Oral Answers to Questions

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

I am happy to meet the hon. Member to discuss this matter. As other colleagues will know, I have already dealt with a number of groups in relation to Ukraine, and there are exceptional circumstances in which the process may need to be expedited.

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

T6. In the past few weeks, not a day has gone by on which my team and I have not helped a constituent with a passport issue. Although most of the issues have been resolved, it should not take the intervention of someone’s Member of Parliament for them to get their passport. Will the Home Office consider bringing back the old British visitor’s passport, which was issued by post offices for a 12-month period, to help to reduce the backlog?

[Kevin Foster]

A lot of work is being done to catch up on passports. I think it is safe to say that to go back to a system that was fundamentally paper-based would bring quite a range of security issues, not least at the border—that is why it was discontinued. I assure my hon. Friend that a wide range of work is being done and, as I have said, we are still doing roughly 98.5% of passports within the advertised 10-week service time.

Foreign National Offender Removal Flights

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

Well, rather like for me, some of the dither and delay we saw in getting on and passing that legislation has not escaped my hon. Friend’s attention. I do not think there is any time to waste in getting on and delivering those reforms. The British people have spoken consistently about the need for action. We have a plan. It is the only credible plan that will fundamentally improve matters and that is why we are getting on and operationalising it.

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

Me and my constituents in Burnley and Padiham are sick and tired of the Labour party approach to this issue—to stand on the side of murderers, paedophiles and rapists. My constituents want to see more deportations of these foreign criminals and more flights, so I urge the Minister to lay on more flights and publicise them, so that people know that we are on the side of the law-abiding majority and the victims of these awful crimes.

[Tom Pursglove]

It is absolutely right and proper that the British Government live up to their legal obligations around the deportation of foreign national offenders from our country who have committed serious acts of crime that have blighted our communities and that blight communities such as my hon. Friend’s in Burnley. He is right to raise this issue, and he has done so a number of times with me during our conversations over recent months. He is impatient, as I am, for the reform to come to fruition. We will continue to drive this agenda forward because it is the right thing to do to keep people in our communities safe from the harms that these sorts of individuals perpetrate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Gentleman makes very important points. I am happy to pick that up directly with him. I do not have time to give him a full answer now, but I will happily speak to him about it.

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

T6. In recent months, we have seen an increase in totally unacceptable antisocial behaviour in Burnley and Padiham town centres, as well as dirt bikes racing up and down the Padiham Greenway. Will the Home Secretary meet me in Padiham to talk to businesses and residents about what more we can do to tackle that issue?

[Priti Patel]

I would be delighted to come to his constituency to do exactly that. Perhaps we can have a conservation about the safer streets fund, which will certainly assist with that issue.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy).

During the 2019 general election, I said on many occasions that I supported a firm but fair immigration system—one that prioritises the needs of our economy and provides robust border security to keep us safe, but also, yes, welcomes those who need the shelter of the United Kingdom. We should always be proud of the refuge that we provide to those who need it. In conflict after conflict and crisis after crisis, we have stood up and promised protection to those whose lives are at risk. That shows our compassion as a country.

But we cannot ignore what is obvious: that our current asylum system is broken. We have all watched the frustrating scenes in the English channel—small boats dangerously full of people who have been sold a false promise by criminal gangs. Every time those criminal gangs fill up those boats, they put at risk the lives of innocent and vulnerable people. They also put at risk the lives of the men and women of our Border Force and of the RNLI who go out to avoid casualties at sea.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

If the hon. Gentleman describes the people who seek the refuge of those boats—who seek that terrible means to cross—as innocent and vulnerable, why is he supporting a Bill that is going to criminalise them and put them in prison for up to four years?

[Antony Higginbotham]

Because this Bill tells people that there are safe and legal ways to get to the United Kingdom, and if they follow those safe and legal ways, then we will provide refuge, but we should not be encouraging people, indirectly, to take those illegal routes that we know cost lives.

