Oral Answers to Questions

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

I will tell the House why the hon. Gentleman is absolutely wrong in his analysis. We are on track to recruit 20,000 police officers. That is the highest number of police officers ever known in this country—higher than in the Labour years and higher than in the 1990s, so I am sorry, but the facts do not support his accusation of reduced funding and reduced resources. He raises an important point about antisocial behaviour, and that is my priority: graffiti, vandalism, drug dealing, nuisance boy racers—they all have to be stopped. That is why increased numbers of police officers and neighbourhood policing on the ground are going to be able to tackle exactly the problem he talks about.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

T2. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman)]

I am going to make a short topical statement.

It is very important that our passport system runs as efficiently as possible. This is an issue that matters a great deal to our constituents. Covid had a global impact on passport processing times. In 2022, His Majesty’s Passport Office served more customers than ever before. Staff numbers have increased by over 1,200 since April 2021 and many staff have been trained to deal with a broader range of applications. I note that last spring there were serious concerns about the performance of the Passport Office, which prompted the Home Affairs Committee to inquire into the issue. I have made it a priority to fix that issue since I became Home Secretary, and I am pleased that since September the team at the Passport Office have worked hard to reduce processing times and that, despite very high demand so far this year, last week, approximately 99% of all UK applications were completed within 10 weeks. Indeed, last week, approximately 97% of all UK applications were completed within three weeks. We expect elevated demand for passports throughout the year, so customers should continue to allow 10 weeks, and I urge people to apply in good time, not at the last minute, to avoid delays.

[Mr Speaker]

I say to the Home Secretary that it is not appropriate to make such statements at the start of topicals. If there is a statement, she should come to the House. Topicals are meant to be short bits of business, not to be dragged out. If we stay long today, she will understand why. If there is an urgent question tomorrow, she should not be shocked if somebody has to answer it.

[Jason McCartney]

Whereas most countries have police forces, we are proud to have a police service in Britain, with police officers playing an integral role in the communities in which they live and work. That is why I particularly welcome the 16,000-plus police officers who are being recruited. In West Yorkshire, in my patch, that means 589 additional police officers. What extra will the Home Secretary do to ensure that we recruit high-quality police officers while also retaining those experienced officers in our local forces?

[Suella Braverman]

West Yorkshire police have recruited 837 additional police officers to December, against their total allocation of 852. This is an unprecedented recruitment drive and it gives forces the opportunity to recruit the brightest and the best into policing. It is thanks to this Government’s commitment to policing, to police numbers and to funding that we are on track to recruit a historic level of police officers on the frontline, something that the Labour party has failed to support.

Overseas Chinese Police Stations in UK: Legal Status

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend to the Dispatch Box and congratulate the Chair of the FAC, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), on raising this important issue. I want to return to the question of intimidation and threats on university campuses and assessments of any foreign state involvement in that. What guidance has been or will be issued to university vice-chancellors about the threats of these transnational oppressive actions?

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend kindly refers to the FAC report of 2019. While I am not going to comment on actions taken towards universities—that is a matter for the Department for Education—the reality is that the communication between my office and that Department will only grow, as, sadly, these incidents appear to.

Ukraine: Urgent Refugee Applications

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

I do not want to get into political point-scoring on this particular issue. It is neither seemly nor appropriate to do so. In terms of the routes, as we say, we place our first priority on families and relatives, because we appreciate that the vast majority of relatives will be able to stay with family. We are working at pace to set up the humanitarian sponsorship visa, but, obviously, our colleagues in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will be leading on operationalising the actual sponsorship element of that to ensure that we can give the warm-hearted welcome that many want to see.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I am so proud to represent a vibrant Ukrainian community in my Colne Valley constituency. I am equally proud to have so many people in my community opening their hearts and ready to open their homes for these Ukrainian refugees. We have done so much on sanctions, on humanitarian aid, and on military aid, so why are we dragging our feet with all this bureaucracy? Will the Minister not only commit to put extra staff into these visa centres, but ensure that they are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week? All the helplines need to be manned 24 hours a day. Can he assure me that, by the weekend, thousands and thousands more desperate Ukrainian refugees will be safe here in the UK with their family and friends?

