(1 year, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberFirst, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. Like so many in the Chamber today and across the country, he was personally affected—indeed, he was actually present. I completely agree with his point about caging; as a football fan myself—I take my son to Crystal Palace—the idea of people being caged is completely wrong. In answer to his direct question: yes, when there is a response to the report, which will be soon, it is important to make sure that it has teeth and is not just warm words; that it has biting and binding effect. I am confident it will, in the way that he asked.
I thank my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) for securing this urgent question. Like many others, I have never forgotten that day. I lived just around the corner from the football ground and remember seeing young people queueing outside phone boxes—probably 50 of them—with not one word being spoken, because they were so traumatised. I have never seen anything like it. There were young people trembling around the streets in my area. Yes, lots of us went out to support them, because that is what we do in Sheffield. None of us has ever forgotten that tragic day, let alone the travesty of justice that has followed.
The Hillsborough disaster will live long in the memory of my constituents, but it is completely unacceptable that, more than 30 years on, 97 families are still waiting for justice and assurances that this can never happen again. It would show those families the respect they deserve if the Government were to do exactly what my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle) has asked for, by supporting the Bill that will be debated in the Chamber on Friday. Let us show the families the respect that they deserve and have not received until now.
A lot has been done already to address many of the issues that the bishop raised in his report. I have gone through them previously, but they include, critically: those professional standards for policing, the removal of the means test on exceptional case funding, and many other things that I have set out and will not repeat. We want to honour the families by responding in full. We want to make sure that this will never happen again. I have already committed to raising the IPA point with Ministry of Justice colleagues, which I will do straightaway. I hope that, through the actions taken already and the response we will bring forward as quickly as possible, we will show the families of those who suffered this appalling tragedy that the Government and the whole House are with them. I want to make sure that no one has to go through what they went through.
(2 years, 1 month ago)
Westminster HallWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms McVey, as usual. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) for securing this incredibly important debate. The powerfulness and eloquence she brought to her opening comments say everything. My hon. Friends’ speeches have really put things into perspective.
The Windrush scandal will forever cast a dark shadow over our nation’s history. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Windrush generation, who have worked hard and contributed so much to our society, not least to the NHS, as we have heard in some personal stories today. The way the Windrush generation has been treated is nothing less than sickening. Let us make no bones about it: the Windrush scandal was a direct consequence of this Government’s hostile environment policy. This approach to policy making must be scrapped, but the circumstances that allowed the Windrush scandal to happen have not been properly addressed. I will touch on that more later.
I want to talk about the experiences of some constituents who were affected by the Windrush scandal and the hostile environment. My constituent Tanya and her family had immense struggles with the Home Office as a result of the scandal. She, her brother and her then 12-year-old daughter all had multiple passport applications refused. The reason, according to the Home Office, was that none of them were British citizens. That is despite the fact that they were all born in Britain, had never stepped foot outside Britain and had worked and paid taxes their entire lives in Britain. Never before had their British citizenship been called into question.
The distress and hurt caused is unimaginable. Tanya’s mother could travel; her older sisters had passports and could travel, but she and her younger brother were unable to travel with her family unit. They were unable to visit where her mum and dad had been born when the older sisters went. They were unable to take advantage of going on any trip abroad. How would they have felt, not being able to understand that? They got no sense from the Home office, which is a terrible way for Government to react to that sort of situation.
Another constituent came to the UK from Jamaica with his grandparents when he was two years old, following the death of his father. He left Jamaica with no family members remaining there, as his mother had also left. He built his life in the UK and had two children. As an adult, he was convicted of a criminal offence and received a custodial sentence. Nobody is defending his actions, but he rightly paid his debt to society. Upon his release, he was told he was to be deported to Jamaica. That came as a huge shock, as he had a young family in the UK and no ties to Jamaica whatsoever. Furthermore, he feared for his safety in Jamaica after his father, who died when he was just two, was killed in a gang-related attack.
My constituent was deported to a country he had little to no memory of and with no family around him. Many years later, thanks to his solicitors and my office, he was finally given permission to return to the UK and see his children again. By then, his partner had moved on to another life and his children barely knew him. That is unthinkable yet it was done to him by this Government. That is the hostile environment policy in action.
Far from tackling the endemic problems, the Home Office is instead going forward with the same mindset that caused the Windrush scandal. It is clear that the hostile environment policy is here to stay. Wendy Williams’ review makes it absolutely clear that cultural and systemic changes are needed in the Home Office—that is so important to ensure that another Windrush scandal can never happen again. But time and again we have seen that not to be the case. The Home Office is still guided by its hostile environment policy.
