Inshore Industry Fishing Crews: Visas

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). In his —if I may say so politely—lengthy speech, he has probably covered everything that every one of us will end up asking for. I agree almost 100% with his requests of the Minister and his suggestions for how we can help the fishing sector and turn on their head some of the long-standing and difficult issues for the industry.

Mr Vickers, if you were to come to south Devon—you are of course always welcome—you would be greeted by three extraordinary fishing towns of great variety: Brixham, Salcombe and Dartmouth. Brixham is the most valuable fishing port in England, as we all know— I spend half my time in this place talking about it—but in Dartmouth and Salcombe there is a large contingent of inshore fishermen, whether they are crabbers or day fishermen, who are really impacted by this issue. Indeed, the entire town of Brixham, which I think is now on its third year of record sales—a point that is often overlooked in the mainstream media—is absolutely dependent on visa arrangements. It is my pleasure as their representative to stand up in this place and talk about how we can do more for the fishing sector.

As the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) said, fishing is all too often an afterthought. People do not fully consider the fact that fishing is a massive lever with which we can help to level up in our coastal communities and create good, well-paying, highly skilled jobs that allow our coastal communities to flourish. We need only read Professor Chris Whitty’s report on how to level up in coastal communities to see that there is a huge opportunity for us to do more for our fishing industry, and that starts by changing our attitudes. It also starts by changing our habits; just eating more fish—more seafood—would help us to grow the UK’s domestic market. That is something that a great people in my constituency, such as chef Mitch Tonks, are trying to do. He is leading a campaign to support the fishing sector and to talk about the fishing community and the great sources of food we have on our coastline.

I come back to the point about changing attitudes, because if we want to attract people into the fishing community, that is not going to be done by handing out visas to foreign workers; we have to change the approach. I welcome the Government’s measure as a temporary measure, because I hope that, in the in-between period, we can put more into training.

On visa arrangements, it is absolutely welcome that the Government have reduced the cost of the visas and reduced the salary threshold, but I come to the point the hon. Member for Strangford made about the B1 English language requirement: if we are trying to fill a gap right now because there are not enough workers in the fishing community, how on earth do we hope to achieve that when the B1 language course is so complicated and, in many instances, lengthy?

[Mr Carmichael]

For the sake of argument, let us say that we do manage to train people to the B1 level in order to meet the visa requirements. We have heard from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about the hard, difficult and occasionally dangerous work undertaken on a fishing boat. Is it just possible that people who have achieved the B1 standard of English might then want to take that skill and qualification and do a job that is perhaps more suited to somebody with that level of language skill?

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[Anthony Mangnall]

That is quite possible but, again, what is the purpose of this debate? What are we trying to do here? We are trying to shore up support for the fishing community; we are trying to ensure that it continues to thrive. We have come up with a solution, but there is just one small roadblock, and the Minister just needs to move it.

The suggestion regarding the B2 level was well made, but I will just make this point. An organisation called Crew Services operates in the United Kingdom. It has on its books 325 non-UK crew who are working in the UK at the moment. Of them, only six have met the B1 English language requirement. That shows, in a very neat way, the difficulty we have with being able to bring in people in the helpful manner the Minister has brought forward. There are limitations because of what we are asking at the moment; it is going to be very difficult.

A lot has been said about training, and I realise that training is a lengthy process. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid) that if he wishes to go out on a vessel, he is welcome at any time to come down to south Devon to do so. I went out two years ago on a trawler for 36 hours—it was probably the last time I did an honest day’s work—and it was incredibly hard work. One of the things explained to me was the skill that goes into it and the dangers that come with it. I would like to say that I was thrown around that vessel by stormy seas, but unfortunately it was as calm as anything. However, for 36 hours, doing two hours on and two hours off, I saw the industry at work, how hard people work and the benefits of the sector.

In that instance, the young people working on the boat had trained locally, in the south-west. They were using local businesses to try to get into the sector, and that was working well. However, we clearly need to do more on this issue, so I would just make the point that, when the visa changes are implemented—that is very welcome —we should also take in hand training opportunities. In my own area of Totnes and south Devon, South Devon College has set up a training school, which is at the Noss on Dart site. It is now launching its own fisher apprenticeship scheme. It has had good attendance so far. There are a few minor niggles at the moment in how that programme is running, but more and more people are getting into it, and we in this place have to encourage them.

I absolutely declare my interest: we now need a Fishing Minister—a dedicated, stand-alone Minister—to be able to do all of this. I am sure that it is within the good sense of this Minister to be able to advocate that to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I congratulate the Government on the two very positive steps they have taken, on the reduction of costs and the reduction of the salary threshold. Will they please look at the language issue again? That is what the industry in my area is calling for.

I will not steal from the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan, but can we also look at the processing sector? A large number of businesses in my constituency are exporting around the world. They rely heavily not only on the fishing community but on there being visas to allow people to work in their sector. However, that will undoubtedly come up further on in the debate.

I am very proud to represent the fishing community. We have some small asks that can make things easier and better, and where we can deregulate and make things more efficient. These steps will not cost the Government much, but they will be applauded by the industry. I hope the Minister has heard my speech and that of the hon. Member for Strangford, and can implement our requests.

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[David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing the debate.

It is a genuine pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). I wanted to intervene so many times during his speech, but I did not want to interrupt his flow. He made lots of very good points, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall). We have not heard from the SNP spokesperson yet, but I am sure that we will broadly agree on most of what we say today. We all represent fishing communities, which, as we have heard, are as wild and varied in their needs and demands as the weather conditions they often face.

I thank the Minister and his officials for meeting me earlier this week to discuss this matter in some detail. It was probably one of the longest meetings with a Minister and his officials that I have ever had, but the fact is that we barely scratched the surface, because there is so much nuance in this industry and the devil is very much in the detail.

This is not a binary issue. It is not a question of whether immigration is bad or good. It is not even a question of whether immigration is legal or illegal. Nobody in this Chamber is advocating doing anything that would be against the immigration rules or classed as illegal immigration. It is right that the UK Government take every reasonable step to stop illegal immigration, stop the small boats coming across the English channel, and stop the disgraceful practice of illegal people smugglers putting vulnerable people at risk and taking advantage of them.

We are talking about a different kind of small boat, although sometimes they are not all that small. These fishing boats operate out of some of the most remote, sparsely populated areas, where unemployment rates are often so low as to be effectively zero. As the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said, in a lot of these areas—particularly in Orkney and Shetland, and in Banff and Buchan, which I represent—there is huge competition from other industries. Traditionally, the competition comes from the oil and gas industry, but given the energy transition, the renewable energy sector is rapidly becoming a competitor, too.

I think we all agree that the system of using transit visas, which technically allow fishermen to enter the country on the basis that they will transit outside a 12 nautical mile limit to work, is not fit for the purposes described today. I have long said that a points-based immigration system, appropriately applied, could replace that system. It is on that basis that I welcome this week’s announcement by the Home Office that share fishermen, trawler skippers and experienced deckhands on large fishing vessels are to be included on the shortage occupation list. Inclusion on the list means that jobs qualify at the 20% lower salary threshold of £20,960 instead of £26,200. However, as has been mentioned, the salaries being paid to those guys are fairly reasonable, and although that measure may help some people start out in the sector, it is not the main obstruction.

Being on the shortage occupation list also means that applicants will pay lower fees of £479 instead of £625 for a three-year visa. That is also welcome. Yet the broader English-language requirements of the skilled worker route will still apply despite the jobs being on the shortage occupation list. It will come as no surprise that, like other hon. Members, I will make that one of my main points.

I welcome the addition of experienced deckhands to the skilled worker route back in 2021. As other hon. Members have said, that followed long discussions between hon. Members such as those of us here representing our constituencies today and the Migration Advisory Committee. I have been doing this for six years; others have been doing it for longer. Through all that, there has been a genuine desire from us as representatives of our coastal communities and from the fishing industry to work constructively and in partnership with Government to come together and find the solutions that we know are there.

[Anthony Mangnall]

Of course, the debate is about the arrangements, but there is also the broader point about where we can reduce bureaucracy. We have skirted around the point about the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and health certificates. There is a series of measures by which we are inadvertently blocking people from getting back into fishing or getting into it. If we introduce the requirement for health certificates, that will have an implication for the visa arrangements of those who come over.

[David Duguid]

My hon. Friend makes a perfectly valid point. That impacts the owners of smaller boats more than those of bigger ones, because bigger boats have bigger crews. On a bigger boat, if someone does not receive their health certificate, there are other crew members who can fill the gap. With a one or two-man crew, that becomes more of an issue. My hon. Friend is right to point that out.

Let me return to my point about collaboration between the industry, us elected representatives and the Government. We should take as much advantage as possible of that desire to collaborate and act constructively in partnership and dialogue. As I found in my meeting with the Minister earlier in the week, a face-to-face discussion is so much more productive than just the odd email going back and forth.

