Draft Data Protection Act 2018 (Qualifying Competent Authorities) Regulations 2025

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 General Committees

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see your wisdom in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. Although I understand the impetus behind the change, I want to ask the Minister one or two questions about it. She and I have traded blows over this agenda in the past. She was my shadow for two years, so I congratulate her on her new position. I am sure she will do a fantastic job.

In considering this change, we have to ask ourselves why sharing was made so difficult in the first place. We have to trust that those who came before us, who put this legislation in place, considered that issue. The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West, said that subsequent events have illustrated the need for agencies to work together more closely on the analysis of data for the prevention of the sorts of incidents he mentioned. Despite that, I think we have to come with a bit of scepticism about what the result of these regulations might be, and what liberties we might be trampling over. My questions are framed in that regard.

I was slightly alarmed by what the Minister said and the contents of the explanatory memorandum, and I was thinking about raising a point of order about the fact that the Government cannot really tell us why the competent authorities have been included in the list. It raises the question of why we are all here. We might as well have had a list that said, “Whoever we decide. Don’t ask questions.” It does seem a bit odd that we are passing regulations, but we are hampered in our scrutiny in asking questions about particular organisations. Nevertheless, I will ask the questions that I have about them and see what the Minister has to say.

First, I wanted to ask about the provosts. The list includes the provost marshals of the Royal Navy Police, of the Royal Military Police and of the Royal Air Force Police, and “The Provost Marshal for serious crime.” I had never heard of that person before, so perhaps the Minister could start by telling us who the provost marshal for serious crime is.

I understand that all the other organisations—certainly the police and chief constables—have very strong and automated controls on the data that they use, not least to the extent, for example, that every access that any individual makes to the police computing system is logged and maintained, and people are very often convicted for irregularly accessing material. However, given that these individuals are military and that we are living with the consequences of a major military data breach that has cost us many billions of pounds and put quite a lot of lives at risk, can the Minister reassure us that the processing of data between civil and military organisations will be done to the same standard, and that it therefore will be safe from leakage?

Regulation 2(o) states that,

“a body established in accordance with a collaboration agreement under section 22A of the Police Act 1996(9)”

can be classed as a qualifying competent authority. What type of body might that be? If we were to have an example of such an organisation, we might be able to form a view on whether it is appropriate for it to be on the list.

I have a question about the inclusion of Revenue and Customs. As the Minister may know, in the old days when Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise were two separate organisations, they had very different cultures. The culture at Customs and Excise was of kicking the door down. They were kind of “Moonfleet”, Daphne du Maurier-type anti-smuggling hard men and women, whereas at the Inland Revenue they were a little more intellectual and professional. In one, they wore suits; in the other, they wore flak jackets. When Gordon Brown amalgamated the two, unfortunately the muscular culture at Customs and Excise was translated and taken over at the Revenue, to the extent that they now both have more kick-in-the-door characters. So I am concerned about the amount of sensitive personal data that Revenue and Customs control at the moment; about the culture of that organisation and its increasing aggression over the last 20 years or so; and what implication that is going to have for the rest of us.

I understand that the Minister cannot tell us why this is being introduced, but is she able to tell us whether Customs and Excise will, as a result, be asked to routinely scan millions and millions of datapoints and people’s personal financial data to look for patterns of movement and transactions, for example? Or is this for use in relation to specific investigations? My general view is that, as with most things, the British people will accept a specific investigatory sharing regime, but may not accept a general fishing regime.

The same is true of the Land Registry, which is on the list. I understand that in the search for illicit funds or activity, specific inquiries and the processing of data is required, but on general scanning, particularly as the Land Registry becomes more and more digital and automated, I am nervous about us moving to a kind of American-style National Security Agency approach, where billions if not trillions of datapoints are collected on a regular basis and analysed by computers—artificial intelligence or whatever it might be—to look for patterns of behaviour. That may well be the way that we are going, but if we are going there, we should be transparent with the public about what we are doing, notwithstanding that the Minister cannot tell us why or what today.

I have two further questions. On supervision, what will the supervision over this necessarily covert process be? Does the ICO, which I presume will be the supervisory body, have the right security clearance at the right level that will allow it to access this operation of data sharing to the extent that it can satisfy itself that the statement that the Minister has made—that we are in compliance with all our human rights obligations and in compliance with the law—will be looked at? Within the Department, similarly, what will supervision of the effect of this data sharing be?

Thirdly, given that this will be new, is it likely to be brought to the Intelligence and Security Committee for review of its operation? That would be at least three layers of supervision over what is quite a large step up in capability—it is not unwelcome, but it is a large step up—by the Security Services and others.

Finally, I want to ask about risk assessment. The sharing of data between organisations could present a greater risk of leakage, or alternatively it could mean, if only one of them is maintaining the data to which the other has access, that there is less likelihood of leakage. We have talked about efficacy. The Minister did not say anything about the risks and benefits from a data security point of view.

As we have learned to our cost recently with the military, the transfer of data between organisations, whether sharing or otherwise, does run the risk of it falling into hands that it should not. Will these organisations therefore have to subscribe to a tighter data control regime than they would have done, to make sure that the possibility of that leakage is minimised?

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[Kit Malthouse]

The Minister said that these notices will be published; will these bodies be general powers or specific powers? Will the Government say, “We’re going to grant a notice on this for six months for a specific purpose,” or will it be just, “We’re going to let the Army share it with whoever, in perpetuity”? So, are the powers time limited?

Secondly, while I understand that the Minister cannot explain to us why, who or what regarding these organisations, as the hon. Member for Newton Abbot said, all of these organisations will be processing that data on third-party software, much of which will be owned by private corporations, many from overseas. Does this power extend to them, by proxy, because they are contractors to the primary organisation—which is, necessarily, by its nature, public sector—or will there be firewalls and controls therein as well?

[Sarah Jones]

I thank the right hon. Member for that intervention. As a couple of Members have asked about it, I was just coming to the point about the duration of time that these powers are given for. The duration lasts for up to five years, but it is subject to annual review by the Secretary of State.

The right hon. Member asked about the number of organisations under a notice. There is no specification on the number; it simply must be at least one competent authority and one intelligence service wanting to share the data. I should have said that the Intelligence and Security Committee is able to request information from the intelligence services under its purview, so these arrangements would not be excluded from that. I hope that is reassuring to the Committee.

To re-emphasise, there is a process here: the ICO will remain with the oversight and have the relevant security clearance, and it already oversees UK intelligence agencies. I can reassure Members that the right checks are there to ensure that this data is not given more widely than it should be.

I hope that that reassures hon. Members that these regulations are needed, and that they respond to our need to be able to act in real time in moving situations to protect the public, which is the fundamental principle behind our doing this. I hope that Members will understand that. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Palestine Action: Proscription and Protests

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

Yes, I would.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

The Minister has said that no one is above the law and that violence is never the answer. I agree with him and I know that he believes that the law should be wielded with integrity, so when are we going to see the proscription of violent settler groups in the west bank, many of whom are perpetrating a reign of terror on innocent Palestinians in that part of the world but who may be garnering support and raising funds in the United Kingdom?

[Dan Jarvis]

The right hon. Gentleman is an experienced Member of this House and has served as a Minister in the Home Office, so I am sorry to have to put my response to him in this way, but he will understand why I do so: we never comment about matters relating to future proscription. I know that his words will have been heard by colleagues in other Government Departments, as well as in my Department. He makes his points with great consistency—he has raised them with me previously—but I know that he will understand that there is a long-standing protocol, across a number of Governments, that we do not talk about future proscription activity.

UK-France Migration: Co-operation

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Certainly, the hon. Member for Clacton has been travelling around the world, and sadly he is once again not here in Parliament when we are discussing these issues. If Reform Members are serious about taking action against the criminal gangs, why on earth did they vote against the counter-terrorism powers to go after them in the first place? Sadly, their one in, one out approach seems to simply be about their parliamentary party.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I have been a bit taken aback by the lack of humility shown by the Home Secretary in the face of what has been a catastrophic first 12 months in terms of crossing numbers. It might have been better for her to acknowledge that “smash the gangs”, which she was always told was going to be a complete failure, has indeed been so. I suppose we should be grateful that she has finally reached for the briefing notes left in the Home Office and No. 10—not about a returns agreement but about a swaps agreement. I suppose I offer her congratulations on getting that deal over the line with the French. However, I disagree with her about it not being a silver bullet; I think this has always been the only solution. But she will know that it will be effective only if we can get to a very high percentage of returns to France.