Steps must be taken to make Britain once again a welcoming place for migrants, refugees and their families. Change has to come from the very top, but the Home Secretary has shown a complete lack of willpower to make positive change happen. What we have got so far is nowhere near enough. We are asking for justice and closure for all those of the Windrush generation and their families who were affected. The Government must ensure that those people get justice and closure and, most of all, the compensation that they are entitled to.
Tanya, who I referred to earlier, got her compensation just last year, after four years. She was one of the just one in four people out there who received compensation. That is not good enough. It is bad enough that these people were in the situation they were in, but to leave them hanging year after year, making unreasonable requests for information that the Home Office already knows they will not have or are unlikely to have, is cruel. The Government must step up and do the right thing.
(2 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberAfter 12 years of a Conservative Government, they now promise that this will be the Queen’s Speech to fix regional inequality. Forgive me if I do not take the Government’s words at face value. We have heard all this before, and just like before, this Government are all talk and no action. First it was the long-term economic plan—remember that? The Conservative party cynically used that phrase time and again to justify slashing services for those who needed them most. Then it was the northern powerhouse. Let us check how that is going—major infrastructure projects scrapped, living standards down and inequality up.
When I say “inequality”, I know that it is a word we can knock about a bit, but it means people, families and children living in abject poverty and having no way out of it. Let us be clear about that, and let us remind everyone again whose fault that is. This Government have been in power for 12 years, but from some of the rhetoric we have heard today, we would imagine this Government were elected only two years ago. When these hon. Members talk about resetting things and getting on with things, what they are actually doing is admitting that they have got it wrong for the last few years. If they had got it right, we would not be seeing them coming up with such policies now, so I do not think that is anything to talk about or celebrate.
To move on, the latest buzzword now is “levelling up”, but just like all those other times before, the Government are hoping that a catchy slogan will be enough to distract us from their chronic inaction. It is yet another piece of the empty rhetoric we have come to expect from the Conservatives, but their record speaks for itself. In my constituency of Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough, we have borne the full brunt of more than a decade of Tory cuts. The spending power of Sheffield City Council has been slashed by almost a third since 2010. Communities such as mine do not need catchphrases; they need investment.
Turning to a particular area very close to my heart, further education has a huge role to play if we are truly to level up. Sadly, we are seeing worrying trends in skills and in education. In a recent survey, a third of British businesses said that their workforces are lacking basic literacy and numeracy skills. Our further education institutions go above and beyond to upskill their students. Having worked in colleges for most of my life, I know that education is one of the most powerful tools in lifting people out of poverty, and I have seen that in action in my constituency. The Sheffield College and Longley Park Sixth Form do fantastic work to ensure that their students leave with the skills that they need to succeed, but that commitment is not matched by the support they need from Government. The Prime Minister speaks about the importance of getting people into high-paid jobs, but he refuses to take the action needed to get them there. More investment in further education and post-16 education and careers is needed now.
The Government’s further education and post-16 reforms risk leaving behind completely the students who need the most help. T-levels are an important addition to our education system, but they should not come at the expense of existing qualifications that have proved to be successful. BTECs are taken by almost a third of 16 to 18-year-old students and help to ensure that young people enter adulthood with a level 3 qualification, which is vital when entering the workforce. Rolling them back will undermine that work as well as cut student choice and degrade the variety of qualifications that employers can look for. Students who do not qualify for T-levels could end up falling through the cracks and miss out completely on any levelling-up exercise, should it even exist.
I agree with the hon. Member that apprenticeships and technical education have not been promoted enough, but does she agree that that was not helped by the previous Labour Prime Minister but one having an obsession with a 50% university target and that many people who have gone to university would have been better served by doing an apprenticeship?
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, but I would say: your Government have been in power for 12 years and, if you did not like it, why did you not do something before?
Order. The hon. Lady knows that she must not address the hon. Gentleman directly.
I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Cutting BTECs flies directly in the face of levelling up. Instead of that, the Government should be championing them alongside T-levels. That is just one example of the Government’s actions failing to meet their rhetoric. Ministers are already making excuses on levelling up. The Levelling Up Secretary has spent the last week trying to cover up his own failures and those of the Government. He is trying to lead us to believe that deepening inequality is purely a result of external events such as covid and the war in Ukraine, but we know the truth.
