Arrests and Prison Capacity

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Chris Philp

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I have every sympathy for victims such as the hon. Lady’s constituent, and the truly tragic case that she outlines. If she would like me to look into particular policing aspects of that case, I would be happy to help. If it is a prisons, probation or sentencing-related issue, my right hon. Friends from the Ministry of Justice stand ready to help her and her constituent.

In relation to automatic release on to licence, under the last Labour Government all offenders ended up getting automatically released at the halfway point. This Government have substantially reduced that, including for offences such as rape. I recall in a Bill Committee a couple of years ago that Labour MPs voted against a measure to keep rapists in prison for longer.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Over the weekend I was almost in tears reading a letter from a local primary school of an account of one of their young mums who felt so intimidated by antisocial behaviour on her estate that she was unable to walk her young son to school in the morning. The school tried to provide a social worker to escort her, but they also felt intimidated. What message does it send to the school, the mum and her child about the safety of our streets when chief constables feel it necessary to deprioritise arrests on the Minister’s watch?

[Chris Philp]

Cases of the kind that the hon. Lady describes would not have been in the scope of the contingency outlined in the letter of a week ago. The antisocial behaviour that she described is completely unacceptable. I am sure that many Members are parents and would want their own children to go to and from school safely. The Government have launched an antisocial action plan, one of the elements of which is a funded scheme for antisocial behaviour hotspot patrols. That started just a few weeks ago, so I would urge the hon. Lady to speak to her local police and crime commissioner—I think a newly elected one in Northumbria, if memory serves me correctly—and to ask that one of the funded hotspot patrols be set up in the vicinity of that school to try to tackle the issue that she described, because no parent should have to face that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Chris Philp

Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

The shadow Minister will know that in the police funding settlement for this year, 2023-24, there is around about £500 million extra—in fact, it is slightly over £500 million—for police forces up and down the country. That has enabled us to deliver a record number of officers ever. There are 149,572 officers—about 3,500 more than there were under the last Labour Government. In West Yorkshire, which the shadow Minister asked about, neighbourhood crime is down by 30% since 2019 and overall crime—excluding fraud and computer misuse, which came into the figures only recently—is down by 52% since 2010. I am still waiting for the shadow Home Secretary to apologise for being a member of a Government who presided over crime levels that are double those we have today.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

4. What recent progress her Department has made on reducing the backlog of asylum applications.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

T7. My constituents want community policing. Kim McGuinness, the police and crime commissioner for Northumbria, has put in place a redeployment programme to get an extra 134 officers into neighbourhoods, but that will not make up for the 1,100 officers and the £148 million that we have lost due to budget cuts. And before the Minister mentions “plans”, that will still leave us 400 officers short. Why have the Tories failed so badly to get police officers on to the beat?

[Chris Philp]

As I mentioned in earlier answers, across England and Wales we now have record police numbers of 149,572. The previous peak was 146,030 in 2010, so we have 3,500 more officers than we have ever had before across England and Wales. In Northumbria, the number has gone up by 512 since 2015. Of course, many of the powers sit with the PCC, including powers over the precept. It is entirely open to police and crime commissioners to use those powers.

Economic Situation

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Chris Philp

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

The growth plan protected the hon. Lady’s constituents and mine from what could have been £6,000 or £7,000 energy bills this winter. Frankly, I think they will welcome that. The growth plan will lay the foundations to continue the G7-leading growth we experienced last year and this.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I would like to dare the Minister to come to Newcastle and explain to my constituents, who are worried about their mortgage payments, their pensions, their benefits payments, their public services, their businesses and the cost of their supermarket shop, that this Government are fiscally responsible. They would laugh in his face, which is what the markets are doing. Why cannot he accept that the only way to address this crisis, made in Downing Street, is to withdrawal the fiscal mini-Budget and put in place something credible, costed and competent?

[Chris Philp]

Once again, the hon. Lady calls for the withdrawal of the growth plan, yet she voted last night for the biggest measure contained in it. I would be quite happy to explain to anyone, whether in Newcastle, in her constituency, or in Croydon, south London, in mine, that we are protecting people from energy price rises, that we have plans to keep our record growth levels going, that we are cutting taxes on working people and that we have a plan to get the economy going. I would be happy to go anywhere in the country and explain that.

