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.

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.

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.

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[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.

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[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.

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.

Strip Searching of Children

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.

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

The Children’s Commissioner has uncovered the shocking absence of a working system of safeguards across multiple police forces. There is no scrutiny by senior police officers to ensure that basic protections for children are being met, and a complete disregard for the potential trauma of strip searching vulnerable children.

Again, just one week after the Casey review, we see that police forces have systemic problems with transparency, scrutiny and non-compliance with the rules. Given that even experienced officers are not following basic safeguards, what will the Minister do to ensure that the huge influx of new, inexperienced officers brought in under the uplift programme—often supervised by sergeants with very limited experience—are properly trained and understand their basic duty to protect and safeguard children?

[Miss Dines]

The right hon. Lady raises an important issue. As I have previously said at the Dispatch Box, the education and training of police officers is vital and more needs to be done. That is why the Government are engaging with the College of Policing to improve education in this regard.

Obviously, there is also local mentoring, but the right hon. Lady is right that better scrutiny is needed, which is why the Government are leading the push for better scrutiny of police forces by local groups. The Government are working hard in this area, and it is about time Opposition Members accepted the force of the Government’s work, some of it groundbreaking, to protect our children and the public from the criminal gangs who exploit children.

Illegal Migration Bill

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry]

I know the hon. Gentleman was trying to assist me, and I agree with him that court scrutiny is important—of course I do; I am a lawyer—but I am not going to let the Government off the hook on the absolutely woeful scrutiny that goes on, week in and week out, in this place. I am totally in favour of the bicameral system. When Scotland eventually becomes independent, which I hope will be during my lifetime, I would like to see a bicameral system in Scotland, because I like to see checks and balances, and I do not like Governments who throw their weight about and do not allow proper legislative scrutiny. That is my point and why I am spending some time on it now, because the way this has been conducted is, frankly, a disgrace. It really is a disgrace.

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

I am very grateful that the hon. and learned Lady is raising these points because, as the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, I know that we were very keen to carry out some prelegislative scrutiny of the Bill to assist the House when it came before us, but that was not possible because it had to be rushed through, it seems, so we have had no opportunity to have evidence sessions or to do any of the work that would really help the Government. Why are the Government so frightened of proper scrutiny of this Bill, which we all recognise is so important?

[Joanna Cherry]

I agree with the right hon. Lady, and I can tell her why the Government are afraid of proper scrutiny. It is because proper line-by-line scrutiny of this Bill would illustrate that it breaches our international obligations under the ECHR, breaches our obligations under the refugee convention and breaches our obligations under the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking. That is to mention just three, but there is also the international convention on the rights of the child, and I could go on and on. That is why they do not want the scrutiny. What really infuriated me yesterday was that, when some of us were actually trying to make arguments based on evidence and the law, the Minister was far more interested in parroting the populist slogans coming from his Back Benchers, which really had no basis in law and no basis in evidence, than in addressing the amendments we are trying to make.

I will spend a bit of time talking about the amendments I have tabled, because I think they are important. It is not just that I think they are important, but they reflect issues that have been widely raised in briefings from home-based organisations, such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Scottish Human Rights Commission, the Law Society of England and Wales, and the Law Society of Scotland. I assure Conservative Members that the Law Society of Scotland is not a bastion of lefty lawyers—I wish it was, but it is not.

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I am afraid that I have no faith in this Government to deliver an efficient asylum system that will help those people. Let us focus on what they can get right, let us stop the political posturing and let us stop forgetting that these are real human beings. I genuinely think that on child detention, we are on the wrong side of history. It is a stain that it ever happened; it is a stain that it happens now. The fact that one third are children should be enough for the Minister to turn around and say that we will have a “do no harm” principle and assume that everyone is a child until proven otherwise. I do not want a single child to be held in detention, and I am rather shocked that the Government do not feel the same.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I apologise for not being here earlier this afternoon. I had to go to the Liaison Committee’s meeting with the Prime Minister.

I want to start by following up on a point made by the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). In yesterday’s sitting, the issue of children and child refugees was raised more than 40 times by hon. Members across this Committee of the whole House. Many described their deep concern about how child refugees will be treated under the Bill. I have a great deal of respect for the Minister, but unfortunately he did not mention children once in his very short closing speech yesterday. It lasted just 13 minutes, which with 70 amendments before the Committee yesterday translates to about 10 seconds per amendment.

I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West that the lack of scrutiny of the Bill is a huge concern, especially considering the importance of the issues, the fact that the Government did not take up the Home Affairs Committee’s offer of pre-legislative scrutiny, the lack of evidence sessions, the large sweep of amendments tabled, the rushed process of introduction and the lack of any impact assessment. I hope that we will get a much more detailed and productive response from the Minister this evening.

I have tabled 10 amendments in this group, which essentially fall under one umbrella: protection for refugee children. All my amendments have the full support of the Children’s Commissioner and some arise from recommendations in the Home Affairs Committee’s small boats report, which we published last year.

I turn first to amendment 295. The Government have excluded unaccompanied children from the removal provisions in the Bill. We know that children will often have made very difficult and perilous journeys, probably at the hands of traffickers or smugglers. However, the Bill will oblige the Home Secretary to remove those unaccompanied children from the United Kingdom when they turn 18.

In the year ending September 2022, the UK received 5,152 applications for asylum from unaccompanied children. Many of them came from Sudan, a country facing political instability following years of civil war, where child marriage is rife for girls as young as 10. Under the Bill, a 13-year-old Sudanese girl, for example, could claim asylum in the UK, be placed in the care of a local authority and be fostered, spend five years at school, make friends, learn English, get an education, build a life and become a member of society, only to face removal on her 18th birthday. If that were allowed to happen, the Home Office would be removing a young woman who had built her life here and might only know this country as home. The Bill also dramatically increases the risk of children fleeing the system and disappearing before their 18th birthday, in the knowledge that they face certain removal. My amendment would not grant an automatic right for these children to remain in the United Kingdom; it would simply prevent their mandatory removal when they become adults, so that each case can be decided on an individual basis.

Turning to amendments 299 and 301, the Children’s Commissioner has raised concerns that under clause 3, the Home Secretary will still have the power to remove unaccompanied children. The explanatory notes state that this power will be used only in exceptional circumstances, but there is no further detail in the Bill about what that means. I tabled amendment 299 to establish the right of an unaccompanied child who makes a protection claim—including a claim to be a victim of slavery and human trafficking, as set out in section 69 of the Nationality and Borders Act—to have that claim considered before potential removal. I have also added my name to amendment 121, tabled by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West, which would strengthen the position further.

Although clause 5(4)(a) goes some way towards protecting such people by stopping their removal if they make a protection claim or a human rights claim, it is dependent on subsection (4)(b), which relies on the Secretary of State’s considering this to be an exceptional circumstance. I understand that such a power is likely to be used in respect of unaccompanied children from a country listed in new section 80AA(1) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, under clause 50.

Without my amendment, the Home Secretary would, for example, decide the right of a 14-year-old unaccompanied asylum-seeking child from Albania to remain in the UK. Over recent months, there has been a growing view that Albanian boys are not in need of protection on their arrival in the UK. In fact, they are exceptionally vulnerable, having often been trafficked here without proper protection and pushed into forced labour or criminality. Again, hanging the threat of removal over these children’s heads is a guaranteed way of ensuring that those who arrive here unaccompanied will try to go it alone—run away from care, and slip out of the system and into the arms of traffickers and abusers. Therefore, amendment 301 goes further by removing the power of the Secretary of State to make arrangements for the removal of an unaccompanied child.

The Home Affairs Committee’s report on channel crossings, produced last year, raised grave concerns about the Home Office’s record of safeguarding children, from failures to identify vulnerable children through screening and assessments to failures of communication when transferring safeguarding responsibilities from one agency to another. There is also the disastrous and unforgivable failure of children going missing on the Home Office’s watch.

I greatly fear that the Home Office is simply not up to the job of keeping children safe and secure. That is why I ask the Minister to reconsider clauses 15 and 16, which set out how the Home Office would accommodate a child and would be given safeguarding responsibilities that currently sit with a local authority. These clauses are incredibly thin when it comes to such an essential issue as safeguarding children, and they make no provision for the state of the accommodation to be provided. Will the accommodation be regulated, which body will inspect it, how will decisions be made, and what support will be available for these children?

The Children’s Commissioner has made it clear that she does not believe that the Home Office is the right body to oversee the safeguarding of children, and I completely agree. That is why I have supported amendments 143, 144 and 145, tabled by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), to ensure that our current statutory time and location restrictions on the detention of unaccompanied children and children with families are not disregarded.

Illegal Migration Bill

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I certainly believe that, vitally, we will only have democratic consent for legal migration if it is clear that that happens at the behest of and with the consent of this House and, critically, that we do not have an illegal immigration situation that is beyond this House’s control.

The reality is that if we are to effectively deter the evil trade of people smuggling, we need to tackle the incentives. That means making it crystal clear that coming here illegally will lead to swift detention and removal. It is neither compassionate nor sustainable to allow what is an abuse of our immigration system to continue. I can testify that, having sat in meeting after meeting with the Home Office as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the cost to the Exchequer of millions of pounds each day for hotels to house asylum seekers is not something that we should take lightly. That is, in part, why I tabled my amendments.

Bitter experience teaches us that Tony Blair’s Human Rights Act will otherwise act to frustrate the will of Parliament. The Government have therefore rightly drafted the Bill to disapply section 3 of the Act. However, I believe that other sections of the Act will be engaged too, and they should also be disapplied for the express purpose of this legislation. I say that not on my own authority but on that of Professor Richard Ekins of Oxford University and Sir Stephen Laws KC, the former First Parliamentary Counsel. As they argue in their February Policy Exchange paper:

“New legislation should expressly disapply the operative provisions of the 1998 Act, specifying...section 3 (interpretation of legislation), section 4 (declaration of incompatibility), section 6 (acts of public authorities) and section 10 (power to take remedial action)”.

They go on to say:

“Without legislative provision to this effect, it is inevitable that claimants will challenge the Home Secretary’s understanding of the legislation, inviting the courts either to interpret the legislation to read down her duty to remove persons from the UK (or reading in new procedural requirements) or to declare the legislation incompatible with Convention rights and thus authorising ministers to change it by executive order and ensuring that political pressure would be brought to bear to that end.”

Having disapplied section 3 on the basis that it leaves open the possibility of systemic legal challenge, I can see no legal, philosophical or practical argument against doing the same where a similar risk exists.

Ultimately, we know that our best—and probably only—chance to avoid this legislation being entangled in human rights law is for this place to be absolutely clear and unambiguous about our intentions. My amendment flows in that spirit. We should show the determination now—not after the fact, if and when the fears of many of us in this House have been realised—to make our intentions clear in the Bill.

I wish to speak briefly in favour of amendment 131, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), which has a comparable aim to my amendment in respect of the ECHR. I do so for the reasons set out by the Lord Chancellor at the time that the United Kingdom entered into the convention. He said:

“The real vice of the document, therefore consists in its lack of precision. I should be unable to advise with any certainty as to what result would be arrived at in any given case, even if the judges were applying the principles of English law. It completely passes the wit of man to guess what results would be arrived at by a tribunal composed of elected persons who need not even be lawyers, drawn from various European states possessing completely different systems of law, and whose deliberations take place behind closed doors.”

In a nutshell, that is the risk to which we expose the legislation if we proceed without that protection.

I very much hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will take these amendments seriously and work with us, over the course of the crucial weeks ahead, to ensure the legislation respects the will of the House and, I believe, the will of the British people.

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

First, I add my voice to the concerns already raised by a number of Members about the lack of an impact assessment, an equality impact assessment and a children’s rights impact assessment, as we commence the Bill’s important Committee stage. In the Home Affairs Committee report on small boats and migration, we made it clear that:

“There is no magical single solution to dealing with irregular migration. Detailed, evidence-driven, fully costed and fully tested policy initiatives are by far most likely to achieve sustainable incremental change that deters journeys such as dangerous Channel crossings.”

So it is regrettable that we do not have all the information, including the costing and the impact assessments, when debating these clauses today, particularly when the Bill is being rushed through the Commons.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

The right hon. Lady has rightly called for a number of assessments, but is the real test of the Bill not the impact assessment of newspaper headlines? That is all it is about.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

Unfortunately, there seems to be a great deal of confusion in the House about the small boats issue. It is worth reflecting on the fact that currently the largest number of people coming across in small boats come from Afghanistan and that the backlog in the Home Office system—now over 166,000—has been growing for some time, creating a knock-on effect on how quickly the system can deal with people arriving in this country, process them and remove those who should not be here.

It is also worth reflecting on the Home Affairs Committee report on the small boats crisis, published last summer, which said that the Government needed to address four things: clearing the backlog and speeding up the processing of people arriving in small boats; the issue of safe and legal routes, which I will say a little more about in a moment; the need for international co-operation; and the need to deal with the criminal gangs and to have return agreements with other countries in place. I remain worried about the argument that the Bill will deter people from getting into small boats, which goes back to my concern about the lack of evidence.

The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) referred to the Home Affairs Committee trip to northern France in January. One key thing I remember from that trip is that if someone is standing on the beach in Calais or northern France, with the British coastline visible just 30 miles away, it is too late; they are going to take their chance and get into a boat.

I worry about the Home Office’s capacity to deal with the momentous change that the Bill will bring. It has not been very good at dealing with the asylum applications that have been building for many years, and I worry about its capacity to deal with the large-scale detention of people, families and children that the Bill will introduce.

My amendment 137 is on the issue of establishing a cap on the number of migrants using safe and legal routes. It will be difficult for the House to identify and make provision for crises that will unfold in the year ahead. In 2010, we could not have known the true extent of refugees from the first Libyan civil war or from South Sudan, or the number coming from Syria in 2011 or from Ukraine just one year ago. We cannot know what global challenges we will face in the next year, so an arbitrary target could be seen as a restraint on Governments being able to respond dynamically and appropriately.

Who will be included in the cap, and will it include children? Every child has the right to protection from persecution, discrimination and violence. That is a cornerstone of international and domestic law. Turning away a child fleeing a war zone or a genocide because of a cap decided months earlier in this House, could undermine the key principles of the international child protection frameworks that we have signed up to, including our own Children’s Act 1989, which gives clear focus to our international obligations in domestic legislation. The Government say that clause 51 will allow them to exceed the number set out in the cap each year if needs be. In that case, it is not really a cap, is it? It might be a target, but one that would have difficulty dealing with what is happening internationally.

We should reflect on and acknowledge the willingness of the British people to step up to the plate when crises appear, as thousands did last year when they took in displaced Ukrainians, and the wholesale support for unaccompanied children being given shelter when we debated the Dubs amendment a few years ago. If the Government are determined to introduce the cap, children should not be included and “people”, as set out in the clause, should be defined as those over 18 years of age. Setting a cap on the number of children who can claim asylum could result in one child being turned away while another is chosen—it is a “Sophie’s Choice” regulation. I ask the Minister to think again, and recognise the special position of children and our obligation to them.

The most obvious and appropriate way to support refugee children is to ensure they have access to safe and legal routes, which are clearly set out and defined. That is why I have added my name to new clause 13 and amendments 72 to 75, tabled by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. I also support new clause 17 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy).

Our Home Affairs Committee report made it explicitly clear that ensuring that there are accessible, safe and legal routes to the UK is a key plank of an asylum system that is both fair and effective, and also provides a clear disincentive and deterrent for illegal routes. I agree with the comments made by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham about the need for additionality. We cannot just say that the current schemes are sufficient, welcome as they are. There must be a package of measures to deal with the current situation, along with clearing the backlog. It cannot be right that that is left until some future date when we will know what the safe and legal routes are. That needs to be up front as part of the Bill, so that we have both the deterrent and the options around safe and legal routes.

New clauses 8 and 10 are about safe passage visa schemes. The Home Affairs Committee report mentioned using reception centres in France to allow people to make asylum claims from France—the Government rejected that idea, but some imaginative thinking about how we can assist people to make claims would be helpful. That is why it is worth the Government considering what new clauses 8 and 10 would mean. We have juxtaposed checks on passports and customs with the French, but there may be more room for negotiations with the French about making claims in France directly. New clause 8 is a little more prescriptive than new clause 10; that might be helpful as well.

I have added my name to amendment 122, which was tabled by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). The amendment would clarify our legal responsibilities and fulfil the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Last year’s Home Affairs Committee report underlined the importance of strong international co-operation and relationships in dealing with migration issues. I believe that those would be weakened by walking away from our international legal obligations.

In conclusion, the Government must ensure that the Bill does not undermine our legal or moral obligations. They should clearly establish safe and legal routes in the Bill. If they are determined to tighten our refugee provisions, we must not turn our back on child refugees by arbitrarily placing a cap on, or excluding, those vulnerable children who turn to us for support.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I rise to speak to amendment 131, which stands in my name and in the name of colleagues. I am grateful to the Minister and his colleagues for their very constructive engagement in recent days; on the basis of the commitment that I hope we will hear from him this afternoon, I do not propose to press my amendment to a vote this evening. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash); I am very glad that he has just returned from his cup of tea, because I am about to make a great speech in defence of parliamentary sovereignty in his honour.

The fact is that we need a new asylum system in our country. Indeed, the world needs a new framework for protecting the rights of refugees in an age of mass migration, with the huge people movements that we are seeing. Part of that is safe and legal routes, which are the natural corollary of the Bill; I support the principle described by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and set out in his amendments to that end. I particularly endorse the work that has gone on in the Home Office—I want to see more of it—around community sponsorship. It is one of the existing global routes that we have, and we want to see it widened significantly. Even more fundamentally, the new framework that we need must honour the founding principle of both the European convention on human rights and the refugees convention: that the primary responsibility for managing asylum rests with the nation state. That is the purpose of the Bill and of my amendment.

It is worth stating why, as part of the new framework that we need, we need a law requiring the removal of people who arrive here illegally. The fact is that even if we had the best safe and legal route in the world, we would still have thousands of people—tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands a year—seeking to come here by unsafe, illegal routes. We simply cannot accommodate all those people. That is why it is absolutely right that this Bill creates a limit, with a cap on the total number of refugees we will receive. What that cap should be is up for debate, but the need for one is clear.

Unless we want open borders—Opposition Members deny that they want them—we have to do something about the many, many people who will still try to come once the cap has been reached. The only logical answer is to deny leave to stay to people who enter illegally, to detain them and to remove them somewhere safe and free: either back to their own country or to a third country that is willing to have them. That process must be swift and unquestioned. Nothing but the certainty of detention and speedy removal will deter illegal migrants and break the business model of the smugglers.

That power of removal was established in the Nationality and Borders Act, but as we know, a judge in Strasbourg was then woken in the middle of the night by a lawyer acting for an assortment of campaign groups. The judge—sitting in his pyjamas, for all we know—issued an interim order that caused the Home Office to stop the policy before the first plane took off.

Metropolitan Police: Casey Review

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs.

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

The findings of institutional racism in the Met made 24 years ago, the findings of institutional corruption in the case of Daniel Morgan more recently, the homophobia in the botched Stephen Port investigation, the misogyny, homophobia and racism in the Charing Cross inquiry, the criminal misconduct of police officers in the murders of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, the strip-searching of Child Q, the numerous Independent Office for Police Conduct investigations and damning HMICFRS reports, the abduction, rape and murder by a serving police officer and the case of the serial sex offender David Carrick were all not enough to provoke real change, so can the Home Secretary say what is now different about this report? Is she confident that the Met can change?

[Suella Braverman]

It is clear just from the examples to which the right hon. Lady refers and from this report that all the behaviour, including instances of racism, homophobia and misogyny, is completely unacceptable and that standards must improve. Sir Mark has been clear that he is not shying away from the enormity of the challenge. He has a plan in place to ensure that standards are increased, that more rigour is instilled in the Met and that there is a better and more robust response when standards fall short. It is absolutely vital that they rebuild trust and improve standards so that all Londoners have confidence in the Met.

Oral Answers to Questions

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. What we have seen from the Iranian regime, sadly, is that overlap of crime, state threats and the use of terrorism to threaten the British people and our allies around the world. This Government will absolutely not allow those to flourish, and will stand extremely firmly against any such threats in this country.

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

Indecent exposure and non-contact sexual offending can be gateway offences to very much more serious offending against women and girls, as in the cases of Libby Squire in Hull and of Wayne Couzens, as we heard in his sentencing last week. When are the Government going to act on these early warning signs?

[Miss Dines]

This is a really important issue, and I am grateful that the right hon. Lady has raised it. We all know from new academic research that indecent exposure can lead to far more serious crimes, and it is now the time that the police chiefs and also the College of Policing take it more seriously. Again, with the extra money that we are spending in this field, with education and allowing police officers to know what they are dealing with, I expect a lot more progress to be made in this area.