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[Robert Jenrick]

I was coming to that point. I was not going to conclude my remarks without addressing it properly.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I apologise to the hon. Member for Strangford for jumping in on the back of his question. The funds are welcome, but I urge the Minister to do all he can to encourage DEFRA to see that access to them is made as easy as possible. I am concerned that in my patch, we repeatedly fail to apply for the funds. There are certain levels of complexity that I do not think are necessary when we are trying to help the industry. It is becoming quite cumbersome, so perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will relay that to his counterpart.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that ask, and I will certainly relay the feedback to the Secretary of State for DEFRA.

I will turn to the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, and then I will come to the ask of the hon. Member for Strangford. As the Home Secretary set out in her letter to the industry, although it is a long-standing Government policy that overseas workers in UK waters needed visas, we accepted that there was a need to legislate for clarity. The fishing sector has been using transit visas erroneously, in our view, for a number of years without consequence, and it was vital to correct that given the labour abuse that we saw in some parts of the sector.

Foreign nationals coming to work in the UK, on land or on our waters, should comply with the immigration system. That includes the firms that are looking to hire those workers. I do not believe that is controversial, and the fishing industry is no exception. None the less, as a result of the clarification there is a transition that needs to be managed, as right hon. and hon. Members have said today.

Antisocial Behaviour in Town Centres

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of antisocial behaviour in town centres.

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey, in a debate on an important issue. Antisocial behaviour is a plague that haunts many of our town and city centres, our villages and our countryside. We all feel passionately about the issue, and I am sure we all receive much correspondence about it. Therefore, we all need to get on top of it. If we are to deliver real, positive change for our constituencies, it is important that we tackle antisocial behaviour in all its forms.

As Members of Parliament, we like to sing from the rooftops about the positives in our communities—how well our businesses are doing, how safe it feels to go around our town centres—but we need to tackle darker issues such as antisocial behaviour, fly-tipping and physical assaults taking place on our streets. I want to use the debate to outline some of the challenges that I unfortunately face in Keighley and in Ilkley, as well as some of the positive work that the Government are doing and further work that I would like them to do.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the police recorded 1.2 million incidents of antisocial behaviour in the year ending June 2022, which is a 16% decrease compared with the year ending March 2020. Antisocial behaviour, while decreasing, remains a problem for us all to face, and I want to describe some examples of antisocial behaviour in Keighley. There is a huge problem around the bus station. Young people are being approached and mobile phones taken off them. Assaults are taking place in the centre of Keighley where people are coming and going, and wanting to access businesses. Sometimes, the environment is intimidating and unsafe. I receive a lot of correspondence about that particular hotspot.

There are various hotspot streets, particularly around the Lund Park area of Keighley, and I have received correspondence about Westburn Avenue. The incidents that take place are localised micro-incidents. Nevertheless, they build the fear factor that we all associate with antisocial behaviour.

We have had some darker incidents as well, such as vehicles being targeted, and petrol being poured on vehicles and set alight. That happened only a couple of weeks ago outside a location in Keighley that I know well. We have also had speeding and the antisocial behaviour associated with it, extreme speeding and cars with loud exhausts going up and down particular streets in Keighley, such as North Street, Cavendish Street, Oakworth Road and Fell Lane. I have received a lot of correspondence about drivers purposely accelerating way beyond the speed limits that have been put in place. The police have been doing their level best to try to tackle those incidents.

Another issue in Keighley is cars being driven without insurance and parked cars that are way beyond having passed their MOT test. Some of those cars are parked at the roadside, particularly where drug drops and distribution take place.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a good speech and giving us an A to Z of road names in his constituency. Does he agree that tackling the list of problems he faces in Keighley, which I also see in south Devon, is about enforcement, police visibility and ensuring that young people have things to do—options and opportunities to go out and achieve?

[Robbie Moore]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I want to paint a picture of the challenges that we all face as MPs and describe the nature of the correspondence that is arriving in our inboxes, whether it is about speeding, antisocial behaviour or physical assault. We have to get to grips with why such incidents take place. It is predominantly those of a younger age who are participating in them, whether because of boredom or a lack of activities on offer to them.

One of the things that I have been doing—I believe that my hon. Friend has been doing this as well—is engaging in dialogue in community meetings. I hold large constituency surgeries and invite the police along, so that the issues can be raised. It is always fed back to me that police prioritisation relies on data collection. How many meetings do MPs go to and hear that, while residents know that these issues are happening on their streets, they have not necessarily been reported via the 101 system or email, or to the community police station so that data is collected and police enforcement targeted in specific areas?

On the outskirts of Keighley, the Utley safer streets group holds regular meetings. It is organised at community level by local residents and provides me as the MP, district councillors and the local police with the opportunity to go along, receive information and provide feedback on what the local police forces do, while also serving as a means to hold them to account.

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[Anthony Mangnall]

My hon. Friend is being gracious in giving way again. I have set up a police hub initiative in my constituency where the police use local spaces to enhance visibility. That ensures that they can get out into the community more readily, rather than having to go back to HQ each time. It has been very effective in driving down crime and antisocial behaviour in local areas, at no extra cost to the state. Does my hon. Friend approve of that model?

[Robbie Moore]

It is an exceptionally good idea. Before I became an MP, the police station was in the centre of Keighley, but, frustratingly, our previous Labour police and crime commissioner decided to move it to an industrial estate just outside Keighley, which is not a good location. Everyone in Keighley knows that the police station is now out of the town centre as a result of that bad decision by the previous Labour PCC. I want that police station to be moved back to the centre of town.

International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) and my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) on securing the debate. I also declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, the co-chair of Conservative Friends of International Development, an ambassador for the HALO Trust, and a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for action on conflict and global Britain. To say that I am invested in this issue and in development matters would perhaps be a bit of an understatement.

I would like to give more of an international focus, given that the UK has just held the conference on preventing sexual violence in conflict. In 2012, I was a junior researcher in the then Foreign Secretary’s office, and I watched William Hague, Arminka Helić and Chloe Dalton formulate the concept behind the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative. I will go on to say a little more about its creation. I saw those early days as a halcyon moment—a British drive to ensure that we were leading the world in international development and tackling the issues that were so often overlooked, because when the United Kingdom stands up and leads the way on development, so many other countries follow us.

In those early years, the UK demonstrated its ability to create and lead new international initiatives and encourage greater global action—whether on women’s rights, conflict prevention, healthcare or support for multilateral organisations based on the rules-based order, we led on it. Indeed, at every summit, conference and non-governmental organisation engagement, there were always British diplomats and politicians sitting around the table, writing the resolutions, helping to push the international community and securing international buy-in. Those activities continue—they are things that we need to champion in this place and within our Government Departments. However, the creation of the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative in 2012 was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. To be privy to the creation of a movement that found domestic and international support and brought 150 countries together in unity was to behold true diplomacy, leadership and statecraft.

PSVI came about because, as is so often the case, it was an overlooked issue. In every conflict and crisis zone around the world, the use of rape and sexual violence was always well documented, but justice and support for survivors went largely ignored. Horrendous accounts have been written—there are countless reports and books—including Christina Lamb’s book, “Our Bodies, Their Battlefield”, which I encourage all colleagues to read if they have not done so. It reminds us that this is not a modern-day phenomenon, but a continuous factor in conflict through the ages. In nearly every instance of conflict, rape and sexual violence is exhibited. It is used by the perpetrators as a free tool of war—used to intimidate, divide, ostracise and subjugate. For its perpetrators, it is enacted with an expectation of impunity—that, in the confines of war, these atrocious acts can be committed freely and without fear of justice or consequences. For its victims, it is an act that will live with them for the rest of their lives. They never forget it; it is often never treated; and, worst of all, they never see justice brought to bear.

The prevalence of this important issue, and the lack of international action, meant that there was an opportunity to address that oversight and engage the international community. That is exactly what our team did, and in 2012 we set up the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative. We held the first conference in 2014, and this week we held our second conference, albeit a few years delayed due to the pandemic. We have demonstrated our ability to lead on this issue, but—as is always the case in this world—we can go further.

We made significant promises in 2014, with lofty goals. As the special envoy, Angelina Jolie, has said, we knew they were lofty goals, and

“there has been some progress, including a few prosecutions at the national level, the adoption of the Murad Code and the establishment of the Global Survivors Fund. But it has not been nearly enough to meet the needs of survivors, or to deter perpetrators from using rape as a weapon of war in almost every new conflict in the past decade.”

We now need to think about what we can do next. I welcome the Government’s decision to introduce a new three-year strategy and £12.5 million of new funding, and the continuation of funding to the Global Survivors Fund. On that point, could the Minister clarify how much money is going to be put into the Ukraine gender-based violence fund? However, we know that political will and economic interests across the world are preventing the meaningful action that is needed. We need to think about what survivors need, and I will make two very quick points.

First, we must lead the charge and put more spending into preventing and responding to sexual and gender-based violence. To date, less than 1% of humanitarian relief is spent in that area. That funding gap is preventing the delivery of our ambitions, meaning that, while we might identify the problems, we are not solving them. Secondly, we must ensure a new international mechanism to lead on this specific issue, to specifically ensure that survivors are supported, crimes documented, and justice sought for those who have been raped. I will leave it there, Ms Elliott, because I am conscious of the time. Thank you.

