Registers of Births and Deaths Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 16th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

That is a most important point. I will come to it, but clause 4 refers to the very point that my hon. Friend so wisely makes.

Currently, registrars submit copies of all the birth and death entries they have registered in the last quarter to their superintendent registrar via a system of quarterly returns. The superintendent registrar certifies those entities as being true copies of birth and death entries in the registers and forwards them to the Registrar General. That is done electronically using the electronic system. The Registrar General holds a central repository of all births and deaths registered in England and Wales. My Bill will remove that administrative burden.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

When the electronic system was introduced in 2009, why did the Government decide not to abandon the hard copy record? Surely the reason was that it was a safeguard. Hard copies are an essential safeguard, are they not?

[Mr Mitchell]

I will come on to a number of points that my hon. Friend alludes to, but I think he will be satisfied, when he hears about the other provisions of my Bill, that that point is properly addressed.

With the move to an electronic register, the system of quarterly returns will no longer be necessary. Following the registration of a birth or death in the electronic register, the entry will immediately be available to the superintendent registrar and the Registrar General, without the quarterly returns process having to be completed from the paper registers.

The Bill amends the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 to insert a new section that enables Ministers to make regulations that make provision that a duty to sign the birth or death register is to have the effect of a duty to comply with specified requirements. If an informant complies with those requirements, they are to be treated as having signed the register and to have done so in the presence of the registrar.

The entry in the electronic register will be treated as having been signed by the person who has provided the information relating to a birth or death. For example, the regulations may require a person to sign something other than the register or to provide evidence of their identity. I reassure my hon. Friends that the regulations would be made using the affirmative procedure, which requires them to be approved by both Houses of Parliament and therefore there would be the opportunity to discuss the content of those measures.

The provisions in my Bill are the first step in moving to a more modern system of birth and death registration. By removing the requirement for paper registers to be signed in the presence of a registrar, we would pave the way for a move to online methods of registration. That would provide more flexibility and allow an informant to provide the particulars of a birth or death online and at a time to suit the individual, without having to visit a register office. That would modernise how births and deaths are registered in the future and give the public more choice, but the choice to register in person would remain, as register offices and facilities are needed for marriages, civil ceremonies and citizenship.

As I am sure my hon. Friends will agree, removing the requirement for face-to-face services is particularly relevant and most important at the moment as we deal with the issues of covid-19 and the pandemic. My right hon. and hon. Friends will also be pleased to hear that just these measures in respect of the registration of deaths would save the taxpayer £90 million over 10 years. Over the next 10 years, we conservatively estimate that the effect of all these measures would save £170 million for the taxpayer. I should explain that the figure of £20 million that appears in the explanatory notes is a reference only to the amount saved by removing the paper register and the requirements for quarterly returns. The savings to the taxpayer would be significant indeed.

I turn briefly to the clauses in the Bill. Clause 1 amends the original Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953. The new sections allow the Registrar General to determine how registers of live births, stillbirths and deaths are to be kept. It would remove the duplication of processes: all births and deaths would be registered in an electronic register without the need for paper registers.

Clause 2 deals with the provision of equipment and facilities by local authorities. It makes clear that all local authorities must provide and maintain the equipment and facilities set down by the Registrar General for all register and sub-district register offices. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) for specifically raising that point in our discussions earlier.

Clause 3 is the requirement to sign the register. This is a new power that would bring before the House new regulations in respect of non-paper registration. Where someone complies with specific requirements, they will be treated as having signed. Obviously, such provisions may require evidence of identity, and those provisions would be put to the House in further legislation that we would move in the way that I have described. The clause makes it clear that the Government can do so only under the affirmative procedure, which means that any provisions must be laid before and approved by both Houses of Parliament.

Clause 4 is the about the treatment of existing registers and records—the point made so ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb). It requires the Registrar General to continue to keep and maintain all the existing records.

Clause 5 effectively brings the schedules to the Bill into effect. Clause 6 is a power to make further consequential provisions, including, if required, to primary legislation. Again, in those circumstances that can be done only by affirmative resolution. Clause 7 is the commencement clause, which comes into force on the day the Bill is passed. Finally, the schedule deals with minor and consequential amendments to the original 1953 Act and certain other primary legislation consequent on the provisions of this Bill.

The Bill requires neither a money resolution, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch will be pleased to hear, nor a Ways and Means resolution. It is also fully compatible with the European convention on human rights. I very much hope that the Bill will progress through the House and, indeed, the other place, where our late colleague my noble Friend Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton has agreed to assist in its passage, and that, with its self-evident benefits for our constituents, it will, after further scrutiny, become an Act. I commend its provisions to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I am not sure that we wanted our parents to give us really popular Christian names, but I note that my parents had the foresight to give me the same Christian name as my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder), so that was obviously a good thing. We are 152nd in the league table. I predict that it will not be long before we are about 1,000th in the league table because obviously Christopher is a name that has Christ in it, and I fear that the Christian emphasis in our society is on the decline, rather than on the increase, but that is by the bye.

The Bill of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) is one about which I have considerable concerns. The hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) identified two concerns: the risk of identity fraud associated with the registration of births, and the problems that there already are in the reliability of the registration online system. We have a registration system at the moment and there is a back-up, which is the hard copies. What this Bill is going to do is to deprive us of that back-up.

I am sure there are hon. Friends who run their constituency offices on the basis that it is all purely electronic, but I certainly do not, and I have good reason not to do that because on so many occasions the electronic systems fail and we need to rely on the hard copy back-up. If that was not just a general proposition, it was brought home to me last evening because I was talking to my wife and she showed me an email that she has had from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency saying that her driving licence details need to be updated. She looked at the email and saw that the details registered were not correct. She tried to change the details but could not. Suffice it to say that, in those details, there are names of foreign people and suggestions that my wife’s driving licence record has now been tampered with and been the subject perhaps of fraud or forgery.

