They chose to apply salary thresholds that were lower than the Migration Advisory Committee originally proposed, and to not update them for years. As Chancellor and then as Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) repeatedly blocked proposals to tighten the rules, including in May this year, and including when the Government refused Labour’s calls to end the unfair 20% discount. They repeatedly failed to listen to warnings about the failure to train or pay properly in the UK. Twelve months ago, I warned that work visas had substantially increased as a result of major skills shortages in the UK and that the Conservatives were not taking any serious action to address those shortages. The Leader of the Opposition warned 12 months ago that the immigration system should be linked to new requirements to train up workers at home, but the Conservatives did nothing; unbelievably they are still doing nothing.

There is nothing in this statement about training requirements or workforce plans. The Conservatives say that they want fewer shortage occupations, but it was only four months ago that they added bricklayers, roof tilers and plasterers to the shortage list. They have totally failed on construction training, and there are no plans to tackle that. Engineering apprenticeships have halved since 2018, so it is no wonder that engineering visas have gone up. Again, there is nothing to tackle those failures.

Social care visas have gone up from 3,500 a year to more than 100,000 a year because the Government have failed for years to heed warnings about recruitment and retention in social care. They halved the budget for social care workforce recruitment and support back in the spring, and they are still not listening and still refusing to adopt Labour’s plan for a proper workforce strategy for social care, including professional standards and a fair pay agreement. They are failing to tackle the delays in the asylum system that have also pushed the net migration figures up. They are failing to tackle NHS waiting lists that are preventing the long-term sick from going back to work.

The Prime Minister is just crashing around all over the place, reversing policies that he introduced, criticising policies he defended six months ago and introducing new immigration policies without any of the economic policies to match. A previous Prime Minister was accused of being a shopping trolley, veering around from one side to another. The current Prime Minister is clearly veering, but he certainly is not steering; he has just climbed into someone else’s shopping trolley and is being pushed around all over the place.

Can the Home Secretary tell us where the workforce plan is on social care, on engineering, on bricklaying and on all the shortage occupations that the Government’s total economic failure has left us with? Has the Migration Advisory Committee advised on these policies? Where are the reforms to strengthen the committee so that it can do so? Why have the Government still not introduced our requirements on employers or on the Government to address the skills and labour shortages that are driving the increase in net migration in the first place? The Conservatives are in chaos. They have no serious plan for the economy, no serious plan for the immigration system, and no serious plan for the country. Britain deserves better than this.

[James Cleverly]

I was waiting for the policy announcement from the Labour party, and sadly I am still waiting. The right hon. Lady talks about skills training. Hers was the party which, in government, dissuaded people from investing in their own skills, telling people that the only good job was a graduate job, undermining apprenticeships. That is something we have set about repairing through our entire time in government. Hers was the party that, in government, failed to put transitional measures in place when the EU expanded, importing significant numbers of people in the construction industry, which meant there was a disincentive to investing in people, technology and productivity—a situation that she now decries. She fails to make reference to the £7 billion employment package announced in the spring Budget that will help 1.1 million people get back into work and stay in work.

When I was at the Dispatch Box in the days after my appointment, I said that Labour had a plan for migration. The problem that Labour Members have is that the plan they are proposing is the plan I am already implementing. Working with the Minister for Immigration, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) since the day I was appointed, we have put forward the most substantial package of legal migration reforms that the country has ever seen. Their great idea is already being put in place by this great Government.

Criminal Justice Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Victims of crime must have justice, and lawbreakers must face the consequences of their actions. This Criminal Justice Bill will give the police the powers they need to crack down on criminals and ensure that those who pose the biggest threat to the public are imprisoned for longer. It will give the public greater trust in the police and more confidence that the system works for them. We have always faced criminal threats, but those threats mutate and evolve, so we have to stay ahead of them by updating our technological capability and also updating our laws.

We are building on strong foundations. Compared with the year ending spring 2010, as measured by the crime survey of England and Wales, domestic burglary is down 57%, vehicle-related theft is down 39% and violent crime is down by 52%. Police-recorded homicide is down by 15% and the number of under-25 NHS admissions for assault by a sharp object is down by 26% in the year ending June 2023, compared with the year ending December 2019.

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

I thank the Home Secretary for giving way. It is so good to see him in the Chamber now. Could he tell us what the percentage increase has been in knife crime since 2015?

[James Cleverly]

I do not have the figures to hand, but the—

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[James Cleverly]

The right hon. Lady has made an intervention. Let me make some progress now—[Interruption.] If she had the answer, she could have just stood up and said it rather than making this rather performative intervention. I will make some progress.

We have also taken the fight to the county lines drug gangs and to antisocial behaviour. Of course, these successes are not the Government’s alone, but we have enabled and supported that success with record funding for police; record numbers of police officers in England and Wales; expanding the powers to stop and search; and expanding the powers to tackle disruptive protests. Of course, we have also cut red tape, which means that more of those police officers are out on the beat fighting crime. We are building over 20,000 more prison places and ensuring that offenders face the toughest possible punishment for their crimes.

We will never rest, and we will go further still. This Bill will support the Government’s zero-tolerance approach to crime by giving the police, the courts and the other criminal justice agencies the powers they need to make our neighbourhoods even safer still.

Illegal drugs and knife crime bring chaos and misery to individuals. They destroy families and ruin neighbourhoods. Knife crime is a scourge in many of our cities and, during my time on the London Assembly and as a Member of this House, I have seen for myself the devastation it can bring to families.

Any family can be affected by drug misuse. I send a message to so-called casual users of recreational drugs that their actions underpin a vicious trade that has a profound and negative human cost. That is why we are giving the police more powers to seize and destroy bladed articles and to drug test more suspects upon arrest.

The Bill increases the maximum penalty for selling dangerous weapons to under-18s and creates a new criminal offence of possessing a bladed article with intent to cause harm. It will enable the police to seize, retain and destroy knives held in private when officers are lawfully on private property and have reasonable grounds to suspect the item or items will likely be used in violent crime.

