Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anna Firth and Priti Patel

Monday 20th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

1. What plans she has to tackle knife crime and serious violence.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Priti Patel)]

The Government work to steer young people away from crime through tough enforcement and dedicated programmes. We have supported the police with investment of over £170 million in the areas worst affected by violence, and on stop-and-search powers. A further £170 million will support violence reduction units, which are fundamental in tackling the root causes of violence.

[Anna Firth]

Knife crime and antisocial behaviour is, sadly, all too prevalent in Southend, as the weekend’s events showed. Our excellent local police want state-of-the-art, portable electronic knife polls, which are cheaper and more effective than knife arch systems. Does the Secretary of State agree that having those in place by the holiday period must be a priority for Southend police?

[Priti Patel]

May I congratulate my hon. Friend on the assiduous way in which she has made representations to me and the Home Office directly on this issue? She has a great relationship with Essex police, which is a very robust police force on this issue. She highlighted a practical solution in terms of how knife crime can be and is being addressed through knife polls, and I have seen in her constituency some of the exceptional work taking place on that.

Refugees from Ukraine

Debate between Anna Firth and Priti Patel

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I refer the hon. Lady to the statement I made earlier. I cannot comment on the anecdotal evidence that she has given, but bearing in mind that Kyiv is obviously under siege, it is thoroughly inappropriate if anybody made that comment.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement, which will be richly welcomed by the Ukrainian families in Southend West I have been meeting. In particular, I welcome the digitalisation of the family scheme. My question is around that. The devil is not in the detail with digitalisation, but the scale. We currently have tens of thousands of applications being made. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that the scheme will cope with the scale we may have on it?

[Priti Patel]

These are big digital challenges that we all face, there is no question about that, but we are working through assurance to ensure that systems can cope and withstand some of the wider technological and digital challenges that come from a hostile country that we are effectively trying to operate against.