I cite that as a topical example of what happens if we become wholly reliant upon electronic systems. I think most of us will have safes at home where we keep our birth certificates for ourselves and our children, our marriage certificates, our passports, our driving licences, exam certificates, degree certificates and so on. The reason we do that is that we have the security of having a hard copy, instead of having to faff around trying to get duplicate copies. How can we be sure that the back-up system, which will now become the main system under my right hon. Friend’s Bill, will be 100% reliable and proof against fraud?

My right hon. Friend identifies savings, and obviously any savings that come from efficiency are good. In terms of the need to pass these records on up through the lines, from the area manager to the regional manager and then to the top dog, I think that is a very sensible reform, but dispensing totally with the written record will save only £20 million over 10 years. The other savings to which he referred are from the other streamlining processes set out in his Bill. I have no problem with those, but I question whether, for £2 million a year, it is worth taking the risk both in terms of opening up fraud and damaging the potential for future generations to be able to examine this period of our history, which is much easier to do with hard-copy, written records than it is with electronic data.

[Mr Mitchell]

I believe that in Committee we will be able to satisfy my hon. Friend absolutely on the issue of fraud and on the other points as well. I hope that he will perhaps consider serving on the Bill Committee, where I am completely confident we will be able to satisfy him on all his concerns.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his confidence. I approach this sort of legislation in a constructive frame of mind. One point occurred to me when he referred to draft regulations. In due course, we will all be able to see these draft regulations. Although they would be affirmative resolution regulations, we know that we would not be able to amend them. I ask my right hon. Friend: would it be possible, by the time that the Bill reaches Committee, as I expect it to, for us to have a draft of those regulations so that we can look at them in Committee alongside his Bill? That practice has often been supported by Ministers, and I think that he would support it as well.

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think that would be a very good thing to do. Of course, it would have to be the proposed orders, which will be subject to the affirmative resolution, as we have both agreed, that are already on the stocks, and there will be more in the future, not least to address any dangers—he mentioned the issue of fraud—that are not relevant or understood today but which could emerge in future.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that assurance. We are talking about fraud and forgery. We know from our own constituency records that it is rife. Action Fraud is incapable of dealing with all the fraud cases that come before it. Most of our local police forces are incapable and under-resourced to deal with the fraud, which is rife. It never used to be part and parcel of British society that you assumed that people were fraudulent until proved otherwise, but we have almost got to that stage now. Elderly people are receiving phone calls and most of them seem to be to try to con the individual out of some money. There is every incentive for fraud where we are talking about birth certificates and certificates of registration, which give us our identity. What could be more fundamental than that? I look forward to seeing these assurances in Committee, but it would be helpful and desirable that we should be able to give them a line by line examination, rather than just rely on expressions of good intention.

I go back to the point that I made in an intervention on my right hon. Friend’s speech. When the legislation was changed in 2009 to allow electronic records to be kept, safeguards were in place. Who could object to the establishment of electronic records if we were going to retain the hard copy written records? Now, just over 10 years later, we see that that safeguard, which was fundamental to the change then, is being removed and without, it seems, any justification. I hope that, in due course, my right hon. Friend will be able to explain what has happened in the last 10 or 11 years that has removed the necessity for the safeguards which this House thought were absolutely essential back in 2009.

Gang-associated Girls

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Before we start this debate, may I remind Members that only those on the call list are able to participate? We have five right hon. and hon. Members in Westminster Hall at the moment, and that will be the maximum number who can participate in this debate. That means that even if the debate looks as though it is going short, others who are not on the call list will not be able to join us.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered gang-associated girls.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher, and to be back in Westminster Hall to debate such an important topic. Youth violence is a very serious issue across our four nations in the UK, and it has a devastating impact on families—mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers—as well as on the wider community in our towns and cities. Here in London, it has almost become a daily occurrence on news bulletins. In the last two months alone, I have had to speak to three inconsolable mothers who have lost their children as a result of knife crime. These children were murdered by their peers. As a mother of two young children myself, that is not something that I can live with, ignore or accept.

However, today I want to talk about something different—another aspect of youth violence, and one that is hidden and often under-reported. It is the role played by girls and young women, whose activities and exploits, both in and around gangs, so often fly below the radar. I will also touch on the emerging issues and evidence that gang members are using the uncertainty caused by covid-19 to recruit vulnerable girls, as they adapt their business to the models of the new normal following lockdown.

I am sure that we all want to see an end to violence, exploitation and abuse, but if we want to understand this whole complex picture, we must understand that gang violence and abuse is a gendered and intersectional issue that requires a different approach. Even the word “gang” can be problematic when discussing the risks faced by girls and women. A youth worker who I spoke to recently highlighted to me that the language used to identify this issue sometimes fails to communicate the impact suffered by girls and young women. As she put it to me:

“Girls running county lines are not in a gang. They are victims of gangs.”

Girls and young women face different risks from those faced by males. Girls and young women may experience rape and other forms of sexual abuse, physical abuse, online grooming in the form of job offers, and direct threats of violence to themselves or their families to make them move or store drugs, weapons or even cash.

Some of these girls start off as girlfriends and get emotionally drawn into a relationship with an exploiter, and they face the additional emotional obstacle of trying to escape from that relationship as well as other forms of exploitation. Young women often carry the emotional burden for gang members and their wider crew, because they are often relied on for emotional support and counsel. Unfortunately, some girls are forced into criminal activity, such as county lines—moving drugs between cities and rural areas. There have been press reports recently of young women dressing as key workers to avoid being stopped and searched while travelling during lockdown.