The police will also be able to test individuals in police detention for specified class B and class C drugs, just as they can already test for specified class A drugs. This will mean that the police can direct more suspects using illegal drugs into treatment, which will help to reduce drug use, support recovery and, of course, cut crime. Those who refuse a drug test, or who fail to attend or stay for the duration of a directed drug assessment, may be committing a further offence.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is good to see the Home Secretary in his place. He was not here for the urgent question earlier, but he has been having a bit of a week of it. He had to pseudo-apologise yesterday to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) for his language. He has been rude about northern towns and rude about northern MPs. Although he may be all over the place on home affairs, we should perhaps be relieved that he is no longer in charge of diplomacy for the nation—although, to be fair, given the treatment of the Greek Prime Minister in the past 24 hours, things may have got even worse since he left.

As I said, the Home Secretary did not come to the Chamber earlier to answer the urgent question, but I gather from reports that he was meeting Back-Bench Conservative MPs. Certainly, yesterday, he had half his party standing up to complain about his policies. The problem seems to be that he thinks his Rwanda policy is batshit, that has driven his Back Benchers apeshit, and now his whole party is in deep sh-ambles.

The Home Secretary told us yesterday that he does not really know yet what is going on in the immigration system, so I assume from today’s speech that he is still getting the hang of what is going on in the criminal justice system. His claims about how well things are going are incredibly out of touch. Let me sum it up for him. After 13 years of Conservative Government, things are pretty dire: 90% of crimes now go unsolved; the charge rate has dropped by two thirds; more criminals are getting off; and more victims are being let down. The Prime Minister has an excuse when he says that things are great: he only sees things from a helicopter, but the rest of them have no such excuse and they are out of touch.

If a person commits a crime today, they are less than half as likely to be caught as they were under the previous Labour Government. That is the collapse of law and order under this Conservative Government, who have been in power for 13 years. In the past eight years, we have had eight Home Secretaries and 10 Justice Secretaries. We have huge court backlogs and delays, record numbers of crimes being dropped with no suspect identified, and record numbers of victims dropping out of the criminal justice process due to lack of support and unacceptable delays.

New technology has helped to prevent some volume crimes, but serious violence is up by 60% on 2015. The Home Secretary did not have the figures to hand on knife crime, but knife crime is up by 70%, and the number of young victims of violence is at its highest in a decade. I have spoken to mums who have lost their children through knife crime; they feel as if they have lost their future, but they want us to act to save other children’s lives.

Crime at the heart of our communities and town centres is also on the rise. We have seen shoplifting surge to record levels—up 25% in the past year alone—but town centre policing has dropped. Many towns have seen a huge drop in neighbourhood police on the beat and half the country say that they do not see police on the streets. There are now 10,000 fewer police and police community support officers in neighbourhood teams. When the Home Secretary talks about police numbers, we remember the 20,000 police officers that his party cut, for which we are still paying the price across the country. The lack of police on the street means that half the country never see them. That is the result of 10,000 fewer police and PCSOs on our streets, and that is the backdrop to this Bill. Quite simply, it is not enough to tackle the serious problems that the country and the criminal justice system face.

[Mr Sheerman]

My right hon. Friend is speaking with great authority on this. Every Member of this House knows how underfunded the police are. We have not only an underfunded police force, but a justice system that has been cut and cut and cut again. We must do something to build it up again, and perhaps the way we will do that is to have a new Labour Government.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right that huge damage has been done to policing and the criminal justice system. In addition, because police are often the public face of the criminal justice system, the fact that confidence in policing has been heavily knocked has an impact on confidence in and respect for the rule of law in our country. That is why it is so serious and why there ought to be cross-party support for restoring confidence in policing and the criminal justice system.

[Mr Sheerman]

One more very small point: I think my right hon. Friend knows of my interest in miscarriages of justice, but is it not a fact that in this underfunded criminal justice system we see more miscarriages of justice?

[Yvette Cooper]

It is certainly the case that far too many victims are not getting justice, because they are either dropping out of the system or being let down.

The Opposition support the Bill before us and we will support its Second Reading. Of course there will be individual measures that we need to pursue, but there are many measures in it that were Labour policies or that Labour has called for. However, the Bill simply does not go far enough to address the challenges that we face.

We welcome the fact that the Government have now agreed to Labour’s calls to crack down on antisocial behaviour by going after drug dealers with stronger closure orders and the introduction of the power of arrest for breaches of antisocial behaviour injunctions. In 2013, the then Conservative Home Secretary removed the power of arrest when antisocial behaviour injunctions were introduced, and we warned that they would not be strong enough. It has taken the Government 10 years to restore the power of arrest, but we welcome it.

On fraud, we called for the introduction of corporate criminal liability during the passage of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, so we are pleased to see it in this Bill now. We have also supported stronger sentences on sexual offences. We support the increase in sentencing for the most serious offences and the power to compel perpetrators to attend sentencing in person. Justice must be seen to be done and the victims of the most heinous crimes need to see justice done and sentence given with the perpetrator standing before the court.

We also welcome plans to tackle revenge porn and image-based abuse. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) makes a very important point on that, which we are keen to discuss further and support in Committee. We also welcome tougher sentences for those who commit murder at the end of a relationship.

It is welcome that the Government have ditched the plan to make cancelling tents their entire policy on homelessness, but we will need to pursue the detail of the measures in the Bill, because they do not address the root causes of homelessness. The last Labour Government cut rough sleeping by two thirds, but under the Conservatives that progress has been reversed and it is now up by 75%.

[Paula Barker]

In February last year, both Houses of Parliament supported the repeal of the Vagrancy Act 1824 via an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. However, no commencement date was included in the amendment, so the Vagrancy Act technically remains in force. The Government are now introducing replacement legislation via this Bill. Is my right hon. Friend as confused as I am about why that would be?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the detail and I hope that, in the evidence-gathering sessions in Committee, evidence is properly taken on that. It is an area where the legislation needs to be got right and concerns have been raised. There is also the wider problem of a toxic mix of rents and the failure to end no-fault evictions, which is hitting vulnerable people hard, and the Conservatives still have not kept their promises to act on that.

There is still a series of substantial omissions from the Bill that we would like to see added to it. There is nothing to ensure that neighbourhood policing is properly restored. We have set out proposals for 13,000 more neighbourhood police and police community support officers, and we want to see that underpinned in legislation.

There is nothing in the Bill to turn around the shocking collapse in charge rates. For example, there is no plan to tackle the problem of redaction—a problem I know the Policing Minister recognises—where officers effectively spend hours and the equivalent of a bottle of Tipp-Ex having to redact a whole series of things before files are even passed to the Crown Prosecution Service. Many have argued that legislation needs to be changed to tackle that. Doing so could save police officers hours and hours of time, and I think it is included in the police productivity review. Surely we ought to be able to tackle that, but it is currently not in the Bill.

