(2 days, 19 hours ago)
Commons ChamberI must say that I never thought the day would arise when I as a non-lawyer would be advising a Government of lawyers that they need to be sure of the legal basis for what they are doing. As I said in an intervention on this subject on 23 June,
“it would do the country and the Government no favours if they were to lose in court a challenge to the process of proscription, because whereas the secret sabotage of planes would certainly have been an act of terrorism leading to proscription, the fact is that this was a performative act that these people announced they had done.”—[Official Report, 23 June 2025; Vol. 769, c. 893.]
My question for the Government is this: will they at least adopt a belt-and-braces policy when it comes to the prosecution of the people who did that terribly irresponsible and wrong-headed act of sabotaging those planes? Will they also prosecute them on the basis that they have done criminal damage, and have attacked the forces of the Crown and thereby done something that borders on sedition? Otherwise, by using the wrong aspects of the law to pursue people who did some very bad things indeed, I fear the Government will end up scoring an own goal, and these people will walk free with a court triumph under their belt.
Although it is justified by the unacceptable behaviour of the perpetrators, I am not convinced that the policy that the Government have adopted will stand up in court, when there are plenty of other legal methods that could be used to deal with this form of extremism. It is extremism, but it does not, in my opinion, pass the threshold to be classified as terrorism, in the legal sense. If I had been able to accept the Minister’s offer to have a word with me on Privy Council terms before the debate—I thank him for that offer, and I am sorry that I was not able to take it up—he may have been able to tell me things about Palestine Action that would have convinced me that it crossed that threshold.
However, if the Minister is not able to say those things in public—there may be very good reasons why he is not—then I suspect he will not be able to tell them to the courts, either. Nobody can accuse me of being soft on anti-militarist extremist groups, but I say to the Government, with the best will in the world, that they must adopt a legal belt-and-braces policy when it comes to prosecuting this group, and not rely on this proscription alone, because I fear that I see trouble ahead from m’learned friends.
(4 days, 19 hours ago)
Commons ChamberForgive me, but I do not think I said that; I think I said the opposite. I am very happy to discuss the matter further with my hon. Friend. I hope she understands, and I hope I have made it clear, that the Bill is incredibly narrow in its scope. It seeks to take us back to the legal position we were in a matter of months ago, prior to the judgment of the Supreme Court. It does not in any way undermine the right of appeal. If she has further concerns, I am very happy to speak to her, but I can give her an assurance. She is very welcome to look at the Bill. It will not take her very long to read it. It is two clauses, with a single substantive clause, specifically designed to take us back to the legal position we were in just a few months ago. I hope she will be reassured by that.
I have come to this debate without any prior knowledge of what is proposed, so I am making this point as a result of what I have heard so far. Am I right in thinking that what the Minister particularly has in mind is people with dual citizenship who might, for example, have gone abroad to fight for a terrorist organisation, such as ISIS. There would, in such a case, be nothing forbidding us from removing their British citizenship. If they came back, even if they could be convicted of anything at all, they would be imprisoned for only a relatively short time, if at all, and then the security services would probably have to spend many years monitoring them. Is that the sort of scenario the Minister has in mind?
The Minister is quite right—not that I ever exercised those powers. But as I said, in my view the Supreme Court has corrected an anomaly that the previous Government took advantage of. Yes, absolutely, hands up, they did—I am not saying that is correct. He is proposing that in the face of a Supreme Court decision that he does not like, he will change the law to say that the court was in effect wrong and that the fundamental right on which the Supreme Court has decided—we should not forget that the courts basically decide our rights within the legal framework—is somehow not to be tolerated.
I have some sympathy with my right hon. Friend’s argument, but surely the effect of this change will kick in only if, in the end, the Government’s appeal succeeds. Therefore, it will be the case that the court previously was wrong; otherwise, the Government’s appeal against its decision will not succeed.
My right hon. Friend is exactly right. However, it does mean that the state can render someone stateless by inaction, because it can take many years for cases to work their way through the courts. It is also, as I said, highly prejudicial, because it means that for the duration of the legal action that person will not be able to come to the UK and therefore will have to litigate from outside our borders.
I grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. As I said in my first intervention, I am new to this whole debate, but I thought I heard from the Minister that the idea was for this measure to stand only until the Government appeal was resolved or the Government ran out of time to appeal. How long would that period be? I do not see how that would put things off for the inordinate amount of time that my right hon. Friend suggests.
As I am sure my right hon. Friend knows, there are various layers of appeal that can be taken, right up to the Supreme Court. The Bill says that, throughout that period, as long as the Government continue to pursue appeals, the person remains deprived of their citizenship, rather than what the Supreme Court is saying, which is that if the person wins any one of those appeals, they immediately become in effect innocent, and their citizenship is restored as if it was never removed in the first place. That is in the same way as if, were I accused of a crime and found innocent and the prosecutor decided to appeal my conviction, I would remain innocent until that appeal was heard and decided against me. If it were appealed beyond that, I would remain innocent then still.
The Government are attempting to revert to the erroneous situation as determined by the Supreme Court. In my view, they are moving the goalposts on an individual who frankly seems to have won a case fair and square in our highest court in the land.
Finally, I want to raise a more fundamental issue about this entire process. Call me an old romantic, but my view is that once you are a citizen, you are a citizen. Once you are in, you are in. Unfortunately, the development of this power over the last however many years since the 1981 Act, which brought it in, has created two classes of citizens in this country.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross), who spoke for the Opposition—she is no longer in her place—said, “citizenship is a privilege, not an unconditional right.” That is not true. It is an unconditional right for me as a freeborn Englishman of two English parents going back I do not know how many years. I have no claim on citizenship anywhere else. It is my absolute, undeniable, unequivocal right to have citizenship in this country, and it cannot be removed from me by any means whatsoever. That is not true of my children. I am married to a Canadian citizen, so they have a claim on Canadian citizenship. If the Home Secretary so decides, they could have their citizenship removed. That is also true of every Jewish citizen of the United Kingdom, who has a right to citizenship in Israel. There will be millions of British people of south Asian origin who feel that they have a second-class citizenship.
This law applies only to certain of our citizens. It does not apply to me. I do not know whether it applies to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Perhaps it is making other hon. Members think about whether it applies to them.
While the Minister has been clear that we should trust him and has given us lots of undertakings, we do not make the law on the basis of a Minister we like, trust and respect; we make it on the basis that the law might fall into the hands of somebody we are not that keen on and who may be more cavalier with the powers bestowed upon them. As the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart), who spoke for the Liberal Democrats, said, we are a country that uses this power disproportionately more than any other western country. We have been free in our use of it, despite the fact that Minister after Minister has stood in the House and said, “We use it sparingly.” We do not. Dozens and dozens of people have been excluded, and we have to be honest about why. Sometimes it has been for safety, but sometimes, on balance, it has been to please the papers—because it looks good and plays well. We never ask ourselves about the cost of that to our sense of cohesion.
The hon. Member for Makerfield gave a lyrical and poetic view of citizenship, but if a large proportion of our fellow citizens believe that they have a second class of that citizenship—if some can say, “I am undeniably and unchallengeably a citizen, but you are not, so watch yourself”—what does that do to society?
(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
Commons ChamberI thank my hon. Friend for speaking out about his experiences. To speak out as a victim of child abuse in that way is immensely difficult, and I think everyone should listen to what victims and survivors have to say. I thank him for speaking out, because by doing so he provides strength and inspiration to other victims and survivors across the country, and I pay tribute to him for doing so. He is right that this should be something that everyone can agree on, because it is about the protection of children and the tackling of serious crime. I hope all of us can do that with respect and together.
I hope something else we can all agree on is our admiration for the former Labour MP Ann Cryer, who exposed what was going on back in 2003, which was only five years into a 13-year-long Labour Government, and was disgracefully smeared as a racist for doing so. Let us belatedly make an apology to her and thank her for her courage.