[Kevin Foster]

I hear my hon. Friend’s point. As he said, we are bringing in more decision makers—people from UK Visas and Immigration who are experienced in decision making—to ensure that, as soon as a decision is ready to go, we can get straight on and do it. We are certainly looking to expand, where we can, the visa application capacity. Again, we need to make sure that we have enough staff. We are looking at whether we can backfill that with staff from the United Kingdom. Again, this is more about staff availability than the actual physical structure. Sometimes local labour laws impact on operations, but we do not think that that will be an issue in this particular instance given the urgency of the case. Crucially, as I have touched on a couple of times, we should look at whether we can remove entirely from some cases the need for an appointment—for example for under-18s—and at whether we can use the tech that we use for the British national overseas visas. Many BNO applicants never go near a VAC; they just use our ID with their passports. Again, that deals with the point about capacity without the need for any extra appointments.

Public Order

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I am saddened that the hon. Lady is shaking her head, because, as I said earlier in the House and I will state again, it is important that everybody learns lessons. It is important that we respect all communities, it is important that we show tolerance and understanding to all communities, and that is exactly what the Prime Minister will be doing through this new commission.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

My constituents, who have been doing the right thing and making huge sacrifices to restrict the spread of the virus, have been watching the events in London over the past two weekends with a mixture of disbelief and anger. I join them in demanding that the Mayor of London gets a grip, and if he will not, will my right hon. Friend step in and get a grip?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The British public have made enormous sacrifices throughout the covid crisis, and it is right, as I have said, that the sacrifices they have made and the hard-won gains we have made as a country in tackling coronavirus are not lost through these gatherings. He is right, and I, too, would urge the Mayor of London, as I have been doing —as have the police, and the Met commissioner as well—to stand firm and discourage these gatherings. Quite frankly, if the Mayor of London is not prepared to do that, then we will absolutely do that, and fill that void.

Unaccompanied Child Refugees

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

It is disappointing that the hon. Gentleman clearly has not heard a word of what I have been saying about the efforts that the UK is going to, the generosity of local authorities, and the commitment from the international aid budget. Those are all strong pieces of evidence to show that this country and this Government are stepping up to their responsibilities.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Having been to Domiz refugee camp on the Iraq border, I am particularly proud of Britain’s biggest ever response to a humanitarian crisis, which amounts to £2.3 billion. Will the Home Secretary confirm that if communities and councils want to continue with the scheme and also to take more vulnerable young refugees in the future, they will be welcome to do so?

[Amber Rudd]

We always welcome initiatives from local councils to ensure that we look after the refugees and children who come over here. I urge any local authorities that think they can do more to get in touch with the national transfer scheme, which will support the councils that are, sometimes, having to accommodate too many children in their area and long for additional support.

Police Dogs and Horses

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

May I say how pleased I am that you are chairing this important debate, Mr Crausby? I thank the Petitions Committee for allocating time to discuss this issue in Westminster Hall, and in particular the hon. Member for Northampton South (David Mackintosh) for doing such a good job of setting out the principles underpinning the debate.

As we have heard, people all over the country have been struck by the story of police dog Finn and his handler, PC Dave Wardell, with the petition reaching more than 100,000 signatures in just 10 days. I will heed your advice, Mr Crausby, and not say any more about that case, but let me take this opportunity to wish Finn and PC Wardell all the best on their road to recovery. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]

I also thank the “Finn’s Law” campaign team, who have harnessed the sense of injustice about what happened to Finn and turned it into positive action, with a view to delivering the change that we would all like to see. I pay tribute to some of the senior officers in West Yorkshire police who have gone over and above what might have been expected to lend their support to the “Finn’s Law” campaign. If people have not already seen the video of Chief Inspector Aidy Waugh and Chief Superintendents Tim Kingsman and Mabs Hussain trying and failing to evade a police dog, all in the name of raising awareness about Finn’s law, I promise them that it is well worth a watch and even a retweet.