We have tried for years to work with France on this issue. We have tried, tried and tried again, and it has not worked. Anyone who says that our asylum system is not broken and does not need fixing must not be seeing the same scenes. They must be oblivious to the thousands of people who have crossed the English channel in dangerous boats this year alone. They certainly are not listening to residents in constituencies like mine, because my residents support a system that works. They support tougher penalties for those who enter the country illegally. The measures in the Bill are tough but rightly so, and they are also simple. The Bill sends a clear message to those in genuine need that we have a safe and legal route into the UK—that people do not need to risk their lives in dangerous small boats. If people need help we are here, but for those who try to game the system and those who think our immigration rules are there to be got around because, somehow, the rules do not apply to them, the penalties are tough. A different approach for those who follow the rules and those who do not—I cannot see how anyone can disagree with that, but somehow, they do.

Some Opposition Members do not seem to have a problem with the last-minute claims lodged to avoid deportation, sometimes in the case of serious criminals. Well, I do have a problem with them, and the new appeals process proposed in the Bill will make a big difference to dealing with those claims. It will allow us to throw out the spurious and deal only with those that are genuine.

It is right, fair and proper that the Home Office plan ahead and consider whether there is a way to look at claims in a safe third country. That would allow us to protect our borders proactively, moving us to a model under which we gave people safe haven while considering their application, then brought them to the shelter of the UK. However, there are two sides to the coin. If illegal entry is one side, the facilitators are the other. Through the Bill, we will empower our Border Force officers directly to intervene in those people-smuggling gangs—gangs that try to find new ways to circumvent the measures that we design here in the House to protect our country and protect our citizens.

Firm but fair rules; secure but compassionate borders; a system that ensures that the people of this country are safe; a system under which we know who is coming to the UK and how they are getting here; and our offer of help and support for those who need them—that is what my constituents want, and that is what the Bill delivers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

May I say what a particular pleasure it is, Madam Deputy Speaker, to see you in the Chair today?

The great English jurist, Lord Bingham, famously wrote that the rule of law encompassed eight principles. Principle 5 states:

“The law must afford adequate protection of human rights.”

Principle 8 stipulates:

“The State must comply with its obligations in international law”—

as in national law. These principles are widely revered and have gained international respect, yet barely a week goes by when this British Government do not bring to this House a Bill that threatens to breach one or both of those principles. This Bill is yet another such example. It is also another example of the Government breaking their word, given the U-turn on their previous commitment to decrease the use of immigration detention.

If anyone was not following the first stage of this debate yesterday, I would commend to them the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), which set out in a very eloquent and measured way the many problems with this Bill. He described how it seeks, as the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said, to tackle a problem that does not exist and fails to tackle a problem that does exist. My hon. Friend also set out in some detail how, if this Bill becomes law, we risk breaching both our international treaty obligations and our obligations under the European convention on human rights.

[Antony Higginbotham]

The hon. and learned Lady says that this Bill seeks to address a problem that does not exist, so what about the illegal crossings in the English channel, involving small boats and dinghies, which are overfilled with people who are risking their lives? Would she say that that is not a problem that we should try to address?

[Joanna Cherry]

When I said that the Bill addresses a problem that does not exist, one of the previous speakers talked of the country being overrun by immigrants. That is simply not the case. As I said in an intervention earlier, yes, I do think—to use the hon. Member’s words—“innocent” and “vulnerable” people crossing the channel with people smugglers is a problem, but I do not think that the solution to that problem is to criminalise those innocent and vulnerable people. That is one of the central problems of this Bill. In fact, to criminalise those innocent and vulnerable people is potentially in breach of our international legal obligations.

If this Bill becomes law, we risk breaching the 1951 UN refugee convention, the 1961 UN convention on the reduction of statelessness, the UN convention on the law of the sea and the international convention for the safety of life at sea, and we also risk breaching the UN convention on the rights of the child. If this Bill becomes law, we also risk breaching multiple articles of the European convention on human rights, to which this Government assure us they are still committed. In fact, the Lord Chancellor gave evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights last week and was most anxious to assure us that the Government are still committed to the European convention on human rights. But there is not much point in being committed to it in name if they bring legislation to the House that threatens to breach it by its terms, as does the introduction of a two-tier system for refugees, which potentially breaches the right to be free from discrimination and enjoyment of one’s human rights.