The Bill is also not strong enough in its measures to tackle town centre crime. A law brought in by the Conservative Government, again around 10 years ago, means that shop thefts under £200 often are not investigated, even if the same gang comes back time and again. We should end that £200 rule to tackle the shoplifting gangs. We also have shop staff who are petrified to go to work when there are 850 incidents a day of violence and abuse against shop workers.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The week before last, during Respect for Shopworkers Week, I had the pleasure of visiting one of my local Co-ops. They have had £155,000-worth of goods stolen in the first six months of this year. For many stores, that is enough to close them down. I commend USDAW—the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers—and the Co-op for the work they are doing on that, but the police are just not turning up or taking it seriously. I commend what my right hon. Friend says; let us see whether she can push the Government to move further here.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the impact of shoplifting. If town centres do not feel safe, it is local businesses that are hit and can end up going under as a result, undermining local economies and putting off local residents who want to go shopping. Sometimes elderly residents, in particular, will simply not go into town anymore if they do not feel safe, and if they feel that laws are just not being enforced when they watch people leaving the shops with a big bag of goods stolen from the shelves and see nothing being done. It is just not good enough.

That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) rightly called for stronger measures to tackle assaults on shop workers. The Government did finally agree, as a result of his campaigning, to an aggravated sentence for assaulting shop workers, but that is not enough. The whole point is to make it simpler for the police to take action and to send a clear message from Parliament to police that this is an offence we take immensely seriously. That is why Labour will be tabling amendments that reflect the campaigns by USDAW, the Co-op, Tesco, the British Retail Consortium and small convenience stores for a new law and tougher sentences for attacks on our shop workers. Everyone should have the right to work in safety and to live free from fear.

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

We do take retail theft and shoplifting very seriously and agree that more needs to be done, but may I draw the shadow Home Secretary’s attention, and that of the House, to the retail crime action plan, which the Government agreed with the National Police Chiefs’ Council just a few weeks ago? In that plan, the police commit to investigating reasonable lines of inquiry for all shoplifting cases, including running CCTV evidence through facial recognition software, attending the scene of a crime where that is necessary to gather evidence, where there has been an assault or where the offender has been detained, and using data analytics specifically to go after prolific offenders. All that is in addition to Project Pegasus, a joint project with retailers to go after serious and organised crime. I hope she will join me in welcoming the plan, which I believe will be very effective.

[Yvette Cooper]

I would gently say to the Minister that the fact that it is an announcement—

[Chris Philp]

It is a plan.

[Yvette Cooper]

It is a plan; it is not even an announcement of something that is going to happen. It is an announcement that there is a plan for the police to check CCTV when a theft has taken place. That just shows how bad things have got over the past 13 years. We welcome any work that is being done, including by the British Retail Consortium with the National Police Chiefs’ Council. However, the Government are not taking the action that they should be taking to underpin this. In particular, they are not changing the law either on assaults against shop workers or on the £200 limit, and neither are they supporting the neighbourhood police we need to do the work to deliver the plan. There are 10,000 fewer neighbourhood police and PCSOs on our streets and in our communities, and communities know that. It does not matter what the Policing Minister says or what figures he plucks from thin air: people know. They can see it. We all see it in our own towns in our own constituencies, and half the country now say they never see the police on the beat.

[Chris Philp]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way, because the Policing Minister is a glutton for punishment on this one.

[Chris Philp]

The shadow Home Secretary is very kind to give way. I am sorry that facts and figures get in the way of her argument but, as I said at oral questions yesterday, the neighbourhood policing figures that she keeps quoting are unintentionally misleading. Local policing numbers cover neighbourhood policing, emergency response and others. Since 2015, which is the year that she cites, those numbers have gone up from 61,000 to 67,000, and overall policing numbers are at record levels, at 149,566—3,500 higher than under the last Labour Government.

[Yvette Cooper]

This is the problem with the Policing Minister: he just thinks that the country has never had it so good on crime and policing. As far as the country is concerned, he is incredibly out of touch. That is not what is happening in towns and cities across the country. The idea that we can just merge neighbourhood policing and response teams, which are different things, shows that he simply does not understand the importance of neighbourhood policing or what it actually does.

Neighbourhood police are the teams who are located locally. They will not just be called off for a crisis at the other end of the borough, district or force area; they are the police officers who can deal with local crimes. They are not the officers who have to deal with rising levels of mental health crisis, which we know so many of the response units have to deal with. There has been a big shift away from neighbourhood policing and into response policing because the police are being reactive, dealing with crises that this Conservative Government have totally failed to prevent for 13 years.

The Government have demolished a lot of the prevention work and teamworking between neighbourhood officers and other agencies in local areas, and as a result the other response officers are having to pick up the pieces instead. The Policing Minister’s approach just shows why the Tories are failing after 13 years. It is not the answer.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Ind)]

On the restoration of police numbers, may I inform the Policing Minister that in Cleveland the numbers have been slashed by 500 since 2010? They have still not been restored, so we are still down in those numbers. On retail crime, we cannot take any lessons from the Conservative party—the Conservative police and crime commissioner in Cleveland received a caution for handling goods stolen from his then supermarket employer. This stuff about retail crime is, quite frankly, hogwash.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point—[Interruption.] I do not think the claims made from a sedentary position by the Policing Minister help him in the slightest, given the challenges involving the current police and crime commissioner.

We ought to have a consensus on tackling knife crime. There are some measures in the Bill, but they do not go anywhere near far enough. I urge the Home Secretary to consider a proper offence of child criminal exploitation to prevent people drawing children into criminal activity in the first place, as well as stronger action on the loopholes that still allow online marketplaces to sell knives. We have had multiple announcements over the years about taking action against zombie knives, but it is groundhog day, because far too many are still being sold easily and not enough is being done about it.

The Bill also does not go far enough on violence against women and girls. We still need rape investigation units in every police force, we need all 999 control rooms to have domestic abuse experts, and we need stronger requirements on police forces to use the tactics and tools normally reserved for organised crime and terrorist organisations to identify and go after the most dangerous repeat abusers and rapists and get them off our streets.