Spending time with West Yorkshire police in my constituency over the summer, I have met some incredibly dedicated people, yet the workload of our police forces is becoming increasingly complicated. In West Yorkshire since 2010, we have lost 1,200 police officers—a 20% reduction in the force—and increasingly officers are asked to respond to 999 calls on their own. I witnessed an incident that quickly escalated, leaving an officer surrounded following a routine attempt to stop a vehicle. With the Police Federation, I started the “Protect the Protectors” campaign and began raising police officer safety in the Chamber, but the work of the “Finn’s Law” campaign reminded me that it is not just police officers but our hard-working police horses and dogs that are exposed to risk.

There are 1,900 police dogs in the UK: 781 specialist dogs and 1,119 general purpose dogs carrying out tasks that are often simply beyond their human counterparts. In West Yorkshire fairly recently, two police cars were rammed by a vehicle and the driver ran off, evading arrest. Police dog Tia was able to track the offender and found his discarded hat; from that hat, a DNA sample was obtained and matched and the suspect identified. Police dog Ty tracked and located an elderly lady with dementia who had got lost in freezing weather. Officers were adamant that had Ty not located her, she would not have lasted much longer, exposed to the harsh weather conditions.

Police officers tell us that dogs are one of the most effective ways of managing some very difficult situations, with officers’ only concern being that not enough dogs are available. Police dog Buzz, a firearms support dog, recently detained a distressed male who was threatening the public with a large knife. He was able to bring the incident to a conclusion thanks to the advanced training that police dogs go through, and thankfully with no harm to himself.

Police horses are also invaluable, yet six were injured during last year’s million mask march and an irate football fan was sentenced to a year in prison in 2013 for punching West Yorkshire police horse Bud in the face before being detained by officers.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I praise the hon. Lady for her work on the “Protect the Protectors” campaign. She is giving very good examples. Police dogs and horses are an integral part of the policing team, and introducing exemplary punishments for those who show ill will and cause harm, damage and perhaps even death to police horses and dogs will give confidence to the police officers who are working as a team with their police dogs and horses.

[Holly Lynch]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is absolutely right: offering that protection to dogs will lend further support to handlers and to their colleagues more widely.

I did not know until I was made aware by the “Finn’s Law” campaign that the only mechanism for charging someone who assaults or kills a police dog or horse is in section 4 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006. Conviction carries a maximum penalty of six months in prison. Alternatively, in the most serious cases, an offender can be charged with criminal damage. Kent Police Federation tweeted me yesterday and summed the position up perfectly. It said that

“the Finn’s law campaign isn’t about the law treating Police Dogs the same as cops, but it is about treating them better than a broken window.”

I understand that a constructive meeting has already taken place between the campaign team and the Policing Minister, which is encouraging, but I think the Minister already knows my view: police officers and police animals alike deserve the full backing of the justice system, and tough sentences must play a role in deterring anyone who thinks that it is acceptable to assault either a police officer or a police animal—quite often it is both. That simply must not be tolerated.

Although I welcome the recent progress made, as with assaults on police officers it has been difficult to establish the scale of the problem of assaults on police animals because of a lack of official statistics. That is partly due to the difficulties of getting an offence to court and securing a conviction, as we have heard. The evidence required to secure either an animal welfare or a criminal damage conviction has to clear such a high threshold that offences are, sadly, going unpunished. To prove criminal damage, it has to be shown that property—a dog or horse in this instance—has been deliberately or recklessly broken, permanently or temporarily. Bruises and cuts resulting from kicks or punches are almost impossible to demonstrate under an animal’s fur. Similar challenges apply under the Animal Welfare Act: it would need to be proved that an offender inflicted “unnecessary suffering” on an animal and did so deliberately. If an offender claimed that a kick to a police dog’s head was an involuntary reaction to being scared, for example, a prosecution would be difficult to secure.

The average cost of the initial training of a police dog is about £20,000, and the lifetime cost, including vets’ bills, food and kennelling, is about £50,000. That is a significant investment on the part of a police force, but it makes that investment because police dogs are a highly trained asset and incredibly effective at what they do. However, precisely because of what they do, they are exposed to heightened and very different risks from other animals, and I agree with the “Finn’s Law” campaign that that should be reflected in the laws that protect them.

Police Officer Safety

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Holly Lynch]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We see police forces having to pick up the slack where there have been cuts to other agencies—agencies that should be taking a lead in dealing with some of these quite difficult social problems. I will come to how many vulnerable people were missing when I did my shift with West Yorkshire police and the impact that had on how many officers were available to respond to 999 calls.

