Equipment Theft (Prevention) Bill

Anthony Browne Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 3rd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) on bringing forward this private Member’s Bill, and on his birthday as well—hopefully, seeing his Bill pass its Third Reading will be a fantastic birthday present for him. Like my various colleagues, I welcome the scope extension to include tradesmen and their tools, but I will concentrate my comments on the original rural focus of the Bill.

Like my various colleagues, I have a rural constituency; I have many farmers in my constituency, and whenever I ask them what their key concerns are and how we can help, rural crime is always one of their top concerns. Indeed, just at the end of last year, I had a meeting with local farmers in the village of Abington Pigotts, which incidentally has a wonderful pub called the Pig & Abbot. Anyone who is in the area should visit that pub. There were 30 farmers there, and we were talking about rural crime. I did a little poll: I asked, “Who has experienced rural crime in the past year?”, and every single one of those 30 farmers stuck up their hand. Every single one had been a victim of rural crime in the past year.

The police do their best. My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham mentioned the hard work of the police, and I know they work hard in Cambridgeshire, but it is often very difficult to crack down on rural crime. As my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) mentioned, urban crimes have a 25% higher enforcement rate than rural crimes. That is not just in South Cambridgeshire, obviously, but in all rural areas: when the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution did its big farming survey, 38% of farmers said that they had been victims of rural crime in the past year. Cereal farmers, who make up a large part of my farming community, are the hardest hit, with 51%—more than half—being victims of rural crime. As such, I fully appreciate and support the intent of the Bill.

It is easy for people to dismiss the seriousness of rural crime; it is often seen as something that we do not really need to worry about. Quad bikes and ATVs, which are the focus of the Bill, are often viewed as leisure vehicles by many members of the public—they see advertisements for quad bike adventures, something that can be done in my constituency as well—but for farmers, they are serious working vehicles. Various hon. Friends have mentioned how dependent farmers are on their equipment to make a living. For farmers, those quad bikes and ATVs make them far more efficient when covering large areas; without them, they simply cannot do the work. Many farmers work on very tight margins, and having farm equipment operational makes the difference between making money for the year, enabling them to pay their wages, and losing money. Having proper, working farm equipment is crucial to people’s livelihoods. That is why agricultural machinery theft was reported to be a top priority for the police to tackle in the 2020 rural crime survey.

Quad bikes and ATVs make particularly attractive targets. They are obviously transportable: a thief can load them on to a trailer or a lorry and whisk them away very easily. They often have poor security features that do little to deter those thieves. Their value on the second-hand market has increased recently, making them even more attractive as targets—that is because of the supply chain issues that make it quite difficult to order new ones, as we heard earlier. Currently, it takes three to six months to get a replacement vehicle, which is an incredibly long time for a farmer to cope without vital equipment.

As such, I fully welcome the measures in the Bill to clamp down on this problem: they make a lot of common sense. Cars have had immobilisers on them for over 20 years, and it is time that ATVs and quad bikes followed suit. Immobilisers act as a significant deterrent by making vehicles much harder to steal. As my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham mentioned, this is not just about making it easier to catch vehicles afterwards, but about deterring the crime in the first place.

A vehicle register also seems like a natural step to take, as better record keeping will help put an end to the grey markets that the criminals tend to operate in. During my research for this speech, I came across the CESAR scheme—the construction and agricultural equipment security and registration scheme—which has a database of ownership and covert markings. That scheme has reported a 60% decline in thefts since it came into operation in 2008, and I hope this Bill will be the catalyst for a similar trend in quad bikes and ATVs.

The Bill will save farmers much aggravation from the fallout and cost of theft. It will be good for police, because it will hopefully reduce the amount of work they have to do, and if there are cases of theft, they will be easier for police to track down and solve. It will also lead to a reduction in insurance premiums over time, which will be incredibly welcome for farmers while energy prices and the cost of living are so high.

This and any Bill that tackles rural crime will always have my wholehearted support. We need to level up our response to crimes committed outside cities. I am glad to see that organisations such as the NFU and the Countryside Alliance, which I know are important in my constituency and elsewhere, fully support the Bill. I support it, and I hope it makes speedy passage through the Lords.

Doctor Training

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of training additional doctors.

I shall start with a quiz. Who does not like a quiz? What do Members think is the most common nationality among doctors working in the NHS who trained as doctors in Bulgaria? I know that sounds like a silly question—surely Bulgarians train as doctors in Bulgaria and come to work in the NHS—but no, two thirds of NHS doctors who trained in Bulgaria are British, not Bulgarian. Indeed, there are more British people training to be doctors at a medical school in Plovdiv in Bulgaria than there are at Plymouth medical school in Britain.

I imagine Members are thinking, “That makes no sense. How can it be?” Well, those bright, young British people who are clearly capable of being doctors could not get places at medical schools in the UK, so they went off to be trained in Bulgaria before coming back to the UK to work in the NHS. Members might think that that is a stroke of genius by British policymakers—getting other countries to train our doctors; think of the money that saves the Treasury. This has been British Government policy for decades: we do not need to train enough doctors for our needs because other countries will train doctors for us, and they will come to work for us anyway. The purpose of the debate is to show that that Whitehall orthodoxy is not just seriously flawed, but against our national interest. It also harms some of the most deprived countries in the world.

