Police Accountability
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Florence Eshalomi(1 month ago)
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Yvette Cooper
I thank the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee for those important points. We are working at pace: we have set out planned legislation in the King’s Speech—the crime and policing Bill—and there are a series of areas where we believe these measures can be taken forward as part of that process. In some areas, we may be able to make progress through regulations; in others, it is simply about changing the guidance. We have set out some timetables as part of the briefing, which will be made public. Everybody who wants more detail on the individual measures will be able to find that information on the Home Office website. This afternoon I will ensure that all those details are sent to the Home Affairs Committee.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Home Secretary for her statement, and I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). Shortly after the tragic shooting, she organised a meeting with the family of Chris Kaba. No matter what we think about an individual, we must remember that for any parent, burying their child is tragic; I met Prosper and Helen, and the pain in their eyes at what had happened will not leave me. I also pay tribute to our officers across Lambeth and Southwark, who work very hard with our community to build community relations. In our borough, often some of the issues are caused by police officers who come in from outside, but the police officers who know our patch work very hard. Against the backdrop of longer-standing concerns about accountability, and following the Casey review’s findings on the issue of institutional racism, will the Home Secretary continue to hold the Met police to account for their progress on the race action plan?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point: we need to see progress on the Met police’s race action plan, which responds to serious findings in the Casey review. That review raised wider issues as well, but it is essential that that action is taken. Both the Mayor and the Met commissioner have made strong commitments to ensure progress continues to be made, and I know that London MPs will also want to see that action taken. We cannot have reports released without follow-up.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Florence Eshalomi(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)
Knife crime takes far too many young lives in this country, so the Government have set a mission—not just for the Government but for policing and local communities right across the country—to halve knife crime over the next decade. As part of that, we have already implemented the ban on zombie knives and zombie-style machetes, and we will now act quickly to ban ninja swords following the campaigning by Pooja Kanda after the death of her son.
Florence Eshalomi
I thank the Home Secretary for that reply on knife crime. I welcome the Government’s commitment in the Young Futures programme to preventing young people from being drawn into crime. A number of gang-associated girls are drawn into crime, and although rape and sexual exploitation is such a traumatising experience, many of those young girls do not see themselves as victims. Fantastic organisations such as Abianda and Milk Honey Bees work to support women. Will the Department consider providing tailored support for young women through the Young Futures programme?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I know that she has championed that issue over many years. The Young Futures programme will include youth hubs to draw together services around young people—I used the concept of a teenage Sure Start to bring young people’s services together. We also need youth prevention programmes across all areas. She is right to highlight that this must be about young girls as well as young boys to ensure that we tackle the threats to young people’s safety from violent crime.
Immigration and Home Affairs
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Florence Eshalomi(4 months, 1 week ago)
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Yvette Cooper
The hon. Member makes an important point—there was a lot of cross-party agreement. There were also areas where the last Government’s attempt to respond ended up provoking a lot of disagreement and where we had different views. I suggest that he discusses the detail further with the new Home Office Ministers, because we take the matter seriously but want to ensure that we get it right and do not make the errors that the previous Government made in the detail of their response.
As well as the issues around community and town centre crime, we have had an important report from the police today warning that violence against women and girls is “a national emergency” that has not been taken seriously for far too long. We have record levels—90%—of crime going unsolved. The criminal justice system and prisons are being pushed into crisis. Too many people have the feeling that nothing is done and no one will come. We cannot go on like that.
For us in the Labour party, this is rooted in our values. Security is the bedrock of opportunity. Families cannot prosper and get on in life if they do not feel safe. Communities cannot be strong if they do not feel secure. A nation cannot thrive if it is under threat. Respect for each other and the rule of law underpin who we are as a country; they are how we sustain our democracy and our sense of justice and fairness. Too often, those things have felt undermined.
That is why we have made safer streets one of the five central missions of this Labour Government—a mission to restore and rebuild neighbourhood policing, to restore trust and confidence in policing and the criminal justice system, and to deliver our unprecedented ambition of halving serious violence within a decade. That is a hugely ambitious mission: halving serious violence means halving knife crime and violence against women and girls over the next 10 years. I know that will be extremely difficult, but I ask everyone to be part of it, because it is so important and we should all be trying to keep people safe.
Florence Eshalomi
I welcome the Home Secretary to her place, and I know that she has campaigned on this really important area for many years. She talked about all of us being involved in this mission. Does she agree that the people who are working with these communities on the ground—youth workers, independent domestic violence advocates, doctors in A&E units, school employees and teachers—all need to be involved in this conversation? Many of those people see what is happening before the authorities do, and it is vital that they are part of this national conversation.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is exactly right. This has to be a mission for all of us—it is not just about what the Home Office does, although we want the Home Office to do so much more in this area. It is not just about what the Government do; it has to be about all of us. It has to be about recognising that for generation after generation, people have just shrugged their shoulders about unacceptable violence against women and girls. It has just been seen as normal—just one of those things that happens—when actually, we should not stand for it. This is an opportunity for change, and to bring everyone together to make that change. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that those who are on the frontline, seeing that violence in practice, are often also those who know what needs to be done.
As part of the new crime and policing Bill, we will bring forward measures to tackle violence against women and girls. That includes making sure that we have specialist rape and sexual assault units in every police force and specialist domestic abuse experts in 999 control rooms, recognising the terrible tragedy of what happened to Raneem Oudeh and how devastating it was: she called 999 four times on the night she was killed, and no one came. For her and her family, we have to make sure that we make changes. We have to get neighbourhood police back on the beat, so we will introduce a new neighbourhood policing guarantee and new arrangements to cut waste, compelling forces to change the way they procure, in order to make the savings we need—savings that we will put back on the frontline.