Oral Answers to Questions
Jake Richards Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Dame Diana Johnson
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I recently met the Agricultural Engineers Association to discuss the implementation of the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023, which he will know is important in tackling some of that rural crime with agricultural equipment that has been stolen, often by organised gangs. There is work ongoing on this, and the issue is recognised by the Home Office.
Jake Richards (Rother Valley) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)
Public confidence in policing fell under the last Conservative Government, as we saw a big drop in police on the beat, with fewer crimes solved and a real sense in communities that more criminals are getting away with it. This Government are determined to turn that around, starting with getting police back on the beat and rebuilding neighbourhood policing.
Jake Richards
Earlier this month I held a community meeting in Dinnington about the regeneration project on the high street. It was well attended, and people are optimistic, but they are also worried about the lack of police in the area and the crime that continues to blight their town. Can the Home Secretary reassure the residents of Dinnington that this Government will rebuild community policing, which was utterly let down over 14 years of Conservative Government?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is exactly right. The percentage of people seeing police on the beat each week has dropped by two thirds over the past 14 years. The percentage of people who say they never see the police has doubled. That is the shameful consequence of 14 years of Conservative policing policies. This Government will put 13,000 more police and police community support officers back on the beat.
Dame Angela Eagle
There will be a huge drop of immigration-related national statistics at the end of the week.
Jake Richards (Rother Valley) (Lab)
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point. There is a serious problem of injunctions, non-molestation orders and protection orders not being treated properly. That is why we are introducing Raneem’s law, which includes stronger protection orders and specialists in 999 control rooms.
Police Accountability
Jake Richards Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
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Yvette Cooper
I thank the right hon. Member for that question. It is clearly important that police officers who face threats or risks as a result of the job they do and the difficult situations they find themselves in because of their work to keep us safe have strong protection and support. He will know that I cannot comment on an individual case and certainly not on an individual investigation. Those are rightly independent operational decisions for police forces. However, I think more widely that everyone will want to make sure that officers who do difficult jobs do have the support that they need.
Jake Richards (Rother Valley) (Lab)
The balance between ensuring that our police have the powers and tools they need to keep our streets safe and ensuring that they are not above the law is a delicate one. In that light, I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement, and indeed the response of the shadow Home Secretary. Does the Home Secretary agree, however, that some of the comments in the media yesterday—and, indeed, from Members of the House such as the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick)—are unhelpful? We need to consider all the evidence carefully, in a constructive and calm way, when considering this really important issue, and should not rush to conclusions on the back of media reports.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is an important British tradition that we respect the rule of law, which means that individual decisions are made by the police, prosecutors, the courts and juries independently of anything that the Government do and independently of anything that politicians do or say. We all operate within legal frameworks, as you reminded us at the beginning of the statement, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sure all of us would want to respect that, but also to support all of those independent institutions in the complex and challenging work that they do. We can set the framework, but they have to take the individual decisions.
Illegal Immigration
Jake Richards Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Dame Angela Eagle
I have not seen the letter to the hon. Gentleman, but I am happy to write to him if he wants a further explanation. We must remember that in its three years in existence, the Rwanda scheme cost hundreds of millions of pounds. We were going to pay £150,000 per person deported to Rwanda; that was part of the agreement. In those three years, only four people were sent to Kigali, and they went voluntarily, so I do not think the Conservatives’ view that the Rwanda scheme was an answer to all their problems and prayers was borne out by the experience of it. Scrapping it has not made a blind bit of difference to some people’s desire to get into this country.
Jake Richards (Rother Valley) (Lab)
On the Rwanda scheme, does the Minister agree with the comments, reported in the press, of the right hon. Member for Braintree (Mr Cleverly)? When he was Home Secretary he clearly understood that it would never work, when the Leader of the Opposition was Chancellor he clearly thought it would not work, and in the three years of its existence it did not work, so the fact that Conservative Members are still clutching on to it does not bode particularly well for their prospects of coming back to reality.
Dame Angela Eagle
I agree with my hon. Friend’s observations. Rather than clutching on to something that was clearly very expensive and has not worked, the important thing is to get down to doing the day job. While the Rwanda scheme was being developed, the Home Office stopped doing a lot of other things that it should have been doing. Returns completely plummeted: the Illegal Migration Act 2023 made it impossible to process a range of people, so they were literally sitting in hotels, costing £8 million a day.
There are no easy answers—I am not the first Minister for illegal immigration and asylum to say that there are no easy fixes, and I will not be the last—but we have to be able to administer the system, deal with returns and do all the things we have to do to make asylum system outcomes meaningful. If a person’s asylum application fails and their country is safe, they should be returned; there should be a consequence to the asylum decision. The Government have a duty to speed up the asylum system and make it fair, but there must be a consequence if the outcome is not what the asylum seeker wants.
Violent Disorder
Jake Richards Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Police officers in this country take an oath when they become officers to operate without fear or favour. They work immensely hard, right across the country, to uphold that. Rightly, we have operational independence for policing. Those claims have been used by those who want somehow to legitimise attacks on the police, who work so hard to keep us safe. It is wrong to make those claims. We should support and work with the police to raise standards across policing and to ensure that they can continue to keep our communities safe.
Jake Richards (Rother Valley) (Lab)
The scenes outside a hotel in Wath over the summer took place just a few miles away from my constituency. A group of rioters set a hotel on fire, knowing full well that innocent people were inside, including a constituent of mine who was being housed there with her children, under the statutory responsibilities of the local authority, as she had recently been made homeless. Local police officers worked 20-hour shifts to keep her safe. The day after the riots, local people attended to clear up the rubble, and in the weeks after community groups, like the Dinnington community boxing club, organised events to show unity and solidarity in the face of violence. Does the Home Secretary agree that that, and not the acts of those mindless thugs who attacked the hotel in Wath, is the true spirit of South Yorkshire?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point and speaks powerfully for his constituency. I am so sorry that his constituent was affected by the violence in that way. He is right to talk about the true spirit of South Yorkshire and the communities that come together. Right across our coalfield communities, there is a spirit of solidarity—of really strong communities pulling together and not standing for such violence and thuggery.