Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

I disagree with the hon. Lady’s interpretation of the situation. We should be working in a collaborative cross-Government way, particularly to support domestic employment wherever possible. Comprehensive steps are being taken through the back to work plan to help deliver on that, and there are many people here on other routes who are perfectly able to work and, with the right support, would be doing so. That is precisely where we are going to focus our efforts.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to provide advice to police forces across the country to help them support communities during the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas?

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is right to ask that question, because sadly, we have seen an absolutely vile upsurge in antisemitism on our streets. We have seen people who claim to be speaking out for equality and justice actually defending people who take slaves, who violate women’s and girls’ rights, and who here in our own country make the Jewish community feel uncomfortable. That is exactly why this Government have committed £18 million to the Community Security Trust. Very sadly, we have also had to commit £7 million to academic security, because there has also been a massive increase in antisemitism in universities. We are combating all of that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

What steps her Department is taking to increase the number of police officers.

[Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)]

What steps her Department is taking to increase the number of police officers.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Priti Patel)]

The Government have a clear commitment to recruit 20,000 police officers by March 2023. Thanks to the strong commitment we have had from all forces across England and Wales, we have made a fantastic start, with almost 6,000 additional officers recruited by the end of September. As the party of law and order, we are well on track to increasing police officer numbers across all forces.

[Jack Lopresti]

I welcome the increase in police numbers across the country; it is great news, honouring and delivering on our manifesto commitment. I have been informed that Avon and Somerset seems to be lagging behind a bit on the uplift of police numbers. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that that is not the case?

[Priti Patel]

I can assure my hon. Friend that Avon and Somerset has all the resources needed to recruit the number of police officers that it needs. We have asked it to recruit 137; it has actually recruited 130, and of course we have funded it with up to £326 million. On top of that, I would urge the police force and my hon. Friend to keep on banging the drum—we are the party of law and order—and to get out there and recruit the remaining police officers that it needs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I would be delighted to look at that application directly with the Home Office. We also have 57 voluntary organisations that have been resourced by the Home Office to reach out to individuals who will not necessarily be able to access technology easily. But, as I say, I will be very happy to look at that individual case.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

May I welcome the confirmation of additional funding for counter-terrorism in the spending review and ask my right hon. Friend what steps she is taking to counter terrorist content online?

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We are determined and focused in making sure that we do everything we can to ensure that we keep all our citizens safe. He rightly highlights the threat to us all of the online environment and the work that we need to do with our agencies right across the board. Great work is being done not just by the National Crime Agency but by other agencies to ensure that we are continually working to make sure that this is a safe environment. However, we all have a part to play in that, and we will continue to be focused on it in terms of finance and of policy and legislation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I have a lot of sympathy for what the hon. Lady is saying. In relation to the Grenfell firefighters, that is something that I will of course take up with the London fire brigade. On the broader point, she is absolutely right to say that firefighters are exposed to contaminants and toxic agents. Exposure will vary, but I am sure she will be aware that past research has not shown an increase in risk. However, this is a source of concern to us, and the fire chiefs have recently commissioned research from the University of Brighton. We will need to wait for that to conclude before agreeing the next steps in relation to the kind of comprehensive universal screening service that she has mentioned.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

11. What steps he is taking to provide security and law enforcement organisations with the tools that they need to counter terrorism.

[The Minister for Security and Economic Crime (Mr Ben Wallace)]

A review of powers was undertaken as part of our updated comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST, and the lessons learned from the attacks of 2016 and 2017 were incorporated. Following the review, the Government launched the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act, which received Royal Assent on 12 February 2019.

[Jack Lopresti]

Our security services are world class, but we know that co-ordination is key, so does my right hon. Friend agree that negotiating security co-operation with our European partners and neighbours and strengthening our alliances around the world should be top post-Brexit priorities?

[Mr Wallace]

Yes, I can reassure the House that intelligence sharing will go on unchanged. The relationship between intelligence services under national security, irrespective of our status within Europe, will not diminish, and the same goes for our status within the Five Eyes community—a strong partnership for intelligence. In addition, when it comes to law enforcement tools, our relationships are also underpinned by the 1957 Council of Europe convention on extradition and the 1959 European convention on mutual assistance in criminal matters, and those will continue no matter what the settlement is.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am sure that the hon. Lady will welcome the fact that the Government have provided up to £970 million more for policing in this year, which means more than £11 million for her constabulary. I am sure she will be delighted that that will be spent by the Conservative police and crime commissioner to fund 50 more police officers and 20 more police community support officers.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that greater flexibility for local police and crime commissioners will better enable local forces to solve local problems?

