Violence Reduction, Policing and Criminal Justice

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment (r), at the end of the Question to add:

“and submit to Your Majesty that this House wishes to see an end to the violence in Israel and Palestine; unequivocally condemn the horrific terrorist attack and murder of civilians by Hamas, call for the immediate release of all hostages and reaffirm Israel’s right to defend its citizens from terrorism; believe all human life is equal and that there has been too much suffering, including far too many deaths of innocent civilians and children, over the past month in Gaza; reaffirm the UK’s commitment to the rules-based international order, international humanitarian law and the jurisdiction of the ICC to address the conduct of all parties in Gaza and Hamas’s attacks in Israel; call on Israel to protect hospitals and lift the siege conditions allowing food, water, electricity, medicine and fuel into Gaza; request the Government continue to work with the international community to prevent a wider escalation of the conflict in the region, guarantee that people in Gaza who are forced to flee during this conflict can return to their homes and seek an end to the expansion of illegal settlements and settler violence in the West Bank; and, while acknowledging the daily humanitarian pauses to allow in aid and the movement of civilians, believe they must be longer to deliver humanitarian assistance on a scale that begins to meet the desperate needs of the people of Gaza, which is a necessary step to an enduring cessation of fighting as soon as possible and a credible, diplomatic and political process to deliver the lasting peace of a two-state solution.”

When the Prime Minister opened the King’s Speech debate just eight days ago, we had all this briefing about how it was a “Rishi reset” moment. So much of a flop was it, that having made promises just eight days ago about the changes his Government would deliver, now he is talking about the changes to his Government instead. We have another reshuffle and another Rishi reset—not change, just more of the same chaos. We remember his conference claim that he was rejecting decades of failure, including the last 13 years of Tory Government. Just a month later, he has brought back one of the main Tory architects in the former Prime Minister, who cut 20,000 police officers, brought in the bedroom tax and austerity, and pushed working families and children into poverty. It is a sign of the state of the Tory party that the Prime Minister who did all that is now suddenly seen as a moderate.

Instead of a Government focused on the problems facing the country, whether the cost of living crisis, record NHS waiting lists or rising town centre crime and serious violence, what we have got is just more of the same Tory psychodrama and chaos. In the past seven and a half years, we have had five Prime Ministers, six Chancellors, seven Health Secretaries, seven Foreign Secretaries, eight Home Secretaries and 11—I think I counted right—Justice Secretaries.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Eight.

[Yvette Cooper]

Eight Justice Secretaries—it has been a struggle to keep count of their changing. We have had eight Home Secretaries in less than eight years and, even worse, two of them were the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman). She was so unsuited for the job of Home Secretary that she was sacked twice: once for breaching security rules in government, and the second time for undermining security on our streets, attacking the police, undermining respect for the decisions they took in the run-up to a difficult weekend, ramping up division around remembrance and making it harder for the police to do their job. No other Home Secretary would ever have done those things. It shows how little this Prime Minister cares about our security that he was prepared to reappoint her, to defend her and to follow her wherever she led, and now we know why.

The dodgy deal that the Prime Minister denied last year is now laid bare in the former Home Secretary’s letter. She says:

“Despite you having been rejected by a majority of Party members…and thus having no personal mandate to be Prime Minister”.

Fair point there. She goes on:

“This was a document with clear terms to which you agreed in October 2022 during your second leadership campaign. I trusted you.”

Obviously that is another sign of her poor judgment. The deal made him Prime Minister and made him make her the most unsuitable Home Secretary this country has had.

The Conservatives published their latest Criminal Justice Bill yesterday. It has measures that Labour called for to tackle antisocial behaviour, and I was going to make the point that the Government have no ideas of their own and are just following Labour’s lead, but I have to concede that they and the Tory party in general are definitely the experts on antisocial behaviour. The former Home Secretary is throwing rocks and stones. The New Conservative group is making dark threats, going round the parliamentary Tory party nuisance-begging for no-confidence letters in the Prime Minister. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) is so desperate to find out how many letters have gone in to the chair of the 1922 committee, the right hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) that he is now camped outside his office, but I guess they told us it was a lifestyle choice.

While the Tories fight culture wars with each other, the rest of us are worried about security on our streets. The new Home Secretary has briefed that he did not want to take over the job, but he has agreed to take one for the team. Let me just say to him and to all Government Front Benchers: if they do not want to run the Home Office or the Ministry of Justice and cannot see how to do the job, they should get out the way for those of us who can. Our country is crying out for a Government who care about tackling crime, restoring security to our streets and restoring confidence in the police, rather than a Tory Government chasing headlines and fighting among themselves.

