Public Order Bill

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Public Order Bill because, notwithstanding the importance of safeguarding vital national infrastructure alongside the right to protest peacefully, the Bill does not include provisions for cooperation between police, public and private authorities to prevent serious disruption to essential services, includes instead measures that replicate existing powers, includes powers that are too widely drawn and which erode historic freedoms of peaceful protest, ignores the need for effective use of existing powers and does not recognise emergency NHS services as vital national infrastructure.

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

Do you know what, Madam Deputy Speaker? I actually will. I was deeply disappointed that once again the Home Secretary, sadly, would not take an intervention from me. It was deeply disappointing to note how frit she seemed to be of any of the questions that I tried to raise, which, once again, would have been extremely factual. I will give therefore way to the hon. Gentleman, if he can explain why crime has gone up and prosecutions have gone down since he became Policing Minister.

[Kit Malthouse]

When Labour Front Benchers called for “an immediate nationwide ban” on Just Stop Oil, did they have the support of their own Back Benchers? If not, is that why the right hon. Lady has performed the most enormous reverse ferret in the amendment that she has put before the House?

[Yvette Cooper]

I think that there is a strong case for using injunctions to deal with the kind of disruption that we saw from Just Stop Oil, but that is not dealt with at all in the Bill, which is part of the problem with it. It does not address a great many of the problems about which the Home Secretary is supposedly concerned; instead, it will cause alternative huge and serious problems. Most significantly, it fails to deal with some of the very serious issues about which the Home Secretary should be most concerned at this moment.

This is the first of the Government’s Queen’s Speech Bills of the Session. This is the Bill to which they have chosen to give pride of place, and what does it contain? There is no action to deal with the cost of living, although inflation is hitting its highest level for decades and millions of people are going without food to get by; nor is there any action to deal with the crisis facing victims of crime. There is no victims Bill, even though 1.3 million victims of crime who have lost confidence in the criminal justice system dropped out last year, and even though crime is rising and prosecutions are falling.

Instead, what we have are rehashed measures from last year’s Bill. We have a second round of measures on public order, even though the Government had plenty of time to work out what they wanted to do in last year’s Bill; even though the Home Secretary claimed that that Bill would solve all these problems—she said then that it would

“tackle dangerous and disruptive protests”;

even though the Government have not even implemented the measures from last year’s Bill, or assessed them to see what impact they are having before coming back for more, as any sensible Government would do; even though, for seven years running, the Home Secretary and her party have been promising a victims Bill; and even though, over those seven years, support for victims has become staggeringly worse. The number of victims dropping out because they have lost confidence has doubled since that victims Bill was first promised. That is more victims being let down and more criminals being let off.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

“A little inconvenience is more acceptable than a police state”—not my words, but those of a police officer consulted by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services on proposals in the Bill. I agree with the sentiment.

People are fleeing war in Ukraine and multiple other countries. The Home Secretary could be focused on sorting out the dangerously long time it is taking to get them to safety. She could be putting her energy into fixing the chaos at the Passport Office. She could be using her power to solve the supply chain issues that are pushing up food prices, which have made things unaffordable for many on these islands. Instead, she is bringing back populist—according to YouGov and Daily Express polls, at least—draconian, anti-human rights policies that were rejected only a matter of weeks ago in the other place. The reason for that is anyone’s guess. Is it to distract from the aforementioned failings of her Department? To raise her profile for when the Prime Minister surely, inevitably, has to stand down? Or just because she can?

Make no mistake: this, to quote Liberty, is

“a staggering escalation of the Government’s clampdown on dissent”.

It is at odds with people’s right to freedom of thought, belief and religion; freedom of expression; and freedom of assembly and association. For some, it will also lead to a clampdown on their right to respect for private and family life. Those are all rights we enjoy through the Human Rights Act 1998, but I do not expect this Government or many of their Back Benchers to care, because they want to tear that Act up and define the rights that they think we should enjoy.

However, I think that the people out there, who after all elected us, have the right to know that this Government want to control what they think, believe and say. This Bill allows the state to stop and search people who are not suspected of a single wrongdoing. It could lead to someone who has committed no crime having to report to certain places at certain times. I would be interested to hear who they will report to in Scotland, and what consultation has taken place with the Scottish Government on that. The Bill could mean people out there, again having committed no offence, having to wear an electronic tag, and having every single move they make monitored 24/7. That is sinister. The Home Secretary did not like it when the Opposition said this, but it bears striking similarities to what happens in Russia and Belarus. It is all about oppressing and controlling people. It is the stuff of conspiracy theories no more; this is the menacing new reality if you do not agree with the Conservative Government.

Big Brother Watch is concerned that the Bill takes us one step closer to becoming a surveillance state. That may be ideologically in line with this Government’s desire to control the people, but is it necessary? Will it work?

[Kit Malthouse]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne McLaughlin]

No, I am not giving way. There is widespread acceptance that the answer to both of those questions is no. Again,

“a little inconvenience is more acceptable than a police state”.

It is not just the one police officer who felt that way. Her Majesty’s inspectorate consulted widely on these powers as early as 2020 and they were rejected across the board, not just because they were incompatible with human rights legislation, but because police concluded that they would not be an effective deterrent. So what is the point?

Existing legislation is already heavily weighted in favour of the authorities, and the 2022 Act has made that even more the case. The former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), said in 2018 that,

“it is a long-standing tradition that people are free to gather together and to demonstrate their views. This is something to be rightly proud of.”

He was right: it was something to be rightly proud of. Where a crime is committed, the police already have the powers to act so that people feel protected. Where there is a clear need to protect critical infrastructure or transport hubs, the UK already has an array of legislation that allows that to happen, as the former Home Secretary said. The Public Order Act 1986 gives the police powers to place restrictions on protests and, in some cases, prohibit those that threaten to cause serious disruption to public order. There is an array of criminal offences that could apply to protesters, including aggravated trespass or obstruction of a highway.

Despite that, the Government waited until the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill had completed its passage through this House to slip much of what we have before us today into that Bill at the last minute, when it was in the House of Lords—and the Lords roundly rejected it. Instead of accepting the defeat, one week later, the Government regurgitated most of the measures into the Bill before us today. The Home Secretary should accept that these draconian measures have already been rejected by Parliament and respect the democratic process. After all, this Government keep telling Scotland to do likewise, although the issue we intend to revisit—the matter of Scotland’s independence—was last put before the people eight years ago, not just last month.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

We should not be fooled: the measures in this Bill are the very same as those the House of Lords overwhelmingly rejected from the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 on the basis that they form a dangerous and blatant power grab that undermines our civil and democratic liberties. The measures include the creation of serious disruption prevention orders that could subject individuals to 24/7 GPS monitoring whether they have been convicted of a crime or not. They include new stop-and-search powers for the police despite a wealth of evidence, as we have heard, that black people are disproportionately targeted. They include a broad, potentially catch-all, new offence of

“being equipped for locking on”,

meaning that someone could face an unlimited fine for as little as carrying a bike lock.

The measures have been described as “draconian”, “authoritarian” and a

“staggering escalation of the Government’s clampdown on dissent”.

They were rightly rejected from the 2022 Act and, even though the ink is not yet dry, the Government are already trying to reintroduce powers that would not be out of place in some of the world’s most repressive regimes. Is this really the kind of country that this Conservative Government want us to be?

It goes without saying that no one should be blocking ambulances from getting where they need to go, which puts lives at risk and does nothing to build public support for a cause. However, the new laws are not about stopping people blocking roads. If the Government really cared about ambulances being delayed, they would be doing far more to tackle the ambulance crisis that is leaving people waiting hours in an emergency. The new laws are about cracking down on the right to peaceful assembly and protest. The police already have the powers they need, as we see when people are arrested for going beyond what is acceptable for a peaceful protest.

The police are not asking for these new powers; they do not even support them. When consulted, senior police officers said that the orders being proposed by this Government would be a “massive civil liberty infringement”. To make matters worse, this legislation will not even be effective. To quote Liberty,

“the Government cannot legislate people into silence”.

If peaceful protest is effectively banned, the likely consequence of this Bill will simply be to push people to seek more urgent routes to protest. All it will do is undermine confidence in our public institutions and in our police at a time when public trust in the police leadership is already fragile.

Without the right to protest, countless hard-earned freedoms would never have been won. From the decriminalisation of same-sex relationships, to employment rights, to women winning the right to vote, the right to peaceful protest has been a force for change time and again. Protest is not a gift from the state to be given and taken at will. It is a fundamental right, and it is the foundation on which any democracy stands. We Liberal Democrats will always stand up for that right.

