Public Order Act 2023

Gary Sambrook Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his words of support and for quoting that great thinker, Edmund Burke. It is necessary that the Government and Parliament pass laws, and that the police implement those laws, in defence of peaceful protest of course, but also in defence of law-abiding members of the public who want to go about their day-to-day business.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

Is the Minister not struck by the irony that if anything had gone wrong on that day, the same people would be in this Chamber blaming the Government for not taking the appropriate steps to protect the public and the historic event? Is it not the case that, time and again, those on the Opposition Benches are on the side of the people who want to disrupt hard-working, peaceful people going to work and enjoying themselves in their day-to-day lives?

[Chris Philp]

On my hon. Friend’s first point, hindsight is something we get quite a lot of from the Opposition these days. I agree that the Government are on the side of law-abiding citizens who want to go about their day-to-day business. That is why the Act was constructed in the way it was and why it was passed after great deliberation by both Houses of Parliament. I see my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) is in his place. I think he had a considerable hand in formulating the Bill, so I take the opportunity to thank him and congratulate him on his work.

The Public Order Act 2023 was passed just a few weeks ago and it received Royal Assent even more recently. It would be absurd to attempt to repeal a piece of legislation so soon and there are no plans at all to do so. It would appear that even Captain Hindsight, the Leader of the Opposition, can see that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gary Sambrook Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

Yes, there is an intention to consult on the police funding formula in the near future. That is very important, but I ask the hon. Lady to join me in welcoming the fact that Bedfordshire now has about 150 more officers than it did in 2010.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

T4. Recently, we have seen an increase in instances of antisocial behaviour, especially around shops in Rubery and in particular the Co-op in West Heath, an incident that involved a knife. Can my right hon. and learned Friend explain how we can help to protect those who work in retail, and also reduce instances of antisocial behaviour?

[Suella Braverman]

Tackling antisocial behaviour is a priority of mine, and my hon. Friend is right to mention this issue. When it comes to retail staff—people who are on the frontline of our public services—we have taken steps to protect them. We introduced an aggravating factor in legislation, so that an assault on a retail staff member will be taken into account at sentencing; we have a retail crime group within Government chaired by the Policing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), to bring together the relevant agencies; and ultimately, more police and less crime is going to do the job of protecting those in retail.

Western Jet Foil and Manston Asylum Processing Centres

Gary Sambrook Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

We are always concerned about the personal responsibility and safety of the staff at Manston. Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to every single person who has been working on the frontline, particularly over the past few days when the issues have been quite chronic, quite acute and incredibly tough for them. They are doing a brilliant job and we will do everything to ensure that their professional positions are safeguarded.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

We need to change the definition of “asylum”. Many people in these centres and hotels are illegal migrants. Many of them are economic migrants who are taking a chance by crossing the English channel. If people come here illegally, why can we not just deport them?

[Suella Braverman]

My hon. Friend raises an important point and he is absolutely right. Other European countries take a very different approach to the consideration and processing of asylum claims. The reality is that once someone makes an asylum claim, we are duty-bound to consider it. What is very good about the Rwanda scheme is that it means that the asylum claim will be considered in Rwanda, so we will be able to physically remove people before that long delay takes place.

National Security Bill (Second sitting)

Gary Sambrook Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 7th July 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Sally-Ann Hart]

Yes, carry on.

Carl Miller: Partly it is to do with changing our national knowledge of where these threats are and who is doing them, so the integration of intelligence. Then, as I said, there should be a national risk register and possibly the creation of powers for parts of the intelligence establishment to undertake direct activity against some of the technical architectures that allow this to happen.

Sorry to delve into the technicalities for a second, but for instance residential proxy IP addresses are a very important way in which this stuff happens. Residential proxy IPs are toasters and fridges and stuff. Basically, they each have an IP address and many of them are hijacked. They are the kind of things you that you use if you want to fool a social media platform into thinking that you are 10,000 people from around the planet when you are not—you are one operator sitting in a particular country. These are criminal architectures that have been amassed and rented out and sold to people, and I am sure they are rented out by some of the actors who seek to do influence operations. These are the kinds of things that we need to target. Putting pressure on that kind of asset is the kind of thing that will probably not get rid of them, but will meaningfully increase the costs of this kind of activity.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

Q The Government tabled an amendment to the Bill to make “foreign interference” a priority offence in the Online Safety Bill. Do you think that will go some way towards addressing the concerns you have raised today?