We know that responsibility for the entrenched inequalities in our society falls at the door of this Conservative Government and their policies. Pensioners are having to ride buses all day to keep warm and families are struggling to afford the basic essentials, but, instead of stepping in, the Government are stepping aside. They are too busy trying to cover their own shortfalls to provide the support that people are crying out for. We all know why they are doing that: one day, just like the long-term economic plan and the northern powerhouse, levelling up will be retired as a political slogan with nothing to show but deeper inequality and worsening living standards.
The Government have once again shown that they are all talk and no action. The Queen’s Speech is yet another missed opportunity that fails to fix the deep-rooted inequalities caused by 12 years of this Conservative Government. They are out of ideas and out touch—and hopefully, following the Conservatives’ dire local election results on Friday, they will soon be out of office. Britain deserves so much better than this.
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Westminster HallWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Rape figures were recently issued by the CPS and prosecutions are even lower than they were. In a number of cases that have not gone forward to prosecution, the victims have been blamed for disengaging with the process when the process is adversarial and they do not get the support they need to protect them from people who are largely still out in their communities. It shocks me; the whole system is wrong, and I fully support my hon. Friend’s campaign to address it.
Abusers commit horrific crimes, but we will not secure convictions unless victims and survivors are thoroughly supported throughout the criminal process. I know that the Minister is committed to tackling child abuse. I hope she agrees today that the Government will accept and implement the findings of the IICSA report. But, to be blunt, warm words mean nothing when children are still being harmed.
To highlight that, I have two local examples where I need the Minister’s help. For the past four years, Barnardo’s in Rotherham has been working, through the trusted relationships project, to support children who are vulnerable to sexual and criminal exploitation. It provides direct, one-to-one support for children and wider support for their families, and carries out awareness-raising sessions for groups of pupils in schools, as well as providing training and resources across Rotherham. However, its funding from the Home Office is due to end on 31 March. The loss of contract will mean that the four team members will have to close 35 children’s cases, and will not be able to go into schools and community groups to deliver work or do assemblies on CSE, child criminal exploitation and healthy relationships.
I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate and for all the work she has done over the years. I praise Barnardo’s, which has been doing a fabulous job. That funding cut would be morally reprehensible of the Government, and would leave even more children vulnerable. It would be brilliant if the Minister could reassure our hon. Friend that that funding will remain.
I thank my hon. Friend, who I know does a lot of work in her community. Barnardo’s, 25 years before anyone really acknowledged child sexual exploitation was a thing, was trying to prevent it. It is deeply naive to believe it is not a current crime in Rotherham, when there are more than 300 identified abusers on whom the National Crime Agency has enough evidence to take them to court, but there is no court capacity. We need help, Minister, not funding cuts at this point.
The next thing that I want to raise is the case of—and I use this word loosely—Lord Ahmed, who recently received a custodial sentence of five years and six months for two counts of attempted rape of a young girl and one for the serious sexual assault of a boy in Rotherham in the 1970s. This man is not a hereditary peer. He was given the honour in 1998 by the then Labour Government, but we threw him out of the party almost a decade ago. In 2020, the Lords Conduct Committee found that he had breached the code of conduct by sexually assaulting a vulnerable woman and exploiting her both emotionally and sexually. The Committee recommended that he be expelled from the House, but instead—
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberI start by congratulating Dr Alan Billings on his re-election as Labour’s South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner. Against a backdrop of immensely challenging circumstances, he has delivered on a range of initiatives to improve policing in this region, including the recently launched campaign to urge anyone experiencing domestic abuse to seek help and support. I also pay tribute to South Yorkshire police and support workers, and to all our frontline workers, for their dedication to duty during our recent covid troubles.
A decade of funding shortfalls has left our police forces cut to the bone. The Home Office police core settlement has remained at the same level it was back in 2010, meaning a cut in real terms, and this is being felt on our streets: the number of police officers has fallen by a staggering 20,000 since 2010. By comparison, between 2000 and 2010 under a Labour Government, the number of police officers rose by 40,000. The Government’s target of recruiting 20,000 more police officers would just scratch the surface, after a decade of severe underfunding has left our streets less safe. I was surprised earlier today to hear the Home Secretary talk to us—boast, really—about the rape strategy, and tell us how no delays would hold this up. I remind the Home Secretary that the rape review was announced over two years ago, and no action has been taken on it since. I urge her to hold sure to her word.