Too many things are not in the Bill. Overall, there is still no proper plan to raise confidence in policing and the criminal justice system. That confidence has plummeted, putting respect for law and order in our country at risk. We support the Bill and will work across parties to strengthen the measures in it, but it will not tackle the serious problems that we face. Security is the bedrock of opportunity. If people do not feel safe—if they do not believe that anyone will come or anything will be done when things go wrong—that undermines confidence in their community, in their way of life and in the rule of law in our country.

That is what is at stake here, that is why incremental measures are not enough, and that is why we need to tackle the crisis of confidence and halve serious violence. Labour has committed to halving serious violence, including violence against women and girls, and to increasing policing confidence, the number of criminals who are charged, and the number of victims who get justice. Those ought to be shared objectives, but for too long the Conservatives have undermined them. That is why we need change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Member is absolutely right. We have discussed that issue more broadly in relation to an end-to-end criminal justice system being fit for purpose: working to a sensible timeframe; the police being able to process the cases with the Crown Prosecution Service; and then, obviously, the cases going to court. I am afraid that there is a lot of merit in the whole debate, particularly around sexual violence and rape cases. We have discussed the matter many times and much more can be done.

Good support has been brought in to address violence against women and girls—the rape review has taken place and there has been investment in independent domestic violence advisers—but there are fundamental criminal justice system issues around cases of this nature, including: the time such cases take; the level of attrition; and the retraumatisation of victims, because these cases are absolutely appalling. I have raised this subject in the House many times, including from the Dispatch Box, and have spoken about personal cases that have come to me through constituents. We all have tragic constituency cases, and we have to make sure that we are strong advocates to bring about justice for those victims.

Let me turn to a number of strong measures that are already in place. A great deal of work has taken place to tackle drugs gangs, organised crime and county lines. The Government deserve great credit for that and for their work on the ring of steel. I used to harp on about the fact that we do not grow these drugs in our country—and some are obviously manufactured—but it is vital that we have in place a ring of steel around our ports and airports to make sure that we do absolutely everything we can to stop at source the scourge of terrible chemicals and drugs coming into our country. We should never, ever stop doing that work; and that goes back to the point about the investment required in our ports and in law enforcement.

The violence against women and girls strategy and the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 have helped victims of the most horrific crimes, but I will touch on what more can be done. I welcome the new Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), to her place. I look forward to working with her on these sensitive and difficult issues.

On policing, the Government have enshrined the police covenant in statute, given the police more powers to fight crime and increased prison sentences. That is all part of offender management and making our communities safer.

[Yvette Cooper]

I know that the former Home Secretary takes the police covenant very seriously. Does she agree that, as well as the police covenant, we should have a police bravery award for those who lose their lives in the line of duty?

[Priti Patel]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right; we have had discussions about that point previously. I think this might be an opportune moment to pay tribute to those police officers who have lost their lives defending communities, being braver than ever and going after the criminals out there. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] We see so many acts of bravery, but I am sorry to say that they are sometimes not recognised enough. A lot of our police officers sadly get a bad rap because of other reporting issues and all sorts of things, but the reality is that we should pay tribute to and give the right recognition to those who are out there on the frontline, defending us. The right hon. Lady will be familiar with the police bravery awards—what a sobering moment, when we honour our police officers—but we must do more to represent the fallen and to protect family members. That is why the police covenant is so important. I would like this House and Ministers in particular to do much more collectively to recognise that bravery, because the families of officers are affected in a very challenging way.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Laura Farris)]

It is a pleasure to close this important debate on the Second Reading of the Criminal Justice Bill, a Bill that puts public protection and community confidence at its core. It has a strong empirical basis, building on the detailed work undertaken by the Law Commission, by Baroness Casey into misconduct in the Metropolitan police, by Clare Wade KC into domestic homicide and coercive control, and by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.

It consolidates the significant progress this Government have made since 2010 and it was disappointing to hear the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary, only rely on the statistics from police recorded crime when she knows as well as I do that the Office for National Statistics says that the correct measure is the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which provides—

[Yvette Cooper]

Will the Minister give way?

[Laura Farris]

I will not because I have little time. That survey provides a more reliable measure of long-term trends than police recorded data.

[Yvette Cooper]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Laura Farris]

If we use the correct measure, the regrettable conclusion for the Opposition is that like-for-like crime is down by 56%.

[Yvette Cooper]

Will the Minister give way?

[Laura Farris]

Violent crime is down from where it was in 2010 by 52%, and domestic burglaries are down by 57%. If we compare—[Interruption.] If we compare where we were in 2019 to today—

[Yvette Cooper]

Will the Minister give way?

[Laura Farris]

Domestic abuse, a sensitive category of crime, has fallen between 2019, before the pandemic, to today by 16%. [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Farris]

My time is limited and I apologise for that.

[Yvette Cooper]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Minister will know that the time is not limited. We do have time and she has named me. I do understand that she has the right not to take an intervention but she will also know that, having named me, as a courtesy to the House, she would normally do so.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

That is not strictly a point of order for the Chair. The right hon. Lady understands the procedures extremely well.

Net Migration Figures

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2023 Commons Chamber

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

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary to make a statement on the publication of net migration figures.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

The most recent published data from the Office for National Statistics estimated that net migration in the year to June 2023 was at 672,000. That places untold pressure on housing supply and public services and makes successful integration virtually impossible. As the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have repeatedly made clear, it is far too high. The Government remain committed to reducing levels of legal migration, in line with the manifesto commitment on which every single Conservative MP stood in 2019 and the express wish of the British public as articulated at every single general election in the last 30 years.

Earlier this year, we took action to tackle an unforeseen and substantial rise in the number of students bringing dependants into the UK to roughly 150,000. That means that, beginning with courses starting in January, students on taught postgraduate courses will no longer have the ability to bring dependants; only students on designated postgraduate research programmes will be able to bring dependants. That will have a tangible effect on net migration.

It is crystal clear that we need to reduce the numbers significantly by bringing forward further measures to control and reduce the number of people coming here, and separately to stop the abuse and exploitation of our visa system by companies and individuals. So far this year, we have initiated a significant number of investigations into sectors such as care companies suspected of breaching immigration rules. We are actively working across Government on further substantive measures and will announce details to the House as soon as possible.