I do thank my former honourable Friend Ann Cryer, because she did speak out and stand up for children who were being abused. It is because of that that I recognise, as part of the response I made to the 2022 child abuse inquiry and again today, that this has been a historic failure over very many decades. Just as I recognise that historic failure, which everyone should recognise, I hope the right hon. Gentleman will persuade those on his Front Bench also to recognise the historic failure and to take some responsibility. It is really sad that the Leader of the Opposition did not choose to respond to, or join in, the historic apology in 2022, which was a cross-party apology involving the former Home Secretary. I am really sorry that she chose not to do so today.
(1 month ago)
Commons ChamberI thank my hon. Friend for raising this matter, and I am very happy to meet her. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is working to ensure that those who need to leave Gaza, and are able and eligible to do so, are supported in that. I am very happy to look at this matter with my hon. Friend.
The Home Secretary was asked a question about Lord Hermer of Chagos, as he perhaps ought to be known. Why did she not answer it, and will she do so now?
(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberI can give my hon. Friend a categorical assurance that this Government will work incredibly closely with the Jewish community, as did the previous Government, to provide them with the assurances that they rightly want and deserve. It is completely unacceptable that any sector of our community could be threatened, whether by terrorism or by a state-based threat. The Home Secretary and I, and other Ministers, are in regular contact with the Community Security Trust and a range of other organisations from the Jewish community, and we work tirelessly to ensure that they not only are safe but feel safe.
In the fullness of time, it will undoubtedly be revealed what the targets of these terrorist plots were going to be. If it turns out that one of them was again the broadcaster Iran International, which had to relocate to Washington temporarily in 2023, will the Minister undertake to speak with his Foreign Office colleagues about the importance of impressing on the Trump Administration that these repressive regimes fear free broadcasting agencies, and that that is why the Trump Administration should not be closing down Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty or indeed Voice of America itself?
The right hon. Gentleman makes a sage point, as he always does, and he is absolutely right. The UK has an incredibly important relationship with the United States, and it is a relationship that we invest significantly in. That is not only in our national interest but in the national interest of the United States and other Five Eyes partners. I can give him an assurance that the question he has just raised will be heard by colleagues.
(3 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy right hon. Friend is right: border security is national security. She will know that the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill has now completed its Committee stage, and she and other Members will have noted that yesterday the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary hosted an organised immigration summit in London, which was attended by countless international partners and was a very constructive and worthwhile gathering. She will also know of the important work that is now being done by the Border Security Commander, who is working closely with our international allies. We are making good progress with these matters, which we take extremely seriously, and although we will have more to do, I am pleased with the progress that we have made to date.
Two of the four ugly totalitarian sisters have been included in the list so far, and I trust that China and North Korea will both be added to the enhanced tier in the fullness of time; but will the Minister take back to the Government the message that the House is concerned about the building of the biggest Chinese communist embassy in western Europe—in fact, the biggest embassy—in London? It is not clear why the Government needed to call it in on security grounds, given that the local authority wanted to refuse permission completely. Will the Minister also explain the differential between the penalty that people will face when exposed for acting on behalf of a foreign power if they have registered and the penalty that they will face if they have not registered?
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberIt seems to me that the Government’s good work in this Bill in criminalising the possession of knives with intent will be undermined if the police have to wait for someone to take out the knife and commit an attack before they can discover whether they have a knife. Surely, if there is a separate offence arising from mere possession, as my right hon. Friend says, it is particularly important to enable the police to discover that someone possesses that knife before they have had a chance to do harm with it.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we are to prosecute these offences, put more potential perpetrators in prison and, critically, protect the public, we need to detect more of the knives that are routinely carried on our cities’ streets. That means more stop and search and the use of knife-scanning technology of the kind I just described to identify those knives before they are used. My right hon. Friend put it very powerfully.
The Opposition may also be minded to table amendments on the setting up of a statutory national inquiry into rape gangs. For some reason the Government have only set up local inquiries in five areas. Some local authorities are refusing to hold inquiries, which is scandalous. About 50 towns are affected, so inquiries into just five of them is not good enough. Moreover, those local inquiries do not have the statutory powers under the Inquiries Act 2005 to compel witnesses to give evidence. The chairs of the Manchester local inquiry resigned last year because, even then, public authorities were covering this up. We need a national statutory inquiry, and we intend to amend the Bill to achieve that if the Government will not agree to one. Local councils and councillors, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service were all involved to a greater or lesser extent in ignoring or even covering up these terrible offences. We need to get to the truth.