Since 2010, knife crime across the UK has risen by a staggering 50%, and in South Yorkshire it has nearly doubled. Despite repeated promises, the Government have continually failed to get a grip on this issue, which is still leaving too many families grieving. We urgently need a national strategy of early intervention to get knives off our streets. Roughly a fifth of knife crime offenders are aged between 10 and 17, so schools and local organisations have a vital part to play in educating children on the dangers of knives from a very young age. My friend and newly elected Labour councillor, Safiya Saeed, has done commendable voluntary work in this area over a number of years. Using funding from the South Yorkshire violence reduction fund, Big Brother Burngreave engages with young people on the streets and from referrals from social care and schools who may be at risk of falling into knife crime, and runs weekly activities ranging from football matches to mental health workshops. Initiatives such as these could save lives.
However, at the heart of all this is the need for more resources: not just more police officers on our streets, but funding for a range of schemes such as amnesty bins and early intervention through schools and local authorities. We cannot sit back and watch as more and more young people lose their lives in these tragic circumstances. There has been enough talking on this issue: we need action, and we need it now. The first responsibility of a Government is ensuring the safety of their citizens. However, while violent crime is rising, the Government are not rising to the challenge. A decade of funding shortfalls and the lack of a coherent strategy to tackle knife crime has left our streets less safe. Instead of warm words and empty promises, we need urgent and comprehensive action to get a grip on these horrific crimes, which shatter families and our communities.
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberI express my commiserations to the Queen, the royal family and, of course, the family of our very own Dame Cheryl Gillan.
I really welcome the Bill: it is a huge step in the right direction to better support victims of domestic abuse, and I thank all those who have worked so hard to make sure that it has come forward. However, in passing this legislation we must ensure that someone’s migrant status does not prevent them from getting the support that they need.
One of the greatest challenges in tackling the abhorrent crime of domestic abuse is the fact that all too often incidents go unreported. The problem is further exacerbated if victims are afraid to come forward because they fear that doing so could lead to their deportation. For example, there is a risk that people will be afraid to report their abuse if their right to be in the UK is dependent on their staying with their spouse. Everyone, no matter their migration status, deserves equal protection under the law.
Lords amendment 40, on data sharing for immigration purposes, is therefore a huge opportunity to reassure victims and witnesses that the details they share with the police and other agencies will not be used for any immigration-control purposes. This will give them the confidence to come forward and report this often-hidden crime.
Let me turn to Lords amendment 41, on leave to remain and the destitution domestic violence concession. The long, arduous process of reporting domestic abuse and then through to eventual conviction is immensely taxing for all victims. The stress caused is unmanageable if victims are having to secure their right to remain in the UK at the same time.
The situation is made worse by the policies that limit access to some key services for those subject to immigration control. Lords amendment 41 will enshrine into law the right of victims of domestic abuse to have a route towards being granted indefinite leave to remain. Importantly, it will also guarantee their right to access services that could provide a vital lifeline. It could save lives.
In building a global Britain, we must stand shoulder to shoulder with all victims of domestic abuse, no matter their country of origin. Not only do we have a moral responsibility to enact the changes in the Lords amendments but, as signatories to the Istanbul convention on preventing violence against women and girls, we have an international responsibility, too.
One of the remaining hurdles in the way of full implementation of the convention is equal protection on the grounds of migrant or refugee status. Eight years on from the UK having become a signatory, it is a national embarrassment that the Government have repeatedly dithered and delayed its implementation. Lords amendments 40 and 41 will remove the stumbling block and pave the way towards Britain fulfilling its international and moral obligations.
Domestic abuse has existed in the shadows for far too long. This legislation goes a significant way towards protecting victims, and I hope Members will support Lords amendments 40 and 41 to ensure that its protections are available to all.
I am delighted to speak in this debate. Some excellent additions have been made to what was already a very strong Bill. In particular, I am delighted to speak to Lords amendment 35, which makes threatening to share sexual photographs or videos of someone without their consent an offence punishable by up to two years in prison.
Let me put on the record my thanks to both Bill Ministers, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk). I know that they have long supported these measures and worked hard to include them in the Bill, and they have put up with my badgering them on this issue with good grace. I also thank Baroness Morgan of Cotes, whose expert—and indeed noble—badgering was successful in getting the amendment over the line in the other place.
Most of all, however, I thank my constituent Natasha Saunders. I should say “my former constituent” because I have lost her to my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin)—although she assures me that that is no reflection on her former Member of Parliament. Brave women such as Natasha, and brave men, have stood up and told their stories. It is one thing to campaign for changes to the law; it is much harder for someone to speak publicly about the darkest moments—the most personal and private moments—of their life.