I add my support to the efforts of the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) to amend the Bill to introduce buffer zones around abortion clinics. It is a clear and tightly targeted measure that would address the harassment of women accessing healthcare. More than 100,000 women in England and Wales every year have abortions at clinics that are targeted by these groups. Since I last supported this measure in July 2021, three more abortion clinics have been targeted for the first time, leaving more women open to abuse and feeling afraid.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am honestly and genuinely perplexed by the argument about buffer zones. I agree that the harassment of women seeking those services is disgraceful and should not be allowed, but why just them? Why not hospitals in general? Why not places of worship? I understand the sensitivity in that particular situation, but why is it that we object to and are willing to restrict that particular form of protest, but not others?

[Wera Hobhouse]

I support a simple and targeted measure against protests outside clinics that harass women seeking abortion. We can talk about other measures, but it is important to protect women who are already in an extremely vulnerable position from such harassment.

Last week, “Newsnight” ran an alarming story on the difficulty that clinics and local residents face in getting councils to make use of the public spaces protection orders—legislation that Ministers say is the only option. These PSPOs create an unacceptable postcode lottery. Our colleagues in Northern Ireland and Scotland are prioritising finding a solution to this form of persistent and targeted harassment, and we cannot allow women in England and Wales to be left behind.

I will never support a Bill that goes against our fundamental civil rights and those who do so tonight should be ashamed.

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[John McDonnell]

My constituents and I have taken the view that because expansion is such a threat to our community, we are willing to engage in direct action, and if we are prosecuted under existing law, we take it on the chin. We go to court, explain our case and accept the fine or whatever. That is the reality of it. That is the way it works. The Bill, however, takes things to another level. One way we have protested is by blocking the tunnel at Heathrow for an hour. Well, we have never really stayed there that long; we have stayed there for half an hour, done a deal with the police and then dispersed. A number of my constituents were fined for that. We went to court, which gave them the opportunity to express their views about what was going on, and to expose what was happening. In some ways, it gained us maximum publicity. Under the Bill, however, they could be serving a sentence of a year, or could have an unlimited fine.

There is an issue of balance and fairness. There is something about British democracy that we have to uphold here, because we have a long tradition of people like my constituents saying to the state, “This far and no further. You are going beyond the bounds of the mandate on which you were elected.”

[Kit Malthouse]

Does the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that sentencing is not just about handing out a punishment? It is about deterring people from committing the offence again. Obstructing the highway attracts a level-3 fine of up to £1,000, but that does not seem to have any impact on the willingness of some protestors to do it time and again. Is there not some justification in using sentencing as a deterrent there?

[John McDonnell]

The problem is—and here I follow the advice of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services—that the measures will not be a deterrent. All they will do is incentivise many more people to come forward, because this will make them angry and it will cause undue suffering. I am just giving a concrete example of what the good people in my constituency are doing. If Members thought a road was going to be built through their local cemetery, and that their relatives would have to be dug up, I doubt any of them would not join the demonstration. A number of Conservative MPs and councillors did join us.

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[Caroline Lucas]

As others have said, evidence-based stop and search—where there is evidence and a good reason—is not in question. What is in question here is stop and search on the basis of a whim. As others have eloquently said, there is a very real danger of antagonising some groups who are already most disadvantaged, and therefore making the situation far worse.

The Government want to give the police powers to stop and search a person or a vehicle in a protest context, even when there are no grounds for suspicion. That will be permissible simply if a police officer believes that an offence—such as wilfully obstructing a highway or intentionally causing a public nuisance—might happen in the area or thinks that some people in the area might be carrying prohibited items; and there we are, back to the marker pens and knitting needles.

Protest is, by its very nature, liable to cause a public nuisance, disruption and noise, and to have specific targets, but real democratic leadership does not seek to ban opposition voices from protesting. Only a cowardly Government, who do not trust or respect their people, would take such a step.

[Kit Malthouse]

I wanted to ask whether the hon. Lady, notwithstanding her objection to the banning of protest, subscribes to the enthusiasm across the House for the ban of protests near abortion centres or clinics, and supports the creation of buffer zones that ban protests in those circumstances. If that is the case, is she possibly guilty of wanting to ban only protests with which she does not agree?

[Caroline Lucas]

I disagree with the premise of the Minister’s intervention. I have been proudly at the forefront of moves to say that women seeking their right to healthcare should not be subject to the personal, direct and threatening individual harassment that happens all too frequently outside abortion centres. I would wager that I have been on more demonstrations than anyone on the Government Benches—I have been arrested for them and I have been alongside them, and I have to say in parentheses that the characterisation of protesters by Government Members is wildly short of the mark—but I have seen nothing that is tantamount to the kind of harassment and direct intimidation that I have seen outside abortion centres, which is why the Minister’s comparison is not a reasonable one.

While I am on the subject of who protesters are, let me say that I am fascinated by the division between the protesters we support and those we do not. It seems to me that we support the ones who are silent and probably protesting in their own front rooms, because we do not like protest to be disruptive.

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[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

Many of the rights that we take for granted today were largely not born of the spontaneous goodwill of some trail-blazing politician. They came about because people stood together, they demanded change, they protested and they made those with power listen. For example, I would not be standing here today as an MP, and many of my constituents would not even have the right to vote, had it not been for the Peterloo protest, also known as the Peterloo massacre due to the horrific atrocities inflicted upon those protesting. That protest movement called for reforms to parliamentary representation. Ultimately, it resulted in the Great Reform Act 1832, which went some way to addressing the injustices in the political system.

We have heard today how women would not have the right to vote had it not been for the suffragettes. They are hailed as heroines now, but back in their day they were demonised and viewed as trouble-making anarchists. They were the so-called “lefties” Conservative Members have been talking about today.

Equal pay legislation was largely born of the actions of brave striking workers at Ford Dagenham and the large scale protests that followed. The establishment of the National Parks and, ultimately, the principle of the right to roam would not have happened without the Kinder Scout trespass. The list is endless, but, sadly, it is clear that such era-changing moments in our history will be a fairy tale that we simply tell our children if this House allows the Public Order Bill as drafted to become law.

Human rights organisation Big Brother Watch says this of the Bill:

“It is without doubt that it includes some of the most undemocratic, anti-protest measures seen in the UK for decades.”

Law reform and human rights organisation JUSTICE considers that the Bill

“would pose a significant threat to the UK’s adherence to its domestic and international human rights obligations.”

Further, Amnesty’s analysis is that many of the provisions that have re-emerged in this Bill after being roundly rejected by the House of Lords in February

“would seriously curtail human rights in this country and damage the UK’s international standing, potentially irreparably.”

On protest banning orders, the vast range of peaceful and innocent conduct that the police would seemingly be able to criminalise is breathtaking. The Bill says that these orders can apply to people without conviction if someone has carried out activities

“or contributed to the carrying out by any other person of activities related to a protest that resulted in, or were likely to result in, serious disruption”

among a range of other scenarios, on two or more occasions. Let me explain that. If a law-abiding person attends two marches, for example, where hundreds of thousands are in attendance and some people completely unrelated to them cause a “serious disruption”, which is undefined and could mean literally anything, could that law-abiding person be subject to a protest banning order? The Bill as drafted certainly seems to suggest that they could.

The offence of locking on is also veiled in ambiguity. As JUSTICE says, it is so vague that it would appear to capture a couple walking arm in arm down a busy street where they may be being reckless as to cause “serious disruption” to another couple walking in the opposite direction. Again, “serious disruption” is undefined and could mean literally anything.

The widening of already extensive stop and search powers also appears wholly disproportionate and hugely damaging to racialised communities. Indeed, clause 7(2) is one troubling example. That allows for the police to search an individual when they have reasonable grounds for finding an object that is

“made or adapted for use in the course of or in connection”

with one of the relevant offences. “Object” is not defined; it could be anything from a mobile phone used to agree meeting points with friends to a leaflet about the event. Those are just three staggeringly pernicious examples from a frightening selection box of draconian and anti-democratic measures in this Bill.

[Kit Malthouse]

I just thought I would take the opportunity to deal with the “serious disruption” issue. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) also mentioned it. I believe the hon. Lady is a lawyer by training, so she will know that the phrase “serious disruption to the community” has been in use in the law since 1986 and is therefore a well-defined term in the courts, which of course is where the test would be applied under the legislation.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

I welcome the Minister’s contribution but, as he well knows, case law differentiates and changes from time to time without adequate explanation in the text of a piece of legislation. That is what causes significant ambiguity here; there is no doubt in my mind that what would be deemed a serious disruption would change over time and could ultimately result, given the other provisions in the Bill, in an inference that serious disruption is of a lesser nature than it currently is in present case law.

To be frank, those provisions have no place in a democratic country with a long, proud history of upholding the fundamental right to lawful and peaceful protest. There has been a lot of talk in this debate about the Bill cutting crime; if that were the case, I think we would all welcome it. However, as the Government well know, the first step to cutting crime would be to properly fund our police services, which have suffered 12 years of dramatic cuts to their funding and resources. This Bill will not cut crime. Indeed, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services said in relation to protest banning orders that they

“would neither be compatible with human rights legislation nor create an effective deterrent.”

