Global Migration Challenge

George Howarth Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments, and I refer to some of the undercurrents of the tone that has been used—not just in this House today, but more broadly—about our partnership with Rwanda. I could go so far as to say that some of this is quite xenophobic and, quite frankly, I think it is deeply egregious. Rwanda is one of the fastest growing countries in Africa, and we have an incredible partnership with it. Rwanda will be the host of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting later this year, and it is leading the way on the international stage on many international issues. I actually think this is pretty distasteful, and it says a great deal about Opposition Members’ understanding of global Britain and internationalism.

[Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Recently my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) joined many others throughout this statement in asking for evidence that this policy could possibly work in some way or another. In each case the right hon. Lady has declined to provide that evidence, so will she put in the Library of the House of Commons all the internal Government advice she has received on the legality, workability and cost of the scheme? That way, at least we will be able to assess what the evidence-base is.

[Priti Patel]

I refer to the comments I made earlier on the legal and legislative basis, which was all put in place under the previous Labour Government. Indeed, this scheme and proposal were also looked at under the previous Labour Government, and had it been operational back then we might not be having this debate today as more people would be claiming asylum in safe countries in the EU and the people-smuggling gangs would have been broken up.

Birmingham Attacks and Extinction Rebellion Protests

George Howarth Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I obviously recognise the challenges, in urban areas of this country in particular, and I know that the hon. Lady will be pleased to hear that we have provided many millions of pounds of surge funding to West Midlands police, alongside money for the violence reduction unit and, of course, the money to allow the uplift in the numbers of police officers. At some point this autumn, I will be visiting that force again to talk about its murder prevention strategy. I will then be able to take a better view about how prepared it is to help us in the fight against this kind of crime.

[Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab) [V]]

On behalf of the people of Knowsley, may I express our solidarity with the people of Birmingham? In a free society, peaceful protest is important, as is a free press, but does the Minister agree that that does not extend the right to any group to prevent the people of Knowsley from going about their lawful business? Will he also confirm that the police have all the powers they need to prevent the unfortunate events that took place in Knowsley and elsewhere over the weekend from being repeated?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s support, and he is right to say that, beyond the freedom of speech arguments, the workers in that plant would have been significantly affected and probably unable to leave work that evening. We are constantly reviewing the powers that the police have. Merseyside police managed to deal pretty effectively with that protest, having it cleared by 10.45 the next morning, but it is our duty constantly to ensure that we review police powers in the light of new and emerging tactics, and that is exactly what we will do.

Draft Justices of the Peace and Authorised Court and Tribunal Staff (Costs) Regulations 2020

George Howarth Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2020 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Chris Philp)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Justices of the Peace and Authorised Court and Tribunal Staff (Costs) Regulations 2020.

Mr Gray, it is, as always, a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I intend to be extremely brief, because these are technical regulations, which form part of the Government’s implementation of the Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Act 2018. I can confirm that, in accordance with the requirements of that Act, the Lord Chief Justice and the Senior President of Tribunals, Sir Ernest Ryder, have been consulted, and both have indicated their approval of the regulations.

The regulations are rather technical, but they have the important purpose of underpinning the protection the Act gives authorised court and tribunal officers. It gives them an indemnity against liability for actions they carry out in good faith in the performance of their judicial duties. The regulations specifically outline the procedure to be followed when an order for costs is sought against one of these authorised officers. It is worth mentioning that the Act provides for court officers authorised by the Lord Chief Justice to perform functions that were previously undertaken by a justices’ clerk or an assistant justices’ clerk.

The regulations specify the procedure to be followed when an order for costs is sought against a justices’ clerk. They specify the circumstances in which those costs may be sought and that it is not the justices’ clerk but the Lord Chancellor who will pay those costs—I do not, of course, mean the Lord Chancellor personally, but the Ministry of Justice, although we say it is the Lord Chancellor. The regulations also specify when such a cost order can be made and how the amount to be paid shall be determined. The answer to that latter question is that it is determined by a costs judge—formerly known as a taxing master.

Very simply, therefore, the regulations make provision for the Lord Chancellor to pick up the costs if any cost order is made against a justices’ clerk—now called a court officer—in the discharge of their duties.

[Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

The Minister has made clear what this measure does, but it would be interesting to know what prompted its introduction.