The Government launched their independent NHS workforce review at the end of last year, and it will look at many of those issues. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s thoughts on the review. The purpose of the debate is to step up the political pressure to ensure that the Government reach the right conclusion, which is that, as a country, we should aim to train enough doctors for our own requirements.

I should declare that I have a big constituency interest in the issue. South Cambridgeshire is the life sciences capital of Europe with a biomedical campus, two major hospitals and two more planned, countless world-leading medical research institutes and hundreds of life science companies. All those are impacted by our national refusal to train enough doctors for our needs.

The first thing to say about our national policy of not training enough doctors is that it has clearly failed. We would have to be hermits to be unaware of the pressure the NHS is facing, with record waiting times at A&E and waiting lists for operations. There are many reasons for those, such as it being winter and the covid backlog, but one of the biggest structural reasons is the workforce. There is a shortage of medical workers of all types, including nurses but in particular doctors, and there are a staggering 132,000 vacancies in the NHS of which 10,000 are for doctors. A recent survey by the Royal College of Physicians found that 52%—more than half—of advertised consultant posts went unfilled, primarily because no one applied for them.

Despite being among the most interesting places on the planet for doctors to work—I agree; I am biased—even my own hospitals in South Cambridgeshire struggle to fill their posts. Across the country, there are doctor deserts in which health authorities have real problems in getting doctors to come and work, and rural, coastal and inner-city areas are struggling the most to fill their vacant posts. The Government are trying to implement their commitment to increase the number of GPs by 6,000, which I strongly support, but in reality, the number of full-time equivalent GPs has been dropping by about 1% a year. There just are not enough doctors.

The international figures highlight the scale of the problem. The UK has just 2.8 doctors per 1,000 people, which is significantly below the OECD average of 3.5. It is even further behind the figure for some of our European neighbours, which have more than four doctors per 1,000 people. To reach the OECD average, the NHS would need an additional 45,000 doctors. Imagine the impact they would have on our waiting lists.

Desperate hospital managers are driven to fill the gaps by employing locum medical workers at pay rates vastly greater than they would be if those people were employed directly, and the bill for locums across the NHS is a massive £6 billion a year—a huge waste of taxpayers’ money.

I do not need to labour the arguments: there is a clear political consensus that current NHS workforce planning is not working. There are many short-term and medium-term sticking plasters for the NHS workforce crisis. We need to reduce the number of doctors who leave the NHS through early retirement, leave for other professions or seek a better life overseas. We need to retain more doctors through improved conditions and financial incentives. We need to improve working practices to give doctors greater flexibility over their lives. We need urgently to update the nonsensical pension regulations that are forcing experienced consultants and GPs to retire early.

Another medium-term solution to reduce strain on doctors is empowering physician assistants, nurses and pharmacists to take on additional duties through new regulations, for example on prescriptions.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend on his excellent speech; I agree with every single word. Would he recognise that the inflow of doctors to the NHS is part of a wider package? He alludes to the appalling high salaries being paid to locums. That is preventing doctors from getting contracts for surgeries locally, which is a problem in Bracknell. Would he also agree that we have to bring doctors back from retirement and other professions? That is about improving inflow at every level, across the whole of the service.

[Anthony Browne]

I agree fully with my hon. Friend that training more doctors is just one part of the solution. There is no point training them if they suddenly leave. We need to ensure that they are not incentivised to retire early, and that they stay working in the NHS.

According to a study by the health consultancy Candesic, only one in four pharmacists are currently allowed to prescribe; 6,000 pharmacists a year could be trained to prescribe, at a cost of £12 million a year. Those are all things that we should be doing anyway, but they will clearly not solve the problem on their own.

The NHS has historically attempted to make up the shortfall of doctors by hiring them from overseas. That decades-old Government policy means that the majority of new NHS doctors are now trained overseas. Only 45% of doctors joining the General Medical Council register last year were trained in the UK—less than half. A similar percentage were international medical graduates from outside Europe, and the remaining 10% came from the European economic area.

Those overseas medical workers keep the NHS going; they provide expertise and care and are part of the exchange of ideas and experience that drives medicine forward. They are very welcome, but relying on other countries to train our doctors for us is not a long-term, sustainable solution. First, it leads to a global doctor shortage, which harms the world’s most vulnerable countries the most. We are far from being the only rich country to try to save money by getting other countries to train doctors for us. In fact, when it comes to training doctors, we are in the middle of the pack. We train 13.1 medical graduates per 100,000 inhabitants. That is more than the US, at 8.5, and Germany, at 12 per 100,000, but we are behind countries such as Italy, at 18.7 medical trainees per 100,000 people, and the world leaders, Ireland, at 25.4.

The World Health Organisation estimates that the refusal by rich countries to train enough doctors has led to a global shortfall of 6.4 million doctors. It is the poorest countries, which can least afford to retain their doctors, that are most harmed. The NHS tends to recruit predominantly from south Asia and Africa. According to the GMC register, the UK is now home to 30,000 doctors from India, 18,000 doctors from Pakistan, 10,000 doctors from Egypt, 4,000 doctors from Sudan and 3,000 doctors from Iraq. Nearly all those doctors were trained in the medical schools of their home country and left to join the NHS.