There has also been an illusion created that new offences are being brought in to deal with some of the issues that have been referred to. I want to set the record straight on that. We talked earlier about the terrible issue of emergency vehicles being stopped. That should certainly not be happening, but there is already legislation for that; the Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006 makes it a criminal offence to obstruct an emergency vehicle. Similarly, the Criminal Damage Act 1971 imposes a fine or prison service of up to 10 years for an act of criminal damage. Highway obstruction is also a criminal offence.

To suggest that the Public Order Bill is in some way a panacea for actions that many within our communities would deem irresponsible, unlawful and incorrect is way off the mark. Therefore, I hope that colleagues across this House will recognise before it is too late the chilling effect that the Bill will have on our democracy and vote it down on Second Reading.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

I have listened to others with pleasure, Madam Deputy Speaker. We have had a debate with a vigorous exchange of views, although I am afraid it was largely bifurcated. There was a group of speeches on the end of democracy: “Here we go, fascism is on its way,” or “We are about to become North Korea”—although I am sure the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) would not think that an entirely backward step. The speeches made by the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) and the hon. Members for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), for Edmonton (Kate Osamor), for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) were all of a kind, predicting the end of democracy as we know it. Among the froth of outrage and alarm, there were some nuggets of questions that need to be answered, particularly on why we chose to bring back the Bill after it was roundly rejected by the House of Lords. Well, their key criticism was that the Bill had not had enough scrutiny in this House, so we brought it back as soon as we could for the scrutiny of hon. Members.

A number of hon. Members claimed that there is no public support for the Bill whereas, in fact, recent polling shows that a majority of the British public support it. There was a lot of focus on and concern about stop and search powers in the Bill. We should all take stop and search powers seriously, and look at them with care, but there seems to be a misapprehension among a number of Members about how the provision will operate, particularly regarding disproportionality and demographics. The notion is that the police will authorise an area for the equivalent of section 60 stop and search that will be where they believe the protest is likely to take place or where people will approach the protest. Therefore, the demographics of those searched are likely to reflect those attending the protest, rather than generally across the board as with other stop and search powers.

Getting ahead of those who are likely to lock on or take other equipment with them to protest will give the police an important head start in stopping some of the prolonged and difficult protests with which they have to deal and which often put them in danger. A number of Members asked why key infrastructure, such as hospitals and NHS sites, are not covered in the Bill. There are already offences that cover those areas in other legislation, so we do not need to cover them here.

I thought that two speeches in particular illustrated some of the issues. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) was alarmist in her portrayal of the direction in which the Government are going on protest, but nevertheless was not seen throwing herself between Police Scotland and the oil protesters at Clydebank, when they were carted off and arrested. Then there was the conundrum faced by the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq): she has happily accepted restrictions on protest outside abortion clinics and, in previous legislation, outside schools and vaccination centres—privileging them, quite rightly, as areas where protesters may come into conflict with those who are going to school or undergoing sensitive medical procedures, or indeed those denying vaccination—but I still cannot see the logic of then not applying some controls on protest outside other facilities or other people’s houses. [Interruption.]

There were some thoughtful speeches that added to the debate, including that of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), who posed some interesting questions that we will address in Committee. I am more than happy to engage with him as he ponders the Bill. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), also asked some probing questions to which we will give some thought as the Bill passes through the House.

We heard two interesting speeches about the two sides of protest. The right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington spoke about a community who have been using protest to further what they regard as their interest against, as he put it, the changing winds of political decision about Heathrow. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) put the other side of the argument—about living with protest. Having lived in very central London for many years, I know the burden that protest can bring to residents and businesses in that part of town. The relentlessness of it—week in, week out, seemingly every weekend—can really prey upon people’s standard of living.

Then we come to the frankly hilarious contortions of the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), and the shadow Policing Minister, the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), where we see in full the contradictions writ large in the body politic of the Labour party. First, the Front Benchers want a nationwide ban via injunctions, but not criminal sanctions. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford condemns Just Stop Oil and XR but is unwilling to do anything about them, and she believes that injunctions, which sometimes take six weeks to bring people to justice, will be faster than a criminal offence.

The truth is that the right hon. Lady’s objective this evening is not to fashion legislation that will deal with new tactics in public order. It is to get her party through the same Lobby in once piece, and at the same time to keep her head down, because we know that she has form; back in 2005, she was the Minister in a Government who voted to ban protest entirely within half a mile of this place. Famously, the first arrest was of a woman reading the names of the Iraq war dead at the Cenotaph. The right hon. Lady has form and Labour Members all know it—she is just trying to get them through the Lobby in one piece.

My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), who is my constituency neighbour, made a thoughtful speech in which he nailed fundamentally the issue with which we are wrestling. As I said in the debate that we had on protest in respect of the PCSC Bill, the job of a democratic Government is to balance competing rights in any scenario, but most importantly in respect of protest. How do we balance that most fundamental right to make our voices known, to protest about those things that are important to us and to try to bring about change? As my hon. Friend quite rightly said, this is about balancing moral force against physical force. The use of moral force is legitimate in a democratic society, but the use of physical force to bring about what one wants to see is less so.

[Yvette Cooper]

The Minister talks about the extension of the powers of stop and search in the Bill; will he confirm that the Bill will make it possible for the police to stop and search people to try to find something that makes noise—such as a boombox, because that could contribute to a protest offence—and will also allow the stopping and searching of peaceful passers-by who walk through Parliament Square?

[Kit Malthouse]

It would depend on which part of the Bill they used for their powers. In essence, they would be stopping and searching people to look for equipment that could be used in the commission of an offence. I know the right hon. Lady will not want to confuse colleagues, but she possibly confuses the conditions that can be placed on a protest with the criminal offences that may ensue from a protest. The police will use their stop-and-search powers to deal with those criminal offences.

Let me return to my thread. As my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes said, we cannot allow our tradition of liberty to be used against us. Sadly, over the past few years we have seen, time and again, so-called protesters abuse our fundamental rights to make our views known to bring about their opinionated aggression, thereby impacting on people’s lives in a way that we feel is unwarranted. When I was a young politics student at university, I was taught by a member of the Labour party and great liberal thinker called Professor Hugh Berrington, who once said to me in a lecture I have never forgotten: “Being a liberal democracy doesn’t mean lying back and allowing yourself to be kicked in the stomach.” Sadly, too many of these so-called protesters—they masquerade as protesters but they are really criminals—bring about opinionated aggression that we believe is unacceptable.

We know that we have the support of the majority of the British public. Opposition Members have lightly lain aside the rights of the British public, but they have been championed in this debate by my hon. Friends the Members for Ipswich (Tom Hunt), for Dudley North (Marco Longhi), for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), for Stockton South (Matt Vickers), for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) and for Ashfield (Lee Anderson). In particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) yet again gave a bravura performance in defence of not only the ancient right of protest but the ancient British quality of proportion and moderation in everything.

[Paul Bristow]

Does my right hon. Friend remember recently visiting my Peterborough constituency? He saw it for himself when he met police officers, members of the public and many fine people in my constituency. Does he agree that the majority of the people in my constituency support this Bill and the powers in it?

[Kit Malthouse]

I do agree with my hon. Friend, but you do not have to take it from me, Madam Deputy Speaker. You can take it from any polling that has been done recently that shows that the majority of the British people support the measures that we are taking.

My hon. Friend brings me to my final point, which was neatly illustrated when I visited Peterborough and looked at its work on knife crime. What the British people actually want is for their police officers—men and women—to spend their time fighting crime, not detaching protesters from fuel gantries, not unsticking them from the M25, and not having to surround fuel dumps in Essex so that the petrol can get out to the people who need it to go about their daily business. The British people want the police to be catching rapists and putting them behind bars, detecting paedophiles and making sure that they pay for their crimes, and stopping young people of all types being murdered on a regular basis. That is what we want our police officers to do. This Bill will release them to do that job, and I hope that the House will support it.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Fire Reform White Paper and Improving Fire Safety for the Public

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Written Statements

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

My noble Friend the Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) has today made the following written ministerial statement:

I am pleased to make a number of announcements to the House today that set out both the Government’s fire reform agenda and the introduction of a package of fire safety measures that will protect the public for years to come. Taken together, this is about:

Driving forward reform of the fire and rescue service by launching the Fire Reform White Paper and consultation (CP 670)

Implementing a package of measures to improve fire safety

Improving transparency and engaging the public.

Fire Reform White Paper and consultation

The Fire Reform White Paper and consultation seeks to introduce system-wide reform to strengthen fire and rescue services across England. The proposals are set out under three key themes: people; professionalism; and governance. The consultation is launching today to seek views and will be open for 10 weeks.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/reforming-our-fire-and-rescue-service



Review of the National Joint Council

As set out in the White Paper the Government will launch a review of the National Joint Council for Local Authority Fire and Rescue Services. The review, which will commence later this year, will consider whether the pay negotiation mechanism in England is fit for purpose.