I have two questions. First, what further incentive could she offer to the French to go beyond this relatively small pilot? Given that we are offering swaps and the theory is that no one will then cross, would she be willing to go for a two-for-one swap? Secondly, as she pointed out, the gangs will react, so does she plan to cut a similar deal with the Belgians?

[Yvette Cooper]

I disagree with the right hon. Member about the criminal gangs. Whatever we do, we must have much stronger enforcement on the criminal gangs; otherwise, if they are given free rein to do whatever they want, they will find other ways around any arrangement and other ways to make money. It is crucial that stronger enforcement is part of any action we take against them. The National Crime Agency has delivered a 36% increase in high-impact disruptions in the last 12 months compared with the year before, and has been building that partnership with other European countries to be able to go further.

The right hon. Member has argued previously, when others were not doing so, for one-for-one returns, as well as for innovative approaches. I agree with him, and we want to develop that, but we need to start with a pilot arrangement that allows both the UK and France to trial things that we have never done before. The previous Government always made grand claims that somehow everything would be solved in the next three days, and repeatedly failed because they did not build up the credibility, the plans or a systematic approach, working in partnership. That is what we need to do.

Deprivation of Citizenship Orders (Effect during Appeal) Bill

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 30th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention, as I always am, and he is absolutely right that it is necessary to close this particular loophole, and that is the purpose of the Bill. He has raised a very interesting example, and I am grateful to him for saying he is happy for me to come back to him. If he lets me reflect on it further, I will respond to him when I make my concluding remarks at the end of the debate.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

The Minister keeps referring to a “loophole”. In fact, it has been an important principle of British justice that successful appeal equals vindication. This Bill is trying to remove that presumption. That is not a loophole; it is a basic judicial right on which we all rely.

[Dan Jarvis]

Again, if the right hon. Gentleman bears with me, I will come to his specific point in a moment, and if he is not satisfied that I have responded adequately then, I am happy to give way again. I will make some progress.

Deprivation decisions are made following careful consideration of advice from officials and lawyers, and in accordance with international law. Each case is assessed individually. Decisions to deprive, where it is conducive to the public good, are personally taken by the Home Secretary. The power is used sparingly. It complies with the UN convention on the reduction of statelessness, and always comes with a right of appeal.

Turning to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), let me give the House a sense of the frequency with which deprivation powers are used. From 2018 to 2023, on average 12 people a year were deprived of their citizenship where it was conducive to the public good. The available period for fraud-related deprivations is slightly different, but from 2018 to 2022 there were an average of 151 cases per year in that category.

Let me turn to the Bill, dealing first with why it is required; I hope this will go some way to responding to the point made by the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse). In a recent case, the Supreme Court decided that, if an appeal against a deprivation decision is successful, the initial deprivation order will have had no effect and the person will be considered as having continued to be a British citizen. This means that people who have been deprived of British citizenship will automatically regain that status before further avenues of appeal have been exhausted by the Home Secretary.

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[Dan Jarvis]

The hon. Member is absolutely right about the point of due process. I can say to him and to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall that these powers are used very sparingly. Each and every individual case is decided on by the Home Secretary. I know that this Home Secretary has—and I am sure previous Home Secretaries have—taken these responsibilities incredibly seriously. Decisions are made carefully, on advice and in accordance with international law, and I am happy to give the hon. Member and others that assurance.

[Kit Malthouse]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dan Jarvis]

Let me make a bit of progress, and then I will happily give way again.

The key point is that deprivation of citizenship on conducive grounds is rightly reserved for those who pose a threat to the UK, or whose conduct involves very high harm. We are talking about some of the most serious cases handled by any Government. Where a loophole is identified in the processes underpinning it, it is the job of any serious and sensible Government to close it, and that is precisely what this Government will do.

Let me turn to the substance of the Bill. The House will note its brevity and narrow scope; it contains just one substantive clause, focused solely on addressing the specific issues that have already been discussed. Its primary objective is to protect the United Kingdom from dangerous people, which includes those who pose a threat to our national security. The Bill will achieve that by preventing those who have been deprived of British citizenship from regaining that status automatically when their appeal is successful, until further appeals have been determined. That will replicate the approach taken on asylum and human rights appeals; in those cases, the effect of an appeal is suspended up to the Court of Appeal and extended to appeals to the Supreme Court.

To be clear, the Bill does not change any existing right of appeal or widen the reasons why a person could be deprived of their citizenship. Should an appeal mounted on behalf of the Government prove unsuccessful, then where there is no possibility of further appeal, British citizenship would be reinstated with immediate and retrospective effect.

[Kit Malthouse]

The Minister keeps referring to a loophole in justice. I do not understand why he cannot see that “innocent until proven guilty” should apply in these cases, as in any other. The idea that my winning an appeal would not automatically mean I was innocent, as it does in every other case, seems a breach of a fundamental tenet. He is also not correct to say that the power is used sparingly. Since 2010, dozens of people have been denied citizenship on the say-so of the Home Secretary, despite there being nothing proven in court. That is what is different about these cases. This is effectively something that is done in secret, behind closed doors, without the facts necessarily being proven in any way. I have a lot of respect for the hon. Gentleman, but this is a case in which we should be even more reliant on due process, rather than trying to legislate judges out of the room, as we are trying to today.

[Dan Jarvis]

I know that the right hon. Gentleman will understand and appreciate, from his time as a Home Office Minister, the huge responsibility that the Government invest in the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary of the day has to make some incredibly difficult, finely balanced judgments. I hope that he would agree that we have to ensure that the Home Secretary, whoever they are, and whatever political party they are from, has the necessary power to make decisions that safeguard the security of our nation. I am certain that he and I agree on that. The Bill essentially ensures that the Government can continue to do that, precisely as the Government whom he served could.

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[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

As I hope the Minister knows, I have devoted much of my adult life to keeping individuals, neighbourhoods, towns, cities and indeed the entire country safe, but I have to confess that I have never been entirely comfortable with the deprivation of citizenship regime. Unfortunately, his Bill, which he is trying to pass off as an innocuous correction, has sparked that sense of unease.

The reason I am uneasy is that, although the objectives that the Minister proposes are laudable, I believe that the cost to our sense of self and the corrosiveness to our sense of citizenship and to the judicial process are perhaps too high. I will not detain the House for too long, but I want to raise three points. We have covered them to a certain extent, but they are worth reiterating.

First, the Minister’s sense is that the Supreme Court has created a loophole; my view is that it has corrected an anomaly. It has long been a tenet of the protections with which the judicial process provides me as an individual that an appeal equals vindication and that it is for my accuser to appeal, on the basis that I remain innocent, even prior to the first action that is taken against me. This regime will reverse that.

The second alarming point is that the legislation is retrospective. As the hon. Member for Makerfield (Josh Simons) asked, there may be a number of cases going through the courts for which this law will have a highly prejudicial impact. The Government are effectively moving the goalposts mid-litigation to get what they want. That, again, is not something we would normally tolerate, and it is a further development of the power.

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I always enjoy our debates. He says that the Government are moving the goalposts, but does he accept that we are ensuring that we have the same powers to deprive that he had when he was a Home Office Minister?

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[Kit Malthouse]

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.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

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.

[Kit Malthouse]

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.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

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.

[Kit Malthouse]

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?

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

Does the right hon. Member believe just by looking at me and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) next to me that the legislation could apply to people who look like us?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady makes the point powerfully. I do not know, but she does. This legislation leaves people from minority backgrounds, second or third-generation immigrants, and those like my children who are of two parents of different nationalities, with a lingering sense of doubt about how secure they are in this nation.

[Josh Simons]

The right hon. Member is portraying the United Kingdom as an exception to a global rule in which citizenship is a straightforward binary and a right. I am of Jewish ancestry and have a right to claim citizenship in Israel, though I have not. My wife is American and our children are dual citizens, so this very much pertains to me. I gently point out that the United States has a similar regime. If a naturalised citizen in America breaks certain laws and is demonstrated to be a national security threat to the United States, they too can have their naturalised citizenship revoked. It is not accurate to paint the United Kingdom as a complete exception to a rule in which citizenship, whether by birth or by naturalisation, is treated differently by the state, by the court and by the legislature.