[Yvette Cooper]

Where is the Home Secretary, and what on earth is going on? The media were briefed that he was going to make a statement on net migration yesterday or today, but we have had nothing, and he is nowhere. The Immigration Minister has been everywhere, madly briefing all his ideas, but who speaks for the Government?

Net migration figures are now three times their level at the 2019 general election, when the Conservatives promised to reduce them. That includes a 65% increase in work migration this year, which reflects a complete failure by the Conservatives on both the economy and immigration. The Immigration Minister is complaining today—he will be furious when he discovers who has been in charge of the immigration system for the last 13 years.

Net migration should come down. Immigration is important for Britain and always will be, but the system needs to be properly controlled and managed so that it is fair, effective and properly linked to the economy. Net migration for work has trebled since 2019 because of the Government’s failure on skills and training, their failure to tackle record levels of long-term sickness and people on waiting lists, and their failure to make the system work. Social care visas have gone from 3,000 a year to more than 100,000 a year, yet this spring Ministers halved the programme for recruiting care workers here. Health visas are up, yet Ministers cut training places last autumn. Visas for engineers are up while engineering apprenticeship completions in the UK have halved.

Will the Government immediately agree to Labour’s plan to get rid of the unfair wage discount that means employers can pay overseas recruits 20% less than the going rate, and which prevents training and fair pay in the UK? Will the Government immediately ask the Migration Advisory Committee to review salary thresholds for skilled workers in shortage occupations, which have not kept up, and where the MAC has warned repeatedly about low-paid exploitation? Will the Minister link the points-based system to training and employment standards in the UK and have a proper plan for the economy and the immigration system?

The Government have no serious plan; they are just ramping up the rhetoric. They have no plan for the economy, no plan for the immigration system and no plan for the country. Britain deserves better than this.

[Robert Jenrick]

I listened to the right hon. Lady for five minutes or so and detected absolutely no trace of a plan from her—

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Home Secretary.

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

The Home Secretary has been in post for two weeks, during which time he has used the same language to pick a fight with Stockton and show what he thinks of his own Rwanda policy, he has been attacked by his Back Benchers, and Downing Street has already been forced to confirm it still has full confidence in him. Twelve days ago he said the number of asylum hotel bed spaces are down, but four days ago Home Office figures showed they are up to a record 56,000—10,000 more than at the beginning of the year. Does he even know what is going on?

[James Cleverly]

Yes, I do. Let me expand—that answer was a by-product of the right hon. Lady asking a closed question at the Dispatch Box. I have been in this job for 14 days, and I am conscious that my counterparts around Europe and the world are grappling with many of the same issues. I would love nothing more than to be able to resolve them all in 14 days—I am good, but I am not a magician.

[Yvette Cooper]

Perhaps that mean an end to the magical thinking that the right hon. Gentleman’s predecessor called for. We still have 10,000 more bed spaces than when the Prime Minister promised to end hotel use. The Home Secretary owes the House the facts. There is still no sign of anything on the failed Rwanda plan, because he knows it will not work, and nothing on the trebling of net migration to tackle the skills gaps that are driving work visas. The Government have been in power for 13 years and all we have is chaos and briefing wars. His Back Benchers are already calling him “Colonel Calamity”, and he has Corporal Chaos next to him on the Front Bench. Given the mess he has inherited and his penchant for profanity, does he accept that he is now up a certain kind of creek without a paddle?

[James Cleverly]

The right hon. Lady is someone I admire hugely, and one of the things I admire most is how she has managed to be at the Dispatch Box twice but has failed to ask anything resembling a sensible question about the issues we are discussing. When her party was in government, it addressed the volumes of migration by simply redefining people, wiping the slate clean and pretending there was never a problem.

I have said this about the right hon. Lady’s party in broadcasts, and I say it from the Dispatch Box: there is a gaping vacuum where the Labour party’s policy on migration, whether it be legal or illegal, should be. Unless and until Labour Members come up with something approaching a policy, I will continue to do what we know to be right: driving down small-boat arrivals and reducing the number of hotel rooms needed. We have closed 50 hotels and we will do more.

Illegal Immigration

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I welcome the new Home Secretary to his post. He is the eighth Conservative Home Secretary in eight years—and what a mess he has inherited. The Supreme Court’s conclusion today is damning. It exposes the complete failure of the Prime Minister’s flagship Rwanda policy, of his judgment in making it the central part of his policy and of the Conservatives in getting the most basic grip on the boats and asylum chaos.

There is no serious plan on the dangerous boat crossings that are undermining our border security and putting lives at risk, the end of which we all want to see. There is no serious plan to sort out the chaos in the asylum system, including ending placing people in costly asylum hotels because of the soaring backlog. There was a readiness to spend more than £140 million of taxpayers’ money on this plan—money we cannot get back now that the policy has totally failed. That adds to the Prime Minister’s disastrous judgment in appointing and backing the previous Home Secretary, who was unfit for the job.

I do not agree with pretty much anything the Home Secretary’s predecessor ever said, but she was right in this message to the Prime Minister:

“If we lose in the Supreme Court…you will have wasted a year and an Act of Parliament, only to arrive back at square one…your magical thinking…has meant you have failed to prepare any sort of credible ‘Plan B’.”

Wasting time, wasting money and letting the country down: that is the Conservatives’ record.

The Supreme Court judgment outlines a catalogue of problems with the policy, but Ministers knew all about them. When it was first announced 18 months ago, I raised in the House the problems with the Israel-Rwanda deal. Ministers were warned many times about failures and weaknesses in the Rwanda asylum system, but they just pressed on. Even if the plan had been found lawful today, they have admitted it would have covered only a few hundred people anyway—at a time when 100,000 people applied for asylum in the UK last year, on the Conservative watch—and that it would have cost about twice as much per person as deciding cases in the UK.

The truth is the Government have wasted not just one but five years by failing to deal with the situation. Five years ago there were just a few hundred people crossing in boats, but they let criminal gangs take hold along the channel. They let asylum decisions collapse, so the backlog soared and there are now 20% more people in asylum hotels than there were when the Prime Minister promised to end that.

Will the Home Secretary tell us how much in total the Government have spent on the failed Rwanda plan so far? The House has a right to know. He says he wants a new treaty. How much more will that cost? Despite his optimism, the Supreme Court judgment says

“the Rwandan government indicated that the contemplated arrangements might not be straightforward to implement in practice…the provision of resources does not mean that the problems which we have described can be resolved in the short term.”

