Deprivation of Citizenship Orders (Effect during Appeal) Bill

Debate between Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Kit Malthouse

2nd reading
Monday 30th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As I am sure my right hon. Friend knows, there are various layers of appeal that can be taken, right up to the Supreme Court. The Bill says that, throughout that period, as long as the Government continue to pursue appeals, the person remains deprived of their citizenship, rather than what the Supreme Court is saying, which is that if the person wins any one of those appeals, they immediately become in effect innocent, and their citizenship is restored as if it was never removed in the first place. That is in the same way as if, were I accused of a crime and found innocent and the prosecutor decided to appeal my conviction, I would remain innocent until that appeal was heard and decided against me. If it were appealed beyond that, I would remain innocent then still.

The Government are attempting to revert to the erroneous situation as determined by the Supreme Court. In my view, they are moving the goalposts on an individual who frankly seems to have won a case fair and square in our highest court in the land.

Finally, I want to raise a more fundamental issue about this entire process. Call me an old romantic, but my view is that once you are a citizen, you are a citizen. Once you are in, you are in. Unfortunately, the development of this power over the last however many years since the 1981 Act, which brought it in, has created two classes of citizens in this country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross), who spoke for the Opposition—she is no longer in her place—said, “citizenship is a privilege, not an unconditional right.” That is not true. It is an unconditional right for me as a freeborn Englishman of two English parents going back I do not know how many years. I have no claim on citizenship anywhere else. It is my absolute, undeniable, unequivocal right to have citizenship in this country, and it cannot be removed from me by any means whatsoever. That is not true of my children. I am married to a Canadian citizen, so they have a claim on Canadian citizenship. If the Home Secretary so decides, they could have their citizenship removed. That is also true of every Jewish citizen of the United Kingdom, who has a right to citizenship in Israel. There will be millions of British people of south Asian origin who feel that they have a second-class citizenship.

This law applies only to certain of our citizens. It does not apply to me. I do not know whether it applies to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Perhaps it is making other hon. Members think about whether it applies to them.

While the Minister has been clear that we should trust him and has given us lots of undertakings, we do not make the law on the basis of a Minister we like, trust and respect; we make it on the basis that the law might fall into the hands of somebody we are not that keen on and who may be more cavalier with the powers bestowed upon them. As the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart), who spoke for the Liberal Democrats, said, we are a country that uses this power disproportionately more than any other western country. We have been free in our use of it, despite the fact that Minister after Minister has stood in the House and said, “We use it sparingly.” We do not. Dozens and dozens of people have been excluded, and we have to be honest about why. Sometimes it has been for safety, but sometimes, on balance, it has been to please the papers—because it looks good and plays well. We never ask ourselves about the cost of that to our sense of cohesion.

The hon. Member for Makerfield gave a lyrical and poetic view of citizenship, but if a large proportion of our fellow citizens believe that they have a second class of that citizenship—if some can say, “I am undeniably and unchallengeably a citizen, but you are not, so watch yourself”—what does that do to society?

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

Does the right hon. Member believe just by looking at me and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) next to me that the legislation could apply to people who look like us?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady makes the point powerfully. I do not know, but she does. This legislation leaves people from minority backgrounds, second or third-generation immigrants, and those like my children who are of two parents of different nationalities, with a lingering sense of doubt about how secure they are in this nation.

Metropolitan Police Service

Debate between Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Kit Malthouse

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend raises some interesting questions, but I believe that the Metropolitan police as currently constructed is capable of policing London appropriately and can and does show some astonishing performance in some particular areas of its activity. Certainly the work we have been doing, for example, on violence and knife crime, where we have been leaning in and providing significant extra resource, will I hope pay dividends over the years to come. We should all constantly pay attention to the structure and effectiveness of those police forces, and I am afraid that the report we have seen today tells us that there is room for improvement.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)]

Policing confidence is at an all-time low under this Government. The Minister may say that the Mayor of London should consider his position, but perhaps the Government should consider theirs. As he says, this is the first time that the Metropolitan police has been under special measures, and that has been under the Government’s leadership. We on this side of the House have consistently called for reform and an overhaul of the vetting and training of officers, and the Government do not listen. At what point will they accept responsibility for their failures?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am absolutely willing to accept responsibility for systemic failures across the whole of policing where they occur. I do not know whether the hon. Lady was in the House at the time, but she will have heard me apologise profoundly for the problems we have seen in rape investigation over the past decade, for example, and put a plan in place to sort that out. Happily, that plan is showing early signs of improvement.