The Fire Safety Act 2021

The Fire Safety Act 2021 was commenced in full on 16 May 2022. This will clarify that structure, external walls and flat entrance doors of blocks of flats are within scope of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (the fire safety order) and ensure that they are included in that building’s fire risk assessment.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fire-safety-act-2021

Fire risk assessment prioritisation tool

To support commencement of the Fire Safety Act 2021, the Home Office is publishing supporting guidance issued under article 50 of the fire safety order and launching an online prioritisation tool. The new fire risk assessment prioritisation tool has been developed to help responsible persons identify the priority for updating fire risk assessments.

Fire risk assessment prioritisation tool: https://bpt.homeoffice.gov.uk/

Fire Safety (Regulations) 2022

The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 will require responsible persons to send information on high-rise residential buildings which will help fire and rescue services better plan for and respond to a fire. They will also improve fire safety in high-rise buildings by setting a baseline on safety checks on lifts for firefighters and other key pieces of firefighting equipment and, in mid-rise buildings, on doors. They will also make residents in all multi-occupied residential buildings feel safer by providing them with fire safety instructions and information on the importance of fire doors. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fire-safety-england-regulations-2022

Personal emergency evacuation plans (PEEPs) consultation response, and new consultation

We are publishing the responses to our PEEPs consultation which we ran from 8 June to 19 July 2021. We have taken account of the substantial difficulties of mandating PEEPs in high-rise residential buildings and have developed new proposals that we are confident deliver proportionality, practicality and improve safety for those vulnerable people living in the highest risk buildings. We will now consult and seek views on these proposals.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/personal-emergency-evacuation-plans

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/emergency-evacuation-information-sharing

Fourth thematic update on Grenfell Tower inquiry phase 1 recommendations

We are publishing our latest update on progress against Grenfell Tower inquiry phase 1 recommendations. This shows progress made by Government Departments, and relevant public authorities, including the London Fire Brigade, and National Fire Chiefs Council. The tracker provides a digestible, transparent way for the public to hold those responsible for delivering recommendations to account. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/quarterly-thematic-update-on-progress-against-the-grenfell-tower-inquiry-phase-1-recommendations

Fires in high-rise residential buildings in England are rare, and thankfully deaths from fires in high-rise residential buildings are extremely rare. The Government, however, are committed to learning the lessons of the tragedy at Grenfell Tower.

[HCWS35]

Public Consultation: Extraction of Information from Electronic Devices Code of Practice

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Written Statements

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

Following the successful passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, I am pleased to announce that today I am launching a public consultation on the draft code of practice for the extraction of information from electronic devices.



It is vital that victims feel confident in coming forward to report crime, but we know that fear of intrusive demands for information can deter victims from reporting offences or from continuing to support investigations. The powers in chapter 3 of part 2 of the Act therefore strengthen the law to ensure that there is a consistent approach to requesting information from phones and other electronic devices which puts respect for an individual’s privacy at the centre of every investigation.



This code of practice will be a vital tool in ensuring that all use of these powers is lawful and that the powers are used only where it is necessary and proportionate. The draft code makes it clear that the powers must be used only as a last resort. This will ensure that all those who are asked to voluntarily provide their devices and give agreement to the extraction of information, are given all the necessary information to enable them to make the decision that is right for them.



All authorised persons have a duty to have regard to the code when exercising, or deciding whether to exercise, the power. The code will also be admissible in evidence in criminal or civil proceedings and failure to act in accordance with it may be taken into account by the court.



Those who have an interest in the use of these powers and the protection of privacy for complainants are strongly encouraged to respond to the consultation, and I welcome the views of all colleagues on this important guidance.



I will arrange for a copy of the consultation and draft code to be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

[HCWS31]

Preventing Crime and Delivering Justice

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right to talk about the public health approach and the need to prevent crime and work across communities to do that.

Across the country, in the last few weeks alone, I have heard from residents and victims talking often about there being no action when things go wrong; about repeated vandalism not being tackled even though there is CCTV evidence of who is responsible; and about the victim of an appalling violent domestic attack who was told that it would not come to court for two years.

I have heard about repeated shoplifting where the police are so overstretched that they have stopped coming; about burglaries where all the victim got was a crime number; about scamming, where Action Fraud is such a nightmare to engage with that pensioners have given up trying to report serious crimes; about persistent drug dealing outside a school where nothing had been done months later; and about a horrendous rape case where the brave victim was strung out for so long and the court case was delayed so many times that she gave up because she could not bear it anymore.

I have heard about police officers tearing their hair out over Crown Prosecution Service delays because they know that the victim will drop out if they cannot charge quickly; about other officers who are working long hours to pick up the pieces when local mental health services fail but who know that that means that they cannot be there to deal with the antisocial behaviour on the street corner; and about women who no longer expect the police to help if they face threats of violence on the streets or in their homes. There is case after case after case where crimes are being committed but no one is being charged, cautioned or given a community penalty and no action is being taken—and it is getting worse.

Since the 2019 general election—in fact, since the Home Secretary was appointed—crime is up by 18% and prosecutions are down by 18%. The charge rate is now at a record low of 5.8% compared with 15.5% in 2015. Cautions and community penalties are down too, notwithstanding the Prime Minister and his Downing Street staff’s attempt to make valiant personal efforts to get those numbers back up again.

The Home Secretary made an astonishing claim. She said:

“We have reformed the criminal justice system so that it better supports victims and ensures that criminals are not only caught but punished.”

Where are the criminal justice reforms that are pushing the prosecution rates up? The prosecution rates have plummeted on the Conservatives’ watch, which means that under the Home Secretary and the Conservatives, hundreds of thousands more criminals are getting off and hundreds of thousands more victims are being let down.

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the Policing Minister. I will also give way to the Home Secretary as many times as she wants, so that she can explain why prosecution rates have plummeted and cautions and community penalties have collapsed.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. I understand the picture that she is trying to paint, but I know that she will want to give the House a balanced picture overall. I am sure, therefore, that she will want to acknowledge that in the latest publication on crime statistics by the Office for National Statistics, violence was down 8%, knife crime was down 4%, theft was down 15%, burglary, which she mentioned, was down 14%, car crime was down 6% and robbery was down 9%. Although we acknowledge that the fight against crime is never linear, we should celebrate our successes, should we not?

[Yvette Cooper]

I am hugely relieved and glad that during lockdown, while everybody was at home, there were fewer burglaries of homes. I am also hugely relieved that during lockdown, while there were fewer people on the streets, there were fewer thefts on the streets. In April, however, the Office for National Statistics said:

“Since restrictions were lifted following the third national lockdown in early 2021, police recorded crime data show indications that certain offence types are returning to or exceeding the levels seen before the pandemic… violence and sexual offences recorded by the police have exceeded pre-pandemic levels”.

On overall crime, I am sure that the Policing Minister would not want to make the mistake that the Business Secretary made of somehow dismissing fraud, which is responsible for some of the huge increases in crime, and of saying that it is not a crime that affects people’s daily life. We know that it causes huge problems and huge harms, particularly for vulnerable people across the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

I support the Queen’s Speech and the programme unveiled by the Government. One can see politics getting back to normal and I am sure that the contest in the House today will be watched in the next two years as we glide to the likely date of a general election. Both sides are feisty performers and I am sure that many of us appreciate that.

The Government’s programme sets out to help grow the economy. It is for safer streets and for supporting the recovery of the national health service. The economy is in much better shape than one might have thought when we had the prolonged period of lockdown. We have a growing economy—this year it will be the fastest growing of many in the G7—a budget that is moving towards balance and falling national debt. There are challenges with the cost of living and inflation, but the Government have so far put in £22 billion of support, they are monitoring the situation and I am sure that, as things unfold, there will be further support as and when needed. One could never argue that the Government have not given support to the British people over the past two or three years. We must wait and see how things unfold on energy. Gas prices have fallen in recent months. Let us all hope that that continues and that inflation is lower than some predict. That is not to say that there are not challenges out there, but I think that the Government have proven that they can rise to challenges.

Some of the measures in the Queen’s Speech are useful to help and support the growing economy, in particular those to deregulate some of the EU regulations that we put into British law when we left the EU. Logically, we need to review them now to see if we can get ourselves a more efficient, more competitive economy. So I welcome the Bills that are looking at that area.

Of course, energy is a major challenge. It is my great pleasure to commend the Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), who is doing an excellent job with his energy brief. The Government are grappling with issues such as nuclear power, oil and gas, and renewables to increase our capacity. That is to be commended. Indeed, it is sensible, even if we are heading for net zero at some point in the future, that we use the resources that God has given us and which the British economy has proved able to get out of the ground. We are going to need oil and gas for a long time and the Government are proving that they want to make use of those resources to make us a richer and more competitive country.