Again, we have more of the magical thinking.

What does this mean for the Prime Minister’s flagship legislation? He boasted about passing it only yesterday, but the Government have not actually commenced the central clauses of the law, because without Rwanda—and, frankly, even with Rwanda—the policy does not work and will just lead to an endless, ever-increasing permanent backlog. Will the Secretary of State confirm now that he will not be implementing the central tenets of that law this year? Will he also confirm that this means that the Prime Minister’s pledges to introduce the new law to stop the boats and end hotel use will all be broken this year?

Why will the Home Secretary not put that money into a proper plan to tackle the boats? I do not believe that he ever believed in the Rwanda plan. He distanced himself from it and his predecessor’s language on it. He may even, on occasion, have privately called it batshit. But he and I agree that we need action to stop the boat crossings that are undermining border security and putting lives at risk. We need a properly controlled and managed system for asylum and refugees.

Let us concentrate instead on the things that can work. We support the work with France along the northern coast; we want it to go further. We support the work with Albania and with other countries across Europe to tackle the gangs, but it is far, far too weak. We need a proper, comprehensive and massively scaled-up plan to go after the criminal gangs, a proper system to clear the backlog, and a proper returns unit in place so that we can end hotel use. Instead of that cost going up from £6 million to £8 million a day on his watch, let us end hotel use and save the taxpayer £2 billion. That should be common ground, so I suggest that he stops wasting taxpayers’ money on more failing schemes, that he ditches the magical thinking and the culture wars of his predecessors and that he ditches the gimmicks and finally gets a grip.

[James Cleverly]

One of the dangers of writing a critique of Government policy before reading the facts laid out in a statement is that the statement makes the critique obsolete. The right hon. Lady talks about hotel usage, which I remind the House is coming down. She talks about small boat arrivals in the UK, which I remind the House are coming down. She talks about forming closer working relationships with our European partners, which I remind the House we are already doing.

In response to the right hon. Lady’s various questions, I have written here, “Does Labour have a plan?” [Interruption.] If those on the Labour Benches could curb their enthusiasm and listen to what I was about to say next, they would hear that I was going to concede that it is clear that they do have a plan. Their plan—their great idea—is to do what the Government are already doing, which is bucking the European trend. When other countries are seeing 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70% or 100% increases in their illegal arrivals, we are seeing a reduction of one third in ours, bucking the trend.

We have always said that Rwanda, and the deterrent effect of the Rwanda plan, is an important tool in our toolbox; we have never claimed that it was the only one. We have always pursued a range of options—when I say “we”, I mean my right hon. Friend the Immigration Minister, with me watching him from King Charles Street, although the collective “we” is appropriate here—and, as I set out in my statement, those activities are having an effect.

My final point is that the mask has slipped. The glee that I detect from those on the Opposition Benches for this temporary setback on the delivery of our plan displays what we on the Government Benches know to be true: they do not want migration control to work. They do not want to take control of our borders; they would rather delegate it to anybody else—[Interruption.]

Metropolitan Police: Operational Independence

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 9th November 2023 Commons Chamber

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

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary if she will make a statement on the operational independence of the Metropolitan police.

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

About a month ago, Hamas perpetrated a sickening terrorist attack in Israel, murdering 1,400 innocent people, often in horrific circumstances. About 200 people remain held hostage by Hamas, a terrorist organisation, and I am sure that the thoughts of the whole House are with those hostages today. We have also seen, in the United Kingdom, thousands of people demonstrating in recent weeks. Thanks to the tireless work of the police, those incidents have largely passed without significant incident. However, a number of arrests, now nearly 200, have been made, where people have committed disorder, racially aggravated crimes or assaults on police officers. It is right that police officers have acted robustly in those cases.

It is also right that the police are operationally independent of government. That is a fundamental principle of British policing, as the Prime Minister made clear yesterday. The Metropolitan police asked protesters to postpone their planned protest this weekend, but the request was refused. The Prime Minister met the commissioner yesterday to seek reassurances that remembrance events will be protected. Of course, remembrance events play a special part in this nation’s long and proud history, and it would be a grave insult if they were to be disrupted in any way. It is for the Metropolitan police to decide whether to apply to the Home Secretary to ban any march. As of this morning, no such application has been received, but the Home Secretary will, of course, carefully consider one should it be made. I reiterate that the police retain the confidence of the Prime Minister, Home Secretary and myself in using all the powers available to them, under terrorism legislation and public order legislation, to prevent criminality and disorder, and hate speech.

Let me say to the House that I have been contacted this morning repeatedly by members of the Jewish community who are deeply apprehensive about what this weekend may bring, and I want to put on record that we expect the police to protect those members of communities in London, including the Jewish community, who are feeling vulnerable this weekend. There are comprehensive powers in place to do that. Hate has no place on London’s streets and we expect the police to ensure that the laws are upheld. There are powers in place to deal with people spreading hate or deliberately raising tensions through harassment and abusive behaviour. The police can impose conditions on marches, as indeed they have done to prevent pro-Palestine protesters from approaching the Israeli embassy, to give one example. The police have also used section 60AA conditions to require people to remove face coverings, but the use of those powers is, of course, an operational matter for the Metropolitan Police Service.

This weekend should first and foremost be about remembering those who gave their lives in defence of this country. Any disruption to remembrance services would be completely unacceptable and an insult to their memory. I have confidence that the Metropolitan police and other police forces will ensure that this weekend passes off peacefully and without disruption.

[Yvette Cooper]

Where is the Home Secretary? She has sent the Policing Minister here to refuse to repeat her words. We have seen her words this morning; she has been attempting to rip up the operational independence of the police, attacking their impartiality in the crudest and most partisan of ways, deliberately undermining respect for the police at a sensitive time, when they have an important job to do, and deliberately seeking to create division around remembrance, which the Policing Minister rightly said should be a time for communities to come together and to pay our respects. She is deliberately inflaming community tensions in the most dangerous of ways. She is encouraging extremists on all sides, attacking the police when she should be backing them. It is highly irresponsible and dangerous, and no other Home Secretary would ever have done this.

