Oral Answers to Questions

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

In the chief inspector of borders and immigration’s latest report on the Home Office system to remove foreign national offenders, he said

“the Home Office does not have a firm grip on its caseworking operations”,

and

“This is no way to run a government department.”

He also said

“I found the Home Office’s inability to provide reliable or consistent data and management information of particular concern.”

Given that, will the Minister explain how the Department will cope with the increase in casework, detention and removals planned under the Illegal Immigration (Offences) Bill?

[Robert Jenrick]

We take that report, as we do all others, very seriously. The right hon. Lady is right to say that there are lessons to be learned. However, returns are increasing as a result of deals such as the one we have done with Albania, as a result of reforms such as those we have made to the national referral mechanism and as a result of the 50% increase in illegal working visits that we have secured this year alone.

Illegal Migration Bill: Economic Impact Assessment

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Two weeks ago, when the Home Secretary gave evidence at the Home Affairs Committee, I asked her when the impact assessment for the Illegal Migration Bill would be published. While I welcome the fact that it has been published today, or last night, it is after the Bill has completed all its stages in the House of Commons and is three quarters of the way through the House of Lords. That is wholly unsatisfactory for Parliament to undertake its role of scrutinising Government legislation. At that Select Committee sitting, the Home Secretary also said:

However, I would also say that to my mind it is pretty obvious what the economic impact of the Bill will be. We will stop spending £3 billion a year on our asylum cost. It is a Bill that will lead to the cessation of 45,000 people in hotels and £6 million a day. To my mind, those are savings that we cannot ignore.”

The Home Secretary told the Home Affairs Committee that those savings would happen. Can the Minister help me by pointing to where those savings are in the impact assessment? I am struggling to find those figures in the document that the Government have produced.

[Robert Jenrick]

The document makes it abundantly clear that, were costs to continue to rise on the current trajectory—we are in an age of mass migration and the numbers of individuals looking to cross, for example from north Africa to Europe, are extremely high so there is reason to believe that numbers will remain high for a sustained period—by 2026, which is just a few years away, the system would be costing an additional £11 billion. We cannot countenance such waste of taxpayers’ money. As we have seen in other parts of the world such as Australia, where systems of this kind have been implemented, by delivering this system and ensuring a genuine deterrent effect, we will ensure that we save the taxpayer that money. But, more important than merely saving money, we will save the British public the stress and the strain on public services, housing, integration and community cohesion that tens of thousands of illegal migrants bring to our country. That is a prize worth fighting for, and that is why we are delivering this Bill.

Stop and Search

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

In 2021, the Home Affairs Committee inquiry into how much progress had been made in tackling racism in policing since the landmark Stephen Lawrence inquiry found, as a cross-party Committee, that the disproportionate use of stop-and-search powers against black people was even greater than it had been when Sir William’s inquiry concluded 22 years earlier. No evidence provided to the Committee adequately explained or justified the nature and scale of racial disproportionality in the use of stop-and-search powers. That has damaged confidence in the tactic and in policing by consent.

Of course, stop and search is a valid policing tactic, as the Home Secretary said, but it must be used in a focused and fair way, and underpinned by an evidence base. Can she explain what evidence base she is drawing on when she says that police forces need to “ramp up” the use of stop-and-search powers? Will she commit to commissioning a fully independent and comprehensive study of the efficacy of stop-and-search tactics, and to undertaking an equality impact assessment on this new policy?

[Suella Braverman]

As I mentioned in my statement, the Department is trialling a more sophisticated approach to calculating disparity, with a focus on the Metropolitan Police Service. That has produced a useful analysis based on actual suspects of violent crime, rather than the totality of usual residents of an area, as a denominator for calculating the rates of stop and search. It is experimental, but the data emerging from that advanced study demonstrates that disparity ratios are significantly reduced for black people compared with the traditional method, falling from 3.7 to 1.2. That is an emerging evidence base upon which policy will be made.

Nottingham Incident

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 14th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for making this statement today and for the information that she has been able to pass on to the House. I look forward to further updates in the coming weeks. I also extend my thoughts and prayers to all those who were killed and injured, and their families and friends. Of course, we all recognise the vital role of the emergency services in dealing with these very fast-moving incidents. Can the Home Secretary say whether she has identified any additional support that Nottinghamshire police need at this time?

[Suella Braverman]

I am in personal and regular contact with the chief constable of Nottinghamshire police, and I have made that offer very clear to her. We stand ready here at the Home Office to help in whatever way she requests, but, to date, this operation is being led very effectively by the chief constable and her team in Nottinghamshire.