Nuclear power is very important. We can see the mistake the Germans made in announcing the closure of their nuclear power stations and their dependency on Russian gas. We need to replace many of the Magnox stations that are going to go offline. This is an exciting time. I hope we get a decision on Sizewell soon. I am particularly pleased that Rolls-Royce has, with its partners, come up with a scheme for smaller nuclear power stations. I think that is going to be a game changer for the United Kingdom and it could be a game changer for exports to many countries that wish to avail themselves of safe nuclear power, so I think that is good.

There is one area, agriculture, that I am still a bit concerned about. I still think we seem to spend a little too much time talking about trimming hedges and less about producing food. One thing the pandemic and the current world shortages have proven is that resilience and local production are important. I would be very disappointed if the food we were producing reduced to below 50%. If anything, we ought to be producing more. I therefore think there needs to be a rethink in this area.

I am not a great fan of Bank of England independence. I have always been a little sceptical about it.

[Kit Malthouse]

On my hon. Friend’s first two subjects, I wonder if he would reflect on the fact that both in terms of nuclear power and agriculture we have the freedom and flexibility that come from his and my vote to leave the European Union. On nuclear power, he will recall the blood-curdling predictions that we would fail in that particular industry by departing from Euratom all those years ago. Does he agree that, along with the French now, we can position ourselves as the only two serious nuclear powers in Europe?

[Sir Robert Syms]

That is absolutely so. The original design teams for British nuclear power were taken apart. To have a productive nuclear power industry, we need continued investment in new plants. The good thing about what has happened at Hinkley C, Sizewell and Rolls-Royce is that we are getting design teams together and collaborating with other partners. That will be a major game changer in terms of Britain being able to produce the power we need in future.

Going back to the Bank of England, I am a little concerned that it has merrily gone on printing money. I am old enough to still be a monetarist in its broadest sense. One of the reasons we have higher inflation is that we have allowed for it because of monetary growth. If we had stopped printing money sooner and put up interest rates sooner, the consequences of the current spike in inflation would be less severe. Nevertheless, we are where we are. At least it is only the European Central Bank printing money at the moment and Britain can get back to a more sensible policy.

We have very low levels of unemployment and high levels of employment. There are many other measures in the Loyal Speech. We are trying to improve education and outputs in that area. We really do have to educate our population, so they become more productive and we can get productivity up. If we get the investment and education right, there is nothing we cannot do in the future.

I thank the Home Office for the hard work it put in in the last Session. My constituents are very appreciative that we now have powers to deal with Travellers, who tend to cause problems every summer in Dorset. They are also pleased that we are starting to deal with illegal immigration. Immigration has to be fair. If people follow the system, pay the fees, fill out the forms and wait in the queue, it is fundamentally unfair that people arrive in boats and try to jump the queue. The Government are therefore taking action. A lot of the action will put off some of those people from coming in an illegal way, which I think is good.

I am particularly pleased with the public order measures announced today. My constituents look at people trying to wreck petrol stations and getting on tankers—taking action that is dangerous. I have to say that my sympathy was with the woman in the Range Rover who was trying to nudge protesters. A lot of people work hard. They try to get their kids to school and keep them in school uniform. They take people to hospital. Protesters who are not demonstrators but are disrupting other people’s livelihoods need to be curtailed. The measures are therefore welcome and I am glad the Government are on the front foot when it comes to dealing with these issues. That is vital. Part of the problem and the reason we have to legislate is that we have seen examples of City banks where people outside have hit buildings and smashed windows with hammers, and, unfortunately, the judicial system has let people off. Sometimes the people who are making decisions in the judicial system do not understand the seriousness of where that leads. If we let there be some degree of anarchy, that can easily overspill and break out, so the measures are welcome.

Of course 13,500 police officers are welcome. I still think the police need some reform. It is the one area that Mrs Thatcher did not reform and sometimes the productivity we get out of the police force is not all that we need. We need some specialists in police forces, so I do not think that just the head count of police officers is important. It is important sometimes when dealing with fraud to deal with people who are experts in that, rather than people who just happen to be officers.

My final point is that we put a lot of money into the national health service. It is important we get the productivity. It is also important that it does not disappear and we cannot deal with care. We made a number of commitments. People are paying higher taxes, at least in the short term, to deal with the backlog and care. It is so important we live up to the pledges we made.

I welcome the Loyal Speech and what the Government are doing. I have one or two concerns, but broadly speaking I am supportive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

I do not often get the chance to speak in the House—being shadow Minister without portfolio means having a lot to do, but often without the opportunity to say very much—so I am delighted to be able to contribute to the debate.

The Home Secretary is just leaving the Chamber. This will not do either her or me very much good—I may even get chased from this place by my own colleagues—but in her absence I want to say that I like the Home Secretary. I also like the Minister for Crime and Policing.

[Kit Malthouse]

And we like you.

[Conor McGinn]

That will definitely not do me any good.

One thing I admire about the Home Secretary, even though I profoundly disagree with her, is that she believes in things. However, despite her virtuoso performance at the Dispatch Box today, I do not think that she believes some of the accusations that she levelled at the Opposition. I do not think for a second that the Government think that an Opposition led by a former Director of Public Prosecutions, who prosecuted terrorists and the worst sort of criminals and offenders and made sure that they were put in prison, are any sort of threat to national security. We can argue about policy, record and delivery, but let us not kid ourselves or the British public, because frankly they do not believe it either.

Before I come on to my main remarks about the Loyal Address, I want to place on record, given the topic of today’s debate, my thanks to and admiration for Merseyside police, led by Chief Constable Serena Kennedy. We have been blessed in Merseyside with good leadership using all the tools to provide a robust policing response to things that matter to people in St Helens and across Merseyside, tackle the root causes of crime and antisocial behaviour, and give no quarter to those criminals who would terrorise our communities. I stand squarely behind our police force—the men and women of Merseyside police who put themselves daily in harm’s way to keep us and our communities safe.

I turn to the wider aspects of the programme that the Government have set out, or the lack thereof. This was a gilt-edged chance for the Government to grab the cost of living crisis by the scruff of the neck. More than that, it was a chance to lay the groundwork after the pandemic, for prosperity and renewal across our communities and to set a pathway to the securer future that has never felt further away for many of our citizens, but is so badly needed.

The House will not be surprised to hear this, but I regret to say that I think the Government missed that opportunity. That matters, because this is not just about the theatre of the state opening. This is a profoundly worrying juncture for our country. Inflation is soaring and is predicted to rise further to some 10%, fuel and food prices are skyrocketing, and 15 of the tax rises imposed by this Government are hitting working people particularly. A national insurance hike—a tax on working people—is the wrong tax, at the wrong time, on the wrong people.

When I speak to residents, my neighbours in St Helens, their families, pensioners, businesses and local community groups, it is clear that this crisis is really affecting people and that they are really worrying about how they will cope. That was the stark reality that I heard from community groups in St Helens at a recent meeting that I convened with some of those who work with our community and residents who are affected. What they tell me is borne out by statistics from very reputable sources. Nine in 10 people have already seen a rise in the cost of living, are already experiencing more expensive energy bills, and are seeing more costly groceries on their weekly shop. Nearly a quarter of adults are finding it difficult to pay their usual household bills.

Worryingly, food bank use in St Helens North has risen by nearly 900 users over the past year, including 300 children—in the United Kingdom, in the 21st century, in a town like St Helens. This is not often cited, but our food banks are also wrestling with a 30% reduction in donations, because people who previously gave cannot afford to now because they have to look after themselves. Our transport costs are also rising, making it harder to get to work, see family and friends and stay connected. That has a huge impact on inequality.

Even before the crisis, a sixth of households in my constituency were in fuel poverty, so I was very pleased that a central plank of the Labour party’s offer in the local election campaign was putting up to £600 back in people’s pockets now by levelling a windfall tax on the excess profits of the oil and gas companies, which to all intents and purposes are printing money because of the increase in costs. At a time when the Government should be using every policy lever they can to deliver security, they had no answer this week.

As I have said before, our communities are resilient. We have been through a lot over the past two years—in fact, over the past 20 or 30 years—but people have come together to meet the challenges, particularly under the banner of St Helens Together, in a spirit of generosity, kindness and solidarity. Contrary to what some commentators wish to believe, communities in the north of England are not homogeneous and the challenges we face are nuanced, but our sense of place is important, as it is in St Helens. We are proud of that and remain steadfast in our ambitions for a better and securer future. That is why—this is a point that I have consistently made—it is not just about criticising the Government. Part of my job as an Opposition MP is to do that, but it is not enough.

I have agency. I am a Member of Parliament and a political leader, so just attacking the Government for what they are failing to do does not wash for my constituents in St Helens. They want to see action, so we are taking responsibility. As political, business and community leaders, we are addressing the big challenges facing our towns and villages in the Liverpool city region by regenerating our town centres through an historic, innovative £200 million partnership with the English cities fund; securing £25 million of innovative projects from the towns fund; investing record amounts in children’s services and focusing on the next generation’s educational attainment; and creating decent, secure and skilled jobs, training and opportunities through world-leading initiatives such as Glass Futures.