Sam Armstrong: Yes, I think so. Imposing a duty on the social media companies is one of the only immediate tools and levers we can pull. I take Carl’s point; I do not think it is going to be sufficient to deal with the hordes of people overseas who are, frankly, conducting quasi-military-type activities against the UK through cyber means here, because criminal law is not the tool for that. Should they exist and are they necessary? Yes. Are they sufficient? Probably not.

Carl Miller: It is just massively insufficient. The reason why is that the platforms, however rich, clever or large they are, cannot reach beyond the platforms themselves. That is the problem. The way we have tried to respond to this problem so far is to have Facebook take down accounts, but take-down is a very weak response. That is essentially being priced in to those kinds of activities. They have developed methodologies for setting up or acquiring new accounts as they go. In principle, I am not hostile to platform regulation across a range of online threats, but for those problems where we are dealing with a set number of actors who have specific capabilities and tap into a specific and constantly evolving tradecraft, I do not think it is going to be the tool to make much difference.

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

Q We have covered a lot of the ground that I wanted to talk about. Several times in your answers, Karl, you have alluded to the fact that whatever we do the pitch is so complex that we cannot deter. What is it in the Bill, which you said you have no problems with, that you like about detecting and prosecuting—if deterrence is not contained in the Bill?

Carl Miller: The main thing I would say that the state can step in to help with is around attribution. That is something that we cannot do without state powers. It is something that, at the moment, only the tech giants do, and that is only linked to take-down. If we were to have any prospect of either taking direct cyber-action, or actually bringing criminal prosecution, it would be something that we need. One big thing here is around data access—I am sure you have had other panellists talk to you about that before. To foreground that, I have come here as a researcher whose job it is to do that kind of research, and one of my main things is that we know so little. We know nothing about TikTok—it makes none of its data available. Facebook makes some of its data available, and that is why we have some picture of it. Twitter makes a lot of its data available, and that is why we have a bigger picture.

TikTok is enormous, likely very influential, anecdotally there is tonnes of Ukraine-invasion activity happening on it now, and it has absolutely no application programming interface available for researchers in any way, whatsoever. By the way, there are also rumours that Facebook is withdrawing some of the data access that it currently gives researchers. I am sorry; I know this is ranging far beyond the scope of the Bill. However, to put this on your radars, I think that legislators may have to step in sooner or later to compel platforms to maintain data availability. Otherwise, even the very small window we currently get is going to continually shrink.

Global Migration Challenge

Gary Sambrook Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

The latest figures suggest that, in December, more than 7,000 people in Birmingham were claiming asylum support amounting to tens of millions of pounds. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this partnership with Rwanda will reduce the reliance on hotels and reduce the number of small boat crossings?

[Priti Patel]

There are a number of things—[Interruption.] If the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) were less hysterical and actually listened, she might learn something about the new plan for immigration.

It is important to reflect on a number of points. The answer to my hon. Friend’s question is yes, because we do not want people to be in hotel accommodation. It is a cheap point for Opposition Members to make, but we had to use hotel accommodation to protect people during the pandemic, and Public Health England guidance spoke to that.

On decision making—[Interruption.] If the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury chooses to listen, the new plan for immigration is about speeding up asylum decisions and processing through legislation and the digitalisation of the system. I have to add that, because every single Opposition Member voted against this policy, they clearly want open borders. They just want to have uncontrolled migration, and they have done nothing to come up with an alternative plan on this issue.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Gary Sambrook Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

What is required is a properly resourced and competent processing system, so that when people come here they can be processed quickly. That would resolve many of the issues to which the hon. Gentleman referred.

Arguably even more astonishing is the fact that clause 38 appears to criminalise the good Samaritans who want to save lives in the channel by removing the “for gain” clause, meaning that it is not just profiteering people traffickers who are deemed criminals, but good, honest people trying to rescue drowning refugees. Lords amendment 20 reintroduces the “for gain” wording, a move that we fully support.

That brings me to the so-called pushback policy. Pushing back dinghies may well mean condemning refugees, including innocent children, to their deaths. This is an utterly barbaric proposal which, again, contravenes the law of the sea. We therefore support Lords amendment 54, which adds language to schedule 6, stating that these enforcement powers must never put lives at risk.

Profound concern has been expressed about the Bill’s failure to comply with the United Nations refugee convention. The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, among others, has criticised the legislation for undermining the human rights of refugees in a range of different ways. At a time when authoritarian regimes such as Russia and China are riding roughshod over international laws and norms, we must show that Britain, as a leading liberal democracy, is ready to lead by example. Britain must show that we stand with refugees and stand up for international law. We therefore support Lords amendment 5, which would add a new clause stating that nothing in the Bill must authorise policies which do not comply with the refugee convention.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

Would the hon. Gentleman like to tell the House what safe and legal routes the then Labour Government opened up after the second Iraq war? I may be able to help him with the answer: I do not think there were any.

[Stephen Kinnock]

The safe and legal routes are not working properly, and they need to be made to work more effectively. We currently have thousands of Afghan refugees stuck in hotels. Let us put in place a system that actually works. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that looking forward is more effective than looking back.

Another stark failure of this Government has been the asylum waiting lists that are keeping refugees in limbo and costing the taxpayer dear. There are now over 100,000 people awaiting initial decisions on their asylum applications, with an astonishing 61,864 having had to wait for six months or longer. These failures are less about capacity and more about a distinct lack of competence. The numbers of asylum seekers are fewer than the UK’s recent peak, so the Home Office should be able to cope. However, under this Home Secretary the system simply is not working.

Lords amendment 7 offers a sensible proposal which could minimise the damage caused by the backlog, as it would give asylum seekers the right to work if their case was taking longer than six months. That would allow dignity to asylum seekers, who could then earn their way and contribute rather than being completely disempowered and excluded from the labour market. The Lords amendment would also prevent asylum seekers from being forced into the dangerous net of the black-market economy just to survive, which is so often more attractive to them than relying on £38 per week from the Government. Moreover, the Government have already said that all Ukrainians can work here as soon as they arrive, so why is it a problem to allow other individuals and families fleeing terror the same opportunity? If the Government are worried about being seen to give asylum seekers work, they should fix the system so that applications are processed within six months. We are pleased to see that more than 66 Conservative parliamentarians, including 27 members of this House, have signed a letter to the Home Secretary expressing support for Lords amendment 7, and we encourage Ministers to see the light and follow suit.

The introduction last year of “inadmissibility’’ has only led to further delays. Because the Government have failed to renegotiate a single returns policy with any country, labelling asylum seekers as “inadmissible’’ for processing is effectively meaningless, as the asylum seeker in question cannot be returned. This simply adds six months of bureaucracy, uncertainty and confusion for the refugee, and a huge cost to the British taxpayer. Of the 8,593 “notices of intent” to deem people inadmissible that were issued in 2021, incredibly, only 64 were upheld. This policy simply increases the enormous backlog further and is a complete waste of money, so we support Lords amendment 8.

Let me now turn to perhaps the most unhinged element of the Bill, the so-called offshoring provisions which allow—theoretically at least—asylum seekers to be sent to faraway lands for processing. The latest ludicrous suggestion is that Ascension Island, 4,500 miles away in the South Atlantic, should be used for the purpose. That is utter nonsense. It is operationally illiterate because it is utterly impractical, and it is economically illiterate because it would cost an eye-watering amount of taxpayers’ money.

Fire Safety Bill

Gary Sambrook Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

Lords amendment 4 seeks to protect leaseholders and tenants from paying for the remediation of unsafe cladding from their buildings. I recognise that a number of alternative amendments have been tabled. I expect we will hear a number of views on this issue today, and I intend to respond to them at the end of the debate, given that many of those interventions will be virtual. First, I should state that we agree with the intent to give leaseholders peace of mind and financial certainty. That is why the Government have recently announced that we will be providing an additional £3.5 billion to fund the removal and replacement of unsafe cladding, targeted at the highest-risk buildings. That brings the total investment in building safety to an unprecedented £5 billion.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

I am glad that the Minister has confirmed that extra £3.5 billion, bringing the total to £5 billion. Will he confirm that this will fully cost the removal of the cladding, and that those leaseholders who live in high-rise buildings will not have to foot the bill?

[Kit Malthouse]

That is the case. I know that my MHCLG ministerial colleagues have been in this place and debated this extensively and, having made the case to the Treasury, it was gratifying to see this money come forward. It will assist those who are living in fear in high-rise buildings in particular, but also those in mid-rise buildings, who, as I am sure my hon. Friend knows, will benefit from a financing scheme.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gary Sambrook Excerpts

Monday 9th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady is right: that is a much needed change required in the law, and I will make further comments on this in due course.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con) [V]]

  For many vulnerable people and victims of domestic abuse, it will not be an easy few weeks in November during the lockdown. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on what measures her Department has been taking to safeguard the most vulnerable people from abuse?

[Priti Patel]

I refer my hon. Friend to the comments I made earlier. He will be well aware of the way in which we have empowered the police, who are going out there to ensure that victims are protected while at the same time going after the perpetrators of domestic abuse. My message is absolutely clear: if you are perpetrating abuse, the police will find you and come after you. We are putting more money and support into the system to protect the vulnerable, and we are asking those who are subject to domestic abuse to leave home and seek advice through many of the portals that we have stood up.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Gary Sambrook Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 19th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I am honoured to speak in this important debate in support of the Lords amendments, particularly Lords amendments 4 and 5, which are reasonable amendments that were supported by great majorities in the Lords. Amendment 5 provides an option of providing physical proof of immigration status under the EU settlement scheme to prevent disenfranchisement of EU citizens.

In Wandsworth, there are 41,000 EU nationals, which is 13% of my constituents, so this is a big issue for my constituents in Putney. Two of those constituents, who have lived in the UK for 30 years, are French citizens and classical musicians with settled status in this country. They have written to me and said: “We are very concerned by the fact that we have no physical way of proving our status when we come back from holidays or trips abroad, and we are afraid that at any moment a similar situation to the Windrush population might happen to Europeans who’ve settled in this country.”

Moreover, Citizens Advice Wandsworth workers who support EU citizens are concerned about that aspect of the Bill. Access to proof of settled status requires digital skills, access to the internet and a suitable device. Time and again, they have seen that vulnerable people find it difficult or impossible to view or prove their status. That means that they are unable to prove their rights in the UK when they are seeking job opportunities, finding a place to live or even getting treatment in hospital. They find that they are discriminated against in those circumstances because they cannot have the physical documentation that they need to prove their status. That cannot be right.

Lords amendment 4 allows unaccompanied children and vulnerable adults to claim asylum in the care and context of their family, which will prevent dangerous journeys from being taken to join them. I have been to the camps in Calais—they were not really camps; they were a lot of bushes in an area near Calais—and I have seen the traffickers circling the area. I know that if any of my children were in that camp and their siblings were just across the channel waiting and able to protect them, I would do everything I could to reunite my family members. To narrow it down to just parents is not fair when many have lost their parents—that is why they fled their country and why we can rescue those children and show compassion.

On 20 December last year, the Prime Minister stood at the Dispatch Box and stated that the Government were “absolutely committed” to continuing family reunion. A Home Office statement on 15 January used exactly the same language, saying it was

“absolutely committed to the family reunion of refugee families”.

There has been commitment after commitment to family reunion, yet it is not in a good enough state in the Bill. That will leave children such as Lili, who fled Eritrea and was found by Safe Passage on the streets of Rome, in a highly vulnerable situation, instead of being reunited with her brother as she was. She wants to be a computer engineer. That is compassion—to allow those children to be here.

To conclude, unless we act tonight, 2021 will be the year in which child refugees in Europe lose the only safe legal route to sanctuary in the UK. Voting against this amendment would be quite wrong. I urge Members on both sides of the House—we have heard good arguments from Members on both sides for this—to think of children such as Lili, do the right thing and vote for Lords amendment 4. It is time to show our British values of compassion and justice, and to deliver for refugee children.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

I have been pleased to support this Bill throughout its passage, particularly for its two primary aims of ending free movement of labour and introducing a points-based system. I wish to focus mostly on Lords amendment 1 and social care. As has been discussed, the amendment would require the Government to publish a report on the impact of ending free movement of labour on the social care sector. I spoke on Second Reading and served on the Bill Committee, and at every stage of my involvement in this Bill I have heard Opposition Member after Opposition Member try to claim that in some way the only way to fix labour shortages in the UK is by immigration. I simply do not agree with that analysis. In the Committee stage, we heard from Brian Bell, the MAC’s interim chair, that only 5% of social care workers come from EU migration. In constituencies such as mine, unemployment is standing at 10.5%. Are the Opposition genuinely trying to say that these jobs in the social care sector are not ones that more than 6,000 people in my constituency can have and that they are out of reach for my constituents? I do not agree.