Remembrance events are really important to all of us. Those events need to be protected. That is the job of the police: to enforce and respect the law, while maintaining public safety, tackling hate crime and extremism and respecting rights in law to peaceful protest. They have to follow the law and the evidence, whatever politicians think, not be the operational arm of the Home Secretary, because whether she likes it or not, that is the British tradition of policing and I, for one, am proud of it.

We know what she is up to—claiming homelessness is a lifestyle choice, picking fights with the police to get headlines—but the job of the Home Secretary is to keep the public safe, not run an endless Tory leadership campaign. Cabinet colleagues refuse to agree with her and former police chiefs are lining up to condemn her, so I have two questions: does this Government still believe in the operational independence of the police and how can they do so while this Home Secretary is in post? And did the Prime Minister and No. 10 agree to the content of the article? Either the Prime Minister has endorsed this or he is too weak to sack her. If he cannot get a grip on her conduct, it means he has given up on serious government, and he and the Home Secretary should both let someone else do the job.

[Chris Philp]

I thank the shadow Home Secretary for her questions, as always. She asked about where the Home Secretary is. It may have been wise to ask that privately rather than publicly, but she is with a close family member who is having a hospital operation this morning. I have the Home Secretary’s permission to say that to the House in the event that somebody raised it, as the shadow Home Secretary has done, so I am passing that message on to the House.

As we consider this topic, the House should keep in mind the fact that many of our fellow citizens are feeling deeply uneasy about what is going on in the middle east and the domestic repercussions. We have seen a spike in Islamophobic offences—there have been 21 arrests in the last four weeks for Islamophobic offences. We have seen a surge in antisemitic offences—there have been 98 arrests for antisemitic offences in the last four weeks.

I have been contacted this morning by members of the Jewish community who are deeply uneasy about what this weekend will bring. I do not think it is acceptable that our fellow citizens feel scared or uneasy walking about the streets of London. It is reasonable for politicians—the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and others, including, I am sure, some on the Opposition Benches as well—to raise those concerns and make sure that the police are protecting those communities. It is not acceptable to have fear and hatred on our streets. Let that message go out from this House today.

In relation to the question about operational independence, yes, of course the Government resolutely back operational independence, as the Prime Minister made clear yesterday, after his meeting with the commissioner at No. 10. But the Prime Minister also said after that meeting that he would hold the commissioner to account, as politicians are supposed to do—police and crime commissioners, including the Mayor of London, as London’s PPC, do that, and so do we, as Members of Parliament. That is perfectly proper and perfectly right.

In terms of the approval process with No. 10, I am afraid I do not have any visibility on that at all, but let us keep in mind that we are seeing a humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza, there are 200 people being held hostage, some 1,400 people were slaughtered by terrorists and members of our own community are feeling scared this weekend. Let us keep that at the front of our minds, not party political point scoring.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 18th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We really do have a problem, don’t we? Home Secretary, I am talking to you. I am bothered, because these are topical questions and there are people here who want to catch my eye. You cannot carry on making statements to every question. Topical means topical. We are going to be here for some while, so I hope you understand. I call the shadow Home Secretary.

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

On 7 March, the Home Secretary emailed Conservative supporters saying

“today we’re changing our laws—and bringing the small boat crossings to an end.”

Since then, 20,000 more people have arrived. She is not applying her own law, because it does not work. The use of asylum hotels is up, with no date to end their use, and foreign criminal returns are down. The independent chief inspector of borders and immigration has said:

“This is no way to run a government department.”

He is right, isn’t he? Is that why the Home Secretary is getting rid of him?

[Suella Braverman]

I am incredibly proud of the landmark legislation passed by this House, which was opposed by the Labour party every step of the way. This will allow us to detain those who arrive here illegally and remove them to a safe country like Rwanda.

The point is that at least we have a policy. I am not sure that anyone on the Labour Front Bench knows what Labour’s plan is for stopping the boats. Shadow Ministers certainly seem to be making it up as they go along. There were quotas and then no quotas. The EU has made it clear that we would be expected to take thousands more migrants from the EU. Will there be family reunion? We already have a scheme for family reunion. They are making it up because they do not have a plan. I think the British people can see exactly what Labour’s plan is—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not think the Home Secretary understands what “topical” means. Could the Whips please explain to their Front Benchers that we have to get through the Order Paper? You are not helping me, and I do not know why.

[Yvette Cooper]

What the Home Secretary said is total waffle. She has no answer on the inspector because she is afraid of scrutiny. There was no answer on her failure, just invented garbage about Labour. The Home Office’s immigration director, asylum director, borders director and accommodation director are all going or gone because the only people she removes are the people she needs to do the job. There has been a 40% increase in the use of asylum hotels since she became Home Secretary. When will she end the use of asylum hotels? When will she deal with this shambles, stop the gimmicks and get a grip?

[Suella Braverman]

The right hon. Lady talks about a shambles, but the last four days have been a great example of a shambles. The EU has called her party “delusional” when it comes to its grand plan for stopping the boats. Labour disagrees with the National Crime Agency on how to solve the problem. The reality is that Labour is on another planet on how to stop the boats. It is not based in reality, it is not grappling with this challenge and it is not being honest with the British people.

Prevent: Independent Review

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Home Secretary for her statement. I join the Government in paying tribute to the work of our security services, our counter-terrorism police, the myriad different agencies—local communities, councils and education bodies—that work on the Prevent programme, and all those who work so hard to keep us safe.

Extremists try to divide us and to undermine our democratic values and our respect for one another. Extremist ideologies are a stain on our society: they feed on fear and vulnerabilities to promote hatred and violence. We have seen appalling terror attacks, from the attack on children in Manchester and the attack in Fishmongers’ Hall to the attacks on our own Jo Cox and David Amess. A strong and determined response to extremism and terror threats and threats to our national security, wherever they come from, is immensely important to our safety.

The Contest strategy rightly includes “prevent”, “pursue”, “prepare” and “protect”, and it was right for the Home Secretary to update the House on the approach to extremism and to the Prevent programme. However, on a day when there are grave unanswered questions about how a terror suspect could possibly have escaped from prison, before trial, hidden on the bottom of a food van, I am astonished that she said nothing about Prevent and prisons. We have unanswered questions about how on earth the escape could have happened, and also about staffing levels. There have been repeated warnings of 30% staff absences and shifts not being covered. Those staffing issues are a matter for Prevent as well. The independent review highlighted an issue about which countless other reports have warned: the lack of sufficient action on deradicalisation and Prevent in our prisons. Prisoners are actually leaving prison more radicalised than they were when they went in. Referring to extremism-related training for staff, Sir William said:

“it became clear during the review that this training was frequently cancelled due to staff and resource shortages…I was further told that there have been delays to staff beginning Prevent training and to extremist prisoners beginning rehabilitative programmes. These delays are attributed to staffing and resourcing issues”.