English Football League Governance: Derby County FC

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Chris Philp

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I share my hon. Friend’s call for urgency. The Sports Minister, as I said, spoke to the EFL last night, and he will continue urgently and forcefully pressing the participants in this saga to get a resolution. I repeat my call for all those involved—the EFL, clubs such as Middlesbrough, the administrators—to demonstrate flexibility and pragmatism in getting this sorted out. My hon. Friend the Sports Minister will be driving that forward.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

As a Newcastle United fan, I know something of sorrow and frustration. I have huge sympathy for Derby County. This Government have repeatedly failed to act on issues of financial sustainability and effective governance in our national game, and they are now dragging their feet on their response to the fan-led review of football. Does the Minister really think that the pace of the Government’s response equals the importance of football in the lives of my constituents? Will he commit to putting fans at the top of the football pyramid?

[Chris Philp]

I do not accept the allegation that the Government have been dragging their feet. It was the Government who commissioned the fan-led review in the first place, and we have accepted its recommendations in principle. Detailed work is now taking place to get it implemented. As I said in response to a previous question, we need to make sure the details are right. Although we are acting with urgency, we do not want to act so fast that we make a mistake in the legislation. On putting fans at the centre, the clue is in the name: it is a fan-led review.

Napier Barracks Asylum Accommodation

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Chris Philp

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend is making an extremely powerful point. The experience of his mother and his family illustrates the service that this country does in providing asylum to those who genuinely need it. It puts today’s debate rather in context.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab) [V]]

Happy birthday, Mr Speaker.

The High Court judgment showed that Napier was unsafe in terms of fire safety, covid security and mental wellbeing, whether for armed forces personnel or asylum seekers, but it is representative of a generalised callousness with regard to support for refugees which leaves many in Newcastle living in inadequate accommodation with inadequate support to keep themselves and their accommodation clean and covid secure. How is the Minister going to change that? Will he say whether Nationwide Accommodation Services, which ran Napier day to day, has other contracts with the Home Office?

[Chris Philp]

If the hon. Lady would like to raise that case in writing, I would be happy to look into it to find out the details and circumstances. We are accommodating 60,000 people across the country. The cost of running the asylum system now amounts to £1 billion a year, which is a staggering sum and makes the case for reform, for all the reasons that Conservative Members have been laying out.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Chris Philp

Tuesday 16th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

There are currently, as we speak, 49 Nightingale courtrooms open and available for work. There are five more opening this week, one of which is Croydon, the borough that I have the honour of representing in south London, and by the end of this month we will get up to a total of 60. Many of those courtrooms can be used for Crown court work, but even where they cannot—for example, because they do not have custodial facilities—they are very often able to do work that would otherwise be done in a Crown court centre that is then freed up for work where, for example, custody suites are required. This is making a real contribution and we intend to go further.

[Chi Onwurah [V]]

Justice delayed is justice denied. That is no cliché; it is the lived reality for the many, many victims who have not had their day in court during this pandemic. The Minister has said that he expects the number of cases to be brought back to acceptable levels before Easter 2023. Is this really acceptable, and what confidence can victims have that this late date will be met?

[Chris Philp]

I do agree that timely justice is essential. In the magistrates courts, the outstanding caseload has already come down by about 50,000 cases since last summer, which is very welcome progress. In Crown courts, we are now getting through about 2,000 cases a week, which is about the same as it was before the pandemic. But we do need to go faster: the hon. Lady is right. I think the judiciary eased off listing a little bit in January, February and the early part March owing to the more recent lockdown. Now we are moving out of those restrictions, in phases, our expectation is that listing levels will go up again. We have certainly created the capacity to do that, with 290 jury courtrooms available. As listing levels increase, using the capacity we have created I expect the outstanding caseloads to come down.

Immigration Rules: Supported Accommodation

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Chris Philp

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We saw in our debate a couple of weeks ago some Opposition Members, astonishingly, standing up for the rights of people who have been convicted of extremely serious criminal offences, instead of standing up for the rights of victims or the rights of our constituents to be protected against the harm that those dangerous individuals represent. He is also right when he points out that unmeritorious claims crowd out, or push further back in the queue, the claims of those who have every right to protection. That is why we are determined to legislate next year to ensure that those whose claims are genuine are treated quickly and fairly, but that where people do not have a good claim and are abusing the system, the system is firm and rejects those claims.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab) [V]]

As a city of sanctuary, Newcastle seeks to support those fleeing war and persecution, but all too often the Home Office places them in accommodation that is unsuitable, inadequate or plain disgusting, and where they may be targeted by far-right groups, as happened recently in Newcastle, and then leaves them for months or years without proper consideration of their case, at great cost to the mental wellbeing of those who are already vulnerable. Am I right to think that the Minister’s solution to this is now to arbitrarily reduce the cases considered, rather than actually fixing the process?