Immigration plays a very important role in managing labour markets, but it does not solve all the problems all the time. The Government are tackling this issue of social care head on; we have seen the investment of £1.5 billion in adult and children’s social care, along with a national recruitment campaign for the sector. I absolutely support those two things. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), made a fair point about the MAC suggestion about pay. Every Conservative Member stood on a manifesto that pledged to look at social care and, importantly, at a way of redesigning it so that it is fairer for those who are cared for, their families and carers too. That is very important, and it is incumbent on all of us that we come to some kind of consensus across this House on that system. In the same way as we see a consensus on the NHS, we need to come to one on social care.

On the NHS, there will be times, including now, when there are gaps in the labour market, which is why I am pleased that the Bill contains provision for the health and care visa, which will be available for people to use to come to this country to work in the NHS. That is very important.

I conclude by saying that I am happy to support this Bill and will be voting to reject the Lords amendments, because I will be fulfilling my promise to my constituents to end free movement of labour, to introduce a points-based system and to deliver on a firm but fairer immigration system for this country.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

This is a thoroughly depressing Bill, one that is entirely political and deeply impractical. That is the kind of Bill, or Act, as it will become, that does not stand the test of time. That we are celebrating the loss of the freedom of British people and thinking it is a good thing would be comical if it were not so tragic, confident though I am that this will not last.

Let us look at some of the details. The Lords amendments are entirely practical and reasonable. Indeed the Minister himself has accepted that, in principle at least, some of them fit that description. I want to focus on Lords amendments 4 and 5. Lords amendment 4 would of course provide the opportunity for family reunion—a safe and legal route. The Home Secretary herself, at the Conservative party conference just a few weeks ago, talked about the importance of safe and legal routes, but of course we are sleepwalking out of one of the safe and legal routes we currently have, the Dublin settlement, with no sign of any kind of meaningful replacement to take its place. If we are—and I am sure all of us here are—outraged and filled with compassion and horror at what we have seen in recent times as people have made the death-defying journey across the channel in rickety boats, taking desperate risks because they are desperate people, the answer is most certainly to provide safe and legal routes. Lords amendment 4 gives the Government the opportunity to have a safe and legal route, and to reject it is music to the ears of the human traffickers. I do not yet understand why the Government seek to turn down such a route via either compassion or practical application.

On amendment 5, it seems an absolute no-brainer that EU citizens with settled status granted to them by this Government should have physical proof of that status. I have had a number of my constituents in touch with me recently who are deeply concerned about the lack of physical documentation. I talked to a person working for a local school and people working in hospitality in Windermere and in Kendal who are concerned about the lengthy multi-step process involving passport, date of birth and a unique one-off code sent to their phone, their employer’s email addresses, business details and both accessing the Government’s website separately. Members have already spoken of the occasional tendency for Government IT schemes not to work completely perfectly. Like other issues that we are talking about tonight, this has huge resonance with the appalling Windrush scandal. While there may be some debate as to which Government bears responsibility for the heartbreak of the Windrush scandal, there will be absolutely no doubt whatever who is to blame for this one. They saw it coming and they voted for it.

Comments were made earlier about the minimum income salary threshold. The Lake district hospitality industry is possibly the most hard-hit part of the UK economy as a result of the coronavirus. May I point out also that 20,000 people working in that industry are from outside the UK, and if we say to 90% of them, “You are not welcome here unless you’re earning a figure that your employers cannot afford to pay”, that would deal an appalling hand to, and damage massively, an industry that is struggling to cope with the covid crisis? It is time for politics that is more practical and less political.

Birmingham Attacks and Extinction Rebellion Protests

Gary Sambrook Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I want to try to get everybody in, so can we be fairly brief in questions and in answers as well?

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

Will the Minister join me in thanking Chief Superintendent Steve Graham and his team for their amazing work and bravery over the weekend in response to the terrible incident in Birmingham, especially in their fight to combat disinformation online and on social media? That work will not have been aided by the disgraceful comments of the police and crime commissioner, who tried to excuse this murderer before he had even been arrested.

[Kit Malthouse]

I know that West Midlands police and the chief inspector will be very grateful for my hon. Friend’s support. It is always heartening when Members of Parliament know their local senior police officers by name, because it means that they have met them, talked to them, understand their job and support them. I am very pleased that he does that as well. I hope that he and everybody in his part of the world will join together in fighting the crimes that his community face.