Drug Crime

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

May I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) on securing the debate? He has touched on a number of issues that impact a range of our constituencies. I hope there will be some solutions at the end of the debate that we can all work on, on a cross-party basis. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown), who brings a huge amount of experience to the House in her shadow roles, and gives great evidence about what schools and communities can do in playing their part. I completely agree with the point made in both speeches about tackling county lines, to ensure that we can disrupt those who deal drugs across our country.

It will be no surprise that I am going to speak specifically about Devon and the south-west. I am representing other south-west colleagues who cannot be here. No Member of Parliament for the south-west would get away in such a debate without mentioning our police and crime commissioner, Alison Hernandez, and the work she is doing with us to tackle drug crime in rural and urban areas. It is a blight that we face, getting increasingly worse in a post-pandemic world. As the record of crime across the south-west decreases, crime around antisocial behaviour and drugs is on the up, which we see in the statistics reported across Devon and Cornwall. We need to see that addressed.

Our police and crime commissioner and our new South Devon sector inspector Ben Shardlow are working with Members of Parliament, parish, district and county councillors, inventing new schemes and initiatives to ensure a comprehensive level of engagement across the county, to report, identify and tackle those who seek to deal drugs, or who seek to influence people by trying to push them into the drugs trade, and seek to create antisocial behaviour.

It is particularly welcome that the Government have taken so many positive steps in the south-west. I believe that by the end of 2023, we will have more officers in south Devon alone than we did in 2010—46 new officers, 25 trainees and 21 transferee officers. However, they must be utilised in a proper and cohesive manner across the whole area, not just the urban areas with high population densities.

I am repeatedly shocked when I visit small villages—as I did over the recess—and parish councillors tell me about blacked-out Mercedes coming into their villages, blatantly dealing drugs, and about the antisocial behaviour that then follows. Just a few weeks ago, one constituent decided to video conference call me from his mobile phone. He turned his camera over and showed me two people dealing drugs on the other side of his fence, and although he reported it through the 101 system, which I will come on to in a second, there was no response from the police in that instance.

There is clearly a breakdown, because ordinary people across our constituencies are reporting these crimes but all too often they are not seeing the action taken to address them. I understand, of course, that the police have many pressures on them, but when that is not being dealt with by the police, it does not give people confidence that the issue will be addressed. We must look at ensuring that the new officers—in the instance of south Devon—are utilised and put on a strategic footing to cover every area in rural and urban settings.

Of course, I and others have mentioned county lines. We see it coming down from the midlands and coming up from Cornwall. South Devon seems to be a crossroads, where we see drugs coming in from all directions. We know where they are coming from, but we must be able to help build the system that allows us to document the evidence and information about what constituents are reporting.

That is where 101 becomes a problem. I must say, the pressure that has been placed on that system over the pandemic is clearly huge. However, it is also clear that people’s faith and confidence in it is not there. We must find a way in which the 101 system allows people to report crimes and know they are being documented, and then acted on, by the police. I hope that the Minister might spend a few seconds addressing that point in his remarks. As the hon. Member for West Ham said, local action requires comprehensive engagement from local society members, the police and the schools, working together to ensure that we can disrupt those who seek to bring harm and dangerous drugs into our areas.

I do not want to bang on for too long, but I have five suggestions, which I hope that the Minister might be able to adopt. The first is what has become known as the councillor advocate scheme, which Alison Hernandez, our police and crime commissioner, has launched in south Devon. It has proven to be a remarkably effective way in which parish councillors, district councillors and county councillors can all get involved and liaise with the police on a regular basis. A police officer might also attend their meetings to give them regular updates and briefings on measures being taken to ensure that crime is reduced in their areas, but also that there is a police presence.

I have already made the point about utilising officers, but we must think about how we do so. All over this country we have village halls that sit, not being used, from 6 o’clock in the evening to 6 o’clock in the morning. We should look to use those spaces as hubs for the police to stop by, throughout the evenings and nights, so that people know that, at any point, a police officer could be in their village or town. The parish councils that I have spoken to in my constituency are all universally behind that. If the Minister wants to use south Devon as a testing programme, I would be delighted. For just a small amount of money from his budget, I am sure I can make it work. It has had a positive response from those who think that it could allow us to address these issues.

My next point is on the substitution of officers. I am delighted that so many of our police officers want to go on training programmes, but there is great difficulty in replacing them when they are on those programmes. That is the problem. I am delighted to have a number of officers going off and doing firearms training courses, but no one can replace them while they are away. I think, although I am happy to be corrected by any hon. Member in this place, that a firearms training course takes 18 weeks. That means that one of my towns, and its surrounding area, is without one of its necessary and needed officers over that time.

From the person who deals on the street to the person who brings drugs into this country, we know that we must disrupt them at every single level. I believe that we can, and that there is a positive story about the uplift in officers, but we must go further, and must be able to ensure that we are addressing all levels of society.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady is right, and she will recognise that criminals who upload videos absolutely are pursued by the police and law enforcement agencies to bring them to justice. She asked specifically about work with technology companies and online platforms and providers. That is always ongoing, including through some of the wider work relating to the online harms Bill.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

The increase in police officers in the south-west is welcome, but what is being done to tackle drugs, and will the Home Secretary meet me to see what we can do to stop antisocial behaviour happening in towns such as Brixham and Dartmouth?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; drugs are a scourge across society and they blight communities. We have a great deal of work taking place on drugs, and I will happily meet him and any colleagues to discuss that. Not only do we, first and foremost, have the county lines programme, but we believe in supporting individuals who suffer from addiction, and that is exactly what Project ADDER is doing.

Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Friday 19th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Latham]

We are not targeting any community in particular, but there are obviously some areas where people are more likely to have child marriages. There is a point that I will come to later in my speech about international treaties that we have signed up to but not gone through with.

Clearly, we need to stop marriages at 16, but there is a further element to the problem. The laws apply only to registered ceremonies of marriage. Unregistered religious ceremonies in this country are not registered by age at all. In fact, the only requirement on religious marriages is that they are not forced marriages. While the Government’s legislation on forced marriages, inspired by the campaign of my friend and long-time campaigner, Jasvinder Sanghera, is hugely important, it does not work for children. To prove a forced marriage, the courts must find that there is coercion or undue pressure on the child to enter the marriage. In practice, this means that the child needs either to give evidence that will condemn their parents or state that they consented to the child marriage. Very few children of 16 have the strength to go against their parents, because they are totally under their care—I do not want to use the word “control”. Children need to be looked after and brought up by their parents; they cannot act independently at 16.

Karma Nirvana has supported children who do not recognise their child marriage as a forced marriage. They have been conditioned to normalise marriage under the age of 16 and as such, the evidence of coercion or duress is absent. It is frankly unbelievable that, in this country, our legal system allows children, sometimes as young as 7, to consent to unregistered religious child marriages. As long as they are not forced to a standard beyond all reasonable doubt, it is not against the law. My Bill aims to change that. No child should be able to consent to a marriage, whether or not they are under pressure from their parents.

A very small number of children registered their marriage legally in 2019—only 125 legal marriages involving a person under the age of 18 were registered under the parental consent exception. The number of religious child marriages is undocumented in official statistics, however, so it is likely to be higher by a huge factor. Of the cases involving child marriage reported to the Home Office-commissioned national honour- based abuse line in the year to September 2021, only four related to civil marriages. Almost 20 times as many cases involved only a religious ceremony.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

It is striking that, this week, the Foreign Secretary announced £18 million to tackle child marriage. It is interesting that our foreign policy seems to be ahead of our domestic policy. My hon. Friend is talking about enforcement. How does she think that the enforcement mechanism would work in the Home Office or relevant Department to ensure that we can crack down on child marriage and get the relevant data to help as many people as possible?

[Mrs Latham]

It does seem that certain parts of Government are way ahead. One problem, which I will come on to, is that we are asking other countries to stop child marriage, but they can easily turn around and say, “Why should we, because you do it?”.

As I said, almost 20 times as many cases—more than 95% of all cases—involved only a religious ceremony. It is crucial to understand that, as in Payzee’s case, the religious element is a fundamental part of the marriage in the eyes of the child’s entire community. Just because the law does not recognise unregistered marriage, that does not mean that it does not exist or that it causes any less harm. Having listened to the lived experience of child bride survivors, it is without question that such marriages cause lifelong harms and threaten the futures of all those who are entered into them. That is the problem that my Bill tries to solve.

I will turn to the specifics of how the Bill will try to achieve those aims. It sets a blanket minimum age of marriage in this country of 18, irrespective of whether the marriage is registered. There are two aspects to that. First, it removes the parental consent exception that allows children to marry at 16 or 17 in a civil ceremony with the signature of their parents or a judge. That means that children who wish to marry will have to wait until their 18th birthday.