Public Order

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. The Government’s job is to provide sufficient, lawful and proportionate powers for the police to exercise. They have operational independence, and they need to make decisions and judgments based on the particular circumstances. Our job is to give them the powers to enable them to take the fullest and most lawful approach.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Have the police specifically requested these new powers? The deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Ade Adelekan, has said about recent slow-march protests

“once a protest is deemed to have caused serious disruption or may do so, we are taking swift action to stop it.”

Does the Home Secretary disagree with what he is saying, that the police already have the powers they need?

Coronation: Policing of Protests

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I add my thanks to those involved in the arrangements for the coronation and keeping the public safe. However, the Home Affairs Committee will no doubt want to look at the policing of protests at the coronation and, in particular, the specific provisions in the Public Order Act 2023, brought in just last week and used to arrest members of Republic.

We have heard a lot about the operational independence of the police this afternoon. Will the Minister explain why on 27 April the Home Office’s police powers unit sent an official letter to Republic, ahead of the coronation? Republic has no history of its members locking on. How many other organisations and groups received such letters? On what basis were they sent those letters? Will that practice now be the norm for the Home Office?

[Chris Philp]

I do not believe that any such letters were sent in my name, so I cannot comment on who may have received them. I suspect, although I am not certain, that those letters related to clarifying the new statutory provisions that were recently brought into effect through the Public Order Act 2023. The operational independence of the police is important, because Parliament legislates and it is then for the police to apply those laws without fear or favour, and they did so on this occasion.

Illegal Migration Bill

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I am not sure I follow the logic of it. He said that there was a deterrent effect, but it has not started yet, which suggests to me that there has not been a deterrent effect. If we look at the numbers, channel crossings continue to skyrocket, so I think what matters to this House is results and outcomes. As things stand, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Rwanda scheme has acted as a deterrent.

This bigger backlog Bill is rotten to its very core, because it prevents the Home Secretary from considering those who arrive here on small boats as asylum seekers, and instead obliges her to detain and remove them. However, there is nowhere to detain them, and there is nowhere to remove them to either. We already have 50,000 asylum seekers in around 400 hotels, costing the taxpayer an eye-watering £6 million every single day, and on average, each asylum seeker is waiting a staggering 450 days for a decision. The backlog now stands at 166,000, more than eight times larger than when Labour left office in 2010, when it stood at just under 19,000. Incidentally, I am still waiting for the Prime Minister and the Minister for Immigration to apologise to the House and correct the record on that point.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentioned detention, and a number of amendments have been tabled today on that topic. I listened carefully to what the Minister said about detaining unaccompanied children, but I also wanted to ask my hon. Friend for his views on detaining children, families with children and pregnant women. This House has made very clear in the past its view about safeguards being required for the detention of the vulnerable groups I have just described. Does he think that we now need to think again about the detention of pregnant women and families with children?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. She is absolutely right to highlight this issue, and she has tabled a compelling amendment to deal with it. Members on both sides of the House fought very hard for these legal limits, as she rightly pointed out, and when we are talking about the detention of pregnant women, removing those limits and paving the way for vulnerable individuals to be detained individually is morally wrong, wrong-headed and deeply counterproductive. I have not heard any argument from Ministers to justify it.

New figures reveal that this bigger backlog Bill could end up putting an extra 50,000 people into permanent taxpayer-funded accommodation this year, with hotel costs rising to more than £13 million a day, which is more than £4 billion a year during a cost of living crisis. That is because, according to the Government’s own forecasts, 53,000 who cross on small boats will be classed as inadmissible, without any prospect of being removed. What is particularly astonishing is that the Government made this same mistake last year by including similar inadmissibility provisions in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. The result is a cost of £400 million to the taxpayer in just six months, with only 21 people returned to their country of origin.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. I will now announce the result of the ballot held today for the election of the Chair of the new Energy Security and Net Zero Committee. A total of 384 votes were cast, none of which was invalid. There were two rounds of counting. There were 362 active votes in the final round, excluding those ballot papers whose preferences had been exhausted. The quota to be reached was therefore 182 votes. Angus Brendan MacNeil was elected Chair with 188 votes. He will take up his post immediately. I congratulate him on his election. The results of the count under the alternative vote system will be made available as soon as possible in the Vote Office and published on the internet.

I now call Dame Diana Johnson, after whom I shall have to impose a five-minute limit on speeches.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). I thank her for highlighting the evidence that we heard this morning at the Home Affairs Committee on the issue of trafficking and modern slavery, and I again pay tribute to the work that she did on that pioneering piece of legislation in 2015.

I think the right hon. Lady is right that the Government do not fully understand the law in this area of modern slavery and trafficking. I support what she said about amendments 95 and 4. I noted that, at the start of proceedings, the Minister said that it is important that we get the Bill right, and it is absolutely important that we do so. As we enter this final stretch for the House to have the opportunity to debate and amend the Bill,

I wish again to express my concerns about the lack of an impact assessment for the Bill. The impact assessment is now seven weeks late, and it is wholly unacceptable that the House is being forced to pass this very significant legislation with no firm analysis on whether it will work or what the cost will be. According to the Refugee Council, the Bill could cost as much as £9 billion over the next three years.