[Kit Malthouse]

I understand the hon. Member’s point, but I am afraid that I am not interested in comparisons with the United States. I would hold us to a higher bar. We are a more ancient country that should have, as he rightly pointed out, a better developed sense of how we build a cohesive society.

I would challenge whether the United States can be held up as a paragon of virtue on societal cohesion or whether actually it is a divided country, with part of that division coming from a sense that there are first, second and maybe even third-class citizens there. At the moment, it is going through a period of challenge as to what it means to be a United States citizen. We have seen litigation under—it has slipped from my mind. It starts, “We the people”. [Hon. Members: “The constitution.”] That is the word—forgive me; a senior moment. The United States is seeing legal challenge under its constitution on precisely those grounds of what it means to be a citizen.

I do not want to detain the House for much longer, but we need to think carefully about the impact that this regime has beyond the people whom it targets. We may say of cases like Shamima Begum that what she did was completely appalling and she deserves to be punished. Obviously, the decision was taken to revoke her citizenship. I am not sure whether that was the right thing to do. I do think she needs to be punished. In many ways, I would rather she had been brought to this country, and punished and jailed here. She is nobody else’s problem but ours. As I say, by promoting this regime I think we undermine the value of what it means to be a British citizen because, once acquired, citizenship should be a right. Civis Romanus sum. It should mean something. It is not the keys to the executive lavatory, to be removed when you lose the privilege and rights of your position; it is something that you acquire that is fundamentally in you once you are in the club, and we should be wary of the wider impact if we decide to remove it.

I have one final suggestion for the Minister. I realise that I am in a minority, and the House is not going to comply; he is going to get his legislation. However, I ask him to think carefully about the value of the judiciary in this process. Would it be possible to amend the process such that, when an appeal is won by an individual and the Government wish to continue to deprive that person of citizenship, the permission of the judge should be sought for that, pending a further appeal? The Government will have to seek permission to appeal in all circumstances; I ask the Minister to consider whether they should have to seek also permission to maintain the condition of a deprivation of citizenship, as part of that permission to appeal.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Minister.

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[Dan Jarvis]

I do not agree with my hon. Friend’s second point. This Bill has been very carefully and narrowly drafted, and I do not think it does the things that she has said it does. As to why the Government would seek to use these powers, I hope she understands that we will do everything we possibly can—as I am sure the previous Government did—to keep the public safe and protect them from high-harm individuals such as extremists, terrorists, and serious and organised criminals, and that this Government, as was the case with the previous Government, consider that this is an appropriate, necessary and proportionate way in which to do that. I hope that the public and the House will understand why we are progressing in the way that we are.

The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) made a very thoughtful speech. He has clearly thought about this matter long and hard, and he has done the House a great service with his contribution.

I want to reflect briefly on the contribution made by the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse). I enjoy debating these matters with him, and I am genuinely grateful for his contribution. He suggested at one point that he might be an old romantic. I couldn’t possibly comment—but I could possibly say that he has advanced some interesting points. They are not points that the Government agree with, and I hope he does not mind me saying that they are not points that the majority of Members of this House agree with, but he has ensured that this debate has been richer than it would otherwise have been had he not made those contributions.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman acknowledges that the Government are acting in good faith in order to ensure that we are best placed to keep the country safe. I know that he is not satisfied with the measures that we have brought forward and does not agree with them. That is absolutely his right. I respect his right to make the case in the way that he has, but I would ask him briefly to consider an alternative scenario in which the Government of the day, regardless of their political party, did not put in place the necessary powers to keep the public safe. One can only imagine the criticism that any Government would face, were they not to do that.

[Kit Malthouse]

I can imagine that situation, but I have been an enthusiastic supporter of lots of powers to protect the public from people from whom the Minister cannot remove citizenship. For example, terrorism prevention and investigation measures, or TPIMs—previously control orders—were specifically designed to put restrictions on individuals who presented a danger to the country but from whom the Government could not remove citizenship. If those measures are good enough for those people, why are they not good enough for the people on whom the Minister is conferring second-class citizenship? He must see that this legislation applies only to certain of our citizens, and that they are not the only ones who present a danger to this country.

[Dan Jarvis]

Again, I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution. I do not doubt that if he and I and others sat in a room and sought to design a system, we probably would not end up with the one that we have, but I hope he understands that, given the constraints on parliamentary time and the bandwidth of Government, we are seeking to go back to the position that we had a number of months ago—I know that he did not agree with it then—to ensure that we have the powers that we need so that we are best placed to respond in the circumstances that I have described.

I want briefly to come back to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), because I gave him an assurance that I would do so. I can say to him that a dual British-Irish national could be deprived of British citizenship and excluded by the Home Secretary. An Irish national who had been excluded from the UK would then require leave to enter. I hope that responds to his point.

This Bill, although short in length, will have an important impact on the safety of those in our nation. It will ensure that those who pose a threat to the safety and security of our country do not have their citizenship restored until all appeals have been determined. The safety and security of those in our country is the foundation on which everything else is built and, as I have remarked in this House before, for this Government nothing will matter more. With that, I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Deprivation of Citizenship Orders (Effect during Appeal) Bill: Programme

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Deprivation of Citizenship Orders (Effect during Appeal) Bill:

Committal

(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Committee of the whole House.

Proceedings in Committee, on Consideration and on Third Reading

(2) Proceedings in Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion two hours after their commencement.

(3) Any proceedings on Consideration and proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after the commencement of proceedings in Committee of the whole House.

(4) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings in Committee of the whole House, to any proceedings on Consideration or to proceedings on Third Reading.

Other proceedings

(5) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Martin McCluskey.)

Question agreed to.

Draft Investigatory Powers (Communications Data) (Relevant Public Authorities and Designated Senior Officers) Regulations 2025

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 General Committees

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to appear before you for the first time, Dr Murrison. I do not want to detain the Committee too long, but I have a couple of questions.

Obviously, I am familiar with this legislation, having served at the Home Office. We should be under no illusion: the powers that we are extending today are actually very intrusive. While the Minister is absolutely right, for example, that there is not a single murder in this country that is not solved without this kind of data, the extension of these powers to the organisations named in the regulations is broadly what was predicted by critics of the Investigatory Powers Bill when it was introduced in 2016. Slowly but surely, they said, everybody would grab these powers just in case they needed them. As Members of Parliament, whose job it is to balance the rights of the public against the Government’s ability to intrude on them, we need to think carefully about whether what we are doing today is proportionate.

My first question, which troubled me when I was at the Home Office, is about the internal conflict for the commissioner. The way that the Act is drawn, the commissioner both authorises and supervises. Although the commissioner is responsible to Parliament and produces reports to it, I am not entirely sure that the commissioner should effectively be both judge and jury on whether an organisation should have authorisation and therefore, presumably, whether its internal structures for controlling and managing the data are satisfactory. One would have thought that in normal circumstances there would be some separate authorisation system that was then assessed to be adequate by the commissioner. That conflict causes me some problems, and I would be interested in the Minister’s comments on it.

My second question is about the use case, which was raised by both the hon. Member for South West Devon and the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam. It seems odd that some ambulance services are saying, “We don’t actually need this,” but others are saying that they do. What is special about the East Midlands ambulance service that means it needs to retain this power? It would be interesting to understand the use cases for all these organisations. For example, why is location and time data for telephone communications useful to the Intellectual Property Office? I do not quite see it myself. I might be missing something—I am not an expert in intellectual property—but it would be helpful to see the use case that I presume it made to the commissioner for the authorisation. Has that been published?

The guidance states that there has been a consultation with the commissioner. I presume that the consultation has been published, although I have not been able to find it. If it has, does it contain information about how the commissioner tested the use cases? Has the commissioner tested the proportionality—that is what we are making a judgment on here—of the case made by each organisation? Are there real examples that Members can look at and say, for example, “Okay, we understand that East Midlands needs it because it is particularly prone to fraud in which this kind of data is useful for prevention and detection, but the other ambulance services aren’t”?