Fewer than 150 children each year currently use the parental consent exception to get married. A handful of those may be young people marrying without coercion, who will be affected by the Bill, but only to the extent that they will have to wait until they are 18 to carry out their marriage.

Many people marrying under that exception are encouraged, persuaded or conditioned by their parents or families to think that it is a good thing. Such families do not necessarily want to break the law. Karma Nirvana, run by my friend Natasha Rattu, received evidence from some children that their parents would not have arranged their marriages at 16 or 17 except for the fact that it was lawful. Those are the people we are targeting with the change: giving children the protection of the law until they are 18, when they are more able to protest or act independently if they are encouraged to enter a marriage they do not want. Any child by the time they have got to 18 is far more mature to be able to decide their own future than they are at 16, so this change to the law of registration of civil marriages will have an important impact. It will send a very clear message to everyone that marriage under the age of 18 is illegal and not recognised in this country.

Secondly, my Bill will not just remove the parental consent exception, but cover unregistered religious marriages. This is absolutely crucial, and it is complementary to the first ambition. Karma Nirvana’s helpline has worked alongside South Yorkshire police to safeguard two girls who were both married in religious or traditional ceremonies at 15, after they were reported missing by their school when they did not return after the school holidays. Following a police investigation, it was discovered that the two girls had been married in a religious ceremony, and following this had been taken out of school and relocated out of the family home in Sheffield to live in the south-east of England with their in-laws.

Despite the girls only being 15 years old, the police were limited in their ability to safeguard them. There was no offence committed as the marriage was a religious ceremony only and never legally registered. South Yorkshire police did try to pursue forced marriage charges, but it was unable to find any evidence of duress or coercion as both children had consented to the marriages. This highlights a flaw in the forced marriage legislation.

Forced marriage requires evidence of coercion or undue pressure, and in most cases that inevitably means children giving evidence against their parents and families. This hinder prosecutions for forced marriages. My Bill will offer an alternative solution: making arrangements for any marriage, religious or civil, involving a person under the age of 18 will automatically be categorised as a forced marriage, irrespective of any alleged consent, and therefore those who encourage or facilitate child marriage will commit an offence and can face criminal charges.

I will now turn to the penalties and consequences of the Bill. It is worth noting, before I go into more detail, that of course none of the penalties or criminalisation is in any way aimed at the child. We must constantly remember that the child is a victim in these cases and needs our protection, not our judgment or our criticism.

First, changing the law in this way is intended to be a preventive measure in itself. We are sending a very clear message that across England and Wales, irrespective of the type of marriage undertaken, it is against the law for a marriage to include a child. As I have set out, this is powerful in itself and will help to reduce the number of child marriages in families that are not lawbreakers.

A second stage, which already exists under forced marriage legislation, is that where there is a concern for a particular child, the courts can impose a forced marriage protection order. This is an extra safeguarding tool in the powers of the police and social services to prevent child marriages.

Finally, in cases where the deterrent or the preventive action has failed, the Bill will penalise those whose conduct caused a child to enter into a marriage, whether or not the marriage is legally binding and whether or not the marriage has yet taken place. This conduct is punishable by a prison sentence of up to seven years, a fine or both. As such, this scale of penalties is proportionate and aims to safeguard the child at all stages, culminating in criminal sanctions for anyone actually causing a child to enter such a marriage.

One final point about the contents of the Bill is extremely important, and I would like to mention it before moving on to talk about how this Bill satisfies significant policy objectives. This is the extraterritoriality element of the Bill. Very often, child marriages actually take place outside the United Kingdom. A girl from Birmingham was referred to the national honour-based abuse hotline in 2020, after being taken to Pakistan at the age of 18 to get married. She told her teachers about the plans, and they spoke to her parents, who denied them. The child was raped in Pakistan until she became pregnant, and only then was she allowed to return to the United Kingdom. What a tragic and horrifying story. Under normal circumstances, it would be outside the reach of UK law to punish the parents, unless the child was willing to testify against them for having forced her into the marriage, which is highly unlikely and would be asking a huge amount of a child who is in the UK, a victim of child marriage and rape, and unable to act independently. My Bill would ensure that any marriage involving a child who lives in England and Wales, or who is a UK national, is covered, whether or not the actual conduct or marriage takes place in this country. Having talked about the scale of the problem and the contents of my Bill, I will now turn to how it would achieve both its direct aims, and significant policy aims in the future.

[Anthony Mangnall]

It is striking that my hon. Friend is talking about violence against women—next week we have the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women—and the need for us to do more to and to bring perpetrators to justice. We have to shatter the cultural impunity, the idea that people can get away with these crimes. Will she encourage the Minister, and other elements of Government, to go further and ensure that there is a mechanism to document such crimes and lead prosecutions? So often there are no court cases that bring people to justice.

[Mrs Latham]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. We have seen that in the case of FGM, where we have had only one case. That was where a child had to testify against a family member who had conducted the FGM procedure. In this case, however, the child will not have to do that, and it is much better that the child is seen always as the victim, as they should also be in the case of FGM—perhaps that law needs to be tweaked to make it more appropriate. In this case we are not talking about women; we are talking about girls and under-18s. Of course we want violence against any woman or girl to be abolished, and we must do all we can to document that and make sure it never happens.

The Bill’s first objective is to safeguard young people, and in particular to safeguard their futures. This is about breaking a harmful practice legacy that is often handed down from generation to generation. We know that children who are subject to child marriages have significantly poorer opportunities and life chances. Those include a lack of education and job opportunities, the removal of independence, serious physical and mental health problems, developmental difficulties for children born to young mothers, and an increased risk of domestic abuse and divorce. There are many organisations in society with a duty to safeguard children, including social services, the police, and medical professionals. It is telling that when it comes to child marriage, those organisations are turning for support to the voluntary sector, including Karma Nirvana, the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, and other charities, rather than being able to rely on the force of the law. The Bill will therefore be an incredibly important tool in safeguarding young people and giving them the best chance for their futures.

I came into politics from a background of education, so giving children the best chance in life has always been at the heart of my political motivations. The Bill will support those young people, and help to ensure that they remain in education or training until they are 18, at which point they are far more able to make informed decisions about their futures.

The second area where the Bill achieves its key policy objectives is in covering both civil and unregistered religious ceremonies. I have been working on this issue for over four years, so I understand that crucial importance of covering religious ceremonies in the legislation. If we were only to regulate civil marriages, we would solve fewer than 5% of the child marriage cases with which the national honour-based abuse helpline deals each year. It is common sense to recognise that the responsibilities and life-changing elements of a marriage flow not from the legal procedure, but rather from the traditional or ceremonial wedding. For so many cases dealt with by the charities I work with, and the forced marriage unit in the Home Office, the religious marriage is the important aspect, and the civil marriage is either non-existent or an afterthought. That is why the Bill will be able to achieve its primary aim of safeguarding young people.

The final point that I would like to make in support of the Bill relates to the UK’s international obligations. The UK is committed to achieving the UN sustainable development goals by 2030. Target 5.3 in the SDGs is to

“eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation”

by 2030. That specifically applies to both religious and non-religious child marriages. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child also recommends that there should be no legal way for anyone to marry under the age of 18, even with parental consent.

By supporting the Bill, we are also helping the UK to set an example to the rest of the world on prioritising children’s futures. It will enable us to further our aims to promote girls’ education around the world, which the Prime Minister has always championed, because, as I have said, dropping out of education is one of the main effects of child marriage.

A practical example is the case of Karma Nirvana ambassador Farhana Raval, who was taken to Bangladesh at 16, under the pretence of visiting a sick relative, in order that she should marry a second cousin. Ironically, and tragically, that marriage was allowed in Bangladesh only because of the UK’s rules. At the time, girls in Bangladesh had to be 18 to be married, but because Farhana was British and the rules were different, the marriage was allowed. Since then, in 2017 Bangladesh implemented a new legal provision allowing younger girls to marry in special circumstances. Human Rights Watch confirmed that Bangladeshi officials repeatedly cited the fact that child marriage is legal in the UK as a justification for that change.

The UK’s position in criticising child marriage around the world and championing children’s future is incompatible with our allowing child marriage at home. To uphold our international obligations under the sustainable development goals and persuade other countries of the importance of banning child marriage, we must first lead by example and ban it ourselves.

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[Tom Pursglove]

My hon. Friend is very generous. It is fair to say that this has been a team effort, spearheaded by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire with support from Members across the House, which is extremely welcome.

I invite our friends in Scotland and Northern Ireland to review the position in their respective countries. I believe that Northern Ireland has just issued a public consultation, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire has alluded. I really do hope that this Bill will be the catalyst for levelling up across the whole United Kingdom, so that we have a consistent position and are able to send out this important message internationally.

[Anthony Mangnall]

When I hear my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) and the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) speak, I always feel very fortunate to be able to serve in the same place as them. So much of what is in the Bill is dependent on prosecution and enforcement. I wonder whether the Minister can go further on this, because we need to ensure that we bring people to account. As has rightly been said, this is about not making the child someone to prosecute, but supporting and helping them as victims.