Many of those countries need their doctors even more than we do. Sudan has a doctor-patient ratio of 0.3 doctors per 1,000 people, a tenth of our doctor-patient ratio. Infant mortality at birth in Sudan is ten times higher than our own. It is ridiculous that our international aid budget is paying for health projects to try to improve health outcomes in those countries, while we strip them of their doctors. If we had supplied 4,000 doctors to Sudan, we would rightly be proud of the help we had given, but instead we recruited 4,000 doctors from Sudan. Countries such as Sudan need our support, rather than our laying out the red carpet for their medical professionals.

The WHO responded to this by setting up a red list of 47 countries that are deemed to have a low doctor-patient ratio, from which other countries should not recruit. That is a step in the right direction. The NHS no longer actively recruits from those countries, but passive recruitment continues apace. The GMC still offers professional and linguistic assessment board tests in countries such as Sudan, Ghana, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In just the past year, another 500 doctors joined the NHS from Sudan, even though the Government are supposedly not recruiting from there.

The global doctor shortage is likely to get worse, as countries age and economies grow, and demand for healthcare increases. It would be foolish to think that we can always rely on importing doctors whenever we want them. We face increasingly stiff competition from the global market. From a workforce planning perspective, it is significant that the retention of UK-trained medical graduates is higher than those trained elsewhere. Nine in 10 UK graduates who obtained their medical licence in 2015 still had it in 2021, but that was the case for only two thirds of international medical graduates, and less than half of European economic area graduates. We need to minimise leakage from the NHS workforce if we are going to stop the vicious spiral of staff shortages.

The only long-term, sustainable solution, and the purpose of this debate, is to train more medical workers, particularly doctors. This really is a long-term solution, as it takes 10 to 12 years to train a GP and even longer for a specialist, but that is all the more reason to start now. We need to ensure that the supply of doctors is sufficient for our national needs, and that we retain them for the span of their whole career. It is a conclusion that the Government have arrived at before: it was once championed by the current Chancellor when he was the Health Secretary and as Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee. The Government announced an ambitious plan to increase medical training places in 2016, creating 1,500 more places—a 25% increase on the existing number. That was then the largest single uplift in our history, and it was very welcome. It was no mean feat and required the building of five new medical schools across the country, but it is still not enough.

We need to be bolder if we are to aim for self-sufficiency. It is an ambition that has widespread support: the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of General Practitioners are all calling for it. The British Medical Association and the Medical Schools Council support it. As I understand we will hear today, it has cross-party support. Last year, just short of 16,000 doctors joined the register. To meet our national needs, we need to double our number of training places by adding at least a further 7,500 to the existing 7,500, making a total of around 15,000 training places.

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a compelling point. Does he agree that we do not have to do a massive expansion of medical schools to expand the number of medics we are training? In Burnley we have the University of Central Lancashire, which already trains medics, but the number it trains for the UK is relatively small; it does a far bigger international programme. The university is more than willing to switch that over and train far more here for the UK. We do not need a massive number of new facilities, so the capital cost is relatively small. It is just about saying to the medical schools, “You can train more UK students.”

[Anthony Browne]

My hon. Friend makes a really interesting point, which I was going to touch on later. I was going to call on the Government to do a feasibility study of how we get all those extra training places, using the existing resources that we have. I was going to mention one: we now have the first medical school in the UK that does not train any UK graduates; it only trains international graduates. The facilities are absolutely there, and we need to make the most of those to start with.

I should say that training enough of our own doctors does not mean an end to international movement of doctors, and nor should we aim for that. A steady exchange of internationally trained doctors around the global health system is a force for good. It provides opportunities for doctors to experience best practice in other countries and encourages knowledge sharing, and long may that continue.

Now that the policy has cross-party support and backing from the medical profession, why are we not already training enough doctors for our needs? Well, I am afraid to say the main stumbling block has been the Treasury. The perceived wisdom in the Treasury is that it is cheaper to recruit doctors from overseas than to train them ourselves, which might be true in the short term. Medical school places are highly subsidised. Estimates vary, but it costs around £200,000, if not more, for the Government to send a student through medical school. The additional 7,500 places would equate to an additional £1.2 billion a year.

However, on closer inspection, the financial argument does not really add up, certainly not in the medium or long term. First, a considerable proportion of a trainee’s time is spent providing clinical care to patients, so training more doctors will mean that hospitals can spend less money on recruiting locums to provide the care that trainees could provide. Secondly, training more doctors will reduce the £6 billion cost of locums overall. Investing in the training of doctors will save the Treasury money in the medium term as we reduce our dependence on agency staff. Thirdly, the financial argument neglects the income tax receipts earned by the Exchequer over the lifetime of a doctor. An excellent paper just published by the think-tank Policy Exchange calculated that there is a net additional positive lifetime return to the Exchequer of £183,000 for women and £398,000 for men—why is there a difference, one might ask—compared with the most positive plausible alternative degree. In layman’s terms, the Government make a greater return if they train someone to be a doctor than if that person pursues a degree in chemistry or pharmacology.