The changes proposed by the Bill potentially undermine the right to life for those at sea. Changes to the application and appeals process for asylum seekers and provisions regarding credibility, and the weight to be given to evidence, risk breaching the right to a fair trial. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, has already raised concerns that decision making by the Home Office in immigration matters is not sufficiently independent or rigorous to ensure that human rights are respected, and the Bill will make that worse.

Why would Scotland want to be part of a Union where decisions like this affecting our international standing and the perception of the state on the world stage are forced through by a Government with such scant regard for human rights and the rule of law? It is not just this Bill. This Bill is one in a succession of Bills that have gone through this House recently which many independent commentators have said threaten to breach our international treaty obligations and also threaten to breach our commitment to human rights under the European convention. In one case, the Government were quite brazen about it. A Minister stood up in the House and said that

“this does break international law”

but only

“in a very specific and limited way.”—[Official Report, 8 September 2020; Vol. 679, c. 509.]

Would that it were so with this Bill. This Bill will break international law, not in a specific and limited way, but in a number of respects that those with more time have enumerated more eloquently than I can.

This is not the way to do things. It is not right and it is not humane. There are millions of displaced people across the world and millions of refugees. The United Kingdom cannot wash our hands of responsibility for them, particularly when at least some of the reasons for their displacement can be laid at our door and at the door of our foreign policy and our colonial past. The real mischief that the Bill should seek to tackle, but does not, is that there are insufficient lawful routes for claiming asylum in the United Kingdom. Yes, resettlement programmes are laudable, but they are not a solution for those claiming asylum because resettlement programmes deal with those already recognised as having a protection need. Those in need of international protection who reach the shores of the United Kingdom should not be criminalised.

It is time the Home Secretary stopped playing to the gallery and did the hard work necessary to fulfil the United Kingdom’s moral and legal obligations to refugees and asylum seekers. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East said so eloquently, there is no point in Conservative Members waxing lyrical about the rights of persecuted Christians and the rights of the Uyghurs to be free from Chinese atrocities if they threaten to criminalise those sorts of people when they make it to our shores.

Oral Answers to Questions

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

May I join the hon. Lady in acknowledging the sportsmanship, the talents, the dignity and the joy that the English football team have brought so many people over the tournament? They have been the very best of us; and they have been the very best of us while facing some horrific abuse—absolutely horrific racist abuse—during the tournament, and that is not acceptable.

The hon. Lady is quite right to raise the question of role models. I know from my own son’s adoration of many of the England footballers just what powerful role models many of those footballers are to younger people. Sadly, of course, we cannot incorporate a Sterling or a Harry Kane into every youth project, but what we can do is build the structures around them. That is precisely what we are doing, with increased investment both through the Department for Education funding over the summer and through our own work in funds such as the trusted relationships fund, which is helping young people to build positive relationships with positive role models. I join the hon. Lady’s cri de coeur that we should pay full credit and respect to our footballers. They themselves tell the tale that if you have the belief and you have the talent, my goodness you can make it.

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

What steps her Department is taking to help dismantle county lines drugs gangs.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

What steps she is taking to (a) tackle county lines drug trafficking and (b) safeguard children from county lines exploitation.

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

Since 2019, we have invested over £65 million to tackle county lines and drug supply, including £40 million committed this year. Through our county lines programme, we have become smarter in our activity against these ruthless gangs, resulting in more than 1,000 lines being closed, more than 5,800 arrests and more than 1,500 vulnerable adults and children safeguarded.

