Arrests and Prison Capacity

Debate between Chris Philp and Alistair Carmichael

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I am happy to confirm that the Criminal Justice Board, chaired by my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor, meets very frequently. Indeed, I attended its most recent meeting just three or four weeks ago—with the Lord Chancellor, other Ministers, police leads, senior members of the judiciary and the Crown Prosecution Service, and many others—so I can categorically confirm that it does exist and it meets regularly.

On my hon. Friend’s question about the police, the police are rightly operationally independent. It is not for Ministers to direct how they discharge their duties; they discharge their duties appropriately with their professional standards and professional judgment, and we support them in doing so. Operational independence for the police is important, as I am sure everyone on both sides of the House respects.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is obvious from the Minister’s demeanour that he does not like to be called to account, but he should reflect on the fact that the mere fact such a letter was written, and in the circumstances in which it was written, is a cause for concern, which he should be taking seriously. It is symptomatic of a wider malaise in the English and Welsh criminal justice system. Last year, 215,933 burglaries went unsolved across England and Wales—an average of 592 a day. Is that not something the Minister should be addressing, rather than getting a little bit worked up with the shadow Home Secretary?

[Chris Philp]

I may have got worked up, because the allegations being made were, in my view, unfounded and unsupported by the facts. I was simply trying to put across the facts—both the numbers and also the quotes from the relevant policing lead—which flatly contradicted the dystopian picture that the shadow Home Secretary, characteristically, was seeking to paint. To answer the right hon. Gentleman’s question, we of course take such matters seriously. The Lord Chancellor is working night and day to increase prison capacity, both by building new prisons expeditiously and by pulling every lever at his disposal to build more capacity within the existing estate. The prisons are pretty full because the police have done a good job at identifying, catching and incarcerating dangerous criminals. A thoughtful approach, of the kind called for by the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), has been taken. That is why, with the implementation of the end of custody supervised licence tomorrow, the issues and contingencies provided for in the letter of last week will no longer be required. It was an eight-day period and, thankfully, those contingencies were not in fact required.

Metropolitan Police: Operational Independence

Debate between Chris Philp and Alistair Carmichael

Thursday 9th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I thank the right hon. Lady for the work of her Committee. I look forward to reading her report greatly. I will give it close attention, as I always do. Scrutiny of action by the police, or indeed any other public body, is not the same as interference. Scrutiny is healthy and appropriate; interference is a different thing entirely. There is a distinction between scrutiny and interference. The operational independence principle is not one that we plan to revisit, but we look forward to discussing these questions, both with the right hon. Lady’s Committee and in this House.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

On this Home Secretary’s watch, every day 6,000 crimes across England and Wales go unsolved, so does she trust the police to do their job or not? If the purpose of her article was to say that she knows better than the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, she should say so—and she should say so here in this Chamber. If not, what possible motive could she have for seeking to undermine public confidence in the police in this way?

[Chris Philp]

We do have confidence in the police, but it is perfectly reasonable to scrutinise the police and hold them to account for their actions, as police and crime commissioners do every day, and as Members of this House do every day as well. In terms of confidence in policing more widely, according to the crime survey for England and Wales, on a like-for-like basis crime is now 54% lower than it was under the last Labour Government.

Coronation: Policing of Protests

Debate between Chris Philp and Alistair Carmichael

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend puts it very well, and I join him in opposing Sadiq Khan’s appalling ULEZ idea.

The police and armed forces did a great job of policing the coronation. Between the Metropolitan police and Thames Valley police, who policed the Windsor concert the following day, almost 30,000 officers were deployed at one time or another during the relevant period. I think 11,500 officers were deployed on the day of the coronation itself, in addition to 6,500 armed forces personnel. There were 312 protected people who came to this country from around the world, and we deployed almost 1,000 close protection officers. All those officers did a fantastic job in a moment of national pride for all of us.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I am a little surprised that the Minister apparently accepts, without question, the proposition that the Metropolitan police now apologises to people who have been lawfully arrested. Even by his standards, that is something of a novel departure.

The Public Order Act has given police officers broad and sweeping powers, which in turn require the police to exercise discretion and judgment with no context or guidelines. If there is no change to this legislation, such things will keep happening. There should have been better pre-legislative scrutiny of the Act, but there was not. Will he now commit to allowing post-legislative scrutiny?

[Chris Philp]

Many pieces of legislation require on-the-ground interpretation, whether by the police or subsequently by the courts in case law. Indeed, the new Act contains much more precise definitions of what constitutes serious disruption, which was previously extremely ambiguous. The police and others had called for that clarity. Obviously, the House is welcome to conduct scrutiny whenever it wants. It is standard for new legislation to be subject to post-legislative scrutiny some time later, but in many areas this new Act, which recently received Royal Assent, provides additional specificity, clarity and precision that were previously lacking.