When we last debated the Bill in this House, I shared some of Natasha’s story. She said, in her own words:
“The threat of those photos being shared was my worst nightmare—I had no choice but to comply with his continued abuse or face potential humiliation… The threat was always there and as the years went on, it was like I ceased to exist. He made me feel invisible to everyone and if I displeased him in any way, I knew he could use those pictures to ruin my reputation.”
Natasha has been working with Refuge. I thank it, too, for its excellent research on this issue, which gave us the evidence base we needed. Refuge’s “The Naked Threat” report found that one in 14 people in England and Wales, and one in seven young women, has been a victim of threats to share. Almost four in five women changed the way they behaved as a result of the threats, proving how much this law is needed.
Threatening to expose someone at their most vulnerable because they have done or want to do something you do not like is a deeply sinister crime. It has already resulted in tragedy, and I know it has contributed to trapping people in dangerous, abusive relationships. Now survivors will have a route to justice.
I am proud to vote for Lords amendment 35. I am even prouder of Natasha. She has decided to start on the journey from campaigner to Member of Parliament, to do more to protect others from the horror she suffered, and I very much hope that she will join us on the iconic green Benches before long.
(3 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend is absolutely right. France is a safe country and, as I said, people who wish to claim protection from persecution when they are in northern France should do so by claiming asylum in France. There is no need at all to attempt this dangerous and illegally facilitated crossing. When people do make the crossing, we are using all the legal means available to us to ensure that they are returned—for example, to countries where they previously claimed asylum under the Dublin regulation—and flights doing that took place last week and will take place this week.
The United Kingdom, over the past five years, has, I am proud to say, run Europe’s leading resettlement scheme; we have resettled more people directly from conflict zones than any other European country. It is currently paused owing to coronavirus, but as soon as we are safely and properly able to resume activity, we will do so.
The UK’s refugee resettlement schemes have been a lifeline to many thousands of people who have come to the UK after escaping some of the world’s most brutal conflict and regimes. However, the Government have still not allocated any funding for these schemes beyond September 2021. What assurances can the Minister give me that the UK will continue to provide safe sanctuary to those fleeing war and persecution after that date?
The hon. Member will know that we are going through a spending review process, where questions of funding will be considered. Although the resettlement programme is currently paused owing to coronavirus, it is our intention to appropriately recommence it when circumstances allow. I thank her for the tribute that she paid to the scheme that has operated for the past five years. As she said, it is the leading scheme anywhere in Europe.
(4 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe Windrush scandal represents one of the largest injustices in recent times. The fact that British people were illegally deported, detained and denied their rights owing to a hostile environment policy is a wrong that can never be righted by compensation alone.
The administration of this scheme remains severely lacking, and adds insult to injury. It is vital for us all to remember the human lives that have been so badly affected by the Windrush scandal. I know that Members on both sides of the House have local experience of helping victims of the scandal, and in recent months my team has reopened cases of those whom we helped back in 2018 as our constituents now battle to secure the rightful compensation for what they went through.
My constituent Tanya Simms was denied a British passport without any explanation, despite having been born in Britain and having parents and older siblings who were all passport holders. That denial meant that she did not have the freedom to travel outside the United Kingdom, and could not produce the passport which would have given her access to many vital services. After many months of fighting for Tanya and her young daughter, who were forced by the Home Office to go through much pain and heartache, I was so pleased when they eventually received their passports after the true extent of the scandal came to light. Given that they had faced a lifetime of discrimination as, effectively, prisoners in Britain, I expected the much-deserved compensation to be easily forthcoming; but, unfortunately, it has been far from easy for Tanya.
I sought to help Tanya to gain access to the Windrush hardship fund to help to relieve the issues that she was facing, but, while helping her with the application, I was told by the Home Office that she could not benefit as she “was not affected” by Windrush, although just months earlier it had accepted that she was indeed a victim of the scandal and had given her a passport. Tanya may not have been deported from Britain, but that does not mean that no injustice was faced by her and her family. The limitations and constraints that she has faced as a result of the scandal have affected her life in ways that most people could never imagine, and because of that, in my opinion, she deserves compensation.
Following this blow, Tanya applied more than seven months ago for the full compensation scheme. However, she is still waiting to hear the outcome, despite many communications to the Home Office from my own office. I accept that it is a complicated process and it is important to proceed correctly, but in this case such a long wait is completely unacceptable.