I will be as brief as possible because I know that others want to get in.
Let me start with a general point. I have sat here long enough—not today, of course, but over the years—to know that every Government come in with a criminal justice Bill, then another a year later, and then another, before the next Government come in and start with a criminal justice Bill. I will not get into a political knockabout on that, but, as Members who have been here long enough will know, the reality is that there is always a reason why we need another criminal justice Bill, and so it goes on. To be a little more rational about it, if passing laws did the job of ending crime, we would have managed it long ago. This is about how we deal with the things that get behind the crime.
The Centre for Social Justice recently published a good report called the “Lost Boys”. It is about the generation, particularly post-covid, of young boys who have become dysfunctional with serious mental health problems, and who often end up on the street being sucked into gangs. The attitude and behaviour of those boys gives rise to the violence and subsequent murders that take place on the street. Putting a knife into someone’s hand does not make them a murderer; putting a knife into the hands of someone who has already been broken in the wrong attitude—that is where murder and violence come from. I recommend that Ministers read that report, because it makes staggering reading for us all.
Those young boys are becoming men. They will live in and out of prisons, and violence, drug taking and drug abuse will be a part of their lives, as will abuse towards women. It is boys and men who are responsible for the crime. Young women and girls are a tiny proportion of the criminals—the problem lies with men and boys. That is critical. If we want to get ahead of this problem and solve knife crime, we must understand that crime is committed in the heads and brains of those young boys, who are subsequently men, and the knife is only the final act. I say to those who recommend the rounding of blades, well perhaps, but a young guy will just go and grind that rounded blade into a sharp point and get on with it if that is what they want to do. Nothing will get in the way of that. I simply make that observation.
It is right that the Government are tackling assault on retail workers. I have struggled endlessly to get the police on to the streets and to arrest people who are shoplifting. People are not shoplifting for a sandwich; they are stripping stores of thousands of pounds’ worth of goods. It is a serious offence of antisocial behaviour, and anything more that the police can do to crack down on that is important, because it is the first crime that most of our constituents notice, and indeed fear. Shoplifters threaten people in the shops and those serving them, and it is important that we get on top of the issue.
I tabled an amendment to the previous criminal justice Bill on cycling and dangerous cycling. Has that gone? I have also spoken to the Department for Transport, and we need to sort out e-bikes and those dangerous fast bikes and cyclists on the road who commit offences.
It would also help if it were made mandatory for all cyclists to have a bell, so that they could at least warn pedestrians of their approach.
I take my right hon. Friend’s point into consideration. The point I was making is that we have had deaths on the street yet cyclists could not be prosecuted for having killed someone, because we are still using a piece of legislation from the mid-19th century to address offensive and wild carriage driving. That is not acceptable and it hardly ever convicts anybody, so I encourage the Government to look again at dangerous cycling, because people genuinely abuse the Road Traffic Act 1988 and nothing ever seems to be done to them. That is particularly true for e-bikes, which are very dangerous when used on pathways. Even if people are not committing a criminal offence, they are causing major danger. Antisocial behaviour is a big thing which our constituents notice; they feel threatened by people who ride those bikes on the pavements. It may seem a small thing, but it is not.
I will end by congratulating the Government on introducing the offence of cuckooing. The Home Secretary will know that I tabled an amendment to the previous criminal justice Bill, and I am pleased that the Government have picked that up and put it into this Bill. There are big issues regarding people who feel threatened by brutal individuals who take over their houses and commit criminal offences from there. In the end, some of those threatened people get arrested themselves, having had no control over that house. Many of them have mental health problems; many are stuck in backrooms and abuse themselves. Having such an offence allows the police—I have said this all along—to move into the house if they have a suspicion that such things are taking place and deal with the issue straightaway. I congratulate the Government on that. The previous Government accepted my amendment. Hopefully, we can all join forces.
I have one question for the Minister responding to the debate. Offenders often use coercion, grooming and manipulation. The Bill refers to an absence of consent. Does she think that an absence of consent alone will be good enough to convict people who have carried out coercion, grooming and manipulation? That is the point I am slightly concerned about. I raise it with the Minister and I hope she can respond at the end of the debate. At the end of it all, a criminal justice Bill is a good thing.