[Victoria Atkins]

Very much so. As my hon. Friend knows, the Government support police and crime commissioners precisely because we believe that, ensconced in their local communities, they can understand the local policing priorities in their areas better than bureaucrats in Whitehall.

Leaving the EU: Rights of EU Citizens

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

People who go through the settled status scheme will be given a digital status so they can evidence that they have been through the scheme. I am very conscious—I believe I said this to the Home Affairs Committee last week—that there will be children born between now and 29 March 2019 who may well live to 120 and beyond, so we have to ensure that the settled scheme is enduring so that, potentially, for the next 100-plus years people will still be able to evidence their status.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that EU citizens who have made their lives in the UK continue to make a great contribution to our country? I sincerely hope that she agrees with me, because my father is one of them. He came here as an economic migrant just over 50 years ago, and he is not in any way unduly concerned about his status when we leave the EU.

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank my hon. Friend for drawing on his family experience. One of the most important things we can do to demonstrate our commitment is to open a settled status scheme, and we have done that. The scheme opened in August for the first private beta testing phase, and we are now in phase 2. There will be a third phase in January after a firebreak so that we can check that the scheme is working as we would want. I am delighted that we have already seen in the region of 1,000 people granted settled status.

Foreign Fighters and the Death Penalty

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I do not think that I need to guide the right hon. Gentleman not to quote from a ministerial source on any day of the week, and I would advise any colleagues against doing so. That ministerial source, whoever it may be, is wrong.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that it is a vital strategic priority of our Government to work as closely as possible with the United States on a range of national security issues, and to assist us in our fight against international terrorism and extremism to help to keep our people safe?

[Mr Wallace]

My hon. Friend has made an important point. Every week, the United States and our European allies share evidence and intelligence that keep us safe. They are our friends in this ever-unstable world. It is incredibly important that we stay close to all our allies and continue in partnership both to prosecute people where they pose a threat—if it is here, then here, but if it is not, elsewhere, in the countries that share our values—and to share intelligence in order to make sure that all of us keep safe.

British Jihadis (Iraq and Syria)

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Woodcock]

The hon. Gentleman captures succinctly the essence of my speech. Not only has the institute made that estimate, but the Government corroborate the fact that just over half of those 850 people have returned to the UK.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

I too congratulate the hon. Gentleman on calling this debate. Is he as surprised and appalled as I am that these people are allowed back into the country, after going abroad to fight with our enemies and to threaten our lives and our freedoms?

[John Woodcock]

I guess I am, but can the hon. Gentleman come up with something that would persuade another Government to take such a UK citizen? I would like them never to set foot back here again, but I know that we would never allow a foreign resident who had committed a terrorist atrocity to stay in our country.

Proscription of Hezbollah

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

I just want to highlight the backers of Hezbollah, the Iranians, who provide training and weapons, including rockets. While the Iranians’ malevolent influence continues throughout the middle east, they are jeopardising the prospects for peace between the Palestinians and Israelis and posing a strategic threat to the very state of Israel.

[Joan Ryan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point with which I absolutely agree. I will come to it a little later.

Hezbollah is a menace throughout the middle east, but Israel is its principal target. That is no secret. In its founding manifesto in 1985, in which it also pledged its loyalty to Ayatollah Khomeini and urged the establishment of an Islamic regime, Hezbollah says of Israel:

“Our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated… We recognise no treaty with it, no cease-fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.”

This is no mere rhetorical sabre-rattling; Hezbollah vehemently opposed the Oslo peace process and has fought any normalisation of relations between Israel and Arab countries. On numerous occasions—most notably in 1993, 1996 and 2006—it has sought to provoke conflict with Israel, and the consequences have been disastrous and devastating for the peoples of both Israel and Lebanon.