We are regenerating former colliery sites such as Parkside. They are not just a monument to those who worked there, proud as we are of that heritage. They are places that will create new employment opportunities for a whole new generation of people across our coalfields. We are revolutionising public transport, we are taking steps to bring buses back into public ownership, and we are seeking to “bring rail home” to where it originated, with the Rainhill trials, through our bid to host the headquarters of Great British Railways in our borough.

Our approach was endorsed again last week, when Labour increased its vote share in St Helens after its candidate stood for election on the basis of the party’s record and an ambitious manifesto. It is now back, forming a new administration in our council with a strong mandate to continue.

Disappointed as I am—as would be expected—with what the Government have, or indeed have not, included in their legislative programme, that is not an excuse for me or anyone else to abdicate responsibility. I know that I have a job to do for my community, and we are of course taking responsibility, because we are proud of our past and ambitious for our future. However, I must stress to Ministers that people are worried. There are huge fears about the cost of living and what it means for their families, and that clouds the present and makes it more difficult to be optimistic about the future. I wish that the Government would do more to help me and my constituents in St Helens, but also to help people throughout the country. I wish that they would help us to get through the cost of living crisis, but also to push on with our plans to build a better and brighter future. If they do not, however, we in Helens will, as always, just do it ourselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

What the hon. Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) said was very revealing, because he actually put on the record that most of this package of legislation is about party political advantage, posturing, setting up straw men and trying to create divisions that do not really exist, rather than trying to address the real issues facing this country, particularly the cost of living crisis, which I do not think he referred to.

What we have is the Government wasting parliamentary time, bringing back, with the Public Order Bill, the culture wars nonsense that we saw with the worst parts of the Policing, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. At that point, it was about attacks on statues, which was very much based on what happened in Bristol. It is interesting that the hon. Member talked about public opinion, but a jury trial acquitted some of the protesters by the Colston statue.

That was very much an attack on the whole Black Lives Matter movement. Although I did not agree with the fact that the statue was removed in the way that it was, we did not need legislation increasing the maximum sentence for damaging statues to 10 years. It was just about party political point scoring.

Now we have the measures on climate change activists. Again, the Government are trying to create a false divide. Most people, if we ask them, want to see greater action on climate change and support the right to peaceful protest, while thinking that the tactics used by some protesters are ill-judged, inconsiderate and counter-productive. People who are very much involved in the environmental movement share my opinion that some of the things we have seen do not help the cause at all. However, I am not convinced there needs to be legislation on this, rather than the Government working with infrastructure providers to obtain injunctions. Again, the reason is very much about headlines and trying to stir up antipathy. It is also interesting that the people who try to do that do not even manage to pay lip service to the need to address climate change.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am a little confused. Is the hon. Lady saying she is content for protesters to be brought before the court and punished either with imprisonment or a fine through an injunction process—a civil process—but would not support the same through a criminal process?

[Kerry McCarthy]

No, I did not say that at all. What I am saying is I think the reason the Government are bringing forward that legislation is suspect and I am not convinced that the police need these powers. I ask the Government to prove as the Bill passes through the House that the police are calling for these powers, because they were not calling for the increased powers brought in under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill; they said they did not feel they were necessary. It is now down to the Government to prove that the injunction system does not work but, as I have said, some of the protests are ill-judged and inconsiderate to people going about their daily lives, and I think we would all speak as one on that point.

It appears at first sight that the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill is more about spin than substance. If it genuinely gives more powers to local communities rather than developers, that is good, although the Government’s past action on this front does not inspire confidence. I hope that as we consider the Bill we can look at what has been happening. I have a case in my constituency where land originally used as meadows was designated for housing by a previous administration. The update of the local plan has been delayed, partly because the West of England has not updated its planning strategy. I think the Government rejected it. Therefore, even though we have a one-city ecology strategy that says we want to protect 30% of the land as green space, we cannot oppose the planning application on those grounds because the previous local plan is still in place. The Minister may have some experience of this sort of issue from previous roles. I hope that, when we get a chance to discuss the Bill, we can talk about how we can ensure that planning rules take into account a city’s desire to address the ecological crisis.

I would like to have a conversation with the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities about architecture. His remarks on Poundbury, the village the Prince of Wales set up, were quoted at the weekend. On aesthetic grounds, I do not like Poundbury. I do not think it is brilliant architecture, so I disagree with the Prince of Wales and the Secretary of State on that. but in his comments, the Secretary of State set up a completely artificial argument, saying opposition to new housing development comes from

“a few modernist architects who sneer at what the rest of us actually like and people who dislike anything that seems small-c conservative.”

That is not the case. The opposition to new housing developments is about people wanting to protect green spaces, thinking that infrastructure is not available and being worried about the impact on road systems and local facilities. It is not about people saying, “We would accept this new housing if the architecture was more modern.” That is just made up. It does not make for good political debate if people are constructing such straw man arguments.

The privatisation of Channel 4 is an unnecessary and spiteful move. Channel 4 is not broken and does not need the Government to fix it. Public ownership is not a straitjacket; the Government are trying to say it is. The channel invests more in independent production companies outside London—including Bristol, where it has one of its regional hubs—than any other broadcaster. Privatising Channel 4 could mean £1 billion in investment lost from the UK’s nations and regions, with over 60 independent production companies at risk of going under.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

It would be customary to say that it is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Dudley North (Marco Longhi), but, without being personal in any way, it is incredibly frustrating, when we are facing a catastrophic rise in the cost of living, a war in Europe and an economy that is just starting to recover from the covid-19 pandemic, that this is the Queen’s Speech we are dealing with today. It should have been full of ambition and vision for our country, but instead we have cynicism, half measures and a total lack of vision. We have an eclectic mix of Bills that is more about stoking division and setting up dividing lines. It does not come close to tackling the issues that the public care most about—the catastrophic fall in their incomes and the cost of living soaring as a recession looms.

The very beginning of the Queen’s Speech talked about supporting the police to make our streets safer. We know the Government have no shortage of hard-line rhetoric on crime; we heard it from the Home Secretary earlier. Browsing the headlines on any given day, there is a good chance that we will see something about how harshly criminals will be punished if they get caught. But it is the “if they get caught” bit that is really crucial. After 12 years of Conservative cuts, the police, and the justice system, often do not have the resources to investigate even the most relatively straightforward crimes. The impact of this has been devastating. The antisocial behaviour that blights significant parts of our country, including my constituency, has effectively been decriminalised. The cuts to frontline policing and the criminal justice system have caused the proportion of reported crimes ending in prosecution to plummet.

[Kit Malthouse]

rose—

[Catherine McKinnell]

If the Minister wishes to disagree with the very obvious statistics on this, he is welcome to; we would love to hear it.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. Obviously antisocial behaviour is an important issue across the whole country, and we definitely recognise that. In my own county of Hampshire, the police and crime commissioner has established an antisocial behaviour taskforce, using the extra resources that the Government have now provided for the third consecutive year. Has she had the same conversation with her own Labour police and crime commissioner to establish exactly the same kind of assertive response in Newcastle upon Tyne?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I appreciate that the Government state their commitment to the issue, but over the past 12 years we have seen an accumulation of the impact of public service cuts right across the board, whether in education, youth services or our police, sending the message to constituents across my constituency and elsewhere that people are getting away with it and very little can be done.

The relatively small increases in police numbers are not going to change that either. Northumbria Police has lost 1,100 officers and we still need 632 more to get back to 2010 levels, but replacing police officers is not going to take us all the way. Ministers have also shown very little interest in replacing lost back-room staff, who are essential to releasing that police resource on to the street. The Minister seems to think the problem is solved, but residents in my area, and right across the country, would disagree. We need to make community safety a priority, and that means more police out there tackling crime, antisocial behaviour and dangerous drivers: the things that they came into the force to do. The Minister’s own Back Benchers have been calling for it repeatedly today. That means tackling the backlog in the judicial system—something that the Government have simply ignored and continue to ignore.

We know the distressing impact that antisocial behaviour can have on victims, destroying their mental health and impacting every part of their life. In the worst cases it can be life-ending. When I speak to people in my constituency in Lemington, Newbiggin Hall, Kingston Park, West Denton, Gosforth and Fawdon, they are very clear that what they want is greater support and protection from antisocial behaviour and crime, and greater strength and legal protection as victims. Yet victims are too often treated as an afterthought. The community trigger, which is supposedly the main instrument to support antisocial behaviour victims, is largely unused, and meanwhile support for victims remains a postcode lottery due to the lack of dedicated Government funding. It is disappointing that the long-promised victims Bill is still not enacted after being promised in no fewer than four Queen’s Speeches and three manifestos. Putting the victims code on a statutory footing is so overdue, and I urge the Government to take up the Victims Commissioner’s recommendation to include in it victims of antisocial behaviour. We must give them the same rights as victims of crime. We must end the postcode lottery in support for victims with proper dedicated funding.