[Tom Pursglove]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. He, too, has been a vocal champion on these issues—not just here on the domestic stage in the United Kingdom, but globally—including on the issue of overseas aid. Let me speak to the point that he has just raised, particularly regarding how the police will be able to enforce this new offence.

We should be under no illusions about the fact that forced marriage remains a challenging crime to prosecute, but we would like to see more prosecutions. The Government are working closely with the police to achieve this, but the situation will not change overnight. Forced marriage is often a hidden crime and children are understandably reluctant to criminalise their parents, but this change could make prosecution easier—not only for the behaviour that it specifically encompasses, but for cases already covered by forced marriage law. If there is no need to prove coercion, the burden on the prosecution is easier and there would be less of a role needed from the child victim.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), raised the wider point about the work that the Government are doing to tackle forced marriage. The joint Home Office and Foreign Office Forced Marriage Unit helps many hundreds of victims and trains many hundreds of professionals every year, and carries out wider outreach activity. The Home Office provides £150,000 a year to the charity Karma Nirvana to run the national honour-based abuse helpline, a large proportion of whose cases relate to forced marriage. The joint police and Border Force operation, Operation Limelight, works to raise awareness of harmful practices at the border, including forced marriage.

The Home Office provides multi-agency guidance and a free e-learning course on forced marriage to assist professionals. The tackling violence against women and girls strategy, which was published in July, confirms that it will develop a new online resources pack to offer further support. The Home Office has produced a leaflet about forced marriage, which is available in 12 languages, and that is also welcome. The Department for Education has added forced marriage to the relationships and sex education curriculum in schools, because it is so important that there is that awareness around the issues.

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[Tom Pursglove]

My hon. Friend is a distinguished former council leader in her own right, and she brings an awful lot of experience and knowledge to the proceedings in this House by virtue of that experience at Westminster City Council. I think her point is well made, and it is one that I am very happy to share with the safeguarding Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean)—who I know looks at these matters very attentively and is always mindful of them.

As someone who has just come into ministerial office, one of the points I have regularly made in the many conversations I have had with officials over the last two months is that cascading best practice is often so important. I always want to be satisfied that we are doing everything we can to cascade best practice where it exists. There are lots of examples out there in lots of different areas of policy, and we do not always need to reinvent the wheel. What we need to do is pick up what is done well, cascade that throughout the wider system and drive forward improvement. My hon. Friend’s point is well made, and I will gladly ensure that it is flagged up.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I apologise for interrupting, but the Minister made reference to a commissioner. I am interested to understand the remit of that commissioner, the response time and the number of reports that will be put forward, how they will act and their purpose, and whether the Government will take on board those things, as we do with the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner.

[Tom Pursglove]

I think my hon. Friend is probably referring to deputy chief constable Maggie Blyth being the first full-time national policing lead for violence against women and girls. I am certainly very willing to go away and try to find out more information on the points he has raised about her remit and precisely how that new role is going to make sure that he is aware of that important work. I think introducing that role was an important breakthrough. Again, that does not sit directly within my portfolio, but I am keen that my hon. Friends engage with him about that work.

Investment Industry Exposure to Modern Slavery

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Gareth Davies) on securing the debate. He and I have been discussing the issue for some time and he has led admirably on assessing the requirements that are needed to address it, bringing his background and experience in the private sector to this place. What a speech that was.

I also thank the Human Trafficking Foundation, with which I believe my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) also has a relationship, whose work has been extraordinary in highlighting and identifying the issue around modern slavery and human trafficking. My predecessor Anthony Steen played a large role in that and continues to perform those duties in a meaningful and effective manner.

I am conscious that there is a limited amount of time, and I do not want to interrupt those Members who will follow me or the Minister’s response, but I want to make a few points about what we understand from the Modern Slavery Act 2015. It was a landmark piece of legislation. All too often in this place we say that a Bill is a landmark piece of legislation—this really was. It was unique in the world, and it has been followed by legislation in Australia, France and the Netherlands, as has already been said. In that Act we committed to bring perpetrators to justice, we ensured that businesses were brought in line with transparency reports, we enhanced protections for victims, we ensured that there were supply chain statements and we appointed the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. Those were all integral and important points, but we also have to assess their effectiveness in delivering, and make sure that businesses are following suit and not just going through the rigamarole of ticking boxes to say that they have complied with the requirement to publish statements. The Act has to have teeth. This is where the opportunity comes. The UK shows global leadership and has global power in being able to set up initiatives like this.

I will go briefly off topic and talk about the illegal wildlife trade. In 2013-14 the UK launched a transportation taskforce in which we brought together private, public and charitable organisations to disrupt the illegal wildlife trade network. We then began to bring in financial networks to look at data analysis and see where we could disrupt those chains across the world. This is what we should be doing in this area. There is huge potential for doing it, and there are similar models that we can replicate in this country.

My last point is what was raised in the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s report at the end of this year. It said there were two points we needed to look at. The first one relates to data analysis. It is a huge benefit to be able to bring in financial institutions; to be able to pinpoint and identify beyond the supply chains and businesses’ internal structures; to look at where money is being transferred; to look at where money is being invested and to take account of that; and to make sure that we can be reassured about where our investments are being put. Secondly, slavery is generating somewhere in the region of $150 billion a year. The report goes on to encourage the exploration of opportunities to partner with financial institutions.

We set up the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner to make sure that we listen to these recommendations. These recommendations have come out in the report; we would do very well to listen to them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford has said, it is the situation that one walks past and cannot ignore. We cannot, in this day and age, look at the crisis and the egregious crime that is human trafficking. We cannot accept it in the 21st century. We have the opportunity to bring those financial institutions together—with the City of London and the power we have as the fifth biggest economy in the world—and it is time for us to take the action, take the lead and provide that leadership. I hope the Minister will listen to these words, and the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford, and take the appropriate action.

Safe Streets for All

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I am actually grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention, because she gives me the opportunity to speak about the success of the EU settled status scheme, which has now given settled status to approximately 5 million people. The Government were mocked when we launched the scheme; we were told that we would never even reach 3 million. To answer her question specifically, intensive work is taking place across the country to reach some hard-to-reach communities, particularly because of the pandemic. Many of the outreach programmes had stopped, but we are now going back into communities and also reaching out to diaspora communities. We are also working with local authorities to reach out to communities, and children in particular, to ensure that their registration takes place. Extensive work is taking place in this area.

I was about to speak about our proposals to address the illegal side of migration. Illegal migration causes real harm and endangers the lives of those undertaking many dangerous and perilous journeys, more often than not in the hands of smugglers and people traffickers. The number of people crossing the English channel in small boats reached record levels last summer. People smugglers trade in human misery. Not only do these gangs exploit and hurt desperate people, but they are responsible for other illicit activities ranging from drugs and firearms trafficking to serious violent crime. They must be brought to task.

The House will recall that earlier this year I launched our new plan for immigration. It is underpinned by the principle that access to the UK’s asylum system should be based on need and not on the ability to pay people smugglers. Nobody thinking rationally could object to that. Our new Bill will help to deliver that plan, which will increase the fairness and efficacy of our system. It will better protect those in need of genuine asylum. It will deter illegal entry into the UK, break the business model of criminal traffickers and their networks, and save lives. It will also make it easier to remove people with no right to be in the country, including dangerous foreign criminals.

Those who come to the UK legally to work hard and contribute to our national life will always be welcome, but those who abuse that welcome by committing crimes will be deported. So far this year, more than 650 foreign national offenders have been removed from the UK; that means fewer foreign murderers, rapists and drug dealers on our streets. While those on the Opposition Benches will do everything they can to stop us, we will persevere, because this is what the British people rightly expect of their Government. This country and this Government have a proud record of helping those who face persecution, oppression and tyranny, and we will always stand by our legal and moral obligations to innocent people fleeing persecution.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend, but she touches on an important point relating to modern slavery. Will she say to the House whether that means an intention to reform the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to include supply chains and investments?

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[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to open this debate for the Opposition at a critical moment for our country.

First, I would like to reiterate what I said during the urgent question earlier and to condemn absolutely the vile, antisemitic, sickening, misogynistic abuse we saw on the streets of London. That behaviour is never acceptable, and I hope that a strong message goes out from right across this House that we abhor it. I send best wishes for a swift recovery to the six police officers who were injured. I would also like to say that the thoughts of those on the Labour Benches are with the family of PCSO Julia James. I commend Kent police for the work that they have done on that investigation.

I give thanks, on behalf of all Labour Members, for the remarkable service that those on the frontline have given during this crisis. Our police officers, firefighters, emergency services, health and social care workers, shop workers, transport workers and local government workers—indeed, all those on the frontline—have shown incredible bravery and dedication in the face of a deadly virus. It has been sobering and it has been inspiring. I pay tribute, too, to all those who lost their lives to this awful virus in carrying out their duties. It is a devastating loss for so many families for whom life will never quite be the same again. Those who put themselves in harm’s way to keep us safe are the best of us, and we thank them for their service.

