Oral Answers to Questions

Karen Lee Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I can confirm that decisions about police funding have not been finalised, but that that will be done shortly. An announcement will be made to the House as part of the draft grant settlement for 2018-19 in the usual way. On the report that the hon. Lady cites, I hope she understands that we have worked with that report closely, because the Home Office and the police system wanted to do a proper job of updating our understanding of the pressures that the police are under, which are real.

[Ms Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Amber Rudd)]

I recently returned from America, and I would like to update the House on progress made there. Along with the US Justice Department, I met representatives from Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Twitter to discuss our collective efforts to fight child sexual exploitation online. I was very encouraged by the development of Project Arachnid, which is groundbreaking software developed by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, backed by significant investment from this Government as well as start-up funding from Google. The technology proactively detects child sexual abuse material online and issues notices to content hosts, so that they can remove it. It has so far crawled 1 billion web pages to identify illegal material, and approximately 300,000 new images of child sexual abuse have been vetted. Appalling images of children being abused and extremist content have absolutely no place on our internet or in our society, and we will work internationally to combat them.

[Ms Lee]

From December, the Policing and Crime Act 2017 will stop police cells being used as places of safety for people detained under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983. In Lincolnshire, with around 750,000 residents, there will be only four hospital-based places of safety, and two of those will be in Lincoln’s Peter Hodgkinson Centre. Last year, 89 people were detained in police cells because there were no other options. Will the Minister give an assurance that moneys will be made available to provide adequate resources for this change?

[The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)]

The hon. Lady raises an important issue. I assure her that the Government have made £30 million of funding available to local areas to improve places of safety provision. Around half of that has been allocated and a second round of funding opened on 18 October, to which applications are invited. The legislation also provides that any suitable place may be used as a place of safety to help to supplement local provision.