Crime and Neighbourhood Policing

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I do agree that the police need to have the powers to tackle serious abuse, antisocial behaviour and problems in our town centres. At the moment, there are not police officers there; too often, they are not on patrol and they are not there. I would just gently remind the hon. Member that it was his Government and Conservative MPs who all voted to cut antisocial behaviour powers, leaving powers that just are not being used at all. Nobody is using even the antisocial behaviour powers they have, and it was Ministers and Tory MPs who voted to cut those powers in the first place.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. I just want to refer to hate crime. We have seen a massive increase in hate crime over the last 10 years from about 40,000 cases up to about 155,000 cases last year. Although we are seeing improvements in prosecutions, the figure is still less than 10% of cases. This makes a huge difference to our communities and to making sure that everybody feels safe. What are her comments on that?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right, and these are also the kinds of crimes—for example, homophobic assaults or racist threats—that can be hugely damaging, and these serious crimes also undermine community cohesion. It is really important that the police are able to respond and have the neighbourhood officers to do so, and also that they do the work on prevention—including, frankly, in our national health service and in our social services—to ease the pressures that the police currently face in dealing with missing persons or mental health crises.

We are calling on the Government to make a proper commitment to neighbourhood policing. What Labour would do and what a Labour Government will do is to have additional police officers and PCSOs back in our neighbourhood teams, supported to work with the communities. That goes back to the core Peel principle that the police are the public and the public are the police. The police are part of our communities in standing up for communities, but also in getting justice for them—getting the prosecutions and the justice that victims need and that they have been denied for too long. That is what Labour believes in. The Tories have shown that they are weak on crime, weak on justice and weak on law and order, and that is why we need a Labour Government now.

Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I agree with my hon. Friend. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I sat in on the morning report sessions of senior officers in West Yorkshire police. They raised a couple of spiking cases that had come in that day in Leeds, and the action that they were taking. I strongly welcome the work that the West Yorkshire Mayor has done to highlight this and to call for stronger action, but we need to go much further.

There is still a blind spot across the country, and across the criminal justice system, around stalking. We have all heard awful cases where someone who had been stalked reported it to the police and then things got worse, and ultimately the awful result was that the woman was killed, despite reporting it to the police. I think that that sets out why we need so much more urgency. Although we welcome the work that the Government have done and the things that Ministers have said, there is still no sense of urgency or action at the scale that is needed.

I am very glad that the Government have made violence against women and girls a strategic policing requirement alongside terrorism. Good. I wish they had done it immediately when the inspectorate recommended it back in the autumn. I would also say that we called for violence against women and girls to be treated as a top priority alongside terrorism in 2014. We need clear objectives and detailed outcomes against which the police and the criminal justice system will be judged. It should not just be made a priority and then passed over—we need clear follow-up.

The Government have set a target to get rape prosecutions back up to the level they were at in 2016. That was still too low, but at least it is a target. However, they are way off achieving that right now and it could take years at the current rate. That is a total disgrace, because women cannot wait for that.

Why does every police force not have a specialist rape and sexual assault unit? Why is that not a requirement for police forces when we have known for such a long time that specialist policing is crucial to investigating and prosecuting sexual assaults, and domestic abuse as well? Having that specialist expertise is crucial, which is why we are calling for a specialist rape and sexual assault unit in every force. It should just be a basic requirement.

Although the police, rightly, have operational independence, the Home Office sets the direction and has oversight. As the chief inspector told the Home Affairs Committee last year, the Home Secretary has powers that could and should—that was his word, “should”—be used to require and chase progress around violence against women and girls.

We need specialist prosecutors and the inspectorate’s most recent report also talked about the importance of specialist courts, such as specialist rape courts, to make progress on policing. And we need training. We desperately need comprehensive training across police forces in violence against women and girls, challenging some of the issues that have been raised and some of the myths and making sure that there is basic expertise and support. Every police officer has to deal with domestic abuse. It is one of the most common crimes we face, so every police officer should be getting stronger training in tackling it.

Yesterday, the Government announced that they will extend Operation Soteria, which works with police forces to investigate the perpetrator rather than the victim in rape cases, to a further 14 police forces. It still covers less than half of all forces in England and Wales, so does that mean that in the forces that are not covered, rape victims can still expect to feel investigated rather than the focus being on the rapist? That is truly unacceptable.

We need much stronger action against perpetrators. The inspectorate’s most recent reports have all repeatedly identified real problems with the identification and management of serial offenders in violence against women and girls. When we made proposals for much stronger monitoring and to add repeat offenders in domestic abuse, sexual violence and stalking to the multi-agency public protection arrangement process for managing the most serious offenders and to add them to the register, the Government refused and resisted. That is just not good enough. We need much stronger intervention and much stronger action, starting with those most dangerous perpetrators and those who we know are most likely to offend again and whose behaviour will escalate.

We desperately need the perpetrators strategy that the Government has long promised, which I hope will be strong and determined. Too often when we deal with issues of violence against women and girls, women end up feeling that it is all their responsibility to try to keep safe and to prevent violence rather than our having a system that says that the perpetrators need to be targeted and tackled. They need to be brought to justice and they need to be held to account, and women have a right to feel that freedom from fear and to feel safe, be it on our streets, in our homes or in our communities. Everywhere, women have that right to feel safe, but, too often, things have happened, the criminal justice system has been unable properly to take the action we need and, bluntly, there has been a lack of determination from the Government to drive the change and to ensure that it happens. I have recognised the Government’s good intentions many times , but words are not enough.

Enough is enough. That is what we all say, but we have to go much further. We need to see more progress. We need not just incremental change but the major, dramatic and substantial changes that will get us the justice and safety that women across the country deserve.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech. Does she agree that we also must not forget the online sphere? As we heard last week in the debate on child sexual exploitation, these things often start online. We have been so slow in catching up. Does she agree that we hope that all the recommendations from the Joint Committee on the draft Online Safety Bill will be incorporated into the Bill?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is completely right. We all know that, just as we campaigned for many years to reclaim the streets from abuse and violence, we may need to reclaim the internet from abuse and violence against women and girls, because it is totally unacceptable that women can end up feeling harassed and targeted by misogyny and abuse. When he presented his ten-minute rule Bill just half an hour ago, we heard the powerful words of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) about the risks of incels and misogyny online and of young people, particularly young men, being groomed online into extremism and misogyny. We need the strongest possible action against that as part of the online harms Bill. I hope that the Government will bring that forward, because our approach needs to be about prevention and safety in all aspects of our lives, online and offline.

It does not matter how many women walk home with their keys between their fingers, how many women share their location with friends waiting at home or how many safety apps are developed. Unless we target the perpetrators, target prevention and have a complete overhaul of a system that just is not working and is not delivering, in 12 months’ time, in the run-up to next year’s International Women’s Day, we will say all the same things again. That is not good enough.

Let us all stand together and urge the Government to go much further and much faster and to be much stronger. Let us tackle violence against women and girls and let all of us say that we have had enough. We will take action. We will see change.

Refugee Crisis in Europe

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I am conscious that I have taken many interventions. Many people want to get in and I really want to complete my speech, so I will take just two further interventions and then complete my remarks.

[Yvette Cooper]

That is another debate. As I have said clearly, there is no quick military or foreign policy fix that will solve the humanitarian challenge we face. Nobody believes that there is a quick answer that will solve these problems.

[Debbie Abrahams]

I am in contact with Syrian families who are seeking asylum in the UK and who originally travelled to Europe through Hungary, where they were fingerprinted and photographed. Their concern is that they will be sent back to Hungary. What should we do in such cases?