We all rightly stood and clapped frontline workers, but the sound of applause does not pay bills. It is wrong —totally wrong—that this Government have time and again praised the work of frontline workers but refused to give them the fair pay rise that they deserve. This has been a time of national sacrifice and none has risked their life more than those who serve on our frontline. I have visited police stations and heard about our frontline officers putting themselves at risk to help others, not knowing who or what they will encounter when they are out on the beat. I have spoken to firefighters and heard about the sacrifices they have made, delivering food parcels and personal protective equipment, driving covid patients to hospitals, and, very sadly, moving bodies. Yet they face a threat to the collective bargaining body that protects firefighters’ rights. Again, Labour Members call on the Government to think again: to reward our key workers and, as a first step, revisit the deeply unfair pay freeze for those who have served so bravely during the pandemic.

As we consider the measures in this Queen’s Speech, it is clear that yet again, under this Conservative Government, there is no shortage of rhetoric but a clear commitment to action is missing. Talking tough and failing to act has been a trademark of this Government’s 11 years in office. Under this Government, victims have been failed and the public has been failed. Rape convictions have fallen to a record low, with just one in every 100 reported rapes even getting to a court. Fraud has rocketed, with 4.4 million victims in the last year. Hundreds of thousands of police records have been lost, and we still have no idea if they will all be recovered. Antisocial behaviour reports have soared by 5 million over the past decade. Assaults on police officers went up 40% during the lockdown, and court delays are now so bad that criminals are not facing justice in the way they should be. It is a litany of failure.

At the same time, the services that are so vital to preventing so many of these appalling acts from happening in the first place have been cut to the bone over the past 11 years. There has been a £1.4 billion cut in youth services, 750 youth centres have closed, and more than 4,500 youth workers have been lost. Mental health services are so stretched that people desperately in need of support are left abandoned, at risk to themselves and others. The Government’s total mess on probation services means that probation officers have one hand tied behind their backs and are doing their best to carry on the vital job of tackling reoffending. It is a shameful record.

The tough talk continued in this Queen’s Speech, but the reality is, frankly, different. In reality, this Government are soft on crime and soft on the causes of crime. The truth is that under this Government, criminals have never had it so good, and it is little wonder that the statistics are so dire with the huge cuts the Government have made to policing. We have seen police numbers plummet since 2010, with 21,000 officers lost across the country and police staff lost as well. We have had a Conservative Government for over a decade who were content to sit back and see violence rise and police numbers fall while the Home Office’s own research was showing them that the police cuts were linked to levels of crime. Of course, I welcome more police on our streets, but the Government uplift programme will not even replace the officers lost since 2010, and what about the police staff lost as well, who play such a vital role?

The harsh reality is that this Government’s failure has had a devastating impact on people’s lives. Rocketing antisocial behaviour, with millions more instances recorded, mean that lives, often of the most vulnerable in our communities, are made a misery. The violence on our streets and in homes, soaring right across the country, has had devastating consequences, taking and ruining far too many lives and causing unimaginable heartache for families. Let us be under no illusion: while rising crime affects everyone in society, it is often those who are struggling most in our communities who are hardest hit, with our poorest neighbourhoods disproportionately impacted on by crime. That is the record of this Government.

What we see in this Queen’s Speech is a warped sense of priorities. This is a Government who are more interested in preventing people from voting than they are in preventing crime. This Queen’s Speech should have focused on addressing rising crime, bringing perpetrators to justice and keeping people safe, but, sadly, what I see is a raft of proposed measures in this Queen’s Speech that, I fear, are about sounding tough but fail to rise to the scale of the challenge.

Let me turn to the measures that have been announced. On fire safety, we will, of course, look carefully at the role of the proposed building safety regulator, but the reality is that thousands of people continue to live in dangerous buildings nearly four years after the tragedy of Grenfell. Before Parliament prorogued, the Government, on four separate occasions, whipped their MPs to vote against amendments that would have ensured that remediation costs would not be passed on to leaseholders. Instead of listening to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), the Government chose to look the other way. I have met those who are still living in those buildings with dangerous cladding—very moving it was as well—and I can tell Ministers that what they want is action, not more words.

Let me turn to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, carried over from the last Session. Of course, there are some elements of that Bill that the Labour party not only supports but campaigned for. My hon. Friends the Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch) introduced “protect the protectors” legislation to increase the maximum sentence for assaults on emergency service workers. The Home Secretary boasted at the Dispatch Box about increasing that to two years. The Government could have done that three years ago; when they were asked to do so by my hon. Friends, they would not do it. Indeed, we believe that the Government should now look at protecting the pandemic heroes and extend protections to shop workers as well as other vital frontline workers and social care staff.

We are also glad to see long overdue work on the police covenant. I put on the record my praise for the work of John Apter and the Police Federation, campaigning hard to deliver this much-needed change. However, we will be pushing hard to ensure that this is not a paper exercise but a real step forward for police that helps to protect their health and, vitally, their mental health and wellbeing.

[Anthony Mangnall]

Clearly the right hon. Gentleman was asleep during the local elections, when we won 10 more police and crime commissioners, showing that the general public view us as tough on crime. If he is going to stand there and say that we are not supporting our frontline workers when we said that we would be tougher on sentences, why did his party vote against that? Why did it not say that it would take the Bill to Committee and reform it, or at least come up with a sensible idea rather than carping from the side?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, just like I will listen to voters in parts of England, I hope that he will listen to the voters in Wales, where we won three of the four police and crime commissioners and a Labour Government achieved the best result in elections since the advent of devolution, showing that Labour in power actually works. [Interruption.] He scoffs at the voters of Wales. I think he should seriously look at the message that they are sending to him.

On the hon. Gentleman’s second point, on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, Government Members know perfectly well that they could have had a Bill that found consensus across this House. Instead, they chose to introduce divisive elements on protest and on discrimination against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities that made that impossible. He knows that, and Ministers know it too.

Indeed, there are measures in the Bill on death by dangerous driving, for example, championed by my hon. Friends the Members for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock), for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) and for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), who worked on a cross-party basis with the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). There is the part of the Bill on positions of trust, where we extend the scope of protections against those who perpetrate sexual relationships with young people under 18. Again, that had a cross-party genesis, with my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) working with the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch). That too could be widened, to include driving instructors and music tutors. I credit my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) for securing changes to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

There are some long overdue parts of the Bill that deal with disproportionality, such as the use of problem-solving courts, recognising remand of children as a last resort, and reform of the criminal records disclosure regime, but the reality is that those things go nowhere near far enough. I was challenged about what Labour would do. The Lammy review, which sets out 35 recommendations, has sat on the Government’s shelf since 2017. They need to implement it. [Interruption.] The Lord Chancellor knows very well that they are not implementing the 35 recommendations. I would be quite happy to go through all 35 with him.

On the Government’s proposed legislation on race and ethnic disparity, I am deeply concerned, since it now seems to be their position that structural racism does not even exist. With that view, we cannot trust this Government to bring forward measures so desperately needed to tackle structural racism. That lack of trust is shown in the way the Home Office has so badly mishandled the Windrush compensation scheme. [Interruption.] The Home Secretary shouts “Rubbish”, but I have spoken to the victims who have been treated so badly. I have spoken to people who have waited years for payments, forced to fight back against insulting offers, and people whose family members have passed away before compensation was received.

Now, the Home Secretary says “Rubbish”; these are her statistics. She promised to speed up the process. On 21 April, 1,417 cases were being processed. Five hundred of them had been ongoing for over a year, and others had been in the system for over two years. Those are the Home Secretary’s own statistics. That slow progress piles injustice upon injustice.

Let me come to the crackdown on protest. Where our existing laws are sufficient, it is wrong-headed and dangerous. The right to protest is a precious part of our democracy that should be treasured, not trashed. At the same time, the measures against unauthorised encampments would further discriminate against our Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities, in breach of the Human Rights Act and of the Equality Act.

Another area in which the Government’s poor record is matched by their lack of ambition is addressing violence against women and girls, which remains a stain on our society. The tragic death of Sarah Everard drew attention in the starkest terms to the desperate need for change that so many of us have long been calling for. As a society, and as men in particular, we must do better by listening to the outpouring of powerful testimonies, but—more importantly—by acting. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill was rightly exposed for the shameful way in which it overlooked reforms that people have been crying out for, and I pay tribute to all those who have spoken up so powerfully: my colleagues my hon. Friends the Members for Croydon Central and for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), and all those across these Benches and the House who have said, “Enough is enough”.

There is deep anger and frustration about the scale of the challenge and the glacial speed of action. We have had several strategies announced in the past by the Government, and in the Queen’s Speech we have had the announcement of the violence against women and girls strategy, but with no timescale or proposed action. Today, Labour is proposing action, and we published our proposals this morning: a rape survivors plan, with support needed from start to finish; cases of rape and serious sexual violence fast-tracked through the system and a Minister tasked with the responsibility of driving change through; tougher sentences for rape, stalking and domestic homicide, including reviewing sentences for all domestic abuse; and a new law on street harassment. We need to ensure that all police forces have specialist teams of rape and serious sexual assault officers in place to support victims and drive up conviction rates; to remove the legal barriers that prevent any victim of domestic abuse getting the help they need, such as barriers to legal aid and no recourse to public funds; and a victims Bill with the victim at the heart of the system, supported through the process and afterwards. Let us see no more strategies and limited pilot schemes: let us see the action that is long overdue.