I again refer to the Home Affairs Committee report on small boat crossings, in which we were very clear about the need for evidence-based policy making. It is regrettable that this Bill is being forced through at breakneck speed with no time for pre-legislative scrutiny. I know the Minister has had to table a lot of Government amendments to deal with issues that perhaps should have been thought through before, and we have heard that he will reconsider issues around modern slavery and trafficking as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the amendments she has tabled and the work she does with the Select Committee. Does she agree with my constituents who have written to me, precisely on this issue, to say that the Bill risks our reputation internationally for providing a safe haven for those who are fleeing persecution, and that we must do all we can to ensure that that reputation is maintained?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Reputation is important in this area, and the approach taken on this particular point will hurt our country more than it helps us. For example, it will not help us to get a returns agreement with EU countries, which I think we all agree is necessary if we are to start to tackle irregular migration.

I welcome the fact that the Government are introducing provisions for legal aid in the Bill, which I think is a positive step forward, but I am concerned that they do not acknowledge that there are currently legal aid deserts across the country that leave genuine asylum seekers, refugees and victims of trafficking without access to legal advice. The sector is on the point of collapse and access to advice regulated by the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner is really hard to come by for the many people who desperately need it. I hope the Minister will set out how people will be able to access that legal advice and assistance.

On new clause 8 and amendment 11, I welcome the Government moving on the safe and legal routes. Again, that is in line with recommendations that the Home Affairs Committee made in its report.

At Committee stage, I raised several concerns with the Minister about the lack of consideration for vulnerable children within the Bill. The Bill creates broad powers to detain unaccompanied children, removing essential safeguards and time limits that had previously been enacted by this House.

I know the Minister said in his opening remarks that he was going to support the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), and I am pleased to hear that. However, unfortunately, the Bill as currently drafted will still allow the unlimited detention of pregnant women, ending the current 72-hour time limit—a limit put in place by the Government in 2016.

The Bill also abolishes necessary safeguards for children who are accompanied, undoing the protection put in place by the Government in 2014. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Children’s Commissioner and the Refugee Council have all raised serious concerns about those proposed changes, and I agree completely with the issues that they have raised.

That is why I have tabled amendments 2 and 3 to uphold the existing detention limits for children, families with children and pregnant women. They were introduced by this House for very good reason and should be upheld. Limits on detention deliver essential safeguards for the most vulnerable people who arrive on our shores, ensuring that while we process their claims we keep them safe, we treat them with care and we do no further harm. The UK has been a stalwart of that decency, but these specific detention measures are a major step backwards for families, for children and for pregnant women.

I welcome Government amendments 134 and 136, and the support for the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, but even with those changes, the Bill does not extend the appropriate protection to children with families or to pregnant women. My amendments have cross-party support, including from the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West, and from the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes). I hope that the Minister will, even at this late stage, consider again whether anything can be done on the amendments. If he is not minded to do that, I will, if necessary, test the opinion of the House on that important issue.

I also welcome the Government’s change of heart on the ban on future citizenship for children born in the UK to parents who meet the conditions in clause 2. That delivers on at least half of my amendment 8. However, I firmly push back to the Minister that it still cannot be right that an eight-year-old child brought here by their parents would be forever barred from citizenship as an adult. I raised that point in Committee. It seems completely illiberal to punish a child for the actions of their parents or carers. Will the Minister look again at amendment 8?

I have tabled several other practical amendments underlining the protections and considerations for children, which I believe need to be addressed. Those amendments are all supported by the Children’s Commissioner, and some have foundations in the Home Affairs Committee report on channel crossings. I hope that the Minister will consider them in that vein.

The Government’s approach to tackling migrants in the Bill remains problematic in respect of children. There are several measures and amendments before the House that could be adopted while still allowing the Government to deliver—arguably more effectively and practically—on their stated aims. There are other, less headline-catching measures that will also uphold the essential safeguarding provisions that the House has put in place over the years to protect victims of trafficking and modern slavery, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, asylum seekers and refugees.

Finally, the Home Affairs Committee has started an inquiry on slavery and trafficking. We were very fortunate to have had evidence from Baroness Butler-Sloss last week, and from the former Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Dame Sarah Thornton, both of whom took the view that the Bill will not help victims of modern slavery and trafficking; it will do the exact opposite. I again ask the Minister to listen to the experts in the field. It is notable that two Conservative Members—the right hon. Members for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and for Maidenhead—made compelling arguments on why the provisions relating to modern slavery and trafficking need to be considered once again.