Similarly, for the other organisations, I can see why location data would matter for DVSA, but I have never heard of the integrated corporate services counter fraud expert services team. I do not know what it does; I would love to know. It would be great if either now or afterwards we could get some information on what it feels like in the real world so Members can make a proportionate judgment, albeit after the fact.

On authorisation levels, the Minister said that there is no requirement because the organisations are all going for authorisation direct from the IPC, but in the regulations, in the column that is amended in the legislation, it gives authorisations at particular levels. For example, it states that in the East Midlands ambulance service, a duty manager of an ambulance control room is able to authorise a request. In the Department for Business and Trade,

“so far as relating to the Insolvency Service”

it specifies:

“Grade 7 in the Investigation and Enforcement Services Directorate”.

Will the Minister explain why he is happy with that level of internal organisation? To me it feels a little low that a request so intrusive and, in certain circumstances, speculative could be authorised by a no doubt hard-working and dedicated duty manager of an ambulance control room, rather than somebody who we might imagine was part of a senior management team of an organisation who is able to take a strategic view about whether a request was proportionate.

As I say, I understand the need for the legislation. It was introduced in 2016 in my first year in the House; I was not the Minister at the time, but obviously I voted for it. It seemed to be the right kind of construct, but we always knew the day would come when we expanded it. The undertaking given then by the Government was that MPs would exercise their judgment about the proportionality of these organisations beyond the police, counter-terrorism and normal enforcement organisations that were really the primary targets of the legislation.

[Dan Jarvis]

First, let me thank the hon. Member for South West Devon for her remarks, which are much appreciated, not least for the constructive tone in which she delivered them. It is important that we ensure there is broad political support for the investigatory powers regime. These are vital powers for our intelligence services, law enforcement and, as we have heard, a number of public authorities. It is absolutely right that we debate these matters and that they are subject to scrutiny in this House. On that basis, I welcome the challenge from Opposition Members, because it behoves the Government to justify the continued need of these powers in the way that we seek. I will say a little more about that in a moment.

The hon. Member for South West Devon asked about the use of powers and consultation with public authorities. She asked for an assurance that adequate, appropriate resources are in place to support the use of the powers, which I can give her. I also say to her that the Home Office, as I am sure was the case under the previous Government, takes such matters incredibly seriously, both in terms of ministerial oversight and the work of officials in the Department. We look very carefully to ensure that the use of powers is necessary, proportionate and appropriate. I assure her that there has been an appropriate level of consultation leading up to these regulations. I am grateful for her broad support of the regulations and of the investigatory powers regime more generally.

The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam specifically asked about ambulance trusts. I can tell him that the six English ambulance trusts being removed, as well as the Scottish ambulance service and the Welsh ambulance service, made a direct request to the Home Office for removal from schedule 4. For the purposes of clarity, the remaining four English ambulance trusts—the West Midlands ambulance service, the South East Coast ambulance service, the North West ambulance service and the East Midlands ambulance service—and the Northern Ireland ambulance service have not requested removal and therefore remain listed in schedule 4. Only one ambulance trust, the West Midlands ambulance service, responded to object to its removal. I assure him that the Government will continue to review the necessity of communications data powers for all public authorities listed in schedule 4, including these ambulance trusts, to ensure that their inclusion in the schedule remains justified. Basically, we do not want organisations to be listed in the schedule if they are not using the powers.

[Kit Malthouse]

I guess what we are asking is why these four did not respond. Was there communication with them to say, “We haven’t heard from you. Should you have responded? Have you missed it? Is it in the pile?” Six have made the case that they have never used the powers. Four have not responded—I would guess they have not used the powers either but just did not respond. How far did the investigation go? From our point of view, it would be interesting to understand why Birmingham objected. What is the real-life case for which an ambulance service needs this data? Make it live for us, Minister. Give us a story that we can tell our constituents.

[Dan Jarvis]

I genuinely welcome the challenge offered by the right hon. Gentleman; he is right to press us on this. I assure him that there are specific operational reasons why ambulance trusts may wish to retain and use this power. One reason why we have proceeded in the way that we have is that removing public authorities that did not respond to the Home Office’s correspondence from schedule 4 could risk operational errors—for example, ambulance trusts, unaware that they were no longer listed in schedule 4, could continue to make requests for CD without the necessary authorisation. I broadly agree with his points, and I accept that there is a case for further tidying up. I assure the Committee that we will continue to do that, and ensure that the right public authorities, which are using the powers for genuine operational reasons, are listed in schedule 4. I assure him that there are genuine operational reasons—if he will forgive me, I will not go into specific detail—why an ambulance trust might want to exercise these powers. However, I accept his basic point that we will need to look carefully at this and do any further tidying up of the four.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Jarvis]

Again, I am grateful to the hon. Member, because it is an entirely fair challenge. I assure the Committee that the Home Office works very closely with the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office—I will say a little more about that in response to the questions of the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire—to ensure that all the entries in schedule 4 remain up to date and reflect those with a requirement or compelling need for the use of CD powers. The consideration of a public authority’s addition to the schedule is entirely based on the operational case, its proposed approach to compliance and its understanding of the appropriate, necessary and proportionate use of the powers. We give these matters very careful consideration, but I will happily reflect further on the point made by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam with regard to the single ambulance trust.

Let me turn to the points made by the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire about proportionality, which he was right to raise. He will know from his time in government, both as deputy mayor and as a Home Office Minister, about the vital requirement for these powers. As I said in my introductory remarks, communications data is routinely used as evidence in upwards of 95%—that is probably a conservative estimate—of serious organised crime investigations. That is a key statistic. That data has played a significant role in every major terrorism investigation over the past decade. It provides vital evidence in both criminal and national security investigations. At the same time, he is right to make the point that we need to be proportionate in its use: strong powers, yes, but with an absolute requirement for strong oversight as well. I completely understand and am genuinely pleased about what he has said. It is not that often that we get the opportunity to debate these niche but important matters about the role of the commissioner.

The commissioner, Sir Brian Leveson, does an outstanding job. Anyone who knows him is aware that he is, by any metric, an extraordinary character and a true public servant with a wisdom and integrity that are a huge credit to the work that he does. He is incredibly well supported by an excellent team who work hard to ensure appropriate levels of oversight for this regime. We would not be able to operate without the independent oversight that he and his team have carried out for the previous Government and this Government, and will carry out for the next one, without fear or favour. All that said, it continues to be right, of course, for us to look carefully at the structural arrangements in place and, as a still relatively new Government, to satisfy ourselves that they are fit for purpose, that they are appropriately resourced and that the right people are doing what is a difficult and important job.

I give the right hon. Gentleman an absolute assurance that the Home Secretary and I personally take these matters very seriously. I meet Sir Brian and his team regularly, who look carefully at the work we do. But if the right hon. Gentleman or any other Member has any thoughts about how the regime could be tweaked or improved, I will happily have that conversation.

[Kit Malthouse]

I do not want to cast any aspersions on Brian Leveson, whom I know well—not least because he was educated at the same school as I was; obviously, a little before.

The challenge is about proportionality. We all acknowledge the importance of such evidence if we are dealing with serious criminality, violence or terrorism—as I said, 100% of murders are solved with the use of this data—but I guess my concern starts when the powers stray into matters that are primarily commercial, for example. The Intellectual Property Office deals essentially with commercial matters—disputes about patents and intellectual property, and possible fraud thereabouts. It is unlikely that anybody will go to prison as a result of the operation of the Intellectual Property Office, although they might pay a big fine or compensation to somebody.

I guess the issue is where the line is between criminality, violence, terrorism or serious and organised crime, and more commercial matters. Take the Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency: it may be a crime under DVSA regulations to do x, y or z, but the British public would not put that up there with terrorism. That is the proportionality that we are asking about: whether we are straying too far. The Government obviously do not think so, which is why they have put the regulations forward, but I ask the Minister whether he has satisfied himself about the point I am making.

I am sorry to make this slightly long intervention, but my prediction is that we will be here again in 12 months’ time. Suddenly all sorts of organisations will be saying, “D’you know what? It might be useful to have a bit of a fishing trip—we just don’t know. Let’s see if we can persuade the Minister whether, once he has put the Intellectual Property Office in, we can be in as well.”