[Antony Higginbotham [V]]

Drug dealing is a despicable crime that preys on the vulnerable, damages communities and causes misery to so many. Locally, the Burnley and Padiham neighbourhood policing team has set up a taskforce to tackle this issue. Will the Minister confirm that local police forces will continue to have the resources and support they need really to tackle this issue and rid our communities of it? Will he meet me and our police and crime commissioner, Andrew Snowden, to see what more we can do?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am always happy to meet police and crime commissioners and their Members of Parliament to talk about fighting crime, and I am very pleased that my hon. Friend is so embedded in the collective mission to reduce crime in his constituency. He is quite right that we are having enormous success with county lines, and that is off the back of significant Government investment. I am hopeful that police and crime commissioners can see the wider benefits of that programme in suppression of violence in their areas and will supplement the work that we are doing, but he should be assured that we will be making a very strong case in the spending round for continued investment. The one thing I have learned about the Treasury over the past few years is that it likes investing in success, and we are certainly having that with county lines.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I am grateful for that contribution, but I am like a dog with a bone on this issue, because I do care that we are putting vulnerable people in the wrong place and, by doing so, doing them harm.

There is a real point that I would like to make about this provision. The advice I received from the Howard League is that it is most often used in respect of women with a mental health crisis. I am also advised of a case of a victim of trafficking who was remanded in custody for their own protection. This is another example of women not getting a fair crack of the whip when it comes to criminal justice. It is not really for the criminal justice system to absorb the consequences of failure by other areas of the state. It is up to local authorities to ensure adequate refuge provision for women in a vulnerable position and, of course, the NHS to ensure that there are enough facilities for crises. We have invested in places of safety, and we must make sure we do better on this. As we look at the wide variety of criminal justice issues—we have heard a lot today about violence against women and girls—I make a plea again to my right hon. and learned Friend that we make laws that centre women. When we talk about gender-neutral legislation, that is another way of centring men. Women have a unique set of vulnerabilities because of their biology, and we must make sure we do everything in our law to protect them. We have heard a lot about that in today’s debate. We have had a lot of commitments from the Government to take this more seriously, but I look forward to some positive work, and I know the Government are listening.

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, particularly having served on the Bill Committee. Law and order matters enormously to my constituents, as it probably does to all our constituents. One thing I hear all the time, from not just residents, but the police, is frustration with the sentencing system, because people want a system that puts victims and communities first. They want to see a criminal justice system that works for the law-abiding majority. It continues to concern me and local residents that some of the most violent offenders have been serving only half their sentence, so I strongly welcome clauses 105, 106 and 107, which will result in some of the worst offenders staying in prison for longer—violent offenders and child sex offenders. I also welcome clause 102, which introduces whole-life orders for the premeditated murder of a child. I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) in wanting to see us get to a place eventually where no one is released midway through their sentence, be it halfway, or after two thirds or three quarters; a sentence should mean a sentence.

Given that I am short on time, I wish to cover one other thing that matters enormously to me and to many people across Burnley and Padiham—rape prosecutions. I am talking about new clause 89. We would all agree that rape prosecutions are at an unacceptable level. I have seen cases of constituents being failed by not just the police, but the CPS. However, this is not an issue that legislation alone will fix; it needs a fundamental change in how the police, the CPS and victims’ support all work together to support people who make a complaint —to support victims—and to ensure that we get a successful prosecution. The law needs to be firmly on the side of victims, and for too long it has not been.

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

I rise to speak to new clauses 89 and 97. Having spent 16 years in the criminal courts, I speak with some experience of how cases are proceeded with. My right hon. and learned Friend is here as Lord Chancellor and his responsibility is the courts system. So his responsibility is the imposition of appropriate sentencing powers for judges, to reflect public confidence in the justice system and the serious nature of offending. In line with his and his Department’s responsibilities, he has clearly done that. There is an increase in sentences for the most serious sexual offences, as has been outlined by my hon. Friends already, and he must be commended for that. I share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham) on prosecutions, and we have spent a lot of time discussing this, in the Justice Committee and elsewhere. In the past year, 52,000 reported a rape to the police but only 1.6% of those led on to a charge or a summons. That is clearly not acceptable. When we are debating this section of the legislation, we must always remember that the justice system can work only if it is linked up with the police, the Courts Service and the probation service working together. Perhaps sometimes the disjointed nature of ministerial responsibilities for various parts of the system does not help in terms of conviction rates.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Second sitting)

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th May 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you for clarifying that, Mr Parr.