The Government have been warned repeatedly about this, and I am concerned about the complete lack of reference to it in the Home Secretary’s statement. Will she please tell us what action is being taken, and also what action is being taken for those due to be released from prison—those who are due to be deliberately released, that is, as opposed to those who escape? Contest has warned that

“four of the nine declared terrorist attacks since 2018 were perpetrated by serving or recently released prisoners.”

The joint inspectorate warned just a few months ago that there were not enough senior officials in place to oversee the 120 prisoners with terror-related convictions who are due to be released by next March. What deradicalisation and Prevent work have those 120 prisoners undergone in prison, and what provisions are in place in the community to ensure that there is no risk to the public? We cannot afford any suggestion of failure by the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to take national security treats in prison seriously.

Today’s report from the borders inspectorate is highly critical of Border Force’s failures on insider threats, saying that organisational structures for addressing

“insider threat were found to be confused, with complex inter-relationships and unclear lines of accountability”.

What action is the Home Secretary taking to deal with insider threats?

There is also no mention of any action on online radicalisation or the use of artificial intelligence. Online radicalisation was raised by the independent review, and we know that generative AI raises further challenges and questions. We have identified potentially serious legal loopholes in our ability to take action against those who choose to use generative AI to try to radicalise people. What action is being taken on that? We have asked the Home Secretary about this before. Will she agree to Labour’s proposal to tighten the law?

The majority of the extremist threats our security agencies deal with are Islamist extremism, followed by far-right extremism. Other warped ideologies have also driven violent threats, but the main focus must continue to be on Islamist extremist threats. I welcome the emphasis on antisemitism, but the agencies, the police and the Prevent programme need to follow the threats of violence and hateful extremism wherever the evidence goes, rather than having to follow any political hierarchies that have been set.

Neil Basu, the former counter-terror chief, has said that we also need to make sure there is earlier intervention and prevention. He said:

“If we set the bar for Prevent so high that it can deal only with those who are already radicalised, we will have more terrorists, not fewer.”

Finally, what action is being taken in response to the former countering extremism commissioner’s report on hateful extremism, published some years ago? Are the Government ever going to respond to that or update the countering extremism strategy, which is now eight years out of date? We need that action. Prevent is not a whole countering extremism strategy. We need broader action if we are to keep our democratic values safe.

[Suella Braverman]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her response. She raised several points to which I will respond.

First, I pay tribute to all the professionals and experts in our agencies who work day and night to keep the British people safe from the evolving, changing and, indeed, increasing risk we carry when it comes to terrorism. They work in many ways of which we will not be aware, but they make huge sacrifices. I am very proud of the progress that they and this Government have made in recent years. That includes the opening of a new counter-terrorism operations centre that is now up and running and delivering state-of-the-art counter-terrorism work between all the agencies—be they the police or others—working in one place in a co-ordinated and streamlined way. I was pleased to visit CTOC recently. Our Contest strategy was relaunched earlier this year and, since 2018, 39 attacks have been disrupted by the brave men and women working in law enforcement and other agencies. That huge amount of work is going incredibly well.

Of course, the threat remains substantial, which means an attack is likely. There is no room for complacency on this issue, which is why I am wholly committed to focusing on the effective delivery of Sir William Shawcross’s recommendations. That is why I have come to update the House today.

The right hon. Lady mentioned prisons and, of course, William Shawcross referred to the threat of terrorism, extremism and radicalisation within the prison estate. In fact, recommendation 27 makes it clear that better and more training is required for prison officers, which is why I am very pleased that there has been significant progress on the roll-out of the new terrorism risks behaviour profile. This new prison-based product is led by the Ministry of Justice, building on the recommendations made by Jonathan Hall and reiterated and built on by Sir William. That roll-out will be completed by the end of the year. The value of this new tool is that prison officers will be better trained. They will have more skills and more tools at their disposal to better identify terrorism and the risk that it poses within the prison estate. That is a direct response to recommendations and concerns that have been raised.

I refer the right hon. Lady to the previous statement made by the Lord Chancellor on the broader issues. I am receiving regular briefings on the circumstances leading to the escape of Daniel Khalife yesterday and on the wide-ranging operation involving the police, Border Force and the agencies to track him down.

The right hon. Lady also mentioned resources. Let me be clear that funding for counter-terrorism is as high as it has ever been, and Prevent funding has not been cut. However, we are redirecting resources to better reflect the evolving threat picture, so that our resources are directed at the priorities informed by the intelligence picture. For example, I am very pleased that all local authorities now have a dedicated Home Office point of expertise and contact. That has been rolled out throughout England and Wales. It will properly equip those in the local authority sector to have proper training and a connection, a dialogue and a meaningful relationship with the Home Office so that they can be better tooled up to respond to radicalisation and the risks relating to Prevent in the community.

The right hon. Lady also said there should not be a hierarchy of threats. Of course, there is no such hierarchy. Prevent is ideologically agnostic, but we must always be clear about the facts. When I last updated the House, for example, 80% of live investigations by the counter-terrorism police network were Islamist in nature, and MI5 is clear that Islamist terrorism remains our predominant threat, accounting for 75% of its case load, yet only 16% of Prevent referrals in 2021 were Islamist. That is a fundamental problem that Sir William identified and that I am addressing right now through these robust and wide-ranging reforms.

Prevent is a security service, not a social service. The role of ideology in terrorism has too often been minimised, with violence attributed to vulnerabilities such as mental health or poverty and to the absence of protective factors, rather than focusing on individual responsibility and personal agency in the choices that these people are making.

I am implementing all the review’s recommendations, and I have committed to reporting back to the House on progress. I am clear that Prevent must focus solely on security, not on political correctness or appeasing campaign groups. Its first objective must be to tackle the ideological causes of terrorism. We will not be cowed by fear, and we will not be hampered by doubt. I am very grateful to the House for hearing this update.