[Dan Jarvis]

I am genuinely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, because he raises some important points. Some of us were here a week ago debating a not dissimilar statutory instrument. I had a very constructive debate with a former security Minister on his Benches—the right hon. Gentleman knows him well—and we repeated some of the debate that we had during the passage of the Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Act 2024 in the previous Parliament. We debated precisely the issues that the right hon. Gentleman raises.

I do not disagree with much of what the right hon. Gentleman said, but let me seek to give him a bit of assurance. First, we definitely do not do fishing exercises—as the Minister, I would not consider that remotely appropriate—and we do not do mission creep either. We need to be really careful to ensure that all the public authorities listed have an absolute operational requirement to use the powers.

The right hon. Gentleman’s raised the Intellectual Property Office in his earlier remarks, and helpfully did so again just a moment ago. The Intellectual Property Office engages with law enforcement agencies and other Departments to tackle intellectual property crimes, including those relating to patents, designs, trademarks and copyright, via a multi-agency approach. It also supports investigations to tackle serious organised crime, such as countering counterfeit goods, illegal streaming and associated money laundering offences under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. I take his point, but I hope that in the specific example he raises I am able to assure him that the powers vested in that organisation are necessary and proportionate. I further assure him that I will continue to look very carefully at these matters to satisfy myself that all the public authorities listed have that operational requirement.

Finally, I thought the right hon. Gentleman made a reasonable point about authorisation. I assure him that very careful consideration is given to matters relating to authorisation—I am sure he remembers that from his time in the Department. He raised an interesting example, but I assure him that, as a Minister, I have looked very carefully at the details of this, as have officials. We will satisfy ourselves that matters relating to authorisation are designated at an appropriately senior level. He is right to raise that point. I assure him that the regulations are appropriate, but I will look carefully at them to further satisfy myself that that is the case.

I hope that I have responded reasonably to all the questions, and that I have illustrated the importance of the regulations, which I commend to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Investigatory Powers (Communications Data) (Relevant Public Authorities and Designated Senior Officers) Regulations 2025.

Border Security and Asylum

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. I welcome her to Parliament, and I welcome her asking questions on this issue. We have to take a strong, rigorous and robust approach to value for money in every Department. It cannot simply be the responsibility of the Treasury; it has to be the responsibility of the Home Office, and of every Government Department. That is the approach that this Labour Government will take. I am frankly shocked that under the last Government not just the Home Office but the Treasury, the then Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues all signed off on these incredibly high payments and costs. They must have had the modelling that would tell them how much the costs would go up by, yet they signed off on them. Our Government are determined to pursue value for money at every stage.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

If the number of small boat crossings are higher next summer than this summer, will she resign?

[Yvette Cooper]

I realise that the right hon. Member is keen to get rid of me before I have even finished standing up at the Dispatch Box. Unfortunately, we have seen a succession of Conservative Home Secretaries—eight, I think, in the last eight years—none of whom resigned. Two of them were sacked under the last Government—actually, those two were the same person. Look, we have to be serious about this, because the dangerous boat crossings are undermining border security and putting lives at risk. Nobody should be making those journeys, and we have to work not just here but across other European countries to stop boats before they reach the French coast in the first place, to ensure that lives can be saved and the gangs are held accountable for their terrible crimes.

Assisted Dying

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Sir Robert. I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on choice at the end of life, so it should come as no surprise that I support the aspiration of the petition.

Over the last 10 years of my involvement in the campaign in Parliament, I have become used to converts—very welcome converts—to the cause, but of course they almost always convert to the cause after they have been through the horrible experience of watching someone they love go through an awful, agonising and degrading death. When Esther Rantzen stepped forward and talked about the impact that her disease was having on her, as well as about her decisions for the future, it should come as no surprise that there was an outpouring of support from the British people, because for many people she was part of the family. She regularly appeared in their front rooms, with her smiley, sunny demeanour, on a Saturday afternoon. Now that she is facing a horrible death and, with money, has decided to make the choice, the British people have obviously stood up and listened to the fact that she is supporting the campaign for a change in the law.

The British people listened to such an extent that they now do not really understand why politicians tolerate or talk about three particular things. First, they do not understand how so many Members in this House can stand for the status quo when, as has already been stated, the status quo is appalling. We have hundreds of people taking their own lives in this country—thousands dying agonising, horrible deaths when they may wish to do something different. Of course, we also have business class, so it is even worse: if you have the money, you can have what the law denies to everybody else. It is an outrage, and it should change. Worse than that, many Members who would oppose me making the choice are quite happy for a doctor to do it for me, as we have already heard. They are quite happy for a doctor to give an extra squeeze on the morphine and take away my own agency, choice and rights about my life. The British people just do not understand how so many people can tolerate that.

Secondly, the British people do not understand this view that the country is teeming with granny killers—that all of us are just waiting to bump off a wealthy relative so we can pocket the cash, like we are some kind of nation of Jeremy Bambers, intent on remunerating ourselves. The vast majority of British people love their parents and grandparents. They want the best for them, and they agonise when they die. If you go to the funerals or see them greeting each other at airport terminals, you will see the love there. That is not to say that there should not be safeguards, but we have safeguards in lots of other areas, and we should in this, too.

Thirdly, the British people do not understand how people of a genuine religious faith can seek to impose their own morality on the rest of us. They have not done so on gay marriage. They did not do so on homosexuality, adultery, abortion or sex before marriage. Why on this issue should the British people be denied a choice, because of the—certainly legitimately held—religious convictions of others? If the law changes, as I hope it will, and assisted dying becomes available, in extremis, to me and others, people need to realise that it is not compulsory. You may not want it yourself, and you may not want it for your relatives, but please do not stop me having it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Farris]

May I say that I did not actually know that my hon. Friend had had that diagnosis. I am so sorry to hear that.

I will just repeat that although those from the medical profession said that they did not wish to be tasked with assisted dying, they also thought that they might want assisted dying for themselves. They recognised that was a morally inconsistent position to take, which was a point echoed by the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq). We must recognise that this tension exists in the medical profession.

There were also counter-arguments elegantly expressed by my hon. Friends the Members for Aberconwy (Robin Millar), for Devizes (Danny Kruger), for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) and for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal and the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), to name a few. One of them more or less echoed the decision that was reached by the divisional court in the Noel Conway case in 2017, which said that section 2 of the Suicide Act 1961 served to

“reinforce a moral view regarding the sanctity of life”

and

“to promote relations of full trust and confidence between doctors and their patients”.

That position was echoed by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). As parliamentarians, we cannot duck the difficult issues that this question engages.

[Kit Malthouse]

The Minister has talked about the medical profession and the various arguments for and against, but she is a distinguished member of the legal profession. One of the things that many people suffering with terminal diseases find so confusing is that the law as it stands is inconsistent and a mess. We have a situation where it is technically illegal to accompany somebody to Switzerland, but upon return, the Crown Prosecution Service has a policy of not prosecuting. We have the example of Mavis Eccleston, who agreed a suicide pact with her elderly husband, but survived. She was prosecuted in court, effectively for murder, but was acquitted, having gone through this dreadful experience. The current law is a mess, and I wondered if we could have the Minister’s professional view on that.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (in the Chair)]

Order. There is a Division in the House. The sitting is suspended for fifteen minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Farris]

Well, I have been told I do not.

The other issue is evolution of the wider principle. What if a right to die evolves, perhaps slowly and imperceptibly at first, into a duty to die? My hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy put it beautifully. Once we have allowed people to rationalise the quality of their life, how do we avoid it becoming incumbent on them to do so? There are also the hard cases: some of the cases described in the Chamber today are heartrending and sound clearcut, but we cannot ignore the difficult ones. One in particular jumped out at me in relation to something that the hon. Member for Gower said: the case in Belgium of Nathalie Huygens, who ended her life because of the extreme psychological suffering that she experienced after she was raped. The hon. Lady—I mean this very respectfully—said we should give people the choice to take themselves out of suffering, but that is exactly what Nathalie Huygens would have argued she was doing. We cannot ignore these difficult cases.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way and I appreciate the point that she is making. However, around the world, different countries have legislation to deal with abortion, and there are different time limits and different attitudes to it. For example, in Canada, it is technically legal to have an abortion up to the point of birth. The fact that other countries have different rules, or indeed different cultural nuances around this or any other issue, surely does not mean that we should not have and design our own framework for the same purpose.