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

Q Mr Parr, this one is probably for you. We spoke earlier today with some other witnesses about protest and public order policing. One of the things that we touched on was the impact that social media has had. So I just wondered if you could give your view of how protests and public order policing have changed over the last 20 or 30 years, and the impact that social media and the ability for situations to evolve quite rapidly have played into that.

Matt Parr: Three aspects of that come to mind. First, the use of social media has clearly enabled the organisers of protests to be significantly more nimble. It means that some of the obligations to engage with the police beforehand can be circumvented, creating really quite significant problems for police commanders in the way they plan for protests.

That is the first aspect, which is reasonably obvious to anyone who has been on or near a protest, namely that there is huge potential for social media to be used—in a good way; I am not saying in a bad way. But its ability to galvanise and organise and inform people to join protests or indeed in the way they conduct them is wholly different to what the police had to contend with 20 years ago.

The second point is slightly more subtle. When we conducted the inspection into protesting, we found that more and more police forces are doing more and more policing of protests, for one reason or another, and they are also finding it ever more difficult to persuade their officers to train to be public order commanders, or indeed to make themselves available to do the lower levels of training, so that they can then help out on the protests.

One of the reasons cited for that is that police officers at protests—not in all cases; the temptation to generalise and to be unfair to all protesters is something that we have to resist here—sometimes get identified through social media. One reason that they are disincentivised from going on these protests and volunteering to train to do them is that they are nervous about being vilified on social media, having been identified beforehand. So that is having a chilling effect for police officers and in fact quite often damages their morale.

One of the things we said about the need to modestly reset the balance in the interests of protesters versus the public, and a remark made about decisions made by gold or silver commanders who are the senior police officers commanding the protest, is that they are often nervous about the backlash on social media of any decisions they take. One of the consequences is that there is perhaps a tendency to default to the balance being more in favour of the protester than otherwise. That was my second point.

My third point is that a cautionary tale came out of the inspection we did into the policing of the vigil following the tragic death of Sarah Everard, and the impact of what is frankly a single still photograph that was circulated very quickly and very widely on social media. That created a backlash, and we ended up with some people, and indeed some public bodies and some unions, calling for the resignation of the Met Commissioner. In that report, we said that the reaction was unwarranted. We all know that there is a danger that people get their news and form their opinions from social media. We trawled through hour after hour of police body-worn video of the same incident and came up with a very different view to what social media—completely under- standably—led people to have. I will start with those three points.

[Antony Higginbotham]

Q That is helpful. Do you think that the proposals in the Bill will help with the first of the three points you raised?

Matt Parr: The Home Secretary asked us to look at five proposals at that stage in November, when she asked me to give an initial impression of five of the proposals going into the Bill. In the end, only four of them went in. We had some reservations, but in general we saw the four proposals—with some caveats, particularly around the fifth one that did not go in—as having the potential to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the policing response to protest. If you want to discuss the details of those, we can do that, but in answer to your general question about whether they would assist the police in getting the balance right in the age of social media, I would say probably yes.

[Antony Higginbotham]

That is helpful, thank you.

[Sarah Champion]

Q This question is directed at Jonathan: the terrorist clauses in the Bill are welcome, and they seem comprehensive. Is there anything, in your opinion, that is missing that you would like to see there?

Jonathan Hall QC: No, I tried to be as comprehensive as I could when carrying out my review of the multi-agency public protection arrangements. I thought long and hard about the additional powers that might be needed, and I am pleased that they are contained in the Bill. I cannot think of anything else. From a detailed, legal perspective I would just say that there are a couple of points of detail about two of the powers, and maybe the Committee will want to question or press on whether further safeguards are needed. I did not draft the powers, of course, and I recommended that they be done generally and they have now been put into statutory language. Overall, I have nothing to add to what is here.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (First sitting)

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th May 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

Q What impact has social media had on public order and protests over the last 10 or so years? Historically, with large protests, you would have had a set of organisers that you could go and engage with, but perhaps you do not have that same group of people now. What impact does that have on conditions? Historically, you might have been able to put conditions on protests, because you had people to engage with, but now, if a protest is organised organically on an online platform, you cannot do that. What impact have you seen from that?

