Chris Philp
Main Page: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)Department Debates - View all Chris Philp's debates with the Home Office
(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
The level of fire cover in Nottinghamshire is a matter for the Nottinghamshire and City of Nottingham Fire Authority, but I would observe that in Nottinghamshire the Labour-controlled fire and rescue service has cut firefighter numbers by 11% since 2016, despite its funding settlement having been about the same as other fire and rescue services, which, nationally have seen only a 1.6% reduction.
Ruth Edwards
The Nottinghamshire and City of Nottingham Fire Authority is proposing to cut the night shift at West Bridgford fire station despite the fact that it will save no money, the station has higher night-time call-out rates than other stations in the county, and it will leave Rushcliffe as the only borough in Nottinghamshire without full-time fire cover at night. Can the Minister advise me on the options Members of Parliament have to challenge the decision-making of local fire authorities when it is clear that they are letting down our constituents and the brave firefighters who serve them?
Chris Philp
I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for her campaigning on the issue of Nottinghamshire fire services, which she has raised with me a number of times. There is certainly no financial excuse for what the fire and rescue authority is doing. This year, it received a 5.2% funding increase and, thanks to my hon. Friend’s campaigning, when the figures are published tomorrow, there will be further good financial news for the Nottinghamshire and City of Nottingham Fire Authority. On how the fire authority’s decisions might be queried, any concerns she has can be raised with the inspectorate and taken into account when the fire service is next inspected. Otherwise, the fire and rescue authority is made up of local authority representatives, who are accountable, periodically, via the ballot box.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service is well led and staffed by excellent firefighters and non-firefighting staff alike. They keep our community staff in increasingly difficult circumstances. They would like to meet the Minister to discuss their challenges, particularly in relation to funding. Will the Minister take that meeting with them and with local MPs?
Chris Philp
Yes, I would be very happy to meet the hon. Member and his colleagues from Nottinghamshire, perhaps early in the new year, to discuss this issue. As I said, Nottinghamshire fire services got a 5.2% funding increase in this current year, and I think good news can be expected when the full settlement is published tomorrow. I would observe that, in common with the rest of the country, the number of fires in Nottinghamshire has substantially decreased by 45% over the last 12 years.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
The Government are committed to tackling burglary. Domestic burglary, as measured by the crime survey, has fallen by 53% since 2010—a statistic that Opposition Members seem remarkably reluctant to discuss. We are hiring many extra police officers—the Metropolitan police force, which covers my hon. Friend’s constituency, has a record number of officers—and thanks to the Home Secretary’s intervention, police across the country are working to ensure that every single residential burglary receives an in-person visit from police officers.
Elliot Colburn
I congratulate the Home Secretary for stepping in where the Mayor of London has failed by pushing for police officers to attend all burglaries, and I congratulate the Metropolitan police for listening to that call and implementing Operation Tenacity, as this was a concern that I heard from many Carshalton and Wallington residents. Can my right hon. Friend, at this early stage, give me an indication of how successful the operation has been for burglary arrest numbers?
Chris Philp
My hon. Friend is quite right to say that the Home Secretary has acted, ensuring that there are record numbers of police in London, whereas the Mayor of London very often simply plays politics. In relation to Operation Tenacity, and the police commitment to attend every residential burglary, I am pleased to report that the Op Tenacity activity has been extremely successful. In fact, it saw 1,700 arrests in just six weeks.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
We now live, under this Government, in one of the most unequal countries in the world. Christmas is particularly hard for many people. Although I wish everyone in the House a happy Christmas, can we make sure that the police have the resources, back-up and backroom staff, without whom they cannot catch burglars? We need to stop burglary and reduce poverty in this country simultaneously.
Chris Philp
As I said, I am pleased to remind the House that since 2010, according to the crime survey of England and Wales, domestic burglary has fallen by an astonishing 53%. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about making sure that the police have adequate resources. That is why, as the Home Secretary said a few minutes ago, police and crime commissioners will receive next year up to £523 million in additional funding. By March next year, we will have an extra 20,000 police officers. Never in this country’s history have we had so many police officers, which is something that, I hope, people across the House can welcome.
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
The Government are determined to crack down on county lines gangs who are exploiting our children and devastating communities. That is why we have invested £145 million in our county lines programme over three years. That is delivering results. Since 2019, the programme has resulted in over 2,900 drug dealing lines being closed down, including over 8,000 arrests. That is important work and it is continuing.
Dean Russell
I recently took part in a dawn raid with Watford police officers as part of a national operation to crack down on serious organised crime. There are of course clear victims involved in crime but, as I wore my stab vest, I contemplated the dangerous situation that we were about to enter. Can my right hon. Friend confirm what support is being put in place to keep our brave police officers safe in such situations, including mental health support for the horrific scenes that they may see in their jobs daily, and support when they encounter dangerous criminals?
Chris Philp
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for taking part in the dawn raid, which I hope was a resounding success. I share his concerns about the mental health of police officers, who are often exposed to dangerous conditions and situations. The police covenant board, which I chair, met just a few weeks ago, and many of the work streams are designed to help police officers deal with mental health pressures. We have instituted a new chief medical officer position to look after serving and retired police officers, which is extremely important, and I am working closely with the Police Federation to ensure that the right support is in place.