The perception that girls work only in low-key roles in county lines is now starting to be challenged, with professionals reporting that, increasingly, young women work in the same roles as young men. That highlights the full scale of the exploitation that is taking place. Also, because young women and girls often go under the radar, their associations are much harder to track than those of males, but that does not mean that we should not offer them support. These are some of the most vulnerable young women and girls.

In February, in my role as London Assembly member for Lambeth and Southwark, I released a report entitled “Gang Associated Girls: Supporting young women at risk”. One key issue that I identified was a lack of data. There was no reliable information about the number of girls associated with gangs. For example, here in London, the Metropolitan Police Service’s records as of last year highlighted on its gangs matrix only six females, in contrast to 2,492 males. However, also in February, the Children’s Commissioner estimated that about 2,290 girls were associated with gangs in England; that is about 34% of all gang-associated children. When I sent a freedom of information request to all London boroughs, I found that more than 1,000 young women and girls had gang associations identified as a factor in their assessments by children’s social services. Therefore, we know that the data is patchy at best.

The invisibility of gangs’ association with girls has dire consequences. Abianda, a social enterprise that works with young women, highlighted that and the problems that it causes. A report from the crisis support charity Hestia in July found that girls were being deployed in county lines operations specifically because they were less likely to be stopped and searched by the police, and that exploitative romantic relationships were being used to lure young girls and women into carrying out that dangerous activity. Therefore, while we as the policy makers fail to truly appreciate the role that girls are playing in gangs, the same gangs are deliberately using that exploitation—that gendered advantage—to pursue their criminal activities. They are evading the law and, because girls on the periphery of gang violence who may need support are not being identified, funding is being disproportionately channelled into supporting young men.

A lot of good work is going on to rehabilitate young men away from this criminality, but there is little support for young women and girls. The issue of gangs’ association with girls is largely absent from the public discourse about violent crime, with both media reporting and funding concentrating on young men who are involved with gangs. Unfortunately, that means that public agencies risk missing the signs of gang-associated girls and do not offer the right support services to help them. If we do not offer adequate support to young women and girls at risk of gang association, we miss a vital opportunity to tackle violent crime.

The Minister shares my passion to end the exploitation of county lines, so will she ensure that resources are put in to disrupt county lines, working on the principle of taking a gendered approach to ensure that those working to prevent county lines activity are always aware of the role of young women and girls in these operations? If we accept that the cause of gang-associated violence has a gender dimension, it follows that the solution should also adopt a gendered approach rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

Young women and girls experience the trauma of gang-related violence in a different way and, as a result, they present differently in hospital settings. Redthread, a charity whose workers operate in hospitals across London and the midlands, has reported that when they talk to young women, they are less likely to present with a physical injury, such as knife wounds, and are more likely to present with psychological issues related to trauma, such as self-harm, suicidal ideation and overdoses. In response, that charity has placed a number of young female workers in accident and emergency departments specifically to support these young women and girls.

The St Giles Trust is another charity that helps young people who are caught up in gangs. It has found that when it works in a hospital and its staff are given flexible access to a range of departments, they can identify these females at risk of exploitation and criminal and sexual abuse. If staff can get to them earlier, it will save costs down the line and get better results for the young women and girls.

Gender-based support works, but we know that our local councils up and down the country are struggling to provide that tailored support because of severe budget cuts. Given the potentially life-changing benefits that will be produced by programmes such as these, run by charities, will the Minister lobby the Chancellor of the Exchequer to ensure that councils have the funding available to provide that bespoke care? The reality is that gang-associated girls are part of a bigger system that not only harms the young women and girls directly involved, but contributes to the wider criminal activities of gangs and their exploitation of children and vulnerable young adults.

We cannot address gang violence without taking a gendered and intersectional approach. We need a better understanding of the role that girls and young women face so that support services can be there for them. We need to look at targeted interventions to help the girls who are being exploited, groomed and abused. We need to continue to raise awareness with the authorities around the use of girls in county lines and other gang-related activities, and we need policy makers to change the language that they use in highlighting the issue. Most importantly, we need to continue to listen to what young women and girls tell us.

When we talk about youth violence, knife crime or gangs, young people are too often labelled as criminals and perpetrators, but evidence shows that the young people themselves have been victims of crimes. We need to remember that when we talk about them. We are all here today because we want an end to the criminal exploitation of all vulnerable young people. To do that, we need to recognise and understand the gender dimension of gang association and violence, and invest in solutions based on that reality. It is a difficult reality, but one that we need to face up to, otherwise we risk dealing with only part of the problem. If we do that, the girls and young women who we all care about, and will carry on advocating for, will continue to suffer and end up in prison, or, even worse, continue to lose their lives.

Forensic Science Regulator and Biometrics Strategy Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 25th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Following up on that point, is it right that the regulator already has problems with codes of practice and conduct? The annual report refers to the fact that there has been a delay in publishing issue 5 of those codes but that it would be published in early 2020. Has it now been published? Why are those non-statutory codes not sufficient?

[Darren Jones]

The regulator has been able to introduce codes of practice, but where they have not been followed, she has not been able to enforce them, which is one of the main issues today. As I understand it, the codes of practice are published in co-ordination with the Home Office, so perhaps the Minister can give an update on the outstanding codes that the hon. Gentleman mentions.

The market’s dependence on large or specialised service providers is not an abstract concern. We know that the resulting fragility, which already existed because of a lack of competition in the market, has had damaging effects on people in the criminal justice system. The collapse of key forensic services in 2018 is a case in point. To manage the fall-out from that collapse, police forces contracted other commercial providers to take on the resulting workload, creating system-wide capacity constraints. The appalling consequences that the Forensic Sciences Regulator laid out show that some cases, where forensic science may have provided valuable information or evidence, could not be processed. In addition, there was evidence of an increased error rate during this period, as well as an unsustainable strain on staff working overtime.