Chief Constable Harrington: Social media has been a game changer in many ways. We still get organisers who come forward and people who say they want to march from A to B. They will organise around that; they are what I call a traditional protest march.

But, as you rightly say, we can have protests or assemblies that are organised in a matter of hours—sometimes minutes—and the use of social media can change those protests and make them more dynamic. Hence, the currency around that, because something was advertised as an assembly at a particular point, but, very quickly, through social media, everyone is off to another point, and it becomes a march. We think that is really important, and the powers help us because we can be really clear about imposing proportionate, lawful and necessary conditions, if the threshold is met, on the whole of that protest, whether it walks or stands still. Then everybody can be clear about what they do.

In terms of social media, we have adapted very quickly, I think. You will regularly see police officers in our police liaison team trying to engage with organisers. We will see approaches through a whole range of social media platforms. Sometimes, as it is people’s right not to engage with us, you will see senior officers making very clear appeals and clearly setting out through social media what, in the policing judgment, is acceptable or not acceptable, in order to make sure people are clear about where they may or may not be breaking the law if we impose conditions.

So we have adapted to that and we continue to do that. Through events, you will see that we continue to do that for those events. We also use social media to understand the impact on those affected, so that we can either protect property or protect the rights and freedoms of those who may be affected.

[Antony Higginbotham]

Q That is very helpful. Thank you. Are there situations where you might get notice of, say, an assembly in one place, but then because of the impact of social media—WhatsApp and Facebook groups and things like that—that quickly becomes a procession? Is that the kind of thing we are talking about? Linked to that, can you envisage the conditions that you currently impose changing materially as a result of this Bill, or is this just about trying to marry the two things up because of the more fluid environment that you are policing?

Chief Constable Harrington: It is the ability to communicate quickly, to change their focus of protest very quickly and to divide and split up—it is just that it is dynamic. We see that in a social context—“I’ll meet you here” or “I’ll meet you there.” That is the same thing in protests.

I think you hit the nail on the head about what we are asking for around consistency and currency, allowing the powers that we use—again, proportionately and with all the balance and the constraints of the Human Rights Act—to be really clear, so we can say, “What is the impact of what this group propose to do? How do we best balance that?”

Then, if we think the threshold is met, we can impose conditions that allow us to be really clear about what we are trying to achieve. To the point you made earlier, we then need to communicate that very clearly to those involved so that they have every opportunity to express their rights, understanding what the rules and thresholds are for when the police would intervene.

[Antony Higginbotham]

Q One final question: Do you get the right level of engagement you need from the social media platforms themselves, thinking about closed online groups where you may not be able to get advance notice? Do you get that engagement when you need it?

Chief Constable Harrington: We are very careful with the use of closed online groups. The open-source platforms we use are exactly that: open source. Our communication with protest groups is open, as is their conversation with us. I think we are very careful; our access to those would be about criminality, and that is not what we are talking about here in terms of our use of those powers. This is not to limit or criminalise protests; it is to balance those rights of disruption with competing rights.

Seeking access to closed groups would always be at a very high threshold we would consider only with criminality. We do that in other arenas, and we have good powers and good co-operation in order to do that. We would not seek that routinely as part of policing protests or public order. As we have seen over the last year—even this last weekend—there have been largely peaceful protests. My view as the national lead is that we would only seek those powers where protests end and criminality begins, but I think they are well catered for elsewhere.

[Antony Higginbotham]

That is very helpful, thank you.

[The Chair]

Allan Dorans.