Antony Higginbotham
In Burnley, our neighbourhood policing taskforce has been doing great work breaking down doors, disrupting gangs and arresting those responsible for dealing drugs. A key driver of that is the Government’s combating drugs strategy, but most of the new funding under the strategy is geared towards treatment and prevention, which, while important, will not be effective without the deterrent of tough enforcement. Will my right hon. Friend agree to meet me and the Lancashire police and crime commissioner to talk about what more we might be able to do to make the strategy even better?
Chris Philp
I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend and his colleagues from Lancashire. He is quite right that there are three elements to the combating drugs strategy. One is treatment. It is important to treat drug addiction, which is the underlying cause of a great deal of offending behaviour. In addition to ensuring that we are treating people, we need to enforce, too. That is one reason why we are recruiting more police officers. I think his local Lancashire force already has an extra 362 officers, which is well on the way to the extra 509 officers it is due to have by March next year. We are also increasing resources in Border Force to stop drugs getting into the country. There are now, I think, over 10,000 Border Force officers, up from about 7,500 in 2016. So, lots of extra resources are going into enforcement and policing, as well as treatment, but both are important.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Smashing the county lines business model and breaking up the gangs has to be a top priority, but of course it is still attractive to far too many young people. At the heart of the model is the exploitation of vulnerable young children. What more cross-agency work does the Minister think could be done that is not yet being done to ensure that a life of criminality is not a viable option?
Chris Philp
I agree entirely with the sentiment that the hon. Gentleman expresses. It is vital to stop younger people, perhaps early and mid-teenagers, falling into gang culture. Very often that is because they have suffered from family breakdown or are in difficult social circumstances. One action we are taking, which we need to accelerate and increase, is introducing violence reduction units. They are designed to identify individual young people at risk of falling into gangs, including county lines activities, and to take interventions, whether through social services, education or other interventions, to try to put them back on the right track. That is a Home Office-funded programme that we intend to continue, but the diagnosis the hon. Gentleman makes is exactly right.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
On that very point, last week I met an inspiring group of young students at West Thames College who are studying full time and having to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. It has not been easy for them. The message they asked me to bring here was that the best way to protect young people from going down a different route and getting sucked into county lines and violent crime is to have adequate, accessible and fully funded youth services. Does the Minister therefore regret the Government’s cuts to local councils since 2010, which have led to the decimation of universal youth provision?
Chris Philp
I have already referred to the significant amounts of money being put into violence reduction units, including funding some of the activity that the hon. Lady refers to—although it is not just that, it is much wider. It is important to divert younger people away from a life of crime and a gang culture that can all too easily take hold. It is for precisely that reason that we have established the well-funded violence reduction units, including in the London constituencies that both she and I represent.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Merry Christmas to you and to all the staff.
Contrary to the current rhetoric on modern slavery, thousands of British children were enslaved for sex and crime, such as county lines gangs, this year. Of the thousands of children identified as potential slaves this year, more British children were identified as potential child slaves than any other nationality. Last year, there was one conviction for modern slavery offences involving children. A woman I work with was left waiting by the Home Office for two years to be classified as a victim of slavery after she was groomed for sex and criminally exploited in a county lines gang since the age of 13. Referring to the Home Office written statement on the national referral mechanism, can the Minister confirm what “objective factors” to evident slavery means? If the Department thinks it is easy to prove slavery, why was there only one conviction last year?
Chris Philp
A lot of work is going on in the area. We have provided £145 million of funding to investigate and tackle county lines. That work has included 2,900 county lines being shut down. Critically, it has also included 9,500 individuals, most of whom are children, being engaged with safeguarding interventions.
Essentially, the national referral mechanism is currently being overwhelmed with a large number of claims, many of which are connected with immigration proceedings. One reason that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration wants to introduce objective criteria is to ensure that we focus our resources on genuine cases like the one that the hon. Lady describes. Rather than having the system overwhelmed by many unmeritorious claims in connection with immigration matters, it is important that we focus our attention on genuine cases like the one to which she refers.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
The production of industrial hemp in my constituency offers real promise and opportunity for crop diversification and soil improvement, but the growers are limited by Home Office rules around tetrahydrocannabinol protections. There is no need to worry about that, so can I invite the Home Secretary to come and discuss the matter with my farmers and to ensure that the law is changed to let them produce not only the stalk and the seeds, but the flowers and the leaves?
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
The Government approach illegal drugs—or drugs of any kind—under advice from the Advisory Council on the Abuse of Drugs. If the hon. Member has detailed points that he would like to submit in relation to this, he can write to me and I would be happy to look into it.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
I want to give credit to the Marling School students who got me in to talk about migration. Those smart, constructive young people really understand the complexities and I know that they will welcome the recent announcements, but they also expect me to keep pushing for improvement. I am concerned that MPs, councils and councillors are still some of the last people to find out when asylum seekers are placed in hotels in their constituencies. How is the Home Office working with the companies that have been contracted to source and organise hotels in rural areas, and is there day-to-day oversight?