Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Brandon Lewis and James Berry

Monday 6th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

The Government will respond to that consultation in due course—to the House—once we have had a chance to go through all the replies.

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

T9. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Government remain committed to resettling 23,000 of the most vulnerable children and adults directly from Syria, the middle east and north Africa over this Parliament, in addition to asylum seekers and family reunion cases? Will she update the House on how many people have been resettled in the past year?

Police Grant

Debate between Brandon Lewis and James Berry

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

I want to make some more progress.

This year, we created the police transformation fund—the grant settlement is not the only source of money for policing—which has already provided investment to develop specialist capabilities to tackle cybercrime and other emerging crimes, and has provided a major uplift in firearms capability and capacity. The fund will increase by £40 million next year to £175 million. We will continue to allocate additional specific funding for counter-terrorism to ensure that critical national counter-terrorism capabilities are maintained. Counter-terrorism police funding continues to be protected and, in fact, will increase to £675 million in 2017-18. That reinforces our commitment to protect the public from the threat of terrorism. The House and the public can be in no doubt that the police will have the resources they need to do their crucial work, and will be given the investment necessary to provide a more modern and efficient police service.

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

I think my right hon. Friend will agree that we have the most professional armed police officers in the world. The statistics on fatalities bear that out. Does he agree that forces outside London must upscale their armed capacity to match the level that we have in London in view of the terror threat that affects the whole country?

[Brandon Lewis]

This comes back to the point that it is important that local police and crime commissioners, working with their chief constables, are able to assess the operational needs for their area and to work across policing. The National Police Chiefs Council is doing very well in ensuring that police forces are working across areas, and that chief constables are working together for the benefit of the country. The Metropolitan police has a big part to play in that, being such a large part of policing in this country.

Leaving the EU: Security, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice

Debate between Brandon Lewis and James Berry

Wednesday 18th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

I am not ruling anything in or out; I am looking to make sure that we get the bespoke deal that is right for this country. I am not going to prejudge the outcome of the negotiations over the next couple of years. It is clear, though, that Europol is an EU agency supporting law enforcement activity, based in The Hague, to which we are a huge contributor. In fact, the current chief executive, who is an excellent lead for that organisation, is a British national.

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

While my right hon. Friend does not want to prejudge negotiations, does not his decision to opt into the recent Europol directive—the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) and I served on the European Committee in which he laid out his case for doing so—show that the UK is willing to be an active participant in Europol for many years to come?

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. As I clearly outlined in the Committee, the decision to opt in was made in the context of our being a member of the European Union, and at the moment, and over the next couple of years, we are still a full member of the European Union. It is important to make sure that we take the opportunity to play a full and strong part in that. We want to continue to play a very strong role as a partner for our colleagues across Europe, and indeed globally, particularly in law enforcement.

The prime objective of Europol is to strengthen and facilitate co-operation in preventing and combating serious organised crime and terrorism, in which we have a clear interest in playing an important part. I have yet to meet a senior police officer across our country who does not value our membership of Europol. By providing a platform for members to share intelligence and information, and through a strong analysis function, it offers unparalleled opportunities to prevent serious crime and to protect EU citizens, including those here in the UK. Concretely, this means that 86,629 suspected criminals were identified on the Europol information system in 2015 alone—up by 40% on the year before. There were 1,800-plus decisions for referrals of terrorist and extremist online content between July and December 2016 alone, with 1,600-plus removals, and numerous ongoing large-scale organised crime and trafficking cases. Indeed, the UK staffs one of the largest national desks in the organisation and is one of the biggest contributors of information to Europol systems.

Another mechanism that we have at the moment is Eurojust, which supports the fight against transnational, serious organised crime by co-ordinating multinational investigations and prosecutions. It works through a co-located network of national liaison desks staffed with prosecutors and investigators from across the EU. Later this year, we will start operating the EU’s Prüm system for the exchange of DNA, fingerprints and vehicle registration data, following this House’s overwhelming vote in December 2015 to join it. In 2015, we conducted a pilot of Prüm, exchanging DNA profiles with four other member states. This gave us an impressive number of hits, many against suspects who would not have been identified otherwise, and enabled the police to arrest people for a number of serious offences, including burglary and attempted rape.

Since 2015, we have taken part in the second-generation Schengen information system, which circulates law enforcement alerts around the EU in real time. This ensures that vital intelligence is shared internationally to help prevent threats from across the world. Joining has seen us arrest and extradite wanted people including drug traffickers, murderers and paedophiles whom we would not otherwise even have known about.