I am sure that all hon. Members agree that that is an unacceptable position for part of the criminal justice system to be in and that we should do our best to try to fix it. At the risk of straying a little beyond the immediate scope of the Bill, I urge Ministers to recognise the systemic issues that such cases highlight. Giving the regulator statutory powers will raise standards but cannot by itself mend a broken market. In the medium-term, the only way to get forensics right is through sustained investment in people, processes and skills.

I am sure that other hon. Members will have examples on which to draw, but the way in which violent sexual crimes are prosecuted makes an especially clear case for why statutory powers are so important. Such crimes, which are subject to unique challenges in obtaining convictions, often rely on DNA evidence as the critical element of a prosecution case. It is therefore vital that the possibility of contamination, for example, at sexual assault referral centres, is minimised as far as possible, yet the regulator’s 2016 annual report highlighted instances of DNA swabs being contaminated through unrelated case handling of different victims on the same day. Clearly, that is unacceptable.

Ensuring adherence to the regulator’s quality standards is a basic precaution, as victims and the general public rightly expect. However, the cost of testing to achieve compliance has meant that the commissioners of affected centres are unlikely to co-operate unless the regulator is empowered to require that. That inadequate incentive structure gets to the heart of why the current soft regulatory model is so weak for existing markets. The regulator’s highest aspiration is to create a competitive climate, in which underperforming or corner-cutting suppliers are unable to acquire contracts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

What a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), whom I congratulate on introducing the Bill and addressing this subject following his success in the private Member’s ballot. I am sure we all agree that we want a fine, good-quality forensic service.

The hon. Gentleman made the point that we need the regulator to take action to improve quality. I am sceptical, because we have had a regulator in place since 2007 and it has the powers to bring in codes of practice and, in essence, to encourage, by one method or another, people to comply with those codes. The Bill refers to the introduction of statutory codes of practice that would have to be subject to consultation, but it is not clear to me whether the existing powers have been used sufficiently. It is one thing to say that the regulator has the powers, has been using them and has not been able to make them work so needs them to be put on a statutory footing, but is not clear to me that the existing regulator has been using the available non-statutory powers.

Let me give an example. In her annual report, the forensic science regulator says, in paragraph 2.1 on compliance with the regulator’s codes of practice and conduct:

“The number of organisations that have demonstrated compliance with the Codes has now risen to 42. This leaves approximately 17 organisations in England & Wales that hold accreditation to ISO 17025 but not the Codes and are regularly practising forensic science in the CJS”—

the criminal justice system.

She goes on:

“Of these, 12 are in policing”.

The Home Office, which funds the regulator, also funds the police service. If the Home Office talks to the regulator, why has the Home Office not been successful in persuading 12 police organisations to comply with the codes prepared by the regulator? I do not understand what is going on. I hope that when the Minister responds he will explain why there is this dichotomy: the Government say that they support the Bill because we need a statutory regulator, but at the same time they seem to have been doing nothing to try to bring the recalcitrant police forces into compliance.

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend is raising an important point, but there are two things to say. Part of the complication is obviously the operational independence of chief constables, in that the Home Office cannot bring any direct sanction to bear where something falls within their ambit, and as this issue does. However, as a strong champion of the authority and importance of this House, he will also know that transposing regulations into law has had enormous effect in the past. Back in, I think, March 2019, this House passed a statutory instrument on fingerprinting and DNA standards that took us from 9% compliance to 90% across police forces. That illustrates the power that he has from the Back Benches to mandate that kind of action across the country.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am fascinated by my hon. Friend’s response. The chief constable of Dorset is the lead chief constable on this very subject. Perhaps following today’s debate I will be able to have a conversation with him on this matter; but I still despair, really, that it is necessary for this House to intervene to get the police to do what we and an independent regulator think is the right thing for them to do.

[Chris Green]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that spending on the forensics sector decreased, from memory, from about £120 million a year in 2008, or thereabouts, to about £50 million to £55 million a year over a 10-year period? That is a judgment that police forces have to take, but we have to consider the wider financial constraints that they face.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Obviously police forces face constraints, but ensuring that the best quality forensic evidence is presented in the court system should be the top priority. Why should that be relegated as a lesser priority? My view would therefore be: yes, it is very important, but chief constables should be addressing that issue.

I am slightly sceptical about the need for this Bill, and my scepticism was increased when I looked at the regulator’s annual report and saw that her budget, supplied by the Home Office, runs to only about £400,000 in total admin expenditure for a year. What will be the costs of this legislation, which the Minister is supporting? We are now told in the explanatory notes that it will add about £400,000 a year to the costs of the Home Office, so the admin budget for the forensic regulator would be doubled. How does that compare with the estimate given when my hon. Friend the Member Bolton West (Chris Green) introduced his Bill in the 2017-19 Session? The explanatory notes for that Bill said:

“An impact assessment has been conducted by the Home Office. The Home Office estimates that the statutory powers of the Regulator will cost an average of £100,000 per year in addition”.

How is it that in the space of just two years the Home Office’s estimate of the cost of this legislation has quadrupled? And how, on that basis, can we rely on any of its promises about what the costs will be? I do not know whether in due course we will have a separate debate on the financial side of this Bill—I imagine that we would need a money resolution—but perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister can answer that point now.

[Kit Malthouse]

I think my hon. Friend has missed his calling: his forensic examination of these documents is to be admired. During the course of the debate I will seek an answer to the question that he raises; I do not have it at the moment. In response to an earlier point that he raised, it is not just the police who are the users of forensic services; very often defence will use them. Having a consistent regulatory environment that is observed by all means that we will get greater consistency in courts, and therefore there will presumably be less time lost—and a saving—in trials that are broken, cracked or have to be delayed because of differences in forensic evidence.