The Government want to tell us that all is fine on the number of police and the level of crime, but they are badly out of touch, because that is not what it feels like across the country, and nothing in the King’s Speech will touch the sides. We have 10,000 fewer neighbourhood police on our streets. Half the country say they never see a bobby on the beat. Knife crime is up by 70%, devastating young lives. We have persistent violence against women and girls across our country. That is the Conservatives’ abysmal legacy on law and order.

Labour has set out a mission on crime to halve serious violence including knife crime and violence against women and girls, to reverse the catastrophic collapse in the proportion of crimes solved, and to rebuild confidence in the police and criminal justice system by getting 13,000 more neighbourhood police on the streets and tackling town centre crime. However, what do we have in the King’s Speech? The Criminal Justice Bill includes measures that Labour called for long ago, but it does not tackle enough of the serious problems that our country faces or make up for the damage that has been done. We support making sure that the most serious and dangerous criminals properly serve their time, but, frankly, too few criminals are actually caught or charged in the first place. Under this Government, more than 90% of crimes go unsolved. For those who commit a crime, the chances of being caught and punished are less than half what they were under the last Labour Government. That is the scale of collapse in law and order under the Tories.

On knife crime, the measures go nowhere near far enough. On violence against women and girls, I am really concerned because there is nothing on spiking, nothing serious on stalking and nothing to turn around the woeful fact that 98% of rapists avoid charge. The Government’s sentencing proposals may mean that thousands of domestic abusers whose violence is escalating will be let off jail.

There is nothing at all on town centre crime. Shoplifting is up a shocking 25% in a year. Assaults on shop workers tripled during the pandemic and have not gone down again. This is Freedom From Fear Week, and I thank the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and the British Retail Consortium for the work they are doing to stand up for staff safety and shine a light on the disgraceful way in which people are being treated just for doing their jobs. But why are the Government not listening to them? Labour is, and we will change the law. We will table amendments to the crime and justice Bill to ditch the ridiculous £200 rule that stops action from being taken against repeat shoplifting gangs and to bring in a proper new offence of assaulting shop workers, because everyone has the right to feel safe at work.

On national security and some of the core issues that affect the safety of our nation, in the past we had broad cross-party consensus and worked together in that spirit. Labour will always stand ready to do so. Security Ministers and shadow Security Ministers have done so before, and that is the spirit in which we will work on the national security Bill. That is also the spirit in which we would always have expected to approach the operational independence and impartiality of British policing. The last Home Secretary undermined that; I hope that the new Home Secretary will be able to restore it, because this is too important for us to disagree on.

It is likewise for the safety and cohesion of our communities. We have seen tensions increase as a result of the truly awful events in the middle east. There has been an appalling rise in antisemitism, including some disgraceful incidents this weekend, with Jewish communities feeling enormous anguish and distress. We have also seen an awful increase in Islamophobia and the rise of organised far-right thuggery about which the police raised concerns this weekend. Every one of us in this House must be clear that violence and hate crime have no place on Britain’s streets and must face the full force of the law. We must all back the police in taking the action that is needed.

I thank the police for the reassurance work they are doing with synagogues, Jewish schools and mosques as well as their action against the hate crimes that devastate lives and corrode communities. I say to the Justice Secretary and the new Home Secretary that Labour has called for stronger action to tackle both antisemitism and Islamophobia and hateful extremism. Again, we stand ready to work with the Government and see what we can do to come together to address these serious issues, because there is a responsibility on all of us to bring our communities together.

The shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), will speak later about Labour's amendment in more detail, but every one of us will have been deeply disturbed by the terrible events in the middle east. We want an end to the devastating violence and suffering. We have seen 11,000 Palestinians killed; two thirds of them women and children. Thousands of innocent children are dead. Families are bereaved and parents grieving. It is intolerable. Hundreds of hostages are still being held following the gravest attack on Jewish people on any day since the holocaust. Israeli families are still experiencing the horror and the trauma as the remains of their loved ones are still being identified. Families and communities are still reeling from the events.

We all condemn the truly barbaric attack by Hamas terrorists on 7 October. Under international law, we respect countries’ right to defend their citizens from terrorist attacks and also countries’ obligations to abide by international law. The conduct of war matters. As Antony Blinken said at the very start of the conflict,

“how Israel does this matters. We democracies distinguish ourselves from terrorists by striving for a different standard, even when it is difficult…Our humanity—the value that we place on human life and human dignity—that’s what makes us who we are.”

The rules-based order must not be abandoned.