In 2006, Hezbollah kidnapped and murdered Israeli soldiers on the country’s northern border and proceeded to launch Katyusha rockets to indiscriminately pound the Jewish state. The resulting conflict led to large numbers of civilian casualties and the evacuation of several hundred thousand people. In defiance of UN resolution 1701, which brought the conflict to an end, Hezbollah has spent the last decade restocking its arsenal and rebuilding its forces in Lebanon. It has trebled the size of its fighting force from 17,000 to 45,000 men. It has launched an arms procurement programme, amassing short, medium and long-range missiles and rockets, drones, precision-guided projectiles, anti-tank weaponry and ballistic missiles. It now has an estimated 120,000 to 140,000 rockets and missiles—an arsenal larger than that of many states.

That Hezbollah has been allowed to replenish and then expand its armoury in this manner represents a terrible failure on the part of the international community, a breaking of the assurances provided to Israel and a betrayal of the people of Lebanon and Israel. The implications are truly horrifying. Andrew Exum, an expert on the region and President Obama’s former deputy assistant secretary of defence for middle east policy, wrote recently:

“I shudder to think what the next conflict will look like.”

Hezbollah has no qualms about such a war. It does not care about the loss of thousands of civilian lives—of Israelis, Lebanese, Jews, Muslims and Christians—that its aggression will lead to.

Quite deliberately, Hezbollah has embedded its forces and weaponry in towns and villages, turning the people of southern Lebanon into human shields. Quite deliberately, it will, as it has done in the past, target civilian population centres in Israel, even vowing, in the words of Nasrallah, that there will be “no red lines” in any future conflict—he underlined the pledge with threats to attack the Dimona nuclear reactor and the ammonia storage facility in Haifa. Quite deliberately, it will seek to draw in other regional actors. Its capacity may be many times greater than those of other terrorist groups, but its aim—to instil terror by inflicting mass civilian casualties—is the same as that of those who wage attacks on targets big and small throughout the world, and of those who attacked London Bridge, the Manchester arena and this House only last year.

Hezbollah has not simply exported terror globally and wreaked havoc in Israel and Lebanon; its bloody fingerprints are all over the Syrian civil war, the most brutal conflict of this century. In 2016, it was estimated that more than a quarter of Hezbollah’s forces were engaged in fighting on behalf of the murderous Assad regime. It has not only contributed to the killing fields of Aleppo and Homs; it has helped to eliminate the non-extremist opposition to Assad, thus contributing to the ranks of Sunni jihadists and stirring sectarian hatred.

Hezbollah has indeed become Iran’s indispensable partner—the Blackwater of Iran, as some have labelled it—helping to promote and further Tehran’s expansionist agenda throughout the middle east, in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Such a vast enterprise cannot be run on the cheap, so in addition to the vast sums of weaponry and cash lavished on it by Iran, the party of God is now engaged in money laundering, arms sales and drugs smuggling. It works through informal networks and centrally run enterprises. The latter, one leading middle east expert told the US Congress last summer, were operating like “international organised criminal entities”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Austin]

In Lebanon and Israel, in Syria and Yemen, Hezbollah is causing carnage. That is its stated aim.

[Jack Lopresti]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, as others have said, one of the best ways of defeating Hezbollah is to encourage and assist a stable, functioning Lebanese state?

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I entirely agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman about the need to ensure that those cases are processed as quickly as possible. The most effective way to do that is to provide teams that link up with the best expertise on both sides of the channel, and that is exactly what we have done with the French authorities. The process will not take as long as he suggested. We are seeing cases being processed in a matter of weeks, which is precisely what we want.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

3. What steps she is taking to ensure that illegal migrants cannot profit from working in the UK.

[The Minister for Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

The Government are committed to tackling illegal working. The Immigration Act 2016 makes illegal working a criminal offence in its own right, which ensures that wages paid to illegal migrants can be seized as the proceeds of crime, and assets may be confiscated on conviction. The Government are prioritising the implementation of that provision, which will take place on 12 July.

[Jack Lopresti]

Does my right hon. Friend consider that tackling illegal working has been made easier or harder by the 2014 judgment of the European Court, which forbids the United Kingdom from requiring migrants to have documentation issued by the British Government, although a High Court judge has said that documents issued by other EU member states are systematically forged?

[James Brokenshire]

I can reassure my hon. Friend on the steps that Border Force takes to check documentation and the fact that under this Government we have 100% checks of all scheduled passengers arriving here precisely to identify where fraudulent documents are used. The most important thing is the join-up across government in identifying where these activities are taking place, which is precisely what is happening.