[Mr Speaker]

Just to say the hon. Gentleman’s calling is Friday.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, and I look forward to hearing the outcome of his further enquiries. His strategy seems to be to supress my scepticism by using charm and flattery, which I am sure are important weapons in his armoury.

I am conscious that lots of people want to participate in this debate. I hope we will be able to get on to some of the later debates on the Order Paper, so having expressed some of my scepticism, I will now sit down.

Operation Augusta

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

The report is scandalous, harrowing and difficult to read. I quote one thing with reference to what the hon. Gentleman has just said:

“the decision to close down Operation Augusta was driven by the decision by senior officers to remove the resources from the investigation rather than a sound understanding that all lines of enquiry had been successfully completed or exhausted”.

On its own merits, that is scandalous. That is in the report. I also read—

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions must be short.

[James Daly]

I do apologise—

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Could you resume your seat, please?

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Gentleman is underlining and emphasising my point about the lack of resources and leadership.

Two of the senior officers became chief constables afterwards, and their recollection of events is either non-existent or hazy. I simply do not believe that someone who had been in charge of such an operation and received such awful reports would not remember—the junior officers have clear memories of how it was finished. That, of course, meant that the perpetrators, who were known about by the police and social workers, carried on, as the report says, in plain sight. A lot of the abuse took place above Indian restaurants on Wilmslow Road—the so-called curry mile—in south Manchester. Cars were known to pull up with girls, and the police did nothing—in fact, they withdrew from acting on that information. As the hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly) said, that is scandalous.

Since the termination of Operation Augusta, the response of Greater Manchester police and Manchester City Council to this quite shocking report has been to apologise and to say that they are improving co-ordination and intensifying work to identify people, and they have done that. The awful thing is that, for the last 50 years, many of the children who have been abused and murdered have become the subjects of well-known operations. Reports always make 80 or 90 recommendations after such failures, and those are always agreed to, but we carry on writing reports, and children carry on being abused. Although I believe that Manchester City Council and Greater Manchester police are sincere in their attempts to be more effective and to get their act together, we need to understand the issue more deeply by asking why these things have happened time and again and what can be done to prevent a report from being written in 16 years’ time about children who are on the streets now, while we discuss this situation.

I referred to the clear memories of the more junior police officers and the amnesia of the senior officers involved. If there had been a different culture and stronger protections for whistleblowers, allowing those junior police officers and social workers to report such cases in the knowledge that they would not lose their careers, I believe more would have been done. In no sense would the public have put up with what happened if they had known about it—they expect our children’s services departments and the police to protect the most vulnerable young women—but they know about it only 16 years later. We need stronger protections for whistleblowers and an acceptance that bringing such issues to the attention of the public and senior politicians is a good thing.

Although there were disputes about resource allocation in the police force and between Greater Manchester police and Manchester City Council, one has to remember that, at the time, police numbers were going up and local government was better funded. That is no longer the case; there is not a children’s department in the country that is not short of resources for the protection of children. We cannot wish, as I do, for better service provision for those vulnerable people without providing the resources. Police numbers have also gone down. However, that decline in resources does not apply to the time of Operation Augusta.

Another point that was made in “The Betrayed Girls” and in the report, and that has been made more generally, is that the vast majority of the men involved were of Pakistani origin and of the Muslim faith. The police, who probably had good intentions, made a mistake in saying, “We will be accused of racism if we point this out.” Nazir Afzal, the previous director of public prosecutions in the north-west and a practising Muslim, said that such activities are against the teaching of Islam and of the Koran, and that the vast majority of Pakistani people are as appalled by what has happened as the rest of the population. That is not to say that one should hide what has happened on Wilmslow Road or in other parts of the country, such as Telford, Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford or Ipswich—one can go on and on listing different towns where such cases have happened.

A final point on resources is that a number of requests have been made for the Home Office to do serious research into grooming. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) recently asked that of the Home Office, both by letter and on the Floor of the House. It is a mistake to think that the grooming of children, as described in the report, is the same as paedophile rings. The Home Office has done good research on paedophile rings. They are understood by the police and the Home Office, which know how to disrupt them. However, very little research has been done on grooming gangs. For instance, we do not know whether there are “Mr Bigs” behind the gangs at a national level or whether the cases represent major crime or decentralised local activity. That is important for our understanding; if it is major crime, organised on a national and international basis like drug crime, the National Crime Agency should be involved in disrupting that activity. I would be grateful if the Minister explained when the Home Office will fund and sponsor research into grooming gangs.

As I said, if people had blown the whistle, a stop could probably have been put to these things, because the public would not stand for them. I want to mention two people who have stayed with this issue and have continued to bring it to the public’s attention since the first Rochdale and Rotherham cases came to light. Sara Rowbotham, who worked in Rochdale as head of its crisis intervention team and is now a Rochdale councillor, and Margaret Oliver, who was a detective on the Augusta team before her maternity leave, have constantly brought it to the public’s attention. Margaret has argued very strongly, alongside the family of Victoria Agoglia, for the case to be re-opened and for the police to take more action against the perpetrators. Those two women deserve serious praise for what they are doing. I do not want in any sense to trivialise this serious debate, but they are more worthy of being nominated to the House of Lords than some of the people who have been put forward by the Labour party, which has put forward a pretty eccentric list, to put it mildly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call Sarah Champion, let me point out that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) referred at the outset of his speech to his entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, but that in itself is not sufficient in a debate. People who are not privy to that register entry need to know the relevance of it, so I will point out that the hon. Gentleman’s register entry includes a reference to the fact that he is a paid adviser to the board of the Outcomes First Group. That is the relevance of it. I remind hon. Members, particularly at the beginning of a new Parliament, that the whole purpose is to promote transparency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. The winding-up speeches will begin at 10.40 am. Five people wish to speak, so I encourage a self-denying ordinance of a maximum of five minutes each. I call Chris Green.