[Laura Farris]

I am not presenting any particular argument; I am reflecting the arguments that were made. I accept that we would not be in any legislative straitjacket, but these are the concerns raised by Members and they deserve to be ventilated in my summing up.

The final issue was manipulation or coercion. The hon. Member for North Antrim made the point very powerfully. I was listening carefully to what the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth) and my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire both said: that a majority of people are well meaning and love their relatives, but implicit in that is that a minority do not. Some people live in dysfunctional families, or may not have loved ones; we must consider the consequences or the potential risks for them, too.

My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) and, I think, the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) talked about the subtle coercion that a person might experience from being made to feel a sense of guilt at the cost that their illness is imposing on family members, not just in terms of money but in terms of stress and time; they could feel that they are becoming a burden. It is right, necessary and incumbent on us as parliamentarians to contemplate and recognise the enormity of the proposition, given the moral and ethical and medical issues that it engages.

I thank the Health and Social Care Committee for its excellent report. One of the Committee’s recommendations is that the Government consider how to respond to potential changes in other jurisdictions in the UK and the Crown dependencies. Of course, should they move on this issue, we will work closely with them to consider the practical implications for England and Wales.

Finally, I emphasise that end of life and palliative care is of the utmost importance. In the Health and Care Act 2022, the Government added palliative care services to the list of services that an integrated care board must commission. Our response to the Health and Social Care Committee’s report was published today. The report’s recommendation 5 was a request for a national strategy for death literacy. I do not think that we went that far, but I reassure the Committee that the Government have committed to including palliative and end of life care in wider strategies.

To conclude, I thank everyone who has spoken and assure the House that the Government will reflect carefully on everything that has been said today. In the meantime, I thank all hon. Members for their sincere and heartfelt contributions to the debate.

Criminal Justice Bill

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

That is a very nice practical example of a community coming together to commemorate and recognise that public service. We are speaking about people who give public service to our country to protect us all, while at the same time making enormous sacrifices. I had the great privilege of spending much of my time as Home Secretary with law enforcement, including police officers on the frontline, and with some of their family members, so I have heard first-hand testimony of the sacrifices made. That is particularly the case for the loved ones of officers who have died in the line of duty; it is incredibly sobering.

This Bill is important, and as it progresses I look forward to working with the Front-Bench team on the measures they are introducing. I will touch on some of the positive measures, as there are sections of the Bill that are hugely welcome. This legislation goes further in giving the public confidence in criminal justice and policing to keep our citizens and our country safe. There are provisions to address the use of 3D printers and electronic communications devices that aid vehicle theft. I think it is fair to say that we are great believers in designing crime out through the use of technology—making it harder for criminals who abuse the system to even commit the crime in the first place. The measures in the Bill should help in that preventive work.

Criminals are clever: they are constantly adapting, they are agile and they evolve their methods. As legislators, we must be prepared to make sure that we can do more to support the police to fight offenders. I welcome more details on how the Government will continue to grow their plans. The Policing Minister mentioned facial recognition, and I support that work. It is about time that we stood up to some of the legal challenges and brought in more facial recognition provisions to strengthen law enforcement.

I particularly welcome the measures in clauses 9, 10 and 18 relating to knives and bladed articles. I agree that more can be done. Online loopholes around the purchase of weapons has been a subject of discussion in the House for a long time, and I think we could do much more there. It is a fact that we are all horrified and shocked by the impact of knife crime on our streets on victims and their families. The lives of so many young people are blighted by the horrors of knife crime, and we can absolutely come together on this issue. Our hearts go out to victims of knife crime and their family members. We never, ever want to experience the grief and anguish that they endure, but we can do more. I pay tribute to the many campaigners in this space; we should stand with them to do much more.

I am pleased to see that clause 13 and schedule 2 include new provisions to strengthen the legal framework to prevent people taking, sharing and broadcasting intimate images—of course, I am referring to revenge porn. There are still loopholes, and we want to do more to close them. It is a sickening offence that blights people’s lives. Essex police investigated a very high-profile revenge porn case that led to the successful prosecution of an offender, Stephen Bear. I pay tribute to Georgia Harrison, who was on television again just yesterday, both for her bravery in speaking out so strongly and encouraging others to come forward and for the many ways in which she has championed this issue. Our laws have to be flexible and able to adapt to modern technology, so that victims are protected from the people who commit those dreadful crimes.

That brings me on to the measures in the Bill that cover the management of offenders who have a record of coercive and controlling behaviour. Clause 30 puts those offenders under the multi-agency public protection arrangements, which is very welcome. Those measures build on a strong record of supporting victims of domestic abuse and violence, and it is vital that they are put into effective practice. Having mentioned domestic abuse and violence, I want to touch on a really harrowing aspect of that issue: domestic homicides. A great deal of work has taken place in the Home Office around domestic homicide reviews. I led that work, and would like to see it strengthened so much more. We see too many loopholes, and I am afraid local authorities are not always following up on domestic homicide reviews in the way we would like them to. A lot of good practice is already out there, with some local authorities championing that work, working with multi-agency teams and law enforcement.

I also welcome the measures in clause 32 of the Bill to confiscate the proceeds of crime, and serious crime prevention orders, which are dealt with in clauses 34 and 37. Again, it is important that we constantly adapt and update our legislation, and that those measures are operationalised and implemented in an effective way. I look forward to hearing more details from the Government about those areas.

I have already touched on the great work undertaken to keep our streets safe and fight crime, particularly the work of the police, who are on the frontline. I believe that we should back the police when it comes to new technology, but also by standing by them as legislators, including in difficult times when the way in which they are policing and operationalising and their professional judgments are under scrutiny, including public scrutiny. The police are the ones who put themselves in harm’s way to protect the public, and in recent weeks, we have seen the pressures they face when it comes to policing in challenging circumstances. I pay tribute to the police—I have seen them in very difficult situations. They are skilled professionals, and the recruitment of 20,000 police officers did not come out of the ether. A great deal of detailed work took place around that recruitment, but also around retaining them—how our laws back them, and how new technology and funding enables them to do their jobs. Our police officers are a credit to our country, and we should always show them our appreciation. They are diligent and maintain the highest possible standards, as I have seen myself.

However, we have of course seen some shocking and disturbing incidents, inappropriate conduct and serious criminality involving police officers. We have debated that issue in this House many times, both during my time as Home Secretary and since I left that position. It is right that chief constables and police commissioners across the country work to improve professional standards—I have had many discussions to that effect—but it is also important that we learn the lessons when things go wrong. In particular, the measures in clause 73 relating to ethical policing and the duty of candour can build on the work that has taken place through recent reviews. Of course, inquiries are still taking place, in particular the Sarah Everard inquiry that Dame Elish is working on. It is important that we maintain those standards going forward—we have a lot of work to do.

I will now touch on some areas in the Bill where I want to see greater scrutiny to ensure that the measures in this legislation will make a difference and will go further in some quarters. One area that needs reflection is clause 19, which the Chair of the Justice Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), touched on already. That clause contains measures that would permit entry into private premises without a warrant.

I am the first to recognise the desired outcome that the Government are seeking: to support the police in tackling the issue of stolen goods by enabling them to enter and search premises and to seize items without a warrant. We all want to see those responsible for those crimes apprehended more quickly, and the goods returned to their rightful owners—that is absolutely right. Too often, victims of crime are left frustrated by the challenges involved in investigating those crimes and getting their goods back. However, as the party of law and order that believes in safeguarding the rule of law, I want to ensure that if this power is introduced, freedom and civil liberties are maintained and due process remains in place. There is the prospect that that power will be misused, leading to miscarriages of justice.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I share my right hon. Friend’s slight misgivings about that clause; it will be interesting to hear the argument that the Minister makes. Obviously, there are already circumstances in law where, if the police have reasonable suspicion that a person has committed a crime, they are able to enter that person’s premises in pursuit of them or the goods they have supposedly stolen. As such, I am unsure what more the clause will add; it will be interesting to see where the Government take it. I share my right hon. Friend’s nervousness about breaching a long-standing settlement with the British people about their privacy and the ability of the police to invade it.