Concerns have also been raised that taxpayers will pay for the training of doctors, who will then simply leave for countries such as Australia and New Zealand in search of better pay, working conditions and, indeed, weather—who can resist the Australian sunshine?—but that is easily sortable. The Army provides medical bursaries worth £75,000 for Army medics, in return for which they must commit to working for the Army for four years. The Government should adopt a similar policy. Trained doctors should have to commit to working for the NHS for a set period, such as four or five years; otherwise, they would have to repay a portion of their training costs.

If, as I hope the Government will do, we decide to train an extra 7,500 doctors a year, how do we make that happen? My hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham) made this point earlier. Implementation of training places is difficult, but it is doable. We have done it before. Training a doctor is complex. There are interdependencies between different bodies that require collaborative thinking and co-ordination. To achieve 7,500 more places, we will need to not only increase the capacity of the existing medical schools and switch places over from international training, but also build an estimated 15 new medical schools.

Each new school will need access to hospitals with clinical training facilities. There would need to be enough clinical academics to conduct the training. Newly qualified doctors will need access to postgraduate courses, including foundation and specialist training.

Despite those hurdles, we managed to increase places by 25% following the announcement in 2016. We can do that again, on a greater scale. I am looking for a commitment from the Minister that the NHS workforce plan that is due out this year—it may be independent, but I am sure the Government have their view—will not only outline an ambition for the UK to do enough medical training for its own requirements but will also include a realistic plan of how that ambition could be implemented. Will the Government launch a feasibility study into how medical school places can be doubled to 15,000 by 2029?

In the meantime, on the path to that ambition, will the Government commit to reinstating the funding provided for additional medical school places during covid for the next academic year? That is a straightforward way to boost capacity in the short term.

Finally, there is a real problem with the transparency of the workforce in the NHS, because of the lack of data. Will the Government commit to providing third-party access to electronic staff records to encourage greater understanding of medical career lifestyles in the NHS?

There are other benefits that flow from increasing training places for doctors. At present, we have many hard-working, straight-A students who are perfectly capable of being excellent doctors but are denied places at medical school. Last year, the rejection rate at medical schools was a staggering 90%. To cling on to their dream, young people are being forced to turn to foreign medical schools for their studies, in places such as Bulgaria, but most of those who are rejected move into other scientific disciplines and are lost to the medical profession forever. If they have the hunger and the ability, we should be giving these students the opportunity to realise their dream of becoming a doctor.

There are clear economic advantages to training more doctors. Life sciences are set to be a major economic growth area in coming decades. To maintain our world-leading position, we need more medically trained people who can conduct the research and run the clinical trials.

Another benefit of training more doctors is for levelling up. The current distribution of medical schools around the country is poor. London has 22% of student places, but just 13% of doctors. That contributes to the increased difficulties for staffing in rural and coastal areas. We need new medical schools in places that are under-doctored—where the places are matters, as around 25% of students remain within 10 miles of their medical schools after graduating. The 2018 expansion capitalised on that knowledge and the new medical school in Sunderland is a fantastic case study. It recruits people from lower socioeconomic groups who are under-represented in medicine. Its graduates will help reduce the shortage of doctors in the north-east, a place where overseas recruitment has been ineffective, due to poor retention. A bonus is that a medical school contributes an estimated £20 million to the local economy.

The arguments are clear. We need to ensure that, as a country, the UK trains enough doctors for our own needs. Increasing training places will be good for the NHS and its patients, good for developing countries, good for the economy, good for the taxpayer, at least in the medium and long term, and good for our bright, young people who will be able to fulfil their dreams of a medical career. In short, it is the right thing to do.

We cannot waste any more time prevaricating on this issue. The medical students who started in 2018 will not be fully qualified GPs until 2028. For too long, we have kicked this issue down the road. Short-termism has been winning the day as we blindly increase our reliance on overseas recruitment. Far too often, we take the easy route and do not make the investments we need for the future. The UK must train enough doctors and other medical workers for our national needs. That is the only sustainable, long-term solution for the NHS.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Browne]

It has been a pleasure to take part in this debate under your chairmanship, Sir George. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory), for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), for Torbay (Kevin Foster), for Bracknell (James Sunderland), for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham), for Wantage (David Johnston), for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) and for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—it is not a debate if he is not here—for their very constructive contributions.

There has been huge support from Members from across the House, including from Labour and the DUP, for increasing the number of training places for doctors, for all the reasons that I laid out and other Members raised in their contributions. I thought the social mobility point was incredibly well made. I am also delighted that so many people invited doctors to go and train in their constituencies, including down in Cornwall. I will pass that on to some of my trainee doctors.

I particularly welcome the Minister’s very constructive support. The Government are aware of this issue and want to do the right thing. The message I want to send the Government—the Department of Health and Social Care and the Treasury—is that there is huge political appetite and cross-party support for increasing the number of training places. We really need to do that for the sake of the NHS and the country. I am sure we will all be watching the developments over the coming months as the NHS develops its workforce plan. We fully support the Government’s aim to be as ambitious as possible.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the potential merits of training additional doctors.

Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill

Anthony Browne Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 9th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I, too, want to start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) on introducing this important Bill. It is humbling to speak after so many passionate speeches; there have been more than in any other debate I have been involved with, particularly from the female Members. I think in particular of the speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Newbury (Laura Farris) and for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), my hon. Friends the Members for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) and for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes). We heard a lot of incredibly informed and powerful speeches.

I think it is important for me as a man also to speak about this, for two reasons. The first is that this Bill is about a problem that affects us all. As other Members have mentioned, we men have daughters, wives, mothers, sisters and we are also directly affected by this; I want all my loved ones not to have to live in fear. Secondly, it is important for men to speak about this because although this problem primarily affects women—it does affect some men as well—it is primarily and overwhelmingly men who are the perpetrators of it. The problem is not women’s behaviour. The problem is men’s behaviour and it absolutely need to change, and that is what we hope this Bill will succeed at. We also need to educate men about the importance of changing behaviour and about how a lot of what they currently do is unacceptable. Wolf-whistling is unacceptable, so is deliberately following women down streets at night and so is leering over them in the tube and making sexual comments—it is not okay. Men have to change their behaviour, and we need to educate young men, boys, children in schools that that behaviour is unacceptable.

Attitudes have changed over time. I recall as a child going past a building site where various builders cat-called, wolf-whistled out to a woman, who was clearly very distressed by it, and other people nearby found it acceptable that that was happening. It was a sort of “joke”, although clearly it was not a joke for her. Nowadays, people would find that far less acceptable, but clearly attitudes need to change far more. One clear lesson from this morning’s debate—I will not recite all the statistics that other Members have used, although I have them here—is that this is still a very widespread problem. It is far too prevalent. Clearly, it is completely unacceptable that the majority of the population live in fear and we absolutely have a duty as a Parliament to deal with it.

As the hon. Member for Walthamstow mentioned, we already have a law for this. The Public Order Act 1986 does cover harassment, not sex-based harassment, and there are penalties for it. Clearly, however, the current legal framework does not work, because this is still a problem. That is why it is clearly necessary to up the ante, have a particular sexual harassment-based crime and increase the penalties, as this Bill does. That should sent out a message to three different groups: the police, the victims, and the perpetrators. The message to the police, law enforcement agencies, courts and judges is: society and Parliament expect you to treat this with the seriousness it deserves; this is not something you can expect victims to shrug off or “man up” and deal with. Some people have talked about that.

The police and the courts have an absolute duty to clamp down on this. Increasing the penalties and having a specific law for it will make it clear to them that they need to do that. It sends a message to victims as well that it is important that they get the protection that they want.

It sends a message to victims as well that it is important that they get the protection that they want, and that there is a law out there to protect them. The law enforcement agencies, if they step up to the plate—we expect them to—will make it clear to victims that the harassment they are experiencing is not acceptable. The victim should therefore feel more empowered to come forward and report it. At the moment, few do so, because they know that it will be ignored, but the Bill will ensure that such cases are taken seriously.

The third message—this is perhaps the most important one—is to the perpetrators: that such behaviour is totally unacceptable, that they absolutely must stop doing it and that, if they do not, they could face up to two years in prison. Perpetrators should know that cases will be taken seriously, that victims will report them and that the law enforcement authorities will treat them with the seriousness that it deserves.

I am proud to speak in favour of the Bill and glad that the Government are supporting it. Again, I commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells for bringing it forward.

Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Friday 25th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)]

I am pleased to speak in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) on introducing this important Bill, which I support.

This is an incredibly complex Bill, and it has been a real team effort. I thank the Ministers and officials, and I pay particular tribute to those in the Public Gallery and other tireless campaigners for raising awareness of this child abuse.

Many of us are parents, and we have all been 16, albeit for some of us it is a distant memory. When I was 16, I thought I would marry David Cassidy. I thought we would have kids called Kylie and Jason and a dog called Freeway. We know how grown-up and responsible we felt at 16, but we also realise just how much we still had to learn and experience at that young age.

In the UK, the average age of marriage is now 30. The fact that official figures for the marriage of 16 and 17-year-olds in the UK continue to fall is evidence that, in general, our society recognises that marriage before the age of 18 is not necessarily the great idea it might seem at that age. It is widely recognised, however, that the official UK data does not reflect the full picture. It does not take account of child marriages enacted through religious and customary ceremonies that are not legally recognised, and there is, of course, currently no way of monitoring the misuse of the loophole that permits parents in the UK to use parental consent to force their children into matrimony.

My hon. Friend’s Bill expands existing criminal law on forced marriage to make it illegal for a person to arrange the marriage of anyone under the age of 18 in England and Wales. Importantly, the offence will apply to any religious or civil ceremony of marriage, whether or not it is deemed legally binding in the UK and whether or not coercion is used.

The amendments debated today add further weight to the Bill, making it more targeted and offering more protection to young girls by removing significant loopholes in the current legislation, including deception, in England, Wales and elsewhere. Elsewhere is important, as marriage is devolved and a child can be taken to Northern Ireland or Scotland to marry. I was pleased to support amendment 4, and I state for the record that Northern Ireland is consulting on the age of marriage. I hope Scotland will do the same, as it is important to remove this dangerous loophole so that all children in the UK are covered.