Safe Streets for All

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

I cannot speak in any debate on making our streets safer without first thanking all the police officers and PCSOs of Burnley and Padiham police, who do a brilliant job of keeping us safe. I also want to put on record my enormous congratulations to Andrew Snowden, our brilliant new police and crime commissioner for Lancashire. I have known Andrew for quite a while, and he has the drive, passion and determination to tackle the issues that matter most to residents, not just antisocial behaviour in our towns, which he will tackle, but rural crime. I am really pleased that he is already looking at doubling the rural task force that Lancashire police have set up.

There is so much in the Queen’s Speech for us to be optimistic and pleased about. I am privileged to be a member of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, which starts in earnest tomorrow. The Bill is particularly welcome. I have yet to meet anyone who thinks we should continue with the automatic release of violent and sexual offenders halfway through their sentence. Not a single person has told me that they think that is a good idea.

Our emergency service workers—we have stood up in this House and praised them time and again—deserve the protections that we can offer them, so doubling the sentence for people who assault them is welcome. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) said, we also need to focus on the more bread-and-butter crimes: the rural crime issues that I just spoke about and which our PCC is looking at, such as speeding cars on our roads and fly-tipping on our country lanes. That is what our residents want us to be focused on, because that is what blights our communities.

However, we are also a nation of fair play and of doing the right thing, and for too long our immigration system has not matched that. As such, the new plan for immigration brings in that sense of fair play for people who follow the rules and do the right thing. No more of people throwing up new human rights concerns 24 hours before deportation that are spurious and meaningless: now, we will reward people who follow the safe and legal route of coming to the UK when they need to, as well as tackle those who try to prey on people’s fears and get them to spend thousands of pounds in the hope of a brighter future, only to lead them down dangerous routes.

My message to the Government on the Queen’s Speech is that there is so much—on crime, on policing, on immigration, and on online harms—that we can be proud of, but let us not lose sight of those bread-and-butter crime issues, such as fly-tipping and speeding cars, that our residents want us to be focusing on every day that we are in this place.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading - Day 1
Monday 15th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

I will have no hesitation in supporting the Bill when it comes to a vote tomorrow, because it delivers on so many of the manifesto promises I made to residents across Burnley and Padiham. It starts by toughening up the sentences for drink and drug drivers who kill while under the influence, for criminals who assault our emergency service workers and for those in positions of trust who groom children for exploitation. It does all this while also tackling unauthorised Traveller camps that show no regard for local residents and planning systems, and so much more. What’s not to like in this Bill?

There is so much in the Bill, but I will keep my remarks to just a small number of areas. The first is the desecration of war memorials. I have been incredibly disappointed to hear Labour MPs indicate that this provision does not matter, because it does. We have some fantastic memorials in Burnley, not least the cenotaph in Towneley Park and the memorials to so many others in our villages such as Hopton and Worsthorne. The images that we saw last year of our national cenotaph being targeted caused hurt, upset and anger. That is why this matters. I am really pleased that the Government have recognised the strength of feeling on this and introduced tougher sentences as a result.

The Bill also delivers on our promise to bring in a smarter, more credible sentencing system. It is one that deals with the most serious violent offenders by ending the automatic release at the halfway point, that tackles repeat offenders that blight our communities, and that makes youth rehabilitation orders more effective at reducing youth offending.

I spent some time before coming to this place mentoring young offenders when they were in prison, and I have no doubt that this will make a difference. I have, however, received emails from concerned constituents about the protest provisions in the Bill. Let us be clear: nothing in the Bill alters a person’s fundamental right to protest and make their voice heard. However, the right to protest does not give anyone the right to block an ambulance going to a hospital; it does not give anyone the right to stop someone going to work to earn a living; and it does not bring with it the right for a person to stop a newspaper being printed just because they disagree with the contents. Just as important as the right to protest is the right to a free press, the right to life, and the right to employment. The Bill just gives equal weight to all those competing rights. The Bill puts the right of the law-abiding majority first. It protects victims, it backs our police and emergency service workers and, with that in mind, it should command cross-party support tomorrow evening.