[Priti Patel]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. He and I spent a great deal of time discussing policing powers and what more we could do to strengthen them in relation to all aspects of criminality. The Bill rightly includes some safeguards, but there are measures in place already. We need to understand how the proposed powers will work—how their use will be authorised, and in what circumstances. The Bill is at an early stage, and it will obviously be scrutinised in Committee, but there are questions that need to be answered. We welcome those discussions.

I will say a few words about the provisions relating to nuisance begging and rough sleeping. I have listened with interest to the comments that have already been made about this issue on both sides of the Chamber. Members will recall that the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 contained provisions to repeal the Vagrancy Act 1824, which is nearly 200 years old. I and my colleagues in the Government at the time worked with all Members of the House on that—it was right that the repeal took place—and we spoke about the replacement legislation as it came forward.

No one in the House would dispute that dealing with homelessness is a difficult, sensitive and highly complex issue. I worked with Government, local authorities and charities on these issues as Home Secretary, as did my former ministerial colleagues. In particular, we looked to provide resources and the right kinds of interventions to support those sleeping rough on our streets. Project ADDER was brought in to deal with a lot of the addiction issues that are associated with homelessness. That is an incredibly successful programme that works with local authorities. The Government must invest more in it and roll it out further.

I recall working on this issue with my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), who was then Policing Minister. He brought his London experience to the fore regarding problems in central London. There were some specific cases of begging and homelessness on Park Lane, and we were able to address those issues and deal with rough sleeping, which was causing a lot of problems in that community, by bringing in the police and Westminster City Council and taking some proactive measures. There are also some incredible charities doing outreach work in London and across the community, in particular those that engage with rough sleeping.

We should reflect on the fact that this issue involves some veterans with complex needs, including the challenges posed by mental health issues, as well as some individuals who need trauma-informed support. We need to invest time across different Departments and agencies to tackle this problem, rather than looking at it just in the context of a criminal justice Bill. It is right that the Government look at the legislation required to prevent rough sleeping, and it is also essential that they bring in measures from other Departments to provide the right help and support. It will be interesting to hear from Ministers about the work that will take place in this area and to hear some of their reassurances.

I would like to touch on the point my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) made about spiking. Some work on that has taken place already, and we have met victims of this horrendous crime and campaigners against it. I had the privilege of working with the police on spiking issues, and in fact with Assistant Chief Constable Maggie Blyth, who was brought in to support all the work on violence against women and girls in particular.

During my tenure as Home Secretary, we certainly introduced new restrictions on some of the drugs used for spiking, and we brought in tougher sentences. We also reviewed whether a new and specific offence was needed. One has not been brought forward, but it is subject to debate, and the Policing Minister is familiar with all this. As the Bill progresses, it will be interesting to see where the Government take this issue, particularly because it is difficult to track, as we know from policing data. We should recognise that as a House, but we want to do more to prevent further victims of spiking, and we need to come together to look at what practical measures can be put in place.

I look forward to working with Ministers. We have a very strong team, who will be very diligent when it comes to both building on previous measures and looking to strengthen the Bill to bring in proper practical measures. No one would dispute that the country wants robust action when it comes to going after offenders and punishing those who do dreadful things across our communities, leaving victims harmed. It is right that the Government bring in this Bill and it is right that we work collectively to strengthen our laws, but we do need practical measures to make sure that the legislation actually delivers for victims. We want fewer victims of crime, and we want to protect our communities and strengthen our safety.

Dangerous Drugs

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

We have conducted further engagement and consultation with the ACMD and others in industry to understand the implications of this move. I am jumping ahead a little, but we intend to table a further statutory instrument that will take effect alongside this one, which will make it clear that the sale and use of nitrous oxide for legitimate purposes will not be criminalised in any way—it will continue to be permitted. The definition of legitimate use will be very broadly drawn in that SI, because nitrous oxide is used for a wide range of medical research and commercial purposes, and we are not going to try to comprehensively list those purposes. A wide-based exemption for legitimate use will be put in place to make sure that we do not unintentionally stymie either medical research or commercial use of this drug.

It is worth saying that the use of nitrous oxide is quite widespread. Among those aged 16 to 24—

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

Could we have a little clarity on those two SIs? Does that mean that there is going to be a period in which otherwise legitimate uses will be illegitimate until the new SI is in place, and is that new SI needed because people came forward and said, “Whoops, you’ve missed this use”? I am not quite sure how the two SIs are going to interact.

[Chris Philp]

No, there will be no gap, and it is not unintentional or inadvertent; it is just likely that we will have to amend the way schedule 5 to the 1971 Act works in order to create this new category, essentially to accommodate nitrous oxide. The two SIs will be implemented on the same day—there will be no lacuna or gap. That is just how we have to sequence the secondary legislation under the Act.

Let me return to the question of prevalence. Some 230,000 young people inhaled this harmful substance in the year ending June 2022. It was the third most misused substance among that age group and, as we have discussed already, there is evidence that it has harmful neurological effects, particularly when consumed in quite large quantities.

Beyond that, we know that nitrous oxide has a significant effect on antisocial behaviour—indeed, we announced the measure for which we are legislating today in the antisocial behaviour action plan. Again, I thank parliamentary colleagues for raising the impact that nitrous oxide has had on their communities. It is fuelling antisocial behaviour and having an impact on the decent, hard-working majority who want to use their local park or go down their local high street without being harassed by antisocial behaviour or seeing the little silver canisters littered all over the place. To give an illustration of the scale of the problem, after the Notting Hill carnival a couple of weeks ago, it is estimated that 13 tonnes of those nitrous oxide canisters and others were collected from the street by the clean-up crews. That is an extraordinary amount.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for laying out the reasons for this SI. I recognise the impact on communities up and down the land of this particular substance, not least in littering and antisocial behaviour. I am anxious, as I am sure is the Minister, that if we are going to introduce this new measure, we do it properly. I have a couple of questions for the Minister about the impact of this instrument, particularly on the criminal justice system.

Looking at the impact assessment, I am surprised by the relatively low number of individuals it is envisaged will be put through the system. As the Minister will know, if we are to have an impact, there has to be a significant deterrent effect. If we are to have a deterrent effect, there has to be a sense in people’s minds that there is a very high probability of their being caught and that when they are caught, there will be a swift and certain consequence. Can he reassure us that the police are gearing up to deal with the numbers—even the relatively low numbers in the impact assessment—and that he has an ambition to go beyond those numbers? I know he does not want to do something that is merely performative, but that he wants to have an impact on this issue. We want to see fewer and fewer of these ampoules on the street and, indeed, fewer and fewer young people in particular using this substance.

If the Minister hits his ambition, what impact will that have on the criminal justice system overall? The estimate is that we will put, I think, a total of 500-odd people in prison for possession of this substance. As far as I can see, that is small against a background number that is running into the hundreds of thousands. Nevertheless, that will have an impact on the prison system. The thousands who will be going through the magistrates courts will obviously have an impact there. The police cost per capita of an arrest, charge and disposal of any kind by my calculation comes in at about £880, which seems light to me. Can the Minister reassure us about the cost, the capacity in the system and the ability for police forces to do this properly?

When this SI lands, will we see some action out there on the street? I am concerned we will see broadly what happened after the Blair-Brown reforms to cannabis possession. If the House remembers, at the tail end of that particular period in our political history, the notion was brought in of a cannabis warning, and then a cannabis penalty of 90 quid for police to hand out for pure possession. What happened was that we saw a bit of a bump in numbers, and then it tailed off, because the police realised there was little effect and it was not cost-effective to do it. The numbers diminished over the years.

As the Minister will know, a White Paper last year looked at a different set of consequences for possession, but in the absence of a response to that White Paper, I am keen to hear from him what the plan will be once the SI is in place, because as he and I both know, the policy is not the product; the product is what happens out there on the street. We are holding out a promise to our communities up and down the land that they will see fewer of these ampoules and less antisocial behaviour as a consequence. I hope there is an action plan.

My second point is to ask about unintended consequences. One of the characteristics of my youth in Liverpool in the 1970s and 1980s was the groups of young people gathering together to sniff glue. It was a horrible thing to do and obviously had a serious impact on their brains. The chemicals are even more noxious than this particular substance, so how will the Minister ensure that there is not a diversion towards those kinds of substances and the resumption of glue-sniffing in parks and playgrounds instead of taking this gas? If he can reassure me on both those points, I will be happy to support the SI.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Ronnie Cowan]

My point is that the Government are not nipping this is in the bud. What will happen here is that they will hand this over to the criminal fraternity, and kids who want to take drugs will continue to take drugs, but now we will not know what they are taking and it could be doing them more harm. Meanwhile, they will be arrested and given a criminal record, which will live with them for the rest of their days. That is not helping the situation at all.

