Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Beamish and Baroness May of Maidenhead(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs May
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that a police cell should not be a place of safety for a child with mental health problems—we are very clear about that. That is one issue that has emerged from the review we have undertaken, with the Department of Health, of sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act, and I am clear that in future we should not see children being held in a police cell as a place of safety when they have mental health problems.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
Some 1,600 acute beds in mental health facilities have been lost on this Government’s watch. What assessment has the Home Secretary made at local level about beds being available for people who actually need them? Does she really think it is acceptable that in some cases people are having to travel up to 200 miles to access a crisis bed? Is that not why people are ending up in police cells, rather than in mental health crisis beds where they should be?
Mrs May
Under this Government we are seeing a significant change in the way in which people with mental health problems are being dealt with by both the police and the NHS: it is this Government who have reviewed sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act; it is this Government who have introduced the street triage pilots, whereby more and more people are being taken to proper places of safety in health care settings rather than being put in police cells; and it is this Government who have put mental health clearly on the agenda in relation to health matters—unlike the Labour Government.
Criminal Law
Debate between Lord Beamish and Baroness May of Maidenhead(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Mrs May
I have explained that the statutory instrument transposes those measures that require legislation. I repeat—I am happy to speak about this again later—that we are not required to transpose the European arrest warrant into UK legislation because it is already in UK legislation, in the Extradition Act 2003.
We had an opportunity to exercise the opt-out, and we did so. We have brought back more than 100 powers from Brussels.
Mrs May
I will make some progress, because the time for the debate is now more limited and I know that many hon. Members wish to speak.
As the Prime Minister says, we have overseen the biggest return of powers since this country joined the EU, but we have always been clear that we wanted to remain part of a smaller number of measures that give our police and law enforcement agencies vital and practical help in the fight against crime. This Government and this party will never put politics before the protection of the British public and that is why we are seeking to remain part of a package of 35 measures that help us to tackle serious crimes and keep this country safe.
Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures
Debate between Lord Beamish and Baroness May of Maidenhead(10 years, 9 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Since 11 September 2001 successive Governments have grappled with the problem of how to deal with terrorist suspects who can neither be prosecuted nor deported. The last Government first introduced the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act in November 2001. This legislation effectively introduced detention without trial for foreign terrorist suspects who could be held pending deportation even when that deportation was unlikely ever to happen. In 2004 the Law Lords struck down those powers.
We later had the extraordinary spectacle of the attempt to increase the period of pre-charge detention to 90 days, which was rightly defeated by Parliament, and in 2005 the last Government introduced control orders, but control orders too, as my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) has said, were steadily eroded by the courts. Three control orders were quashed because the courts said they were wrong in principle, two control orders were revoked because the courts directed that they were no longer necessary, and three control orders were revoked because the previous Government felt they were unable to make the disclosures ordered by the court. All those individuals were then freed from their controls.
Mr Kevan Jones
Does what the right hon. Lady has just described not show that the judicial oversight of control orders was actually working?
Mrs May
I have to say that that is an ingenious argument to make in support of the hon. Gentleman’s Front Benchers, but what it shows is that the courts were giving a very clear message about aspects of control orders. What we needed was a regime that was legally viable and would command the confidence of the police and security services, and TPIMs have been consistently endorsed by the courts, two successive independent reviewers of counter-terrorism legislation, the police and the Security Service. They provide some of the strongest restrictions available in the democratic world and some of the strongest possible protections that our courts will allow. We now have a strong and sustainable legal framework to handle terrorist suspects whom we can neither prosecute nor deport.
Mrs May
I was about to answer the point that the right hon. Gentleman has just made. When I refer to the seven absconds that took place under control orders, the answer that I always get from Opposition Members is about this issue of relocation. What neither he in his intervention, nor the right hon. Lady in her speech tell us is that forced relocation was struck down by the courts in four control order cases, including those of two individuals who were subsequently placed on TPIMs. The right hon. Lady also does not say that several control order subjects breached their control orders even while they were relocated, so the idea that relocation would prevent orders being breached is simply not correct. When the Metropolitan Police Commissioner was asked whether the removal of the option for relocation would have had any bearing on the case of Ibrahim Magag, in particular, he answered:
“we do not think so”.
Mr Kevan Jones
What about the point made by David Anderson in his latest review? He says:
“The possibility of relocation has now been removed. That step was not required by the courts …which had indeed shown themselves generally supportive of relocation as a deterrent”
to terrorism.
Mrs May
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, because David Anderson has consistently said:
“The only sure way to prevent absconding is to lock people in a high security prison.”
As I said at the beginning of my speech, that option, without charge or prosecution, has already been struck down by the highest courts in the land.
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman brings considerable experience of this matter to the House. As I said, the police and Security Service have been putting plans in place for those individuals who will come off TPIMs, and they are similar to the plans they use every day to manage other suspects who are not subject to restrictions.
Mrs May
I am going to make some progress as I have taken quite a few interventions.
We continue to believe that the best place for a terrorist is behind bars. As I have said, if the police and Security Service find any individual engaging in new terrorism-related activity, the police will seek to have them prosecuted. If that is not possible, it is open to the police and Security Service to recommend that a new TPIM notice should be imposed.
In response to an earlier intervention from the hon. Member for North Antrim, I said that I would talk about the new powers that we have introduced. We have not just given extra money to the police and Security Service; we have strengthened their powers. In April last year, in a written statement to the House, I explained how we would use the royal prerogative to remove passports from British nationals who we believe want to travel abroad to take part in extremist activity, terrorist training or other fighting. That has significantly enhanced the security services’ powers in this area and the prerogative has already been used on several occasions, helping to disrupt terrorist suspects who want to travel abroad to gain skills or contacts that they could use to plot attacks in this country.