Another case with which I have dealt, and which I raised in the House a year ago, is not a Windrush case, but it is a constant reminder to me that the environment in the Home Office has not changed. My constituent Victor Mujakachi was detained during a routine fortnightly reporting appointment, and is currently waiting for his appeal to be heard. When he was detained, his blood pressure medication was taken away from him, and he was not assessed by a doctor during his two days of detention, which put his health at great risk. That was completely wrong, and completely against all his human rights. The Home Office wants to deport Victor, although he would be punished by authorities in Zimbabwe for his outspoken criticism of the regime there. They continue to deny him, and a large number of other Zimbabwean asylum seekers, the right to stay in the UK.
The Bill seeks to remedy the vast pain that was felt by far too many in our country. The root cause of that pain was the hostile environment, and I fear that as long as it continues, we will be back here again. It is 652 days since Amber Rudd resigned as Home Secretary, which was, perhaps, the key moment when the Government admitted that a serious wrong had been done to thousands of people. On any reasonable timeline, we might expect today to be talking about wrapping up the compensation scheme having concluded payment, but nearly two years after the scandal broke, it is clear that we are very far from that point. As The Guardian reported on Thursday, only 3% of claimants have received payment from the scheme in 10 months. That delay is inexcusable, and it further underlines the incredibly low priority that the Government have given the scheme.
The Bill is important, but my colleagues and I have highlighted many issues that remain. I strongly hope that its passage will encourage a transformation of the way in which the scheme is being handled. Every time it has seemed that the Government understand the damage that they have done to British citizens, there is another roadblock, injustice or delay. Let me say this to the Home Secretary: pay what is owed to those who have suffered so much, and put an end to the hostile environment. Do it quickly, and give people the dignity, respect and compassion that they deserve.
(5 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberToday marks World Refugee Day. I am proud to represent Brightside and Hillsborough in Sheffield. We have a proud legacy of welcoming and supporting refugees over many decades. My city was the first “city of sanctuary”, established more than a decade ago. We are home to a vulnerable person relocation scheme. I am pleased that our Labour council has recommitted to the scheme until 2020, and hopefully beyond. Yet the scale of the challenge is enormous. Globally, there are 25 million people who are refugees and 68.5 million forcibly displaced from their homes due to war, persecution or environmental catastrophe. Today we are reminded of their plight and suffering, but also recognise the enormous contribution that refugees make here in the UK and beyond.
In March 2018, I stood before the House to deliver a speech in favour of the Second Reading of the private Member’s Bill on family reunion introduced by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil). I explained that I supported the Bill for all the refugee and migrant constituents in Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough, and for their loved ones who were unable to join them in the UK. I talked about my constituent Abdul—a young man from Syria who had settled in Sheffield after completing his degree there. Abdul attempted to rejoin his family in Syria, facing many dangerous situations along the way. It quickly became apparent to him that a reunion in Syria would not be possible due to the ongoing war, so he returned to the UK. On his return, Abdul made every effort to ensure that his family would join him safely in the country he now called his home. He sought help from every agency and organisation available to him to be able to be reunited with his family as quickly as possible. Despite his efforts, and compliance with the Home Office guidance and procedures, the process proved to be painfully slow and disappointing. It was an arduous journey for Abdul, separated from his elderly parents who had serious health problems for over 11 years while the request for reunion was dealt with.
I am very pleased that after that speech and following my plea to the Minister, Abdul and his family were finally reunited. I met the family a few weeks after they had arrived safely. It is fair to say that it was an emotional day for us all. Both I and his mother cried. I would like to place on record my sincere gratitude to the Immigration Minister, who responded swiftly to my request and was able to assist Abdul and his family. However, while Home Office policy can be useful in exceptional scenarios like that of Abdul and his family, I am afraid it is not good enough that families are still suffering, proving that the system is not fit for purpose—and the cases continue to come forward.
Only recently I have been approached with another deeply worrying case. Ms Sermani is a Syrian refugee, too, who came to the UK through family reunion to join her husband. She was separated from her children, aged six and 10, while undertaking the extremely dangerous journey to safety. Four years have now passed, and we are aware that the children, now 10 and 14, are currently living in Turkey. Their biological father disappeared during the war, and his whereabouts are not known. It is quite possible that he will have lost his life during the conflict in Syria.
It has been four desperately sad years since Ms Sermani has seen her young children. I cannot begin to imagine what it must feel like to live with so much distance between them. Despite her numerous attempts to bring them to the UK, she has had no success. I have been informed by the Home Office that under current rules, as she came to the UK under her husband’s refugee status, she does not have refugee status in her own right. This means that she cannot bring her children to join her through a family reunion application. Her husband is unable to make the application for them to reunite under his status as he is not their biological father. It is beyond shocking that we are confronted with this situation. Due to Home Office rules, the children will remain in another country without either parent.