Taking on crime is also vital to rebalancing our economy—or levelling up, as the Government like to call it. Crime not only leaves people fearful in our own communities but damages the prospect of attracting people and businesses to areas that quite often badly need the investment. The levelling-up agenda itself seems up in the air, with little sense of the Government’s priorities. The modest changes expected in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill simply are not enough, especially if the Government have already passed up the chance to transform northern economies by delivering on the long-promised eastern leg of HS2.

In the Levelling Up White Paper, the Government identify 12 missions to drive and measure change. I do not have time to go into them all, but take, for example, the mission of 90% of children meeting the expected standard in reading, writing and maths by the end of primary school by 2030. We would all love to see it happen, but is it possible to achieve, when the highest performing areas currently do not reach 90%? It is hard to see how a Government who are presiding over half a million more children sinking into absolute poverty can possibly achieve that goal, given all that we know about the impact of poverty on achievement at school. Promises are one thing; delivery is another, and indeed there is no mention of child poverty at all in the Queen’s Speech or in the Levelling Up White Paper, even though we know it accounts for much of the difference in attainment at school across the country and impacts on so many areas of life, including health, wealth and happiness. It has become a reality that must not be named, but in failing to do so, the Government are failing our children.

I will touch on transport, because the transport Bill will include long-awaited and much-needed measures to roll out charging points for electric vehicles. Making the shift to low-carbon vehicles will save drivers money, increase energy independence and clean our air. We know that nearly 40,000 buses on Britain’s roads need to be replaced, both as part of the switch to zero-emission vehicles and to encourage people to switch from private to public transport with a new modernised fleet. The Department for Transport’s target is to fund 4,000 zero-carbon buses in this Parliament, but 40,000 need to be replaced.

The DFT’s approach of funding zero-emission buses through this ad hoc centrally administered funding pot, forcing local authorities to spend precious time and money writing bids, feels like an outdated and half-hearted solution, if I am honest, to the urgent problem of decarbonising our transport system. I often imagine my communities with full electrification of cars and buses, and think how quiet and clean the air would be. It is within our grasp; we just need more urgency, and we need to streamline the process of returning bus networks to public control, so that green buses can become integrated, efficient and accountable, like they are in major cities such as London. We want the same for Newcastle.

Fundamentally, we need to remove fossil fuels from transport. We need to make electric vehicles affordable for everyone and ensure that every community has the infrastructure to charge them. We need the right regulation and funding for a clean, efficient bus network, and we need investment in cycle paths and walking to allow people to travel safely. That is how we create safe and healthy communities.

Crippling energy bills and runaway inflation are hitting families hard, and the catastrophic fall in disposable income alongside the crisis in Ukraine will define our politics for the foreseeable future. The very first line of the Queen’s Speech should have acknowledged that we are living in a cost of living crisis and made a commitment to bringing forward a Budget to support households. Yet that is not what we got yesterday, and we are left with grudging half-measures previously announced by the Chancellor. That is scant comfort to constituents facing another increase in the energy cap in the autumn, when energy bills are expected to reach a staggering £2,500 to £3,000 on average. It is just not good enough.

Two and a half years into his premiership, it is not at all clear what the Prime Minister’s guiding mission in office is, other than staying there at all costs. It is a remarkably thin policy programme from a Government with an 80-seat majority who tell us that they are going to level up our country. It shows a Government seriously lacking in ambition and far more interested in stoking culture wars that they think will benefit them in the next election, rather than supporting British people and British businesses through the multiple domestic and international crises we face. I will work with Labour colleagues to try and improve these Bills and the Government’s programme, but frankly, after 12 years, it is time for a Labour Government.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), who spoke passionately about the cost of living crisis and the problems we face that have not really been addressed by the Government’s Bills.

First, in this new Session of Parliament, I will talk about the platinum jubilee. The Loyal Address has come weeks before this year’s celebration to mark 70 years since Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth became the monarch of the United Kingdom and the head of state of other territories and countries. For me, it is particularly poignant because 20 years ago, at the golden jubilee, as a result of the efforts of people in Preston, the council, other stakeholders and me, Preston was fortunate enough to receive city status in the golden jubilee competition in which 40 towns across England competed. I do not know which town will be chosen this year but I wish good luck to whichever town it is and the Member of Parliament who represents it, because we have seen considerable investment in Preston as its profile has been raised through its city status.

Despite the joyous occasion of celebrating the Queen’s platinum jubilee, the people of Preston and the country cannot help but be distracted by the real-time tragedy of the cost of living crisis that comes on the heels of two-plus years of hardship and sacrifice caused by the global pandemic. In the Queen’s Speech, the Government made it clear that they are not interested in easing the pain of people who are suffering now and will suffer in months to come. Between last year’s Queen’s Speech and last month’s spring statement by the Chancellor, no tangible action has been brought forward to address the cost of living crisis.

The country is in a state of emergency and on the brink of a potential recession, so people need help now. I echo the calls that the Government will have heard from Opposition Members for an emergency Budget to try to address that situation. At a time when high inflation is outstripping wage and benefit increases, in conjunction with recent tax increases, this Queen’s Speech is a missed opportunity to address the issues that matter most to people: their livelihoods and the future.

Today’s debate focuses on crime and justice. The Conservative party fancies itself as tough on crime, yet it has a Prime Minister and a Chancellor who have been issued with fixed penalty notices for breaking laws that they wrote. Crime is up while criminal enforcement is down, with thousands of criminals getting off without being charged or held accountable.

The same is true for fraud and computer misuse, with online fraud soaring during the pandemic and before, yet few fraudsters are being arrested. According to the figures that I have, 416,000 cases of fraud have been reported in the last year and £35 million has been stolen as a result of that fraud, but only 156 fraudsters have been arrested. People may conclude from that that crime does indeed pay.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would want to acknowledge that, although he is right that fraud and computer misuse have been rising and have been included in the overall crime numbers in the last few years, quite a lot of those offences are committed by people who are operating internationally and online and who are, therefore, particularly difficult to bring to justice because they are in other jurisdictions.

[Sir Mark Hendrick]

I certainly agree with that point. In fact, as the Minister knows, there has been a big shift away from things such as car and telephone theft. Many people are now finding that their identities are being stolen and fraud is taking place as a result of computer crime, which is a big problem. We certainly see problems in cyber-space in terms of defence. I am pleased that the cyber-security centre is coming to Lancashire and hopes to do a great deal in that area. I am still quite bemused by the size of the resources being committed to police forces up and down the country to tackle this sort of thing, and the lack of wherewithal for Companies House to try to tackle fraud with businesses. I have had a number of cases of online fraud in my own constituency, about which I have written to the Government.

With the Online Safety Bill having been carried over into this Session, we have seen how delay has allowed disinformation to spread like wildfire online, particularly during Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, which obviously speaks to the point I have just made about cyber-crime and cyber-security. We want to see more effort on scams included in the scope of that legislation, to which I know the Labour party is committed.

The data reform Bill will reform the way data is handled in the UK after Brexit. The Government have said that the changes will help to increase the competitiveness of UK businesses and boost the economy, but reinventing the wheel by finding an alternative to the general data protection regulation just so the Government can claim freedom from so-called EU red tape is a waste of time. It is posturing really, and just creating new standards for data security is not going to solve any problems.

On the question of security itself, with the current state of affairs internationally, I think the Government need to be reminded of how critical national security is. We welcome the National Security Bill, and we want to limit state threats activity in the UK. As has been witnessed in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and in state-backed interference in the UK before that, there are changing threats to the UK, and legislation on foreign interference must keep pace with the reality on the ground. We want better security and we support the National Security Bill, but we want this situation to be transformed quickly, with the cyber centre I have mentioned being constructed and the experts in there as soon as possible.

On the Public Order Bill, this should really be about tackling injustice. However, it is not about tackling injustice; it is about restricting further rights to protest in a legitimate way. There are extreme cases, as we saw here when people glued themselves to the glass in the Gallery overlooking the Chamber, but laws exist at the moment to deal with that sort of thing. The normal activity of demonstrations is something that, as a free country, we have come to expect, and if the Government are too heavy-handed on this, Bill will do a great deal more to cause problems by not allowing people to protest freely.