Chinese Police Stations in UK

Debate between Chris Philp and Alistair Carmichael

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I assure my hon. Friend that I was listening extremely carefully to what she was saying. She asserted in her question that these locations are still operating. If I may say so, she is making an assumption in doing so—not an assumption that I am going to comment on, because it is a matter that is under live investigation, as she will appreciate. As soon as the Security Minister is able to comment on this matter, he will come to the House and do so.

As my hon. Friend will also appreciate, I cannot comment on the IRGC either, because as she knows, Ministers do not comment on matters around proscription that are being considered. What I can and will say is that this Government take interference with foreign nationals here—transnational intimidation—extremely seriously. It is completely unacceptable, and we will do whatever is necessary to stop it from happening.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Anybody who has the right to be here has the right to feel safe and secure in being here. In the past couple of years, to their credit, the Government have allowed in excess of 100,000 Hongkongers to move to this country, but we know that the intimidation and persecution has followed them. In universities up and down the country, they are shouted down, and they continue to be intimidated. These police stations are part of the infrastructure that enables that. To borrow a phrase from the Foreign Secretary, is it not time that we should be pulling down the shutters on them?

[Chris Philp]

I completely agree with what the right hon. Gentleman has said, particularly in relation to the British national overseas Hong Kong citizens who have come here. We have extended a very warm welcome to those people, who are at risk of repression in Hong Kong now because of the Chinese Communist party’s brutal repression of democratic freedoms and other freedoms there, which this Government abhor in the strongest terms. That is why we have offered refuge here to those people.

The right hon. Gentleman is quite right to say that foreign nationals residing in this country, regardless of their immigration status, should enjoy all the rights and freedoms around free speech and freedom from intimidation that we would expect any citizen of this country to enjoy. I agree with him: it is the duty of Government and the law enforcement services and agencies to ensure that those freedoms and rights are protected, including on campuses. I think the Department for Education is doing some work in that area. Where Chinese nationals are students at universities, they should be free from harassment and intimidation—the same applies, of course, to other groups of people, Jewish students being another obvious example. It is vital that university authorities take robust action to protect their students, whether Chinese, Jewish or from any other group, from any sort of intimidation on campuses, which is totally unacceptable.

Machetes: Consultation

Debate between Chris Philp and Alistair Carmichael

Tuesday 18th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I thank my hon. Friend for his tireless campaigning on this issue, and his local paper which I know has been raising it as well. I am sorry to hear what he says about the Labour PCC in the west midlands. I urge all PCCs to engage with their local communities and I am particularly shocked and concerned to hear that the west midlands PCC is apparently considering closing down 20 police stations.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I welcome the relative novelty of a Home Office statement, instead of Home Office Ministers having to be brought to the Chamber to answer an urgent question. If this statement is a yardstick by which statements can be expected, the House will be better served in the future than it has been in the recent past.

The measures in the consultation are eminently sensible, and I do not think there would be any challenge from Members in any part of the House, but the Minister is kidding himself if he thinks that this process is going to shift the dial at all in reducing violent knife crime. What would make a difference is visible police presence in our streets. It remains to be seen whether the Government have honoured their manifesto pledge on police numbers, but we already know that the number of police community support officers on our streets is down by 33%; when are the Government going to restore those numbers?

[Chris Philp]

I am glad the right hon. Gentleman likes the statement and I will try to provide further such statements in the future given that there is clearly an appetite for them from his side of the Chamber.

On moving the dial, there is clearly no one solution to a problem like knife crime—there is no silver bullet; no one measure will fix the problem in totality—but I do think that these proposals will move the needle. I saw a knife today in Brixton police station that is currently legal; it was a zombie knife without lettering on it and therefore does not fall within the scope of section 47 of the 2019 Act. It is legal today, but under these proposals it will be illegal, meaning people cannot sell it, market it, import it, manufacture it or even possess it in private. I spoke to the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead today about the totality of these measures and he was very clear that he thinks this will make a difference. It will not solve the problem on its own, but I think it will make a difference.

On police numbers, the figures will be unveiled at 9.30 on 26 April—next Wednesday—so the right hon. Gentleman will have to bear with me until then. However, I am very confident, as I have said once or twice already, that we will have record numbers of officers—more than we have ever had at any time in the history of policing in England and Wales.

Napier Barracks Asylum Accommodation

Debate between Chris Philp and Alistair Carmichael

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I think my right hon. Friend is raising an extremely good question. It is precisely because of that question that we will be introducing a Bill in the near future, announced in the Queen’s Speech, to reform our system to make sure that the asylum system is fair, as of course it should be, to those in genuine need, but that we deal with these claims quickly, effectively and fairly, and also prevent unnecessary illegal migration, which puts enormous pressure on the system of the kind we are discussing.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The British Red Cross, which I think we would all acknowledge as the expert in the area of provision of accommodation of this sort, made a recommendation in its recent report that the Home Office

“should introduce a formal, independent inspection regime for asylum…accommodation with publicly available reports,”

in order to better

“monitor the quality and effectiveness of support provided and improve transparency and accountability”

for decisions. Surely, in the Home Office’s own interests, that would be preferable to a status quo where it is left to mark its own homework or to be called out by the courts.