I raise Ms Sermani’s case, with her consent, to highlight her personal plight but also the real, practical problems we are facing when dealing with such cases. These arbitrary criteria leave people extremely vulnerable, falling through the cracks of the system. The current bureaucratic barriers are actively keeping parents separated from their children. This is not the Britain that I know and we must do better.
The hon. Lady highlights an interesting case. Surely there have to be guiding principles from which the Home Office’s rules stem. The rules have not been written from those principles in a way that allows that person to come here. In the absence of rules, the Home Office should fall back on principles, and the woman being able to be reunited with her children is a case in point.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for those remarks. I hope that my speech today will alleviate the process for this family. I hope the Minister is willing to help, and I ask her to reconsider the application of Ms Sermani in my constituency. I also ask her to look at what more the Government can do to ensure that the guidance allows for greater flexibility in cases that do not fit the criteria directly.
Finally, as we mark World Refugee Day, I urge the Minister to allow the Refugees (Family Reunion) (No. 2) Bill to come back to the House, so that we may move forward. It is vital that the House has the opportunity to debate the Bill in Committee as soon as possible. We owe it to the many people who will rely on the passing of the Bill to be reunited with their loved ones.
(5 years, 2 months ago)
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I beg to move,
That this House has considered the cost of policing football.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and I am grateful to have been granted this important debate. Football policing is an interest of mine and is of particular local interest in my constituency, which is home to the famous Hillsborough stadium—one of England’s largest grounds and home to Sheffield Wednesday, which my family have supported for generations. Let us hope they do better this season, but there we go.
I am proud of our football history and of having such an important football ground in our community. However, the cost of policing matches is increasing, and the burden is falling on our already stretched police forces. Despite Wednesday’s extended stay in the second tier of English football—something that I am sure will end soon—South Yorkshire police incurs significant match day costs. According to the BBC, the steel city derby between Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United in September 2017 was the country’s most expensive match to police that year, costing over £200,000. Figures from South Yorkshire police, using a recent improved methodology for calculating match day policing costs, put the cost of this April’s steel city derby at Hillsborough at £203,000. That is against a backdrop of unprecedented cuts to our police services.
The Tories’ record on policing is one of failure and broken promises. Over 21,000 police officers and 7,000 community support officers have been axed since 2010, despite a promise to protect the frontline. While officer numbers have been slashed, the police have recorded the highest number of offences in a decade, and violent crime has doubled under the Tories and is now at record levels. The Tories have slashed billions from the police since coming into office and broken their promise to protect police budgets after 2015.
Our police forces have had resources drained out by a Government intent on policing on the cheap. Sadly, that means competing and conflicting demands on those vital, yet limited, resources. Knife crime continues to rise, as do other forms of violent crime. Alongside large sporting events such as football games, the police are struggling to keep pace with the scale of incidents to be responded to. In a sense, this debate is regrettable, in that if the Government had not abandoned our police forces, we might not be in the position of asking clubs to help foot the bill. However, given the overstretched nature of policing, we are where we are. The Labour party will invest in our police forces, giving them the proper resources to ensure that our communities are safe.
Professional football clubs rely heavily on the support of police to ensure football matches are safe for fans. Police officers do not just provide safety and reassurance within the bounds of a stadium, but have essential duties in preventing disorder around football grounds before and after matches. I will use my time today to highlight three factors that threaten the ability of our police forces to maintain order at football matches. First, as I said in opening, police forces are under the biggest strain they have faced in modern times. They have vastly reduced budgets and are dealing with a rising tide of violence and organised crime within our communities—something that, sadly, I know too well in my constituency. The number of officers available to cover matches is lower than it was, which unfortunately means that police officers must be taken away from neighbourhoods to support match day policing.
Secondly, disorder at football matches is rising. The figures presented to me by the UK football policing unit are stark: disorder has risen, with nearly 38% of professional matches reporting some form of violence or disorder incident during the 2017-18 season, compared with 25% of matches during the 2013-14 season. I have seen police footage of recent disorder at football matches, some of which is truly shocking. Many of those incidents took place away from the ground, where police are often less well positioned to respond. The consistent and sharp rise in hate crime at football matches is particularly concerning: police received reports of hate crime at 127 fixtures in 2017-18, and the campaign group Kick It Out received over 500 reports during the same season. As a society, we still have a long way to go in stamping racism, homophobia and sexism out of our beautiful game. Although education is at the heart of that work, police officers need to be able and ready to clamp down hard on the tiny minority of people who pollute football.