There is talk about an energy security Bill and how it will build on the success of last year’s COP26 environment summit in Glasgow, with a pledge to build up to eight nuclear power stations and to increase wind and solar energy production in the UK. Again, I, as a Labour Member, and my party will support an energy security Bill. In particular, an increase in the provision of nuclear power is a no-brainer to me. Over the last 20 years—I do stress the last 20 years, and I would include the Labour Government as well—what we have seen in this country is a lot of talk about nuclear without much being done. I certainly welcome the consideration given to small modular reactors, which will provide very efficient nuclear power from engines that were originally designed to power nuclear submarines rather than provide power to the public. There is potential for great developments to see us move towards a carbon-free future, and not only in this country, but for exports abroad. In the area of my constituency, we have Springfields—formerly British Nuclear Fuels, but now part of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation—which is a world leader in producing nuclear fuels. I think the 1,000-plus people who work at Springfields can look forward to extra work if this Government and any future Labour Government are committed to delivering on the ground, instead of just the talk we have had over the last 20 years.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. We are not under huge time constraints today, which is unusual, so I will not put a time limit on. We will leave it up to people to judge for themselves how long they should speak, but I should just give an indication that 10 minutes is usually the maximum for a Back-Bench speech for all sorts of reasons that I do not need to explain to anyone who feels the atmosphere of this Chamber.

[Kit Malthouse]

She’s talking about you, Lloyd.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Mine is shorter, but I will extend it now. [Laughter.]

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[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

What we have here is a set of divisive, straw man Bills—all fluff and no substance. Where these Bills do have substance, they are nasty and miserable, or they are in complete reverse from what was suggested in the previous Session. Planning is one such example. One moment, we were to have a developers’ charter, but a rebellion on the Tory Back Benches meant that that was suddenly reversed, so now we have a nimbys charter. Suddenly, our neighbours will be able to vote on whether we can have that loft extension. Do not upset the Joneses otherwise there will be no extra room for your child. What kind of world are we living in? It is absolute tosh. Then we have a Bill that will make sure that MPs can sit in their offices in silence—with no noisy protesters outside. Really! Is that the extent of the Government’s ambition?

The borders Bill summed up the failure of the Home Office, which is unable to properly process refugees’ applications, leaving them to wait years for proper and decent outcomes, and unable to create safe and legal routes for refugees, of which there are none at the moment for the vast majority of people in the world—none, in fact, for anyone outside Afghanistan and Ukraine. The only legal route to claim asylum is to make an illegal crossing. Is that not stupid? I would have thought that the Government would fix that tautology. No, instead they offshore the problem—they let Rwanda fix it because they cannot get their own house in order. Indeed, it is not just those applying for asylum who are suffering from Home Office mismanagement; ordinary people cannot even get their passports from the Home Office, such is the incompetence in that Department.

On conversion therapy, we have a Bill that is completely useless. Yes, it will protect under-18s, but the majority of those who attend conversion therapies are over 18 and they will of course sign a waiver because they will be told that if they want to stay in their church or their community, and with their friends and families, they will have to go through conversion therapy.

There is a good argument for including trans people in a ban on conversion therapy. I am not saying that trans people should not have psychotherapy and be able to discuss their options as they go forward, or that different options for going forward should not be presented to them and that things should not be slowed down rather than speeded up, but in conversion therapy, the therapist is trying to force people to go in one direction and that is wholly unethical in whatever form it takes. It is wrong for trans people, for gay people, or for any form of therapy where the therapist is forcing the person into a certain direction. The Government’s failure to ban trans conversion therapy, and to ban conversion therapy entirely for over-18s, is a missed opportunity.

My partner twice suffered going through conversion therapies in his long process of coming out—he comes from an evangelical Christian background—and it has caused huge amounts of pain and agony. I do not want other people to go through that, and the loophole the Government have given is not worth the paper the rest of the Bill will be written on. I am deeply saddened by that and hope the Government will come forward with something to address it.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s view on this. Is he proposing there should be an absolute ban on conversion therapy, even if an adult consents? I understand the problem he raises about societal and group influence, but I am genuinely interested in how he would overcome the issue of freedom of association, or indeed action, for an adult.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I do not think that any psychotherapy processes should ever have a prescribed outcome. Of course, people can have friends persuading them one way or another, but that is not a therapeutic programme. That is the difference.

This is a lock-‘em-up Queen’s Speech: lock up the refugees if they manage to get over here because there are no other legal routes for people to come; lock up protestors; and lock up people who may be drug addicts and need treatment and support rather than a criminalising approach. Meanwhile, it allows corporations to continue to get off the hook with tax dodging, and allows the huge covid scams that existed under this Government to go unpunished. There is nothing on clamping down on those corporations that led to the Grenfell tragedy—no forcing them to pay the costs of converting all the properties up and down the country.

We could have seen a cap on fuel bills. We could have seen real progress on social care, integrating it into the NHS. We could have seen the Union saved through confederacy, with the independent sovereign states and regions of this country coming together, instead of continuing the Conservative party’s blind approach of trying to pretend the Union is not in peril and forcing it further apart.

All the Queen’s Speech does on justice is pretend there is no problem. It pretends there is no backlog in the courts. It pretends that all people want is some British Bill of Rights. It pretends that there is not a crisis in the family courts. It pretends that there is not a crisis in the magistrates system—where the Government have cut local magistrates courts up and down the country in the past 10 years, where victims and people seeking justice cannot access a local court and often have to get a bus that takes half a day to get to the local court and a bus back. There is no access whatsoever and no suggestion of fixing it. Even where the Government do suggest some positive things, it is too little.

One area where I welcome some progress is on housing and the renter’s rights Bill that the Government are suggesting will come forward in this Parliament. I welcomed that in the 2019 Queen’s Speech, I welcomed it in the 2021 Queen’s Speech and of course I welcome it in this Queen’s Speech—but this is the third attempt to announce a strengthening of tenants’ rights. Ministers are planning to produce a Green Paper, to consult on it, to produce a White Paper and to get through all the stages in this place while assuming there will not be a new Session in Parliament or a general election, which would mean that all that good work was completely wasted.

I implore the Government to get on with the process, because every minute delayed is another minute of private renters being turfed out of their homes—and I literally mean every few minutes. Research by Shelter shows that every seven minutes a section 21 eviction notice has been served to households in England since the Government first committed to ending no-fault evictions. That equals 230,000 private renters who have been evicted from their households for no fault of their own.

Every one of those renters has their own story. Just last week I heard from one, a private tenant for 13 years in her current home, who has five children between 18 and seven years old. Their landlady has informed them they that they have to leave with a section 21 notice. The council will not help them until they get a county court judgment, and that is another scandal: once they have the county court judgment against them, they have a black mark against their name and they cannot rent from the private rented sector.

In this Kafkaesque world, that parent is petrified about even being about to put a roof over her children’s heads. She has the money to pay the rent, but will any landlord, or the council, help her? She says she is terrified. She has never been in rent arrears. She has two children with autism, one of whom has hypermobility problems and both of whom attend special educational needs provision in the city. She is worried she will have to move out of the city with the rest of her family. There is no legal redress or compensation for the fact that that family have been kicked out through no fault of their own after 13 years of calling that place a home.

I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group for renters and rental reform—I should mention that we are meeting next week, for those others who want to join—and our group has heard time and again that the lives of renters are being harmed.

These moves are positive, and the Government have agreed to set up a private rented property portal. I hope the lessons have been learned from the rogue landlord register, on which the Government predicted there would be 10,000 entries but on which, after two years of operation, there are just 21 names. It is completely useless. If the Government are to make the next register work, all landlords must be on it. Every single landlord in this country, with no exceptions—everyone in this Chamber who is a landlord, everyone out there who is a landlord—needs to be on that register and there needs to be a scorecard for them. If there is not, it will not work for people.

Finally, and most pleasingly in the housing section, there is to be a new housing ombudsperson. That is music to my ears, but what is the detail going to provide? Take the deposit scheme, where there is already a system of redress: it does not allow for precedent to be set from one judgment to the next in deposit disputes. If someone wins an argument that the level of mould was the landlord’s fault and not the tenant’s, the person in the house two doors down, with the same landlord who holds the deposit back and refuses to give it to them, has to go through all the arguments again, and with a different ombudsperson they might have a different outcome. We cannot have justice like that.

An ombudsperson in housing must have precedent for all the other cases they then see, unless the precedent is overturned through legal argument; and they must have open justice, where people can see the results of previous outcomes. They must look at rent, because we know that if we abolish section 21, all landlords will do is whack up the rent and kick tenants out. The Government’s saying they will make it easier for landlords to kick people out for rent arrears without going through the courts is a worry in itself. The system must not penalise tenants if they seek to use it, as currently happens in the county court system, where it can take many months, sometimes almost a year, to even get a hearing. There is a real problem with the backlog in our courts. The Government have called the Bill on housing and renters radical, and a radical approach is needed, so I hope we will see it.

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[Colleen Fletcher]

In my constituency, off-road motorbikes are being used in a very, very intimidating way. They are almost escorting cars around. They are not doing them any actual harm, but they are intimidating people, so much so that one person in my constituency had to stop at the side of the road to gather himself to be able to drive on. That has been said to me time and again through emails and through visits in the community. I visited the police. I had a meeting with our police and crime commissioner. Only two weeks ