Safe Streets for All

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. He will see when the Bill is introduced some of the loopholes and the way in which even the landmark Modern Slavery Act is sadly being abused by criminal gangs and traffickers. There is an important point that we must address. We will continue to support those who flee persecution and those who become victims of gangs and criminals. Those important elements will be part of the legislation. We want to get it right because we must absolutely stop the level of criminality that is taking place. That very much speaks to the fact that the current system is not fit for purpose and justice is being delayed for those with genuine and important asylum claims. Judicial and court resources are overstretched and our new plan for immigration will address that.

The Bill will ensure that the system does not reward those who enter the UK illegally and through those appalling illicit means. Those who have travelled through a safe country where they could reasonably have claimed asylum, such as France or Belgium, are now inadmissible in the UK asylum system. For the first time, whether people enter the UK legally or illegally will have an impact on how their asylum claim is progressed, and on their status in the UK if their claim is successful. We will create a new and expanded one-stop-shop process so that asylum, human rights and any other protection claims are made and considered up front at the beginning of the process, ending the cycle of limitless appeals in our courts.

As I have made clear, the Government will do whatever it takes to protect the public, and that also applies to our national security. This year, we implemented the largest shake-up of terrorist sentencing and monitoring in decades. The Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Act 2021 gives the courts, the police, the probation service and the security services greater powers to protect the public. The public rightly expect that we are always looking for ways to strengthen our national security. That includes responding to the growing and evolving threats and risk posed by other states.

States that engage in hostile activity are becoming more assertive in how they advance their objectives and undermine our own. Their tactics are markedly different from those used by other adversaries. While the methods deployed by terrorists often rely on grabbing the public’s attention, states conducting hostile activity against us typically seek to operate in the shadows and remain hidden. We need to be constantly alert to espionage, political and electoral interference, sabotage, disinformation, cyber-operations and intellectual property theft. Though those acts fall short of open conflict, the consequences for our democracy and our economic security and prosperity are a real and present threat.

To address that, we will introduce a counter-state threats Bill that modernises and updates existing espionage laws, and creates new offences, tools and powers to detect, disrupt and deter hostile activity in the UK and actively targeted at the UK. It will also improve our ability to protect official data. Many of the Official Secrets Acts date back to the early 20th century, with their roots in the 1889 Act. They are simply no longer suitable for the modern world we live in. We will therefore reform the Official Secrets Acts of 1911, 1920, 1939 and 1989. Legislation will also include the creation of a foreign influence registration scheme. That is an important new tool to combat espionage and interference and protect research in sensitive subject areas.

On 13 May, I published a public consultation on the Government’s legislative proposals to counter state threats, which includes seeking views about the reform of treason laws. The response to this consultation will help to shape the new tools and powers so that they are comprehensive, effective and workable, and, importantly, will protect our national security along with our rights and our values.

As we emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, we are determined to build back safer. This Government will continue to deliver on the people’s priorities. The British public back the police and want to see more police officers in their communities, and we are delivering on that. They want us to take back our country’s borders, and we are delivering on that. They want us to ensure that criminals are properly punished for breaking our laws, and we are delivering on that. Where further action is needed to make our streets, our people and communities safe, we will take it. As Home Secretary, I am driven by a simple goal, which is to do the right thing by the law-abiding majority of our great country. That means supporting our police and others whose job it is to keep us safe, defeating the criminals and criminal gangs, securing our borders and removing those with no right to be here, protecting our national security, and taking the strongest possible action against those who wish to harm us. The measures that I have outlined today will help us to achieve just that, and this Government will always put the safety of the British people first.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

It may be helpful for colleagues to know that there will initially be a time limit of five minutes on Back-Bench speeches but I would expect that to reduce in due course.

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[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, it was wonderful to see Her Majesty in the other place last Tuesday giving the Gracious Speech, announcing the Government’s priorities for this year, and I am grateful to you and to the House for giving me the opportunity to participate in this important debate. We have today reached step 3 of the road map out of lockdown, and as we recover from this dreadful year there seemed to be an added salience to this excellent Queen’s Speech. We will be judged on the success of this programme: on how quickly we can help people return to their normal lives, restoring their liberties, abolishing emergency powers and allowing them and their families the freedoms to go about their daily lives, free from government diktat. In essence, this means that we can reinstate some common sense and personal autonomy, without there being government instruction on every aspect of citizens’ daily lives and without the constant financial bail-outs.

Equally, the culture of the Government must change. It needs to change from one of preventing people from doing things to one of encouraging citizens to take their own action and decide what is best for them and their families. It is very good to see my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary introduce the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The timing of that could not be more urgent, after the completely unacceptable violent antisemitism we saw over the weekend. Regardless of people’s view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is simply no justification whatsoever for antisemitism in our society. My right hon. Friend is also introducing one of the most significant overhauls of the asylum system in decades, which I wholeheartedly agree with. We need a fair, long-term system that will work for this country.

In essence, I believe that education ought to be the number one priority, giving everyone the best possible education at any stage of their life, as it opens up opportunity and careers that can improve their lives. It is the best route out of poverty and should be available to all. An important priority should be to expand support for children of all ages to compensate for their lost learning time during the pandemic. There is a huge programme in the Queen’s Speech to help to recover that lost learning, recognising that the disruption this year has had a major impact on our children’s learnings and lives, and including, importantly, catch-up classes in the summer.

The Government are committed to helping people to buy if they want to and they have committed to an ambitious target of 300,000 new houses by the mid-2020s. However, as a representative of one of the most important and unique areas of outstanding natural beauty, I am extremely concerned about some aspects of the planning Bill. It is the biggest overhaul to the planning system in 70 years. There are some positive proposals in the Bill and the planning system does need modernising. Home ownership needs to be an attainable aim, especially for young people. However, for areas such as the Cotswolds, there needs to be an absolute commitment to protect the AONB.

The proposal to abolish section 106 and the community infrastructure levy should speed up the planning process, and it is important that the money is retained locally so that the infrastructure can be built at the same time as developments. However, the algorithm to calculate housing need was a great concern to many of my constituents, as the Cotswolds had one of the highest proposed increased housing targets anywhere. There is a real danger, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) said, that it will simply be replaced by a zonal planning system, foreshadowed in the White Paper, which will mean that all land will have to be designated as either growth for renewal or protected areas, and that could be enforced through the local planning system.

As I have said to the House before, the most important factor is not housing number, but housing mix. The proposals to simplify and speed up local plan making and retain neighbourhood plans where possible are welcome, and the design codes can be specified so it should be possible to protect our unique Cotswolds vernacular. I do not want building to be at the expense of our unique environment and wildlife here in the Cotswolds or anywhere else. I believe strongly that new builds should be sympathetic to the local surroundings and well designed so that they do not become the slums of tomorrow. Above all, they should be built to high environmental standards, such as insulation and electric vehicle charging points, as I set out in my 10-minute rule Bill.

To wrap up, I would like to quickly mention the electoral integrity Bill and giving votes for life. I would also like to welcome the internationally important landmark that is the Environment Bill. Wearing my hat as chair of the all-party group for shooting and conservation, I will be scrutinising carefully the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill for any possible effect on shooting.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Before I call Yvette Cooper, I ought to say that the time limit for Back-Bench speeches will be reduced after the right hon. Lady’s speech to four minutes in an attempt to—

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Aw!

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Yes, I realise that will be some disappointment to the whole House in respect of the speech we were anticipating from the hon. Gentleman. [Laughter.] I call Yvette Cooper.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

After the next speaker, the limit on Back-Bench speeches will be reduced to three minutes—but with four minutes, I call Alistair Carmichael.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am very grateful to you.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who made a very thoughtful contribution. He said a lot in four minutes, characterised by the fact that, of course, he knows what he is talking about, because he has not just a political understanding but professional experience of criminal justice. In particular, when he spoke of sentencing and how rehabilitation should be at the heart of our prison system, there was nothing he said with which I could disagree personally or politically.

When listening to the Home Secretary, however, it struck me that if we ever wanted to generate a bob or two, we could bring out a new parlour game called “Who said it and when?” because there were points in her speech when I felt that I could have been listening to just about any Home Secretary that I have heard speak at the Dispatch Box in the last 20 years. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard Home Secretaries stand there talking about “Cracking down on this” or “Getting tough on that”. It is always the rhetoric of toughness, whereas we know that, in fact, getting things right in criminal justice is often about doing things that are difficult—and difficult to explain in the tabloid press—but that are also right and effective.

We heard as much tonight when the Home Secretary talked about setting centrally driven targets in order to improve policing. Centrally driven targets will not improve policing; it is community policing, rooted in the community that it is there to serve, that will improve policing and produce the outcomes. We have heard this for decades: the rhetoric goes on, yet year after year our streets and communities become less safe for our people, and the rhetoric does not change.

I also discern in the Queen’s Speech an emerging pattern from this Government, and it is one that disturbs and concerns me. Yet again, I am afraid, the Conservatives have been pleased to style themselves in opposition as liberals, and perhaps even occasionally as libertarians, but they are increasingly authoritarian in government. The moves in the carry-over Bill in relation to the right to protest are misjudged and ill-conceived, and I think that, ultimately, they will be counterproductive.

The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst referred to the question of judicial review. Any Government who believe in the rule of law should have absolutely no difficulty putting the decisions that they have taken before the court. If those decisions are right and legal, they should have no problem in the courts; and if they are not right and legal, they should want to change them in any event.

Time is short and there is one point that I wanted to put on the record. I am in total agreement with the Home Secretary’s comments condemning the scenes on our streets and online in relation to antisemitism, specifically in London. I think I come at the Israel-Palestine question from a rather different point of view from that held by the Home Secretary, but even for somebody who is as staunch a supporter of the Palestinian cause as I am, there can be no place in this debate for what we saw, and we in this country help nobody in Palestine by evincing sentiments that are antisemitic. On that, at least, I hope there will be a measure of consensus across the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

It is very good to hear the right hon. Gentleman mention consensus in that respect. As a rabbi in my constituency was brutally attacked yesterday—many people may be aware of this—I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for having just articulated what I would have liked to say myself if I were able to do so. I am delighted to tell him that Essex police have arrested two young men in connection with the attack on the rabbi, which was an absolute disgrace.

We now go to a limit of three minutes, I am afraid, and I call Caroline Nokes.