The third problem facing the police is that despite the rise in disorder over recent years, they are able to recover only a small proportion of the money they spend on policing. Mark Roberts, the football policing lead for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, has put the cost of policing professional football matches in England and Wales at over £48 million a year, of which police are able to claim back only around £5.5 million from clubs. Why are the police repaid only a fraction of their costs? The question of who pays for football policing is complicated, and has been in dispute for many years. The argument chiefly centres on the cost of policing outside stadiums, whether on closed streets immediately surrounding them or routes to and from the match. Despite the huge wealth that many football clubs have, they consistently challenge the extent to which they should refund the police for their expenditure outside the ground itself.
Currently, the legal position on the extent to which police can charge clubs for match costs is based on an October 2017 Court of Appeal ruling that went in favour of Ipswich Town and against Suffolk police. The ruling in that case was that the police could recover only the costs of policing the stadium itself—not even the immediate surroundings, let alone the wider area. To any of us who attend matches, it is clear that police do a significant amount of extra work outside the stadium to ensure that fans can go to and from matches safely. In giving their judgment, the judges recognised that the situation seemed unfair, but argued that it was for the Government to fix it. That difficult legal situation is significantly worse than it was previously, when the roads around stadiums were often deemed to be under the control of the football club, and policing costs were therefore recoverable.
The three combined problems of severe police cuts, a rise in match day disorder and legal rulings that are unfavourable to the police mean that both the safety of fans and the sustainability of policing are under threat. It is hardly for me to talk in detail about just how much money is in football, but a few figures will illustrate the resources available, and therefore the ability of clubs to pay a higher percentage of policing costs. In 2017-18, the 20 Premier League clubs alone had combined revenues of over £4.8 billion—almost double the entire budget of the Metropolitan police. One particularly stark fact, which comes from analysis undertaken by the National Police Chiefs’ Council, is that the £211 million paid to football agents last year is more than the annual budgets of 27 of the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales. We should be in no doubt that there is far more money available to top football clubs than to local police forces.
What might be done to create a better situation? I would not want to be too prescriptive in suggesting to the Minister how the situation could be resolved. However, I ask whether he agrees that action needs to be taken. I also ask whether he agrees that any such action needs to be proportionate in how it targets clubs. We need to be aware of those clubs that may suffer incidents of disorder but do not have the financial resources of the top leagues. Full cost recovery could be damaging for many local league clubs, which leads me to support a suggestion by the police that a levy on football TV rights might be the fairest way for police to receive additional funding. The Premier League’s total TV rights are now expected to exceed £3 billion a year. To illustrate, a 1% levy could recover enough money to cover a substantial portion of football policing costs and relieve clubs and the police of expensive and time-consuming arguments about the extent of payments.
In public policy today, there is often cross-party support for policies that ensure the costs of dealing with a problem for society are borne by the organisation responsible for the activity causing the issue. We see that with recycling levies for packaging firms and carbon taxes for power companies. Does the Minister agree that the taxes paid by football clubs or footballers cannot be used as an argument against clubs contributing properly to policing costs? Taxes pay for the benefits we all share as a society; football clubs should bear a more representative fraction of the burden for the costs incurred in keeping fans safe.
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. She is making a strongly argued case. The problem is that football clubs are their own worst enemies. They say, “No spectators on the pitch,” but they blatantly ignore that when spectators do come on the pitch, as they do when fans bring pyrotechnics or provocative signs into the ground. Clubs owe a responsibility to the vast majority of fans to stamp that out. Does my hon. Friend agree that they could do much more on that?
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which makes exactly the point that I am raising. Being a lifelong Wednesday fan builds character, as my nana used to say, but it also helped me realise that football is wonderful. I am in no way anti-football. We love football; we are a footballing country. I am seeking fair play and a level playing field for police and football clubs. The clubs absolutely can do more. We do not want to go back to the bad old days of 30 or 40 years ago, which some of us will remember, when football was not the family game we have now successfully made it. That is really what I want to get over to the Minister today.
To conclude, I will not let up campaigning for police funding to tackle knife crime and to better protect our communities, but I hope that today’s debate raises some important issues for us to consider. Will the Minister outline what the Government will do to share the costs more reasonably between the large clubs and our police forces? In that way, we can not only ensure that football events are properly policed, but support our local police services and ensure that they have sufficient resources to meet all the demands that are placed upon them.