The other place may take further views, but does the Minister seriously want to make it harder for victims to come forward? If—as Dame Sarah Thornton said—a woman is trafficked into this country after 7 March, taken to a brothel and repeatedly raped, but manages to escape and seek help, does the Minister want to ensure that she is told that no assistance can be given and that she will be removed to Rwanda? Is that how we want to treat people like her?

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Police Uplift Programme

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Sir Mark Rowley gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee this morning. According to the Home Office, the Metropolitan Police Service missed its uplift allocation of 4,557 additional officers by 1,089, missing the target by 23.9%. When I questioned Sir Mark about why that had happened, he pointed to a range of reasons, including the erosion in the starting pay of a police constable and the hot employment market in London. Can the Minister say what the implications are for the ability of the Metropolitan Police Service to perform its UK-wide responsibilities, as well as to keep Londoners safe, particularly at this point when we have had the Casey review and we know that the Metropolitan police are in the engage phase with the inspectorate? What is the Policing Minister going to do to address those concerns?

[Chris Philp]

I thank the Select Committee Chair for her question. It is first worth observing that the Metropolitan police have by far the highest per capita funding of any police force in the country. I think the average for forces outside London is about £200 per capita and in London it is about £300 per capita, so the funding is very much higher. On the issues identified by the Casey report, there are a series of recommendations, most of which are for the Met and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. I expect them to implement those recommendations. On numbers, every single police force met its uplift target, with just one exception: the Metropolitan police. It is certainly a question I will be asking Sadiq Khan as the politician responsible. It was the only force not to meet the target. As the right hon. Lady said, it recruited an extra 3,468 officers and it should have recruited an extra 4,557. The funding was there to do that and I will certainly be asking Sadiq Khan why he failed. But I am pleased to be able to reassure the House that, despite that shortfall, the Metropolitan police still have a record number: 35,411 officers.

Points of Order

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

No, I will not, but I am sure that this debate will continue elsewhere. The hon. Gentleman may well wish to respond to the Minister’s letter, but I think at this point we should leave it at that.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On 27 March, the Home Affairs Committee invited Andrew Patrick, the UK migration and modern slavery envoy, to give oral evidence to our inquiry into human trafficking on Wednesday 26 April. The Foreign Office told us on 18 April that Ministers had declined permission for Mr Patrick to give evidence, given

“the focus of the inquiry, and his remit”.

We wrote to the Foreign Secretary immediately, pointing out that civil servants should be made available to Committees as requested. Although we were told yesterday that Mr Patrick’s role

“complements the work of the Home Office and is focused on the global and regional mechanisms to tackle modern slavery”,

the Foreign Secretary again declined our request. What action would you advise we take in relation to this discourtesy to the Committee, which was trying to carry out its duties to scrutinise properly the work of the Home Office and the modern slavery envoy?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving me notice of her point of order. Mr Speaker has said repeatedly that it is important that Committees are able to take evidence from the witnesses whom they believe to be essential to their inquiries. Ministers will have heard the point of order from the right hon. Lady, who chairs the Home Affairs Committee, and the Whip appears to be making a note of it right now. I am sure that Mr Speaker would encourage Ministers to reconsider their position on this issue.

Machetes: Consultation

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 18th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I know that there is widespread concern about this issue on both sides of the House. In 2019, the Home Affairs Committee published a report on serious youth violence, following a 70% rise in knife crime over five years. The Home Office had failed to give the Committee at that time any assessment of how many young people were at risk of being involved in knife crime. The Committee called on the Government to treat this as a social emergency and warned them that the serious violence strategy was inadequate. Four previous Home Secretaries have made announcements in response to knife crime. I wonder if the Minister could set out why he thinks those approaches have not been effective. What is different about the approach that he has announced today and will that be effective?

[Chris Philp]

I thank the Select Committee Chair for her question. I do not accept that the previous initiatives have been unsuccessful. I have already pointed to the steady reduction in hospital admissions as a result of knife wounds and the steady reduction in violent offences, as measured by the crime survey for England and Wales. The Government have successively tightened the law and we are tightening it further today. We have also put more and more resources successively into tackling the social problem that the Select Committee Chair rightly highlights. For example, the violence reduction units are now putting a great deal of money into the 20 police force areas where violent crime is most serious. The Youth Endowment Fund has £200 million to spend on targeted, evidence-based interventions to help young people into a better future. I have visited some of the programmes that have been run—by Everton football club in Merseyside, to give one example. I was in Brixton in south London earlier today, hearing about the community work that happens there. I think the process we are following is successively increasing resources, investing in diversionary activities for young people and successively strengthening the law where evidence emerges that that is necessary. It is over time yielding results; I set out the data at the beginning of my answer.