On the counter-state threats Bill, the warnings for action could not have been clearer: citizens poisoned on our own streets, attempts to subvert our democracy, and London becoming a laundromat for dirty money. The Intelligence and Security Committee’s report on Russia could hardly have delivered a more damning indictment of deep, systemic failings in the Government’s approach to the security threat posed by Russia, finding that the Government had “badly underestimated” the Russian threat and the response it required.

We thank our security services for the work they do, but they need more support. The Russia report concluded that previous changes in resourcing to counter Russian hostile state activity are not, or not only, due to a continuing escalation of the threat, but appear to be an indicator of “playing catch up”. We cannot keep playing catch-up, which is why we have long called for the recommendations of the Russia report to be implemented. It is why we have consistently criticised the actions of the Government of China against the Uyghur and on the security law in Hong Kong. We will look at this long-delayed legislation closely, and seek to work constructively to bring about the changes needed to guard against not just the threats of today, but the fast-emerging global threats to our democracy.

As we look at the UK’s role in the world, I want to turn to the new plan for immigration. I do not disagree that the asylum system is too slow: the reason for that is the Conservative party, which has run the immigration system for the past 11 years. The share of asylum applications that received an initial decision within six months fell from 87% in 2014 to 20% in 2019. That is the Conservative record, and we have seen an approach from Ministers that lacks both competence and compassion. There has been a huge surge in the number of dangerous crossings in small boats from France, but where is the comprehensive deal with France to deal with it? The Department for International Development, which was the very Department that addressed the causes of people being displaced from their homes in the first place, has been abolished. Safe routes such as the Dubs scheme have closed down; the Dubs scheme closed after just a few hundred children, when everyone expected it to help 3,000. That is not the way to tackle the issue or the heinous crime of people trafficking.

At the same time, we have seen people housed in overcrowded accommodation that represented a fundamental failure of leadership and planning at the Home Office, leading to a dangerous covid outbreak and putting vulnerable people, staff and neighbouring communities at risk.

From what we have seen of the plans so far, they will do next to nothing to stop people making crossings. They risk withdrawing support from vulnerable people, including victims of human trafficking. Nor do this Government show any sign of delivering the international agreements they require for their measures. Yet again, Conservative failure will be hard-wired into the system.

On the issue of borders, the lax measures against covid have been frankly negligent. The Government were late to introduce formal quarantining, they failed to have an effective home quarantining system, and they were late to introduce border testing and hotel quarantining —and even then, only 1% of arrivals actually stayed in hotels.

Like everyone across the House, I am deeply worried by the sharp increase in the covid variant cases in Bolton, Blackburn, Darwen and other parts of the country. Cases have almost doubled in the past four days. If there is one thing we have learned from this awful virus, it is its ability to spread rapidly.

We should never have been in this position. We have been warning the Government for months of the reckless risks they have been taking with their half-baked border measures. [Interruption.] The Home Secretary shakes her head, but she has been on video making clear her disagreement with the Government’s approach to the borders. We called a vote in this House in February on comprehensive hotel quarantining, but the Conservative party refused to back our plans, which would have given us the best chance of stopping strains reaching the UK. Instead, the variants first discovered in India, Brazil and South Africa have all reached the UK, with outbreaks occurring.

India was added to the red list only after cases had already been detected in the UK back in February. By 5 April, India was reporting more than 100,000 new covid cases a day, and neighbouring countries Pakistan and Bangladesh were added to the red list on 9 April. As cases rocketed in India, No. 10 kept saying that the planned visit by the Prime Minister, which was scheduled for 25 April, would go ahead. It was not until 19 April that No. 10 cancelled the trip to India—the same day that the Health Secretary announced that India would be added to the red list. That measure came into force on 23 April.

It has been reported that during that time of dither and delay, more than 20,000 travellers from India entered the country. The Prime Minister has serious questions to answer about the suggestions that he delayed adding India to the red list because of the planned visit.

Ministers must learn the lessons, act more cautiously now on the reopening of international travel, and make their border protections effective. Yet again, it is the same theme: Ministers talk tough but fail to take action to keep people safe. Sadly, that is the story of this Government: tough rhetoric; little effective action. At the same time, violence has been on the rise, affecting all our communities; neighbourhood policing has been cut to the bone; our democracy has been left vulnerable to hostile state action; and we have an immigration system devoid of compassion and competence.

What we needed was a bold vision for security in our country and safety on our streets. Instead, the legislative agenda set out in this Queen’s Speech merely repeats a pattern of failure, and it is the British people who are left to pay the price.

--- Later in debate ---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Anthony Mangnall]

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I would say that it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), but it is a complete load of nonsense to suggest that we are subduing democracy in any way. If she looked at the Electoral Commission report of 2014, she would note that it very sensibly suggested voter ID. Indeed, in Northern Ireland, votes have not been supressed; they have continued and been allowed, and it has been a very successful roll-out.

I welcome the measures outlined in the Queen’s Speech, which sets a clear and bold agenda for this parliamentary Session. In the time allowed, I would like to draw attention to a few points. First, on rail and bus reform, at long last we are to see a White Paper that will join up our trains, buses and boats. Hopefully, it will be delivered on time so that I can go back to my constituents and tell them how they can traverse the area more ably.

Secondly, the skills and post-16 education Bill will enable further education colleges, such as South Devon College in my constituency, to help people in every age group have the opportunity to innovate, create businesses and retrain. That is hugely important.

Thirdly, I completely welcome the procurement Bill, which I hope my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) will have a significant hand in, given his previous work on this subject. By addressing procurement, we will not only save taxpayers’ money but put it where it needs to go more effectively.

Like other Members, I would like to speak about the planning Bill. It will come as no surprise that I am, at present, heavily against it. We need to entrench ourselves in localism. The Conservative party has stood for localism. We must listen to what local residents want for where we develop. That means following neighbourhood plans and addressing the issues relating to building on brownfield sites, ensuring we protect our green spaces, ending land banking, and building in an environmentally friendly way. Those are the things that the people of Totnes and south Devon want to see done. Of course, they want affordable homes and homes that they can rent. All of that can be achieved, and I look forward to the opportunity to helpfully reform the planning Bill when it comes to this place.

Of course, today is for talking about crime and safer streets. I congratulate Alison Hernandez, our police and crime commissioner, on her re-election—how lucky we are in Devon and Cornwall to have her re-elected. She has a firm agenda of not only keeping Devon the second-lowest crime area in the United Kingdom, with an ambition to make it No. 1, but introducing schemes such as the councillor advocate scheme, putting new officers on our streets and delivering a safe environment for all people, whether they be residents or visitors.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 6th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak in the debate and hear the recounted stories that so many hon. Members have brought to the House. Domestic abuse is a horrific experience; I have spoken to many of my constituents who have suffered it. However, this is a landmark Bill, and we should all be rightly proud of what is going on this afternoon.

I was sorry not to be able to contribute on Second Reading. However, I listened carefully to hon. Members from across the House, whose contributions were heartfelt and have added great weight to the Bill. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Newbury (Laura Farris) and for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) and the Mother of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), on their extraordinary work in ending the perverse and unjust rough sex defence. The addition of their amendment will ensure that perpetrators can no longer escape justice from the most heinous and horrific crimes.

My reason for speaking in the debate is twofold. I do so first as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on preventing sexual violence in conflict and, secondly, because a new domestic abuse prevention group has been set up in my Totnes constituency called SASHA—support, advice, safety, help and aid. I hope my work on the former and support for the latter will be of use in tackling this issue and helping all those who, too often, suffer in silence. Much of the work that I and others have done on preventing sexual violence is based on tackling the culture of impunity, ensuring that justice is delivered, and supporting and providing the assistance that so many need. The same can be said of this Bill, which I hope will deliver for people across the country and serve as an inspiration to people around the world, with other countries following suit. I suggest we should be very proud of that.

At the start of the debate, I listened to my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who spoke passionately about advertising and ensuring that people are aware of the contents of the Bill. That cannot be expressed enough. People must understand what the clauses do and how there will no longer be the injustice of people getting away with a flimsy defence. The Bill will end the reality of people thinking that domestic abuse is just something that occurs and that it is of a time. We can do better than that.

Covid-19 has highlighted the prevalence of domestic abuse both at home and abroad. The sad fact is that crises and conflicts only see gender-based violence increase, regardless of where someone is or where they live. The facts speak for themselves. As other hon. Members have said, 26 women and girls have been killed since the lockdown began in March. That is a tragedy in itself. The lockdown has forced people from their schools, their places of work and their social areas—essentially their refuges and places of safety—and pushed them back into the arms of abusers, behind locked doors from which they cannot call out, cry out or ask for help. Again, that is something that the Bill will deal with in its entirety. However, for every crime, how many will not be reported? For every bruise, every broken bone and every rape, how many people will not be able to come forward? That is of serious concern. We must continue to work that.