[Chris Philp]

We do not mark our own homework; we are very widely inspected. In fact, there was an inspection by the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration just a few months ago into Napier.

Immigration Rules: Supported Accommodation

Debate between Chris Philp and Alistair Carmichael

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. I am afraid that, as it stands, the legal system is, as my right hon. Friends the Members for Wokingham and for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said, unfortunately routinely abused with repeated unmeritorious claims. We are determined to prevent that from happening. Of course people will have a fair hearing, but we cannot have our legal system abused. I am very much looking forward to my hon. Friend’s assistance in making sure that this legislation is tightly drafted to ensure that there are no loopholes.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [V]]

I too congratulate the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) on obtaining this very important urgent question. It is quite remarkable that, but for her efforts, there would be no effective scrutiny of changes of this magnitude. May I take the Minister at his word when he speaks about support for safe and legal routes and perhaps invite him then to update the House on what work he is doing to build a replacement for the Dubs scheme to bring unaccompanied refugee children from Europe to the United Kingdom?

[Chris Philp]

As I have already said, we have a very effective resettlement scheme, which takes people directly from conflict zones. The resettlement schemes that we have run over the past five years have principally focused, for obvious reasons, on Syria. A total of 25,000 people have come in via those schemes over five years. The Dubs scheme focuses on unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Europe. If we have to prioritise our scarce resources, we should prioritise people, including children, who are in dangerous places such as Syria, not people who are in Italy, who are already in a safe European country. Furthermore, in terms of UASCs in Europe, this country had more UASC applications last year than any other European country. The figure was about 3,800 applications, which means that we are doing our bit for UASCs in Europe, but it is right that we prioritise people in dangerous places, not people in countries such as Italy when it comes to direct resettlement.

Scheduled Mass Deportation: Jamaica

Debate between Chris Philp and Alistair Carmichael

Monday 30th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Even if the Home Office were halfway competent in dealing with these matters, this area would still be absolutely fraught with difficulties, as the figures given to the House by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee indicate. It has been reported that the Government have now entered into an agreement with the Government of Jamaica regarding this flight and others. When will that agreement be published?

[Chris Philp]

We do not have any formal agreements. What we have is an ongoing dialogue about any individual flight or any individual operational circumstance, but let me make it completely clear that our commitment to discharging our duty under the 2007 Act, which is to seek to deport anyone committing an offence of over a one-year sentence, regardless of their age on arrival, remains steadfastly in place.

Channel Crossings in Small Boats

Debate between Chris Philp and Alistair Carmichael

Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

It is the case that the planned flight to Spain on 27 August was cancelled as a result of the lodging of a large number of last-minute claims, which left no time for them to be properly considered prior to the flight. It is likely that many of those claims were intentionally lodged at the last minute, but as those are being worked through, we will be organising subsequent flights so that people can be lawfully returned to Spain, a safe country where these migrants had previously claimed asylum. That can and should take place.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I apologise in advance for stating the totally blindingly obvious, but I do so in the hope of assisting the Minister here. If we do not provide safe and legal routes for people who are fleeing war and persecution, they will resort to unsafe and illegal routes. There is only one other country in Europe that does not allow unaccompanied refugee children to be reunited with their families and sponsor that reunification. Why is that?

[Chris Philp]

I repeat that there are plenty of legal mechanisms by which people may claim asylum. About 40% of those people claiming asylum have entered the country in a lawful manner. I will just draw attention once again to the resettlement scheme, which has seen almost 20,000 people resettled here directly from conflict zones—not people coming through France and Spain who are in a safe country already, but the people who were in or around places such as Syria who were genuinely in danger. On unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, given that last year we received more than 3,500 UASCs, the highest number of any country in Europe, we need no lectures on that topic.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Philp and Alistair Carmichael

Monday 23rd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

Significant resources are being put into protecting the short straits, particularly the crossing in the direction of Dover. Where people make that crossing cladestinely, they are met by the relevant officials, particularly from Border Force and from immigration enforcement. Of course, one of the screening checks now being done relates to their health, to make sure that if they need to be isolated to avoid the disease being transmitted onwards, that happens. On returns, we are currently bound by the Dublin regulations, but once we exit the transition period, we will not be and there will be an opportunity for us to form our own policy in this important area.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Overwhelmingly, people entering the UK in Orkney and Shetland do so because they are coming off cruise ships. That traffic is currently suspended, as a result of the businesses themselves suspending it. Will the Minister reassure me that if these businesses were to try to reinstate cruise ship business before it was safe to do so, steps would be taken to prevent their doing it?

[Chris Philp]

Let me reassure the right hon. Gentleman that, as I said previously, the scientific advice is at the forefront of the Government’s thinking and there is no question at all of allowing any unsafe operating practice—by cruise ship operators or anyone else. The Government will not contemplate allowing this business to happen until the scientific advice categorically states that it is safe.