What is really depressing about this exchange is the unwillingness of the Opposition to accept that even a shred of responsibility or accountability should attach to City Hall, notwithstanding the fact that in law and in truth the Mayor of London is the primary accountability mechanism.

Metropolitan Police: Strip-search of Schoolgirl

Debate between Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Kit Malthouse

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question) To ask the Secretary of State to make a statement on the recent report concerning the Metropolitan police’s handling of the strip-search of Child Q.

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

The City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership report into the strip-search of a 15-year-old schoolgirl while at school by police officers in 2020 is both troubling and deeply concerning. This experience will have been traumatic for the child involved; the impact on her welfare should not be underestimated.

The Government and the public rightly expect the highest standards from our police officers. The ability of the police to perform their core functions is dependent on their capacity to secure and maintain public confidence and support for their actions. While the Metropolitan police have apologised for their actions and recognised that this incident should never have happened, the force’s culture has again come under scrutiny.

Members of the public must be treated fairly and without prejudice, no matter their race, age or background. Strip-search is one of the most intrusive powers available to the police. The law is very clear that the use of police powers to search must be fair, respectful and without unlawful discrimination. Any use of strip-search should be carried out in accordance with the law and with full regard to the welfare and dignity of the individual being searched, particularly if that individual is a child. If police judge it operationally necessary to strip-search a child, they must do so in the presence of the child’s appropriate adult.

It is the role of the independent police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, to investigate serious matters involving the police, and the IOPC says it has been investigating the actions of the Metropolitan police in this case. We must let the IOPC conclude its work. We will of course expect any findings to be acted on swiftly, but it is vital that we do not prejudge the IOPC’s investigations or prejudice due process, so it would be wrong of me to make any further comment on the case in question at this time.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

They walked into her place of safety at the request of people who were meant to keep her safe, stripped her naked while she was on her period and forced her to remove her sanitary towel, spread her legs, part her buttock cheeks and cough, to look for drugs they never found. We should remember that this comes on top of a string of incidents, from the abuse and strip-search of Dr Duff, the rapist and murderer Wayne Couzens, the vile racism and misogyny uncovered in Charing Cross police station, the brutal handling of the vigil in Clapham Common, and the record low confidence in policing, particularly by minority communities, who are evidenced as being over-policed as citizens and under-policed as victims.

Does the Minister understand that there is no apology that could atone for the perverse racist degradation of this child? Does the Minister accept that this is not an isolated incident—that between 2016 and 2021 the Met carried out over 9,000 strip-searches on children, some younger than 12, and that over 33% of all strip-searches were carried out on black people, despite only 13% of Londoners being black? Given that this happened in a school, what discussions has his Department had with the Department for Education on this serious breach of safeguarding and the questionable presence of police officers in our schools? Will he finally accept that the Met police have an issue with institutional racism and misogyny and take steps to ensure that any new commissioner is committed to rooting it out?

The Minister may be aware that during the statement on the commission on race and ethnic disparities last week, the Minister for Equalities said:

“We have systems in place to ensure that when things go wrong we can right them. What we cannot do is stop any bad thing happening to anyone in the country at any time.”—[Official Report, 17 March 2022; Vol. 710, c. 1075.]

I have to ask: what on earth are this Government here for? I simply do not accept that. Finally, in the words of Child Q herself:

“I need to know that the people who have done this to me can’t do it to anyone else ever again”.

Can the Minister assure Child Q and our constituents of that?

[Kit Malthouse]

As I said earlier, we await the outcome of the investigation, and we will learn whatever lessons need to be learnt from it. While my hon. Friend the Minister for Equalities said that we cannot prevent all bad things from happening, we can try. What is clear from this case is that the complaint mechanism and the safeguarding practices involved did surface the issue and bring it to light, and have allowed us to examine this appalling—[Interruption.] Hold on. They have allowed us to examine this appalling incident in more detail and to try to learn the lessons, so that as—I assume from what she said—Child Q hopes, we are able to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.