The Bill, as I said, is a landmark piece of legislation. It does all the things in the right area. However, it is also important to note that it is the first step of many that I hope this Government and future Governments will take to ensure that we can always seek justice for those who need it. Only when victims have places of safety and perpetrators feel the full force of the law will we be able to believe that progress is being made. I see that my time is already running out, so I will just make the point that the creation of a commissioner, the new civil domestic and protection notice, and the international jurisdiction are all incredibly useful.

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

Diolch, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), who spoke so passionately. I echo and support his calls.

It is an honour to speak on the Bill, which I know has the potential to change the lives of so many domestic abuse victims across the UK. Colleagues may be aware that I sat on the Bill Committee. We heard compelling evidence from a wide range of charities and campaign groups, including Women’s Aid, Welsh Women’s Aid and the Latin American Women’s Rights Service. I pay tribute to them for the fantastic work they do every day, although it is of course frustrating that their services are required and relied upon by so many victims in the first place.

I also pay tribute to my fantastic colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield). I know that her bravery in speaking up about her personal experiences has formed the inspiration for many of our speeches today. I thank her and admire her for her courage. I hope that by speaking up I can do my bit to ensure that the experiences of domestic abuse victims remain at the forefront.

It is clear that coronavirus has confirmed and exposed what I already knew to be true, based on experiences with domestic abuse victims in my own constituency: there is simply not enough protection and support for domestic abuse victims. Since December, my team and I have dealt with more cases of domestic abuse than I ever imagined possible. It feels as though domestic abuse is seen by many people as a hidden offence, something that happens in the newspapers, behind closed doors or somewhere else, but not to people on our doorsteps. The harsh reality is that domestic abuse is a very present threat to so many individuals in so many households. It is happening right now, right this minute.

Ultimately, 10 years of Tory austerity has impacted the ability of local authorities to fund the specialist services that support survivors of domestic abuse. I welcome the Bill, but it must go further to provide equal protection for all victims of domestic abuse: men, women and children. A one-size-fits-all approach to tackling domestic abuse will prolong the suffering of victims, so it is vital that we use this opportunity to ensure that the Bill commits to a co-ordinated cross-Government response to domestic abuse. The Bill must deliver the changes that survivors urgently need in all areas of their lives, from housing to healthcare, from immigration access to justice and to welfare reform.

The changes simply must apply to migrant women, who we know face a unique set of acute barriers when seeking support, coupled with the Home Office hostile environment. Migrant women face the unique threat of having their immigration status used as a form of coercive control, which may prevent them from seeking support. I find it hugely concerning that more than half the police forces in England and Wales confirmed, in response to freedom of information requests, that they share victims’ details with the Home Office for immigration control purposes. Surely, it is our duty to protect victims. They should be prioritised ahead of and above immigration action.

I would also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the fantastic work of Laura Richards and others for all their hard work in relation to new clause 33. Colleagues may be aware that domestic abuse currently costs society at least £66 billion a year, yet that estimate does not include stalking or the psychological impact of stalking. Therefore, the cost is likely to be much, much higher. It is clear that we could save the lives of many, if only the violent histories of domestic abuse perpetrators were actively joined-up. It is vital that our police, prison and probation services are able to identify, assess and manage serial and serious domestic violence perpetrators and stalkers ahead of them committing an offence. The Bill presents a real opportunity to better protect victims, intervene and prevent further abuse, but it does fall short of committing to a multi-agency problem-solving approach by statutory agencies.

To conclude, public protection must be at the forefront. Our current incident-led approach to patterned offences such as domestic abuse and stalking is costly with people’s lives, especially for victims.

Policing in Devon and Cornwall

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Double]

My hon. Friend makes the point very well. I will come on to talk about that in a bit more detail.

Before I go any further, it would be wrong of me not to mention the Isles of Scilly, largely because my wife hails from there. She was born and bred there and her family still live there. It is also another unique part of our force area. The five inhabited islands that are 25 miles off the mainland need to be policed by Devon and Cornwall police, and that adds further complexities to their work.

The Devon and Cornwall police area has a number of very particular challenges. When taken together, it is clear that no other police force in the country has to face this combined complexity. None the less, the Devon and Cornwall police do an incredible job. Devon and Cornwall is the second safest region in England and Wales and has the lowest rate of victim-based crime nationally. But what is incredible is that, despite all those challenges, the force provides an excellent service in keeping us safe with lower than average national funding. The Devon and Cornwall force receives 52p per day per person in police funding, compared with the England and Wales average of 61p per person per day, while having to cope with the challenges that our rural peninsula presents.

In addition to all this, as colleagues have mentioned, we must include the impact of tourism and the summer surge that we see every year. The funding gap is even more significant when we consider that Devon and Cornwall experience the highest level of visitors in terms of overnight stays, second only to London. In fact, I learned during the lockdown that the constituency I have the pleasure of representing has the highest number of overnight stays, at 4.7 million a year, of any individual constituency in the whole of the UK. During the extended tourism season, we experienced a 14% increase in the number of incidents, including an 11.7% increase in recorded crime. This represents the highest seasonal increase in recorded crime across the whole country. The intensity of calls for service seen in the extended summer period places considerable pressure on our services for the rest of the year, as staff seek to catch up on training and annual leave and to address the toll that the summer season pressure takes on their workloads. So the pressure of tourism is not just felt during the peak tourist season; it has an impact on policing across the whole year.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments and for securing this Adjournment debate. If he would like to have a vote on whether Devon or Cornwall is better, I would take our odds as a good chance. He is talking about the geographical issues as well as the population influx that we have in the south-west. Would he support what has been done by our police and crime commissioner in the councillor advocate scheme, which gives new mechanisms for people across the area to support their police officers and help to eradicate crime?

[Steve Double]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, because he highlights a point I was going to make. The pressures and the below-average funding that our police face mean that the Devon and Cornwall force is often at the forefront of innovation and finding new ways in which to work and use its resources in the very best, most efficient way. The example he highlights shows a way of working within the community to ensure that effective policing takes place despite having lower than average funding. We should praise our police force for the work that it does but at the same time make the case that it deserves better funding.

I also want to take this opportunity to mention the excellent piece of analysis that the office of the police and crime commissioner for Devon and Cornwall has put together. It is entitled “Understanding the exceptional policing challenges in Devon and Cornwall from tourism, rurality and isolation”. I am sure that the Minister is familiar with this piece of work. It shows in much greater detail the unique challenges that our police force faces.

I want to talk a bit more about funding. The current funding gap between rural and urban police forces needs to be addressed. This is something that I have raised continually since I was first elected five years ago, and I know I was not the first to do so. It is a long-standing issue that needs to be addressed. I would again draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that funding for Devon and Cornwall police is 9p per day less than the England and Wales average, and that when we factor in the adjustment to the population for tourist numbers, it is 13p per day. That situation needs to be addressed, so I seek confirmation from the Minister that any future review of police funding will factor in these different elements and ensure that police funding better reflects the position on the ground and the challenges that the police force actually faces. We need a better funding formula that really reflects the complexities that policing in rural areas, particularly in Devon and Cornwall, faces. The current formula fails to reflect the very high volume of calls for services faced by the police, which cover a very broad nature of incidents. Last year, as much as 84% of Devon and Cornwall police force’s total demand fell under the non-crime categories, many of which occur in rural and remote locations that are very time-consuming to get to, and so are an intensive use of resource. The role that our police officers play in rural areas, more than in urban parts of the country, is much broader than what is captured in the recorded crime figures.

I would like to make reference to the allocation of police numbers. I believe that all colleagues here will have welcomed the 141 new police officers that Devon and Cornwall was allocated out of the initial 6,000 tranche of the 20,000 new officers that we are going to put on to the frontline. However, we await the Government’s decision regarding how the remaining 14,000 of this 20,000 uplift will be allocated. If we are truly to deliver on the Government’s levelling-up agenda across the board, we need rural areas such as Devon and Cornwall to get a better share of new police officers in future. An allocation model based on population, for instance, would provide a truer reflection of the universal service demands placed on policing, given that the vast majority of all emergency calls do not in fact result in a recorded crime, particularly if such calculations include the increase we face through tourism. We do not want an approach that is largely based on recorded crime or levels of specific crimes such as serious violence, because that is urban-centric and favours inner cities over rural areas. When it comes to allocating the new police officers we are recruiting, I ask the Minister to consider these matters carefully to ensure that new officers are deployed in the best way to meet the challenges our police are facing.

I again pay tribute to our police officers across Devon and Cornwall for their hard work and dedication as they continue to work to keep us safe. I am grateful to the Minister for taking the time to listen to this case this evening. I hope he understands the unique challenges and circumstances that we face in our two counties. I look forward to working with him positively, going forward, to ensure that we get the results that we need in Devon and Cornwall.