I was just going to say that this change will result in people being arrested and convicted. That conviction will lead to stigma and damage employment opportunities, housing, personal finance, travel and relationships. That is what we have been doing for 50 years, and that has been a rolling success, has it not? There is little or no evidence that says that this action will address—[Interruption.] Does the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) want to intervene?

[Kit Malthouse]

indicated dissent.

[Ronnie Cowan]

There is little or no evidence that says that this action will address the problem. Can the Minister provide me with one example—just one—over 50 years where arresting someone for personal possession and giving them a criminal record has helped reduce the misuse of drugs? As has been highlighted already in this debate, the problems of antisocial behaviour and littering can be addressed through existing legislation properly applied.

This change is driven by the Government’s desire to be seen to be coming down hard on crime and, by doing so, they are ignoring evidence from their own expert body, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, along with the Royal Society of Medicine, the World Health Organisation and the United Nations. The focus should be on education, not punishment.

This change does nothing to address the question of why people fall into addiction, or indeed why they take drugs in the first place. It does nothing to reduce criminality; it just pushes it on to the consumer. It does nothing to make people safer. It creates a vacuum for criminals to fill. It is a wolf whistle to the “hang ’em high” brigade and it is typical of the lack of long-term strategic planning that is required. There are no short-term solutions; no magic wand exists.

Finally, continuing to bolster a policy that has not worked for 50 years will only add to the misery and pain that has already been inflicted. It is time to think outside the box and radically overhaul this Act and make it fit for the 21st century, where drug harm is a health issue and not a matter for the criminal justice system.

Public Order

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

The main point I want to emphasise today is that these issues are of course to do with balance. Opposition Members want to make it black and white, but we know that these things are not black and white. I am also interested in the fact that some of the same Members who have been so opposed to these regulations made complete counter-arguments when they proposed legislation, which I supported, to say that people should not be able to protest within a certain distance of an abortion clinic. These are common arguments and it is about the individual interpretation of them.

In a free society, we have responsibilities as well as rights. Our right to protest does not offer absolute relief from our responsibility to allow other citizens to go about their lives freely. Of course they have a right to do that. Much attention is paid to the rights of the protesters, but what about the rights of everyone else? We must view the impact in the context of the cost of resources to taxpayers, because they have a right to see their resources used sensibly. If we are going to say that something is acceptable—disruptive protest, disrupting sporting events, going on the road—let us imagine what would happen if we were not spending millions of pounds to minimise that behaviour. That behaviour would run rife. We would not be able to have a public event in this country without one or two people running into it and disrupting it. We would be unable to have any kind of major event without spending millions of pounds to stop people from protesting en masse, so it is quite right that we should look at making sure that we can do that more efficiently.

I would encourage the Home Secretary to consider going further. We are talking today about serious disruption and people perhaps not being able to go to hospital, but what about just being able to go to work, to catch up with a friend that they have not seen for a few months or to go out for dinner in a restaurant? Why do we say that one individual person can block a road and prevent all sorts of people going about their daily lives because they care deeply about an issue?

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very strong point. Does he agree that part of the disconnect on this between the Labour party and the rest of the country is that with these protests, the disruption is the objective, not the message? That is what makes the British people feel so aggrieved. Here in Westminster, more than anywhere, we understand that disruption can be a by-product of protest, but that is a by-product, not the primary objective.

[Dr Mullan]

Indeed, and the protesters brazenly admit it. It is not about protesting with a by-product of disruption; they brazenly admit that they want to do ever-escalating things to get into the news. They should go on a hunger protest and disrupt their own lives. Do not eat—that will get in the news. Why do they think they can go around disrupting everybody else’s lives just to make their point? Importantly, they can still protest. I was flabbergasted by the reporting of the apparent crackdown on protest at the coronation. I was on the parliamentary estate, and I saw loads of people holding up signs saying, “Not my King”. It was all over the news and I saw lots of people who were not arrested and who were not moved on. They were within feet of the procession and were perfectly able to go about their protesting.

I urge the Home Secretary to think about this. In my view, people should not be able to disrupt a road. They should not be able to stop traffic because they care particularly about an issue.

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[Alison Thewliss]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I would take a lot more from him if he actually believed climate change was real in the first place, before he starts lecturing other people.

The UK Constitutional Law Association has described this statutory instrument as

“an audacious and unprecedented defiance of the will of Parliament.”

This Government are bringing in things through this SI that they could not get through in legislation. The UKCLA says that

“The Government set about drafting regulations that would reverse the defeat in the House, relying on Henry VIII powers to amend the Public Order Act 1986 conferred by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. These draft regulations were laid before the Public Order Bill had even completed its Parliamentary stages. In this way, the Government sought to obtain through the back door that which it could not obtain through the front.”

That goes to the heart of this shoddy process this afternoon.

While this regulation is an England and Wales regulation, it does have implications for my constituents and other people from Scotland who wish to come and protest. If the WASPI women campaigners in my constituency wanted to come down here to complain about the injustice of having their state pension robbed from them by consecutive Westminster Governments; if they wanted to protest outside Parliament, as they have done on many occasions; and if they wanted to invoke the spirit of Mary Barbour, to bang pots and pans and stand in the road outside of this building, they would not be protected just because they are Scottish. They would be at risk of causing serious disruption under these regulations and would be lifted by the police forthwith. They would be at risk of causing serious disruption under these regulations and would be lifted by the police forthwith. That goes to the heart of these proposals. Those actions are just and important, and they want to draw attention to that injustice.

[Kit Malthouse]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison Thewliss]

No, the right hon. Member has been extremely obnoxious to me many times in the past, so I will not take his intervention.

Groups, including Liberty, have pointed out that these are not insignificant changes. Liberty says that the Government’s attempt to redefine serious disruption from “significant and prolonged” to “more than minor” is

“effectively an attempt to divorce words from their ordinary meaning in ways that will have significant implications for our civil liberties.”

The statutory instrument refers to

“the prevention of, or a hindrance that is more than minor to, the carrying out of day-to-day activities (including in particular the making of a journey)”,

but what is “minor”? We do not know. Is a couple of minutes late “minor”? What is “more than minor”? Is that 10 minutes late rather than five minutes late? There is nothing in these regulations to say. They will give significant discretion to the police to figure out exactly what is “minor” and what is “more than minor”, because nobody can really tell us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Carmichael]

I think the glorious 12th comes in August actually, but I bow to the expertise of those on the Conservative Benches on such matters.

In fairness, however, the right hon. Gentleman has a reasonable point, and I understand that the legislation to which he refers pertains only to Northern Ireland and that is perhaps why it is not part of this legislation. Essentially, however, as the shadow Home Secretary said in her remarks, this is an area of law that is already well regulated. Very few areas of lacuna remain within the law and this legislation is not in any practical, meaningful way going to fill any difficulties. What would fill difficulties is a better resourced police force that is better able to engage with people and take on board their wish to protest.

[Kit Malthouse]

Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on the fact that it is not just Northern Ireland that has regulation of protest? He will be aware that in Scotland it is a criminal offence not to notify the police within 28 days of an organised moving protest, and that people may face criminal sanctions if they do not do so. What is the difference between the legislation we are currently discussing and the law under which his constituents operate, where they may go to prison if they do not tell the police about a protest that is coming?

[Mr Carmichael]

I could be wrong because I am hopelessly out of date on so much of this stuff, but I think from memory that the right hon. Gentleman refers to the provisions of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, which was brought into force under a previous Government—a Government for whom I had very little time, but in terms of the way in which they went about their business were a model of parliamentary propriety compared with the mince that has been brought to the Chamber this afternoon. This comes back to the point I made about the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich: there are serious issues here to be decided—serious issues about the balance between the rights of the individual to protest and the rights of the community to go about their business—but this is not the way to deal with them.

The shadow Home Secretary made the point that this is an area where there is already extensive legislation. Problems arise not from the lack of legislation but from the lack of the ability to implement properly and with consent the laws we currently have.