These changes align with the Government’s tackling violence against women and girls strategy and will provide unequivocal protection to young women in the UK.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech about the need to raise the age of marriage. Does she agree that if somebody is judged too young to buy an alcoholic drink in a bar, drive a car or buy a firework, and too young to be trusted to vote in an election or to consent to a marriage, they must be too young to marry?

[Virginia Crosbie]

I thank my hon. Friend for his powerful words. He makes a powerful statement with which I wholeheartedly agree.

The UN estimates that 110 million girls will marry before their 18th birthday in the next decade. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommends that there should be no legal way for anyone to marry before they turn 18, even if there is parental consent. In 2016, it made the recommendation that the UK

“raise the minimum age of marriage to 18 years across all devolved administrations, overseas territories and Crown dependencies.”

The UN sustainable development goals require all countries to eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation by 2030. It is a duty of the UK Government to take a lead and clearly demonstrate that they take the matter seriously and that child marriage, under any circumstances, is wrong. In doing so, the Bill will not just serve the girls of the UK but help to tackle child marriage globally.

It is a privilege to be the Member of Parliament for Ynys Môn. I entered politics to try to make tomorrow a better day for as many as possible and to try to be a voice for those who have no voice, particularly children. We now have a Bill to protect some of the most vulnerable in this country and around the world, and I am proud to give it my support.

Birmingham Attacks and Extinction Rebellion Protests

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I obviously cannot comment on the particular circumstances of the investigation, but one of the things that we do know is critical in making sure that people do not become offenders—or, indeed, reoffend if they are released from prison—is that they have good, adequate and high-quality housing. I will have meetings with colleagues from MHCLG to discuss the role that they can play in our fight against crime.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I am a journalist and an environmentalist. I used to be environment editor of The Observer and The Times. I am currently chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the environment, and I have seen around the world that those countries that have a free press are far better at tackling environmental problems than those countries without a free press. Will my hon. Friend join me in condemning Extinction Rebellion’s assault on the free press, and does he agree that such attacks on free speech will ultimately do more harm to the environmental cause than help it?

[Kit Malthouse]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Of course, the paradox, or even the tragedy, of the protests is that I understand that the edition of The Sun that was prevented from being distributed contained an op-ed from David Attenborough—no less—extolling the virtues of climate change action and urging Sun readers to do their bit on global warming. Ten years ago, nobody would have dreamt of that opinion appearing in that newspaper, and it shows how far the argument has been advanced by peaceful means. This protest runs the risk of setting the debate back rather than moving it forward.

Climate Protests in Cambridge: Police Response

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I would not have asked for this Adjournment debate if I thought the issues arising from policing in Cambridge during the recent climate protests were of merely local interest, or related only to events in the past, but they are issues of national importance. Police forces across the country will have to grapple with them as the protests spread to other towns and cities, as they inevitably will. We have had London and Cambridge—where next? Far from being confined to the past, it seems to me that we are at the start of protests that are likely to escalate in frequency, duration and severity. There is widespread public anger about the events in Cambridge and deep concern among many of my fellow MPs. We have reached a situation in the UK where the police sometimes no longer believe that they have a right to stop blatant criminality during political protests. The issues raised by events in Cambridge need to be resolved. The powers of the police must be clarified, and the police must have the confidence to use them. Otherwise, we risk undermining the rule of law and even public support for the police.

On 16 February, Extinction Rebellion activists started a week of protests in Cambridge that initially involved a blockade of two major roads into Cambridge, preventing vehicles from getting in and out of the city and forcing ambulances carrying patients and other emergency vehicles to be re-routed. The blockade remained in place for a week. Blockading a road is an offence under section 137 of the Highways Act 1980, but the police did not uphold the law and open the roads. Instead, they used emergency powers to close the roads legally, thereby giving protection to the blockades. The police were usually present during the blockades, but to protect the activists from angry members of the public.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that a key issue here is the role of the College of Policing, which actually stated that blocking the public highway was not unlawful? It instructed the police in that way. Does not this also link in with a recent case in which advice from the College of Policing led to a situation where Harry Miller was visited by police on his doorstep to question his thinking on societal issues? Is it not time for the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office to look at the role of the College of Policing and the way in which it is unfortunately leading to skewed police priorities?

[Anthony Browne]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I shall come later to the issue of the advice from the College of Policing.

On 18 February, the protesters, armed with spades, dug up the lawn at Trinity College. They then proceeded to load soil into wheelbarrows and dump it in the foyer of Barclays bank—my branch of Barclays. Throughout this episode, Cambridgeshire police stood by and watched. They did not intervene to stop the criminal acts and no arrests were made at the time. The police said that they did not stop the criminal acts because they were concerned that to do so would be an infringement of the activists’ human rights. During the week, there were various acts of vandalism by activists, including at the iconic Schlumberger building and at a Shell petrol station. Subsequently, following public outrage and complaints from Trinity College, myself and Ministers, the police have arrested a total of nine activists.