(4 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend raises an important threat vector that is not often commented on. I can tell him that the National Cyber Security Centre assessed that Iran is an aggressive and capable cyber-actor, with a number of powerful disruptive and destructive tools at its disposal. As he will understand, the NCSC continues to work closely with Government, industry and international partners to mitigate the cyber-threat from Iran. It is something that we take seriously and that we are working across Government to counter.
Does the Minister agree that this is at least one area where our co-operation with the United States can continue on the basis of a common mutual interest, given President Trump’s extremely strong attitude to the abuses carried out by the Iranian regime? Is the Minister aware—I think he probably is—that during the previous Parliament the Intelligence and Security Committee completed the classified version of a major report on Iran and all its activities? Does he look forward, like me, to the redaction process being completed soon, so that we can all benefit from the findings of that report?
I am grateful, as always, to the right hon. Gentleman because he always adds a significant amount of wisdom to proceedings, and I appreciate it. I agree about the importance of our relationship with the United States and that we absolutely have a mutual interest with colleagues in the new Administration. The Prime Minister discussed the matter with President Trump on his recent visit to Washington. I am aware of the report by the Intelligence and Security Committee in the previous Parliament that the right hon. Gentleman referenced. I wrote to the Committee this morning outlining the measures that I have announced today. I look forward to working closely with the Committee to ensure that we can collectively derive the benefits of the report. I am grateful to him and previous Members for the work they have done.
(4 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend is right that terrorists do not speak for any faith. Interfaith relationships are an important part of developing stronger communities, but we are clear that in the Government and across society we have to do more to prevent radicalisation and particularly the growing numbers of young people from being drawn into terrorism—both Islamist extremism and extreme right-wing threats. That is why tomorrow we will introduce new youth diversion orders through our crime and policing Bill to give the police new powers to divert young people away from terrorism.
Although I welcome what the Home Secretary is saying about the need to divert and prevent home-grown terrorism, does she accept that a pattern of terrorism is emerging in continental Europe of undocumented migrants going into countries and committing terrorist acts? Does she agree that it is very difficult for the authorities to prevent anything of that sort if undocumented illegal migrants are released into society when they arrive on these shores?
We are clear that we need to tackle extremist and terror threats wheresoever they are found, which includes making sure that we have strengthened border security. That is why we have put forward new counter-terror style powers around people smuggling and trafficking to strengthen our border security, and it is also why we need to tackle particularly the radicalisation we see online. That is where we also see young people being drawn into extremist and terror threats. Wheresoever that is found, we need strong action in place to keep our country safe.
(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberThe right hon. Member will be aware that the common travel area has long been in place, and that means that arrangements have to be addressed differently. Part of the problem with the whole asylum and immigration system has been that issues around enforcement have just not been taken seriously enough for far too long. We have been clear that the rules need to be respected and enforced. That is why we have substantially increased the resources and staffing available for enforcement and returns. It is why we have had 19,000 people returned. It is why we have increased returns. For example, we have increased enforced returns by 24%. It is why we have also increased the illegal working raids by 38% just since the election. That is a substantial increase in the illegal working raids and arrests, because not enough action was being taken on illegal working and employers exploiting people. If we do not have that system of proper enforcement, people think it is just too easy to ignore the rules, to break the rules and to ignore the system, and that is what we have to turn around. There has to be some credibility underpinning the asylum and immigration system and some enforcement of the rules; frankly, there just has not been that for far too long.
We will introduce two new offences to criminalise the making, adapting, importing, supplying and offering to supply and the possession of a specified list of articles for use in serious crime. That includes templates for 3D-printed firearms, pill presses and vehicle concealment. We will introduce stronger powers to go after dangerous criminals—criminals who are planning to provide small boats, supplying small boats, putting lives at risk, undermining border security and organising serious crime.
I know that the Home Secretary is doing her best to cover the waterfront—almost literally—but is not part of the problem that so many of the criminal gang organisers are outside our jurisdiction? How will these new laws apply to people we cannot reach?