To return to the statistics, I am asking the Home Office to work with police forces to standardise the process of collecting that information. Quite simply, if an officer is assaulted, in any force at any time, let us record it. Assaults on officers must be the subject of robust investigations. While officers need to play their part in that and follow up by reporting instances where they have been the victim of an assault, I also appreciate that they will not report injuries unless they have the confidence that those involved will be investigated and prosecuted appropriately.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising this issue on behalf of West Yorkshire police, our local force. Will she join me in welcoming the recruitment of an extra 300 officers in West Yorkshire? Does she also agree that we need some exemplary sentences as a deterrent, so that the police can have the assurance of knowing that anyone who perpetrates violence against a police officer or PCSO will receive a harsher sentence?

[Holly Lynch]

Of course, sentencing plays a big part in deterring those contemplating assault on a police officer. I very much welcome that recruitment drive, but we have seen the loss of 1,200 officers in West Yorkshire, so the faster those new boots are on the ground, the better.

I welcome the work of the Police Federation’s John Apter in Hampshire, which has been an effective means of establishing best practice. I would encourage all forces to consider rolling out similar schemes for recording and investigating assaults on officers. Police officers who are assaulted deserve the full backing of the justice system, as the hon. Gentleman has just said. Since my shift with West Yorkshire police, I have become aware of at least five more assaults on officers in my constituency in the days that followed and have been made aware of some absolutely horrific incidents reported to me by serving officers all over the country—indeed, we have already heard many more today. What has shocked me, and what thoroughly depresses police officers, is that sentences handed down to offenders for assaulting the police often fail to reflect the seriousness of the crime or, more crucially, serve as a deterrent.

Terrorist Attack: Nice

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about the type of weapon that was used in this case. I repeat that there is an ongoing investigation in France. We have no further information or details, but we are keeping large events under particular review, so that we can ensure that the people promoting or hosting such events always have the important information that they need to keep the attendees safe.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

The murderous rampage of this evil terrorist was eventually halted by armed police in Nice. Will the Home Secretary reiterate how satisfied she is with the availability of armed rapid response units in our regional towns and cities?

Football Fan Violence: Euro 2016

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman mentions stadium security and flares being taken in, and we are discussing with the French police what further steps they can take on security both at and inside the stadium on Thursday. The UK police are working with the French, and with the Russian and Slovakian police—the match on Wednesday will be Russia versus Slovakia in Lille—to ensure that every action is taken to identify and act against troublemakers. Action has been taken against England fans, and there are also some reports about the French authorities taking action against some Russian fans.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

The French authorities, police and armed forces have had to face the horrors of the Charlie Hebdo and Paris attacks in recent months, so does the Home Secretary agree that no matter what the provocation from Russian thugs, it is beholden on English football fans to show restraint and respect to the French authorities?

[Mrs May]

Yes, and we should give that clear message to the England fans. As I said, the England captain and manager have urged and encouraged fans to go and enjoy the football, to show respect for the authorities, and not to get involved in violence or hooliganism.

Child Refugee Resettlement

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

As I have said, we want to make rapid progress. We are already taking children with family connections to the United Kingdom from France, and we want to find ways of improving the process further so that, when cases are identified, we can take charge and ensure that those children come to the UK quickly. There are vulnerable children in Italy and Greece, which is precisely why we are opening a dialogue with those countries. We want to understand their systems properly, and join up with them effectively so that we can identify such children and act to enable them to come to this country.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

The Minister has spoken about the extra 75 staff who will help with child refugee resettlement. What will be the role of those staff, what will be the timescale for their deployment to help identify vulnerable children, and how will this move help to speed up the process?

[James Brokenshire]

Some of the 75 experts whom we have offered to the European Asylum Support Office to contribute to its endeavours in connection with the EU-Turkey deal will help with processing. Others will be translators. We have also offered medical support, as well as officers who will be able to identify vulnerability issues. I had conversations with EASO about this when I was in Athens on Friday. We have identified the people concerned, and we want them to be deployed quickly—within, I hope, a matter of weeks.