[Chris Philp]

Very simply, this measure was first introduced in this form in the Courts Act 2003—of course, the practice predated that, but it was most recently legislated for in 2003, when it applied to justices’ clerks and assistant justices’ clerks. However, in the 2018 Act, those positions were replaced by court-authorised officers, who perform essentially the same function but under a different name. When we say “court-authorised”, it is ultimately the Lord Chief Justice who authorises those officers. This is really a technical change that continues a practice that has been going on for many years. It is really a change of nomenclature more than anything.

[Sir George Howarth]

The Minister is being admirably clear, but I do not think he has completely answered my question. What prompted me to ask was that I am not clear why these provisions were not incorporated in the 2018 Act.

[Chris Philp]

Often when we legislate in this House, some of the more technical matters are not put on the face of the Bill. The Government are given regulation-making power the activate or implement powers at a subsequent time—otherwise the Bill would be enormously long. This is one of the many examples where the technical implication of a measure is done via a statutory instrument—in this case, an affirmative statutory instrument—rather than on the face of the Bill. In fact, we were in this very room just a few days ago implementing a similar measure in relation to alcohol abstinence and monitoring requirements. This is just one of those measures that are activated by an SI, rather than being on the face of the Bill, to keep the Bill a little smaller.

I hope I have outlined the substance of the matter before us. If colleagues have questions, I would be delighted to answer them—

Retail Workers: Protection

George Howarth Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Thomas]

It is interesting that the hon. Member says that. I welcome his comments and the conversations he has had. The lack of prosecutions suggests that the issue is still not being taken seriously enough by the Crown Prosecution Service or by the understaffed police forces in our country. I hope that the Minister will be able to demonstrate that that will change.

[Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem with the £200 threshold is that it puts a monetary value on something when, as my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) demonstrated, the personal consequences of such offences are much greater than the monetary value?

[Gareth Thomas]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The fact that post-traumatic stress disorder is being suffered by a number of shop workers who have been on the receiving end of intimidation or actual violence is a powerful demonstration of his point.

Dr Emmeline Taylor recommended a publicity campaign to promote zero-tolerance of violence towards shop workers. That seems eminently sensible and it would be comparatively easy for the Government to encourage that and make it happen. It would be good to hear whether the Minister will support such change. Dr Taylor recommends changing expectations, such that evidence of age should be provided more often to purchase age-restricted items such as alcohol, knives, aerosol paint and tobacco. Again, that seems eminently sensible.

Dr Taylor also recommends measuring hate-motivated offences in shops. Hate-motivated crime was one of the drivers that she identified as being behind the increase in violence against shop workers. Another recommendation was for drug testing on arrest for shop theft and violence against shop workers. She identified the rise in drug use—particularly of heroin, among other substances—as a significant problem, set against the sharp decline in the availability of services to help people deal with addiction. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister whether the rise in police numbers will be matched by a rise in access to drug and alcohol treatment services, and whether he specifically supports drug testing on arrest for shop theft and violence.

The last recommendation was about streamlining the reporting of incidents to the police and an effort to improve the accuracy of data, so that we can properly understand and, over time, tackle the sheer scale of violence against shop workers, which, as we can all clearly report anecdotally, is on the rise. Without accurate data, that will be more difficult to handle. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale and others on keeping the campaign very much alive in the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service (Kit Malthouse)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I make no complaint that this subject has been brought up twice in three months. It is obviously extremely important and affects all our constituents in many ways.

Frankly, I have experienced this issue myself. When I was a young man, as a relatively penniless student, I worked behind a bar in a pub for about six months. I well remember the tension when denying another drink to those who had perhaps drunk a little too much. I am a big fellow, and if I felt threatened, there is no question but that people who do not quite have my physical stature might have felt deeply anxious and threatened. Fortunately, I never faced violence, but I am aware that lots do. As an MP representing a constituency with a small town in it, I am aware of the violence prevalent on the high street, and particularly in retail premises.

In the debate back in November, on the last day of the last Parliament, I took Members through the initial findings of the call for evidence. To be honest, although my speech was going to rehearse that again, it sounds as if people are a little more interested in a sense of action and movement, so with the forbearance of Members I will skip to that part. Having sat as a Back Bencher through a lot of ministerial speeches, I have found that there is quite a lot of flannel in a lot of them, and this is an area in which we need to see action more swiftly.

First, we will publish the response to the call for evidence next month; it will come shortly, in the next few weeks. I hope that that will be the start of action, not the end. I refer everybody to the speech I gave back in November, which indicated some alarming developments in violence towards retail workers and, sadly, the sense that that community of workers is starting to feel that it is just an acceptable part of their existence, which, from our point of view, is completely unacceptable. There is much more that we can do.

Secondly, as I am sure Members know, we co-chair the national retail crime steering group with the British Retail Consortium, through which we can do a number of things. One key theme coming through from the call for evidence is about really understanding the data and what is going on and disseminating that to the organisations that need to be doing something about it, both private and public. I will set up an intelligence-sharing group, made up of some members of the steering group, to work through what the data tells us and some of the practical solutions that we need, and then to report back to the wider group, which can help to implement this on a national scale.

Another thing that came through was about messaging effectively—to customers and staff—about the unacceptability of violence in a retail environment. As mentioned by the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), we should take a zero-tolerance approach towards this sort of violence, so a second group will try to develop some of that effective messaging, which we then hope to promote among retailers, learning from some of the good practice we have seen in sectors elsewhere and trying to bring the worst up to the standard of the best.

Thirdly, there is a big job for policing in terms of violence generally across our streets, but in retail in particular. As a couple of Members mentioned, we are recruiting 20,000 extra police officers by the end of the next 36 months. We will have to replace all the ones who retired as well, so the overall target will be to recruit between 40,000 and 50,000 over the next three years. It is a huge task, but it has nevertheless started well, and the first batch of recruits are already out and in training, on top of some of the recruits put in place last year off the budget settlement that policing got then.

Critically, we said that those first 6,000 police officers, whom we are relatively confident we will get in the first 12 months, have been designated to be territorial police officers, so they will be out in our communities and on the streets, able to respond to incidents that take place in a retail environment. That is an investment of something like £750 million, and it is the first instalment of a three-year programme that we hope and believe will significantly increase the police presence in our high streets and shops. We have also given the Crown Prosecution Service an extra £85 million to enhance its ability to prosecute.

I am conscious that my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) raised the issue of making sure that our police and crime commissioners and chief constables are aware of the issues around the £200 limit. I will write to them all to point out that the £200 limit is optional. It is no brake on their ability to prosecute or arrest somebody, which is effectively for their judgment. I will also include in that letter a requirement for chief constables and police and crime commissioners to examine their data too, to understand what is happening and to respond to concerns in their own communities about this kind of crime in the priorities that they set in their police and crime plans. Hon. Members will be aware that police and crime commissioner elections are coming up in May. This is such an important issue that I think all candidates should be apprised of it. We should put it on their agenda, so I will write to them as well.

That is the start of what I hope will be a huge collective effort to combat violence in retail and generally across the country.

[Sir George Howarth]

The Minister will have noticed that several colleagues raised sentencing and available sentences. Is he able to say anything about that?

Knife Crime

George Howarth Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend raises another important issue on the role that social media might be playing in spreading serious violence. Late last year, I provided £1.4 million of funding for a new social media serious violence hub so that the Metropolitan police can work with social media companies and specifically focus on this very issue. He knows that the Government will shortly be publishing an online harms White Paper, which will also look at this important issue.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I am sure the Home Secretary will agree that behind every fatal stabbing and shooting is a young person’s future cancelled, and a family left grieving and wondering for the rest of their life, “How could this have been prevented?” He has demonstrated that he knows what needs to be done—it is about interrupting the drugs industry, early intervention and having more police on the street—so why on earth we need yet another consultation is beyond me. What we do need is for him to come back to this House, within the next week, with a definite plan about how to deal with this and proper resources behind the plan. I ask him to do that, because he already knows what needs to be done.

[Sajid Javid]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right when he talks of the tragic deaths, lives being cut short, all those opportunities that are forever gone and the impact on those families. I think he was referring to the public health approach and asking why it would require a consultation. That is because it is supposed to be a statutory approach. We could have taken the non-statutory route. That would have been quicker, frankly, but I think it would have been less effective because I need every Department—colleagues have mentioned the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education—to make this a priority. We have talked about the experience in the other parts of the UK and in other countries. It has been a statutory approach. With very few exceptions, there is a requirement with such an approach to have a consultation to make sure it is legally watertight.

Merseyside Police Funding

George Howarth Excerpts

Tuesday 19th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

May I, too, say how good it is to serve under you in the Chair, Sir Edward? I add my thanks to Jane Kennedy, the police and crime commissioner for Merseyside and to Merseyside police. My hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) have given us a comprehensive survey of the current situation, particularly the financial problems that Merseyside police faces, which I will say a bit about in a moment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby made the point that a police officer was stabbed in my constituency, which brings home, sharply and regrettably, the risks that police officers face when going about their everyday business of trying to keep us safe. I will return to knife crime in a minute.

As has already been said, Merseyside police has had to make more than £110 million of savings since 2010 and as a consequence, the police officer establishment has been reduced by 1,120, which is a fall of 24.4%. That must have consequences; it cannot simply be brushed aside as, “Well, we don’t need them.” I want to talk about how some of those consequences affect my constituents.

I will make three points. On gun crime, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby has already stated the statistics, but I will repeat them for emphasis. In Merseyside, there were 79 firearm discharges in 2018 and 94 firearm discharges in 2017. Of the discharges in 2018, 13—16%—were in Knowsley, and in 2017, 22% were in Knowsley. That means that guns are now considered something relatively normal in some sections of the community, which was unthinkable when I was growing up in the area and cannot be right. There must be some connection between that and the level of policing that Merseyside police can provide.

Knife crime has become commonplace, and 88 knife incidents in Knowsley in one year is really frightening. It is frightening, first, that the knives seem to be readily available, and secondly, that the—mainly young—people who use them seem to think that doing so is perfectly normal. Again, that must be linked to the level of policing provided. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby rightly referred to the policing model. Neighbourhood policing has now been abandoned, so the intelligence needed to deal with this problem, such as who has the knives, where they are getting them from and all that important information, is not being gathered to the same extent. That is not the police’s fault; they simply do not have the resources.

I will make one further point on knife and gun crime before I move on. This is not unique to Knowsley or to the Merseyside police force area; to a different scale in different places, it exists everywhere. There are a group of young people in this country who will probably not get any GCSEs. Most will get an apprenticeship, find work and make their way in the world. However, there is a sub-group within that who, maybe because of family influence or other influences in the neighbourhood, see a life of crime as being a perfectly normal progression. We need to do much more with those young people, to make them appreciate that, first, that is not normal; secondly, that they have the potential to do other things—really good things in some cases—with their lives; and thirdly, that they need to be in a position where they can provide for a family in later life, and not by the haphazard means of the proceeds of crime.

My second point is on antisocial behaviour. Merseyside police says, and the statistics show, that there has been a recent 32% reduction in the number of reported incidents of antisocial behaviour—[Interruption.] I have to say that that is not my experience as a local MP, and I can see from the reaction of my hon. Friends that they feel the same. I simply say that I held two advice surgeries on Friday evening—one in Huyton and one in Kirkby—and most of the cases brought to me were in some way related to antisocial behaviour.

I also think that the term “antisocial behaviour” often does not properly describe the sort of problems we are talking about. For example, with the local social housing provider, Knowsley Housing Trust, I have been dealing with a case of a woman in north Huyton who cannot step out of the door without a volley of abuse being thrown at her by neighbours. The police might classify that as a neighbourly dispute, but when someone is literally afraid to step out of the door because of the abuse they will get from neighbours, that is serious.

People have a right to a reasonably quiet life in which they should not expect daily abuse to be normal, yet in some cases it is. There are people in housing need who might be in a perfectly nice, well-maintained house that they pay the rent on, but they want to move out to get away from the trouble. That cannot be right. There cannot be places in this country where those subjected to antisocial behaviour feel that the only way they can escape it is to move house. Again, it comes back to whether the policing resources are there to deal with the problem. The police are honest about that and say there are not.

There is some light at the end of that particular tunnel, certainly in Knowsley. Knowsley Council, as my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood is aware, is looking within its resources to see what more support it can provide to the police to get on top of antisocial behaviour. However, should that be the responsibility of the local authority?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

Yes!

[Mr Howarth]

The Minister nods her head and says yes from a sedentary position. Perhaps up to a point she is right, but at the end of the day Knowsley Council does not have the powers to intervene in such cases without the support of the police. All it can do is to help to point the police in the right direction, perhaps building up a case with some evidence, but in the end it has to be a policing matter.

Finally, I agree with my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, West Derby and for Garston and Halewood in that I welcome the increase in the precept and that it is not how policing should be paid for. The increase will not have the impact that we need, but nevertheless I welcome it. Late last week, Merseyside police announced that they were going to downgrade Kirkby police station in my constituency, so that it will be open to the public on only two days a week. I recognise that we do not want police to sit in police stations; we want them out on the streets doing things. To be honest, however, if people want to report a crime, to get into a dialogue with the police about antisocial behaviour that they are experiencing or to give information on gun and knife crime when PCSOs are not out and about on the streets, the only place they can do so is at the police station.

I also question the way that the announcement was made on social media. The local councillors and I were alerted to the announcement on social media, but was that any consultation whatever? Is that any way in which to do it? I know why the police had to do it—because they have problems with resources—but I question the method.

A group of local councillors has been invited to meet Merseyside police tomorrow. Those councillors will put the case against the downgrade strongly. The leader of the council, Councillor Graham Morgan, has written to Jane Kennedy, and I will quote from what he said, because I agree with him. This relates back to the decision about the increase in the precept:

“The Chief Constable, and yourself for that matter, had the opportunity to let Cllr Aston know that you were planning the same thing for Kirkby ahead of her formally considering your Precept proposal on Knowsley’s behalf. Nothing at all was mentioned!

As you know, Cllr Aston moved the proposal and Knowsley reluctantly supported you, noting that colleagues in St Helens were not in a position to do so given the issues relating to Newton Police Station”—

which my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) raised in a debate in this very Chamber. The letter continues:

“I ask myself would we have taken this course of action”—

to vote for the increase in the precept—

“if we were made aware that we too were going to see a reduction, almost identical to that faced by our colleagues in St Helens?”

For the leader of Knowsley Council, the sort of person who tries to be reasonable with everyone, to write in such strong terms is an indication of how annoyed the community are about that. I share that annoyance. When the police meet the local councillors tomorrow, I hope that they will reach a solution that does not involve virtually closing down Kirkby police station for most of the week.

Unless Ministers appreciate the terrible circumstances in which the police have to operate throughout the Merseyside police force area, and do so quickly, I am afraid that we will have this debate repeatedly, with some of the problems that we are concerned about just going up and up. That cannot be right.

Police Grant Report

George Howarth Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous). I agree with him on one specific point: we really do need a better understanding of why mental health is a problem within crime and of how it should be dealt with more appropriately than is currently the case.

I do at least agree with the Home Secretary on two points. First, he was right to pay tribute to the work that the police do on behalf of us and our communities. It is only the police who take the risk of trying their best to protect us. Secondly, I agree that it is his job to keep the people of this country and our communities safe. However, the sad fact is that although he acknowledges that that is the case, he does not seem to do much about trying to turn it into reality.

Much of what I say will be about facts and figures, but it is important to say that behind those facts and figures lie some incredibly terrible human tragedies. I will talk about knife crime in a moment. That is about a young life lost needlessly and, more than that, about a family who, for the rest of their lives, will be left asking, “What if?” We must always be mindful that while facts and figures tell one story, the effect on people’s lives is often much more pronounced and vivid than the figures alone show.

First, inevitably, I want to talk about funding for Merseyside police. My hon. Friends the Members for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) and for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) both referred, in slightly different ways, to the way in which the loss of central Government funding has affected policing in our constituencies. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) made a similar point about the closure of a police station in his constituency as an example of how things play out on the ground. My hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood rightly pointed out that since 2010-11, the Merseyside police force has lost £90,396,258 of central Government funding. That is a lot of money, and it has consequences. It means that we have lost over 1,000 police officers, which must have an impact on crime. We have lost over 200 PCSOs, and that in itself must have an impact on crime, at least in the sense of how the police get information about what is going on in communities. We cannot hide from the fact that there has to be a direct relationship between police on the ground and the ability to deal with crime.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) was right when he pointed out in an intervention on the Home Secretary that the additional money that the Government have provided will mostly cover only the additional cost of pensions. On Merseyside, of the £8.8 million of additional money that will be provided through the central Government grant, which is of course welcome, £7.8 million will go directly to plugging the gap in pensions.

At the same time, we are experiencing steep rises in very serious crimes. On Merseyside, over the past 12 months, knife crime has increased by 32%. I have talked about the impact of that on young lives. My hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood and I, along with others, want to get into a discussion with the Government about how the problem can be better dealt with by giving young people alternatives to a life of crime and by providing the police with the ability to intervene more effectively. After many attempts, we have not even been able to get a meeting with the Policing Minister. I have asked him in previous debates to meet me to discuss this, but answer comes there none. There has also been a massive 47% rise in domestic abuse, which means that whole families are in terrible crisis, with terrible problems.

There is so much more to say, but to keep within the limits you have set, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will conclude by simply saying this. The Government have done too little too late to resolve the problem that our communities and police forces face. Frankly, if the first job of the Government and the Home Secretary is to deal with community safety, I am afraid that this settlement goes nowhere near assuring people that they will be able to carry out that duty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hurd]

Divisions do exist. Labour is desperate to assert its narrative that cuts have consequences. On this side of the House, we know that the cuts were the consequence of a Labour Government yet again running out of public money so that tough decisions had to be taken. There is an artificial debate about the balance between the contribution from central and local taxpayers. If we want more money in policing, we have to pay, and the hypocrisy of this—from a Labour party that doubled council tax when it was in power—is overwhelming.

The common ground is that Members on both sides of the House recognise the increased pressure on the police and want to provide additional support to them. That is exactly what the settlement does.

[Mr Howarth]

The Minister offers us the tempting prospect of finding common ground, but does he not realise that the common ground he asks us to step on to is actually sinking sand?

[Mr Hurd]

As I have said, I am more than happy to meet the Merseyside MPs, but this settlement is set up to increase public investment in our police service by up to £970 million. If it is voted through tonight, it means that we will invest more than £2 billion more next year than we did three years ago. How that can be presented as a cut is beyond me. What the public will note is that the Labour party has fought us every step of the way—it voted against the settlement last year and it intends to vote against it tonight. Labour is apparently blind to the fact that while we are committing to almost £2 billion of investment in the police service next year, its commitment is for £780 million over the life of this Parliament.

Police Funding Settlement

George Howarth Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I thank my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour. He is entirely right, and I will be sitting down with Pinner residents tomorrow to discuss exactly their concerns about the spike in aggravated burglary. The police response, to their credit, has been good, including enhanced neighbourhood team working and enhanced advice on crime prevention. One of the gangs in the case has been disrupted. There has been a good policing response, but the situation requires additional resources going into the Metropolitan police, in part to support increased investment in frontline officers but, critically, to support increased investment in detectives, who follow up crime and give a better service to victims. I hope he supports the settlement for that reason.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Does the Minister accept that the proposed increase in the precept in the Merseyside police force area will mean that people in all council tax bands will experience a 13% increase? Jane Kennedy, the police and crime commissioner, says that that will allow only for a stand-still budget on Merseyside. At the same time, we have seen a worrying increase in knife and gun crime, and the needless and tragic loss of so many young lives, yet the Minister has been unprepared to meet the police and crime commissioner and local MPs to discuss it. Will he undertake to meet the commissioner, the chief constable and local MPs to discuss how we can tackle that appalling problem?

[Mr Hurd]

With genuine respect to the right hon. Gentleman, I have met Jane on a number of occasions, and once specifically with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who has responsibility for crime and safeguarding, to discuss serious violence.

[Mr Howarth]

We have asked four times and had no answer.

[Mr Hurd]

I am not aware of that. I see Jane quite regularly, as I do the chief. Given the seriousness of the matter, I am more than happy to sit down with Merseyside MPs—I give that undertaking, and was unaware of those unanswered requests. We have an open and regular dialogue with the police leadership.

The settlement helps police and crime commissioners to manage cost pressures—the pension issue was a serious concern—in a way that will allow Jane to go to the people of Merseyside and say clearly that any increase in the local precept will go into local policing. That is one objective of the settlement.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

George Howarth Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb). I agree with him on at least one thing—there is nothing simple or straightforward about what we are confronted with here.

I want to spend the time available to me talking about Brexit and Knowsley. People might say, “Why Knowsley?” Why do I have to talk about Knowsley in connection with Brexit? The reason is that in the 2016 referendum the people of Knowsley voted in exactly the same way as the rest of the United Kingdom—52:48—to leave the European Union, so, in a way, it is a microcosm of the rest of the United Kingdom. Why did the people of Knowsley vote in the way they did? When I was out on the street campaigning to remain, three reasons came up continually. The first was immigration; I will say a little more about that in a moment. The second was sovereignty, or taking back control. The third was that they wanted us to control our own finances properly. I want to deal with each of those in turn.

First, on immigration, some of it—not all of it—was xenophobic in nature, with people addressing it as, “We don’t want to be that country. We don’t like multiculturalism” and that kind of thing. People also gave other reasons, one of which was a feeling that immigration was putting too much pressure on public services. In Knowsley, we have the lowest level of immigration in the country, and although we have pressures on public services, immigration has nothing to do with those pressures. But that was one of the reasons they gave.

Another reason people gave—my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), as so often, touched on it—was a feeling that those coming from eastern Europe in particular were undercutting wages in some of the industries that operate in my constituency. Whether that is right or wrong, that is what people felt at the time. As it happens, I think we need to have a more intelligent debate about immigration than we have had so far, so that people really understand the nature of it, but we have not had that debate, and we certainly had not had it at that point.

Secondly, I will not labour the point on sovereignty, because it has been made repeatedly by others, but the reality is that we are ceding more control than we are gaining, so the deal does not meet that requirement. Thirdly, on the issue of repatriating the money we spend in Europe and economic control, frankly, all the evidence is that it will go in the opposite direction. The reality is that everything the people in my constituency voted for when they voted to leave is not going to happen with this deal. This deal does not meet the requirements they set, and I think most Members are conscious of that.

Before I conclude, I want to talk about what I know of opinion in my constituency at the moment. Like every other Member of this House, I have had hundreds of people contact me in the last few weeks, and they fall into three distinct categories. The first is people who, like me, voted to remain, and they want us to have a second referendum, so that they can have a go at determining a different outcome. The second category is people who voted to leave, are still convinced of that and are willing for us to come out at any cost, with no deal at all. The third category, which is really interesting, is people—some of them remainers, some of them leavers—who are saying, “We’ve already had a referendum. We should get on with it.” The Prime Minister has been using that mantra over the last few weeks. The problem, given that the deal does not represent any of the things that those people voted for, is that getting on with it means getting on with something that virtually everyone in the House concedes is an unsatisfactory outcome.

I think we would all concede that those who contact MPs to tell them what they think are not necessarily typical of opinion in any given constituency. Nevertheless, that is one signal I have to go by. I got another signal when I went to speak on this issue at the All Saints sixth-form in Kirkby in my constituency six weeks ago. In the middle of it, for some reason, I decided to take a straw poll. Although Kirkby is a traditional white working-class area, the students overwhelmingly voted to remain. They wanted some means by which they could remain in the European Union, and that highlights the generational difficulty we have.

I also attended an event over the summer that I organised with the help of the local chamber of commerce, for local businesses that trade with Europe. From big companies like Jaguar Land Rover, down to a small company that deals in precious metal, they wanted a deal that assured their future trading relationship with the European Union. I do not think this deal provides that.

I am left with the view that this can only be sorted in one of two ways. The first is a general election. That does not seem likely to happen, but it is one way of doing it. The second option is another referendum. I believe that one or both of those, or even a combination of the two, is the only way forward, because there is no majority in the House for anything else.

Police Pension Liabilities

George Howarth Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I thank my hon. Friend for that constructive intervention. We share a desire to continue down the path we set, and as a result of the action that we have taken, almost every single police force in the country is now recruiting additional officers. We do not want to go backwards. We must solve the pension issue, and we are working closely with our Treasury colleagues to do just that.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that the pension issue comes at a time that is not without problems that already exist. My constituency has seen an alarming rise in gun and knife crime, and a bus service was withdrawn last week after hooligans threw bricks at buses. The Minister needs to resolve the situation quickly; otherwise we run the risk of losing control of the streets.

[Mr Hurd]

I will resist any such scaremongering on this issue, but I do not need any lectures about the demand and pressures on the police following my conversations with all ranks of police leadership and with Members from both sides of the House. We are all in the same place, and even the Chancellor recognised here at the Dispatch Box the pressures on the police. We are trying to structure the right response to those pressures, and we are doing so from a position of growing economic confidence, which is in stark contrast to what the situation would be if Labour was in power.