Policing: Staffordshire

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) on securing this incredibly important debate in the first week back after the recess, and on her exceptional speech.

I welcome the Minister to his place and look forward to, as his predecessor said, keeping him on his toes with the new funding promised. It is good to see that the Government finally recognise that police funding should be a priority, and that they should abandon the dangerous delusion of police funding and crime being completely separate. I add to the remarks expressed by my hon. Friends by offering my condolences to the family and loved ones of PC Andrew Harper, who tragically lost his life over the summer. I also offer our best wishes for a speedy recovery to PC Stuart Outten, who was stabbed in Leyton, and PC Gareth Phillips, who was run over in Birmingham—tragic reminders of the dangers that our police officers face every day they put on their uniforms.

We have heard the consequences of the cuts to police funding and to our public sector over the past nine years across the city of Stoke-on-Trent. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North about the impacts that gang crime, organised crime, serious crime and violent crime has had on her constituency—[Interruption.]

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. There is a Division in the House, so the sitting is suspended for 15 minutes until a quarter past 5 o’clock.

Emergency Summit on Knife Crime

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Friday 22nd March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Lady will know that decisions about how her borough is policed lie at the feet of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Mayor of London, because the Mayor of London is the police and crime commissioner for London, so I hope that she has raised this matter with him.

The hon. Lady mentioned urgency. The knife crime summit is really important, but it is not the only thing happening in Government to tackle knife crime and serious violence. The national county lines co-ordination centre has been set up, we are spending £220 million on early intervention, there are local projects for the anti-knife-crime community funds and there is the #knifefree social media campaign. If colleagues want to work with us to send the message out through their constituencies that carrying a knife is not usual, I urge them to use that hashtag to refer people following them on social media—young people, parents, those who work with young people—to the websites that can get help for people they are worried about. We can all take responsibility for such measures as leaders in our local communities to help tackle knife crime.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Will this knife crime summit examine why so many of the perpetrators and victims are male and so relatively few are women?

[Victoria Atkins]

The demographics of victims and perpetrators will be examined not just at the knife crime summit; we think about them carefully and try to reflect them in our policies. I urge a note of caution: we know that, sadly, girls are involved in gangs, and the youth workers and former gang members I meet have emphasised to me that girls are beginning to be ensnared in these gangs as well. The way in which some of those girls are treated by those gangs is utterly horrific—beyond most people’s imagination. We need to support those girls who are ensnared in gangs as well.

Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Friday 15th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

Thank you so much, Mr Speaker. Having made the journey back home, I eventually got to my office to realise that I had left my mobile phone in my jacket that I had taken off, so things can only get better today.

We have before us technical amendments. The Bill has had a long journey. It had its First Reading on 19 July 2017—those heady days when we had a relatively stable Government and could get legislation through the House. Today is a culmination of that, with ping-pong, which I hope will be solely ping and leave no pong.

Members will remember that when my Bill left the Commons last year, it contained my last-minute amendment obliging the Government to bring in the legislation on civil partnerships within six months of the Bill achieving Royal Assent. Curiously, although the Government at that time were not supportive of it, when it came to the possibility of a vote, a rather curious new parliamentary term was coined by the Immigration Minister, who said that the Government were not “actively” opposing my amendment. Hopefully that has now transmogrified into the Government supporting it.

While the wording of clause 2 has changed since the Bill left this House, I want to assure Members that the intention of the clause—to create equality between same and opposite-sex couples in their ability to form a civil relationship—remains. I amended my Bill on Report, before it left this House, to give the Government the ability to extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, rather than just review the possibility of an extension. The Government, although slightly belatedly, came to support the principle of opposite-sex civil partnerships, perhaps spurred on by the Supreme Court judgment in a case last June. I accept that there were technical deficiencies in the drafting of my original amendment.

Since then, I have worked with the Government and the noble Baroness Hodgson of Abinger, to whom I pay great tribute. She guided the Bill through the Lords as a private Member’s Bill virgin, as she described herself, but did so skilfully and with great deftness, steering it on an even course so that it is back here with us today. Baroness Hodgson was able to correct those deficiencies and improve the drafting of the Bill. She then tabled and successfully moved the revised clause 2 and related changes in Committee in the other place, despite some rather indulgent attempts by certain peers in the other place to add their own agendas to the Bill, which were, alas, defective and would have had the result of scuppering the whole Bill. I pay tribute to the way that Baroness Hodgson steered those through potentially choppy waters to avoid the Bill being holed below the water line.

Lords amendments 1 and 2 replace my earlier version of clause 2. The new clause now requires the Secretary of State to amend by regulations the eligibility criteria of the Civil Partnership Act 2004 so that two people who are not of the same sex may form a civil partnership. The Bill requires that these changes be made so as to come in no later than 31 December. That will mean, as we have agreed with Ministers in the other place, that the legislation needs to be in place by 2 December, because notification of a clear 28 days is required before a ceremony can actually take place. There was an undertaking that civil partnerships would be available before the end of 2019, and I look forward to a series of invitations to civil partnership ceremonies on new year’s eve.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Many congratulations to my hon. Friend on steering this Bill through so successfully and on getting his timing absolutely right so that it could incorporate the decision of the Supreme Court. May I ask him whether he is concerned about the fact that subsection (1) of the new clause says:

“The Secretary of State may, by regulations”

thereby indicating a certain discretion, but subsection (2) says that if he exercises that discretion under subsection (1) then he “must” do so before 31 December? Is my hon. Friend suspicious that the contrast between “may” and “must” in subsections (1) and (2) could be used by the Government to undermine what he has just asserted?