The lack of police action against law-breaking protesters caused public fury across social media, the airwaves, the letters pages and my inbox. Virtually no one has argued that the police were right not to act. That public anger is very understandable. We rely on the police to uphold the rule of law, and not to let mob rule unfold. When those tasked with law enforcement appear to be unwilling or unable to intervene in flagrant criminal conduct, the public start to feel threatened. The public are also annoyed by the perceived double standard. Many said to me, “If I had blockaded the road or committed criminal damage, I’d be arrested on the spot. Why aren’t the protesters?” I want to put on record that I strongly support the ultimate objective of Extinction Rebellion in combating climate change, but I do not support its means.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Taking into consideration the fact that a number of my constituents attend Cambridge and study there at this time, I am sure that the hon. Member will share my concern that, at what should have been a peaceful expression of opinion, tensions were heightened deliberately by a few. Does he agree that now is the time for calm heads and cool words, and that that must be the first line of defence when dealing with passionate young people?

[Anthony Browne]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. As I have said, my aim is not to inflame things, but to ensure that the police have clarity on their powers to act. I also strongly support the police, who I recognise are caught between a rock and a hard place. I know that fundamentally they want to uphold the law, but the guidance and interpretation can be confusing.

There are two questions that need answering: first, why did the police stand by as crimes were committed; and secondly, what can be done to ensure that they will uphold the law in future? I have met the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable of Cambridgeshire, who are now conducting a review of the lessons learned. It is not clear that the police would do anything differently if it happened again. They are sharing the learnings with other police forces across the country that are developing their own plans in case of similar protests. Cambridgeshire police have welcomed this Adjournment debate, as they hope it will help generate agreement on how they should respond in future. I know that, following the Extinction Rebellion protests in London, the Metropolitan police is also considering these issues with Home Office officials.

Having considered the arguments carefully and examined the relevant legislation and court judgments, I believe that none of the reasons for police inaction stands up to scrutiny. I contend that the police did have legal grounds to act even under existing legislation.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a thoughtful speech. He and I were briefed at the end of last week, along with other Cambridgeshire MPs. I, too, was outraged by the digging up of the lawn, but does he agree that there was a danger of a much bigger reaction being stimulated in the city? The city is proud of its protests, but was that not a real dilemma that the police faced?

[Anthony Browne]

The hon. Gentleman is right; it was a dilemma. In fact, I was just coming to the pragmatic arguments before moving on to the legal arguments.

The police point out that after a week of protests, no one was physically harmed, the protests did not escalate and there was no irreparable damage. That is all true, but if that is the police criterion for action to stop a crime, they would rarely enforce the law. Thousands of people’s lives were disrupted and criminal damage was done.

The police have also said that Trinity College did not complain about the vandalism while it was taking place; it did so only later that evening. It was only after Trinity College lodged a complaint that the police made arrests. But the police would not stand by and watch a burglar rob a jewellery shop just because the owner was not there formally complaining about it.

Others have said—this relates to what the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) said—that the police should not arrest people because that would make them martyrs. Well, they have arrested some people, so will they become martyrs? Who knows, and actually what difference does it make? The martyr argument could be used to justify just about anything.

A far bigger and more realistic concern is that if activists know they can get away with breaking the law, the law breaking will escalate. They will do it again, and others will be tempted to join them. Many will be quite attracted to the idea of breaking the law in front of the police, making a mockery of them. Some will push the limits, committing ever greater crimes, until ultimately the police do stop them. In this situation, appeasement will just encourage more law breaking. The pragmatic arguments do not stand up.

We then come to the legal arguments. During the week of action, the police put out a video explaining why they were not acting to stop these crimes. It was based on their interpretation of the Human Rights Act 1998, as set out in guidance from the College of Policing, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) referred earlier. Under article 11 of the European convention on human rights, enshrined in UK law through the Human Rights Act, people have the right to peaceful assembly. I am sure that all Members of this House support that right—indeed, if it was threatened, I would be out there protesting for the right to protest.

As the College of Policing guidance points out, those rights are qualified rights, and the police can impose restrictions on demonstrations under certain circumstances. Those restrictions must be prescribed by law, necessary and proportionate. The law that allows the police to impose restrictions on processions and assemblies is set out in sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986. It gives the police powers if they believe that a procession or assembly may result in

“serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community”,

or if they believe that

“the purpose of the persons organising it is the intimidation of others”.

The police believe that the Cambridge protests did not amount to “serious” disruption. I have been told that there is no case law on that, and that point was made by the police earlier. The Metropolitan police lost a judicial review following its imposition of restrictions on the Extinction Rebellion protests in London, but that was on an entirely different issue and is not relevant to this case. What I can say with certainty is that many members of the public feel the Cambridge protests caused them serious disruption and serious damage.

