Violence Reduction, Policing and Criminal Justice

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to be called early in the debate. I usually wait a lot longer—

[Emily Thornberry]

So get on with it!

[Chris Stephens]

“Get on with it,” says the Labour Front Bencher.

On justice, I hope that the Minister heard my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) speak about the violence reduction unit work being done in Scotland. I was a member of the cross-party Youth Violence Commission. There is a lot of work being done on this issue in Scotland. It is a public health issue and, yes, education and lifelong learning have a role in tackling it, as I hope the Minister will take on board.

On the King’s Speech itself, this has been an extraordinary five days. It started off with a lot of the hard right-wing rhetoric, and now we see that the Government have moved, or are trying to move, to a centrist position—it is quite extraordinary. I listened to the right hon. and learned Member for Northampton North (Sir Michael Ellis), and I have heard others. I hope that he will condemn the far-right thuggery we saw at the weekend in London and elsewhere. Those were not counter-protesters—the phrase I have seen being used—but far-right thugs. Every single Member of this House should condemn those individuals, who wore a poppy on their jackets while showing a swastika tattoo at the same time. It was an absolute outrage. Those were despicable sights at the weekend.

Other measures were mentioned in the King’s Speech. After today’s Supreme Court judgment, it is obvious that there will be yet another immigration Bill—that has been an annual event in this place since I came here in 2015—to try to fix the broken asylum system in this country. I am concerned; at my surgery in Govan on Friday, I met a Palestinian constituent who has been denied asylum by the Home Office. He has not heard from his family in Gaza for 10 days, and has been denied refugee status in the United Kingdom. That tells me how broken the asylum system is, and I hope that Home Office representatives will meet me to discuss that particular case.

What was most surprising about the King’s Speech was that it contained very few measures to tackle the cost of living crisis—or, as I call it, the cost of greed crisis—that is taking place across these islands. It is interesting that in America, President Joe Biden has launched a food poverty strategy to eliminate food poverty by the year 2030, but this Government will not match that ambition here. I certainly intend to table a Bill on that issue, because we need a strategy to eliminate food poverty. Far too many of our citizens across these islands are going hungry; it is a disgrace that that is happening in an economy like ours. It is being left to the rest of us to develop a community shop network, selling food at affordable rates or at cost, to help people move away from food banks—from emergency need.

We need that sort of system, and we need the Government to take food poverty in this country extremely seriously because, as I have said, far too many people are in food poverty, including far too many children. It makes me weep when I hear some of the stories reported to my office of people who do not have the basic essentials. We need essentials guarantees in the universal credit system. It is incredible that we have this ridiculous situation in which the universal credit system, which is there as a so-called safety net, is no longer a safety net for many reasons. Universal credit and the social security system are also broken; there were opportunities in the King’s Speech for the Government to fix them, but sadly they did not.

I associate myself with the remarks of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, about the lack of action on infected blood in the King’s Speech. It is no longer good enough for the Government to sneak out statements just before recesses or prorogations, talking about the lack of action that is taking place for far too many people who have been caught up in that scandal. We will continue to call that out; there need to be debates and regular statements in this Chamber, so that Members from all sides of the House can call the Government to account for the snail’s pace of action. Lastly, I will be voting in the name of humanity and supporting a ceasefire in the Lobby tonight.