[Tim Loughton]

I know my hon. Friend is always vigilant, rather than suspicious. Having sat through many Committees over many years in this House arguing the toss over whether the word “may” should be replaced by the word “must”, I have to say that I am not concerned about the wording of the Bill. I have had many conversations with the Ministers responsible, and the Government are absolutely committed to delivering on the undertakings in this Bill. It had to be put together in such a way to give some leeway to Ministers to be able to produce the right legislation at the right time. That involved a degree of discretion, which I know my hon. Friend and others in both Houses were concerned about. A number of undertakings were therefore added to the Bill and were given orally, not least a sunset clause, so that this clause, which I know my hon. Friend has had concerns about in the past, could not be used for other purposes as something of a Trojan horse. I entirely appreciate his observation, but I do not share his concern that this will not actually be produced. I think it will be produced in a fairly short space of time. Goodness knows, we tried for long enough to get mothers’ names on marriage certificates.

Speaker’s Statement: New Zealand Terror Attacks

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Friday 15th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

This poisonous barbarity will not prevail; I think we are all clear about that. I deeply appreciate the words of the Minister and the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting). In saying what they have said, and doing so in the way in which they have, they have spoken for millions—if not hundreds of millions—of people around the world. I think colleagues will understand that there is a particular piquancy about me calling the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope).

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

May I, on my behalf and that of my constituents, express our sympathy and solidarity with the citizens of our twinned city of Christchurch in New Zealand? This grotesque manifestation of religious hatred is beyond comprehension, but as the Minister intimated, it requires us all to redouble our efforts to promote the virtues of tolerance and religious freedom as the best weapons against the outrage of terror.

[Mr Speaker]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman.

English Channel: Illegal Seaborne Immigration

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

I shall draw my remarks to a close.

What nationality are the people crossing the English channel illegally? It is reported in the media that most of them are Iranian. I understand that is fuelled by Serbia giving Iranians visa-free access to Serbia for a four-month period. Some 40,000 Iranians took advantage of that and are seeking to disperse themselves around the EU, including coming to these shores. Apparently, we let 63% of Iranians in; France keeps 69% of Iranian applicants out. Two and a half thousand Iranians applied for asylum here each year between 2008 and 2017—more than in any other EU country except Germany. Why are they all seeking asylum in this country and not in other EU countries on the way? Less than 4% of the total have been forcibly removed or have chosen to leave. What action have we taken or are we taking with the Serbian Government to ensure that the visa programme is closed down?

This is a big issue of huge concern to many people. We must be able to defend our coastline from illegal immigration. We must not encourage, by either doing nothing or doing very little, the people traffickers who are driving this horrible trade that puts many lives at risk. Above all, we want to ensure we have secure borders and can control who comes here and who does not.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

The Minister has until 5.13 pm, if she wishes to extend her remarks until then. That is because the previous debate finished early and we have been interrupted by Divisions.

Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 26th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities is best placed to make written statements on this matter rather than me, but we will provide as much detail to the House as we possibly can. Hopefully, that will be provided as soon as possible.

The Bill, as introduced, contained provisions for such a power to be included, but those provisions were removed in Committee as we did not wish to provoke parliamentary opposition in either place that could prevent the Bill as a whole from proceeding. Those are the reasons why our preference would be to introduce our own Bill in the next session to extend civil partnership as soon as a suitable legislative opportunity is available, which is what my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities has indicated in her written statement. However, I do not want anyone to think that the Government are merely paying lip-service to the need to press on with resolving this matter.

Government research that was originally due to conclude next autumn has already been brought forward by a year. It has been wound up and officials are now using its findings to help with the impact assessment for the new civil partnerships. The Government Equalities Office has also been in contact with Departments across Whitehall to begin discussions on how to undertake the necessary legislative sweep and with its counterparts in the devolved Administrations to identify UK cross-border issues that will need to be considered.

I am very conscious of the keen interest that Members of both Houses take in extending civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples and of the private Member’s Bill brought forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) and her continued support for our introducing measures through that Bill. In addition, as I have said, a Bill has also been introduced in the Lords on this matter.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham has pursued this matter with passion and enthusiasm, and these are legislative proposals that will get on to the statute book, but we are keen to do so in the right way. I hope that this reassures the House that the Government are working hard to extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, as well as same-sex couples, despite not being able to actively support his new clause for the reasons I have outlined.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

The Minister speaks in riddles. Is she saying that the Government are not actively supporting my hon. Friend’s excellent amendment and new clause and so will abstain, or is she saying that the Government are opposing them?

[Caroline Nokes]

I think I made it clear that we are not actively supporting my hon. Friend’s amendments, but he has done an excellent job over the last few days of making sure he has enormous support for his amendments both on paper and in the House today.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I take it from that that, because of the forces lined up against the Government, they are throwing in the towel, which is good and encouraging news. I congratulate my hon. Friend on the progress he has made.

I despair at the way the Government have been dragging their feet over this issue for so long. It was on 21 May 2013—more than five years ago—on the Third Reading of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 that I intervened on the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and Minister for Women and Equalities asserting that I believed that doing what the Government were doing in that Bill would be in breach of human rights law. The answer from the Minister, obviously on the advice of Government lawyers, was that the provisions of the European convention on human rights would not be compromised by the fact that the legislation made unequal provision for civil partnerships.

How wrong were the Government and the Minister! For five years people have been in limbo, while the Government have connived over legislation that is at odds with human rights requirements under the European convention. Surely there must be a greater sense of urgency from the Government than was demonstrated in my right hon. Friend’s response to the new clause. I also find it extraordinary that today’s written statement makes no mention of the Supreme Court ruling.

I hope that when the new clause and amendment are put to the vote, they will go through without a Division, but if there is a Division, I will be interested to see whether the Government try to argue against what the Prime Minister has already assured us of—namely, that the Government are on the side of the proposal in the new clause.

[Chris Bryant]

I will be very brief. I just want to explain to the Minister why I feel very impatient—she looked grumpy with me for complaining that she was taking a long time. She used words such as “soon”, “as soon as possible” and “quickly”, and while Ministers often use those words, they mean absolutely nothing in parliamentary language.

On the Minister’s timetable, we might get a Bill in the next Session, but I would not be surprised if the next Session was a two-year Session, like this one, which might mean us waiting another two and a half years. Every year, I have straight people coming to my surgeries who had lived with a partner of the opposite gender for years and years in a relationship that had felt in every respect like a marriage, but who never wanted to enter into a marriage and consequently suffered when their partner died due to a lack of a legal arrangement because civil partnerships were not available to them. They suffer exactly the same distress as gay couples did until civil partnerships were brought into law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. I said at the beginning of my previous remarks that this morning would be a breeze. There have been a few headwinds, but so far, so good. I hope we can continue in that spirit of agreement and consensus across the House regarding all four measures in the Bill, which are much needed and much supported. My Bill has been referred to as the hatch, match and dispatch Bill because it covers so many junctures in people’s lives. I like to view it rather more as a Bill to address anomalies and iniquities in the law that, in many cases, should have been dealt with a long time ago.

I want to apologise in advance to officials, because if the Bill now goes through as amended, as I hope will be the case, they will have a lot of work to do in a relatively short space of time, but we now have a timeline, and that work should be a welcome distraction for them from Brexit, so there are upsides as well as downsides.

There are four aspects of the Bill, as I have mentioned. Clause 1, which is about marriage registration, seems to have excited the most vociferous support this morning. I am sure that the Minister will actively support it, rather than not actively support it—she appeared to say earlier that she did not like new clause 1 but would not actively oppose it, although passively she would have done. But we have moved on to Third Reading now—we are on the final bend.

I pay tribute to the Bishop of St Albans for the Bill that he has steered through the Lords, ably supported by my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman), whose name is attached to it on today’s Order Paper, albeit somewhat later on. She has been a champion for this issue over many years, as have other Members who have attached their names to various private Members’ Bills to try to address this anomaly. It is absurd that mothers have been able to put their signatures on marriage certificates in Scotland since 1855—and indeed in Northern Ireland—and in respect of civil partnerships in England and Wales since 2004, but that not since Victorian times has a mother’s name been recognised on a marriage certificate.

On Second Reading, I produced my own marriage certificate. My dear late mother’s name is absent from it, and to add insult to injury, my father’s name is on it twice, because he signed not only as witness but as the vicar who married us, adding double insult to injury. There are countless cases of people saying, “I never knew my father because he assaulted my mother and did a runner on us before I ever knew him, yet his name has to go on my marriage certificate, and the name of my mother, who has done all the heavy lifting, suffered all the abuse, and brought up, nurtured and loved me as a daughter, does not appear.” That is not right. I hope that the Bill will at last address that anomaly and that mothers can then proudly put their names on the marriage register in the new electronic form, which will bring it up to date for the future.

I am not going to go into the second aspect of the Bill, which is civil partnerships, at length again. We have been debating the matter since the 2013 same-sex marriage Bill. If my amendment had been agreed at that time, we would not still be having this discussion now. There have been many opportunities to address this unintended inequality.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Since the Government are in the mood to apologise for all sorts of historical events, does my hon. Friend think they should apologise for getting the law completely wrong?

[Tim Loughton]

I am in a generous frame of mind this morning, and rather than their saying sorry, we should be saying hurrah that we are now doing something about it—[Hon. Members: “Hurrah!”] I do not know how Hansard will treat that.

The third aspect of the Bill relates to the production of a report on the registration of pregnancy loss. Again, clause 3 has already achieved its objective, partly in the light of our Second Reading debate, which we had back on 2 February, when we were all moved by the extraordinarily touching personal testimony of the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) about her own experiences—I wonder whether she will draw her attention away from her mobile phone, because I know she would like to listen to this tribute and not be distracted. As a result of the strength of feeling in the speeches and the subsequent response from our constituents, the then Health Secretary—he is now Foreign Secretary—said, “Well, actually I think we just need to get on with changing the law.” A group was set up with a mandate to see how we could change the law to acknowledge in some way those births that are stillborn but happen, by whatever quirk, to fall below the 24-week gestation line and are therefore not recognised in the eyes of the state. The situation has brought huge distress to parents who are already in distress at the trauma of losing a child. The fact that they happened to lose that child at 23 weeks and six days means that, in the eyes of the state, that child never existed and is classed as any other baby loss. In saying that, I in no way diminish the trauma of all baby loss, but there are so many examples of this.

My constituent Hayley Petts first brought this matter to me, and she served on the working group with the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West. The group has been discussing many aspects of how the law can be changed and has also thrown up a lot of problems about how we go about changing the law. Should we have a universal certificate for all baby loss, for example? Should the scheme be voluntary or mandatory? Should it be subject to medical verification, as is the case under the Australian scheme, and should it be retrospective? There is then the whole thorny issue of how we avoid getting into the minefield that is abortion and other forms of termination. The Bill has done its job before it has become an Act because such work is going on under the aegis of the Department of Health and Social Care, and I hope we will have some results in due course.