This also misses the point. On close scrutiny, the College of Policing guidance is poor, and the Cambridgeshire police interpretation of it is flawed. Sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act are clearly not meant to deter the police from arresting people for committing other crimes. They give the police powers to impose a legal restriction on the location or size of an assembly or procession if they think serious disorder is likely to result from it. Sections 12 and 14 absolutely do not say the police cannot arrest people for committing a crime in front of their eyes, as happened at Trinity College—that is clearly not the intent of the legislation. Even when the police cannot legally ban or restrict a whole demonstration, they can still arrest demonstrators who commit criminal damage. Even if we accept that the criminal damage was not serious, it just means the police could not use section 14 of the Public Order Act to ban the assembly overall. It does not mean the police could not have arrested those digging up the Trinity College lawn.

When it comes to the blockade of the road, I believe the police could have used section 14 powers relating to assemblies, rather than processions. Section 14(1)(b) says the police can impose restrictions on an assembly if

“the purpose of the persons organising it is the intimidation of others with a view to compelling them not to do an act they have a right to do, or to do an act they have a right not to do”.

The intimidation does not have to be serious; it just needs to be the purpose of those organising the assembly. The very purpose of those blockading the Fen Causeway and Trumpington Street was to stop people travelling on them, which they had a right to do—at least, they had a legal right to do it until the police used their emergency powers to close the roads.

That clearly fits the description of intimidation under the Public Order Act. The purpose of the assembly was to intimidate the public in and around Cambridge to stop them using the roads, so the police had a right to impose a restriction on that assembly and to require that it be moved to a place that was not blocking the road. As the hon. Member for Cambridge knows, there are plenty of places in Cambridge where the protestors could have held their assembly without depriving people of their right to travel on the roads.

The police misinterpreted not only the Public Order Act but the European convention on human rights, which is explicit that the right to assembly does not give people the right to break the law or to deprive others of their rights or freedoms. Paragraph 2 of article 11 says:

“No restrictions shall be placed on the exercise of these rights”—

of assembly—

“other than such as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. This Article shall not prevent the imposition of lawful restrictions on the exercise of these rights by members of the armed forces, of the police or of the administration of the State.”

There it is, in black and white.

The Human Rights Act itself says that that Act cannot be used to stop the police imposing legal restrictions on assemblies.

[Daniel Zeichner]

The hon. Member is making a powerful legalistic argument, but I put it to him that this is actually a political argument. There are many people in my constituency who think we face a climate emergency so serious that it justifies what would in normal times be considered extreme action. Does he understand how strongly people feel about this? The police have used these powers on the A14 diversions, and there has been less disruption for my constituents over the past few years than was suffered the other week.

[Anthony Browne]

I understand the passion, the urgency and the importance that people feel about climate change, but that does not justify breaking the law.

This is also clearly counterproductive. I have had lots of correspondence from my constituents, as perhaps the hon. Gentleman has had from his, saying that people cannot be won over to a cause by alienating them. If we want to make a political argument, I would say that Extinction Rebellion portrays itself as a fringe group with a fringe cause and actually undermines support for action on climate change. It must obey the law, which is the way to win people over.

I am close to finishing my legal arguments. The Human Rights Act also says that restrictions can be legally imposed on assemblies to prevent crime, as with the Trinity College lawn, or to protect the rights of others, as with the blockades.

In summary, there is nothing in law—in the Human Rights Act or in the Public Order Act—to stop the police upholding other laws.

The public are rightly angry that we have got ourselves into a position where the police believe that they cannot uphold criminal law. Why has this come about and what can be done about it? I believe the police fundamentally want to uphold the law, but are beset by uncertainty, with one problem being that they get weak legal advice—that is the point my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) was making. Can something be done to improve the legal advice that police forces get, and the advice from the College of Policing? The police are up against strong activist groups, which are often chasing them through the courts, always pushing to constrain the powers of the police, but no one is chasing the police through the courts to force them to uphold the law. Can the Government do something so that there is less one- sided pressure on the police?

I would like to ask the Minister whether the Home Office can undertake a public review to see what can be done to stop a repeat of the unfortunate events in Cambridge in other locations in the coming months and years. That might mean a change in the law, but, as I have said, I do not believe that is necessary. It would be good to have practical, deliverable proposals to help the police do their job. Never again should police feel they have to stand by and watch powerlessly as criminal acts take place. In future, the police must be able to do what they are employed to do: uphold the law.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I think it is fair to say, given that remark, that the insincerity sits with the hon. and learned Lady. The fact of the matter is that it is right that we come together. [Interruption.] Yes, we will see. It is a fact that it is this Government who are trying to deal with this type of issue. Members have already heard me speak about dealing with online harms and trolling, and have heard me call this unacceptable. I am absolutely sincere in my remarks, and I am so sorry—actually, I think it is shameful—that the hon. and learned Lady is herself being quite insincere in respect of the case that I am putting to her.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

T4. My constituency has one of the fastest-growing populations of any constituency in the country, partly because it is such a wonderful place to live, but police numbers, which are partly based on lagging population figures, have not kept pace. Will my hon. Friend tell me what the Government are doing to increase police numbers in Cambridgeshire?

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service (Kit Malthouse)]

We have provided up to £10.6 million more funding, which will allow the police and crime commissioner to recruit another 64 police officers for the county. That is the first instalment of Cambridgeshire’s share of the 20,000 police officers. I hope that the good people of Cambridgeshire will reciprocate by electing a very good police and crime commissioner in May.