That is why we must commit to recognising the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court to address the conduct of all parties in the conflict. But it is also why we need an urgent suspension of hostilities: not just a short pause, but, as my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary has set out, the time and space to get in fuel, food and water, to rebuild vital humanitarian infrastructure, to protect aid workers, who are losing their lives on a scale we have never seen before in conflict, to put in place protection for civilians and negotiate hostage releases, and to work towards a full cessation of violence and enduring peace so that lives can be saved and the intolerable suffering can end.

We know that that requires immense and complex diplomatic work. It is not easy. We have words on a page that we will talk about voting on today, but we all know that it is not through words on a page that this will be achieved; it will be achieved through step-by-step intense diplomacy and pressure that recognises how difficult it is when Hamas refuse to agree to stop rocket attacks and pledge again to repeat the attacks of 7 October. We recognise, too, that hostages are still being held, but we still have to make urgent diplomatic progress. We still have to do what we can right now to save lives and make progress in getting hostilities suspended, especially so that humanitarian action can be taken.

We recognise, too, that the only way forward is a two-state solution with a secure and safe Israel alongside a secure and sovereign Palestine. My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary was right to say yesterday that

“neither the long-term security of Israel nor long-term justice for Palestine can be delivered by bombs and bullets.”—[Official Report, 14 November 2023; Vol. 740, c. 510.]

That is why there is a responsibility on all of us to urge the UK Government to do what they can—to strain every sinew—in the pursuit of peace.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to be called early in the debate. I usually wait a lot longer—

[Emily Thornberry]

So get on with it!

[Chris Stephens]

“Get on with it,” says the Labour Front Bencher.

On justice, I hope that the Minister heard my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) speak about the violence reduction unit work being done in Scotland. I was a member of the cross-party Youth Violence Commission. There is a lot of work being done on this issue in Scotland. It is a public health issue and, yes, education and lifelong learning have a role in tackling it, as I hope the Minister will take on board.

On the King’s Speech itself, this has been an extraordinary five days. It started off with a lot of the hard right-wing rhetoric, and now we see that the Government have moved, or are trying to move, to a centrist position—it is quite extraordinary. I listened to the right hon. and learned Member for Northampton North (Sir Michael Ellis), and I have heard others. I hope that he will condemn the far-right thuggery we saw at the weekend in London and elsewhere. Those were not counter-protesters—the phrase I have seen being used—but far-right thugs. Every single Member of this House should condemn those individuals, who wore a poppy on their jackets while showing a swastika tattoo at the same time. It was an absolute outrage. Those were despicable sights at the weekend.

Other measures were mentioned in the King’s Speech. After today’s Supreme Court judgment, it is obvious that there will be yet another immigration Bill—that has been an annual event in this place since I came here in 2015—to try to fix the broken asylum system in this country. I am concerned; at my surgery in Govan on Friday, I met a Palestinian constituent who has been denied asylum by the Home Office. He has not heard from his family in Gaza for 10 days, and has been denied refugee status in the United Kingdom. That tells me how broken the asylum system is, and I hope that Home Office representatives will meet me to discuss that particular case.

What was most surprising about the King’s Speech was that it contained very few measures to tackle the cost of living crisis—or, as I call it, the cost of greed crisis—that is taking place across these islands. It is interesting that in America, President Joe Biden has launched a food poverty strategy to eliminate food poverty by the year 2030, but this Government will not match that ambition here. I certainly intend to table a Bill on that issue, because we need a strategy to eliminate food poverty. Far too many of our citizens across these islands are going hungry; it is a disgrace that that is happening in an economy like ours. It is being left to the rest of us to develop a community shop network, selling food at affordable rates or at cost, to help people move away from food banks—from emergency need.

We need that sort of system, and we need the Government to take food poverty in this country extremely seriously because, as I have said, far too many people are in food poverty, including far too many children. It makes me weep when I hear some of the stories reported to my office of people who do not have the basic essentials. We need essentials guarantees in the universal credit system. It is incredible that we have this ridiculous situation in which the universal credit system, which is there as a so-called safety net, is no longer a safety net for many reasons. Universal credit and the social security system are also broken; there were opportunities in the King’s Speech for the Government to fix them, but sadly they did not.

I associate myself with the remarks of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, about the lack of action on infected blood in the King’s Speech. It is no longer good enough for the Government to sneak out statements just before recesses or prorogations, talking about the lack of action that is taking place for far too many people who have been caught up in that scandal. We will continue to call that out; there need to be debates and regular statements in this Chamber, so that Members from all sides of the House can call the Government to account for the snail’s pace of action. Lastly, I will be voting in the name of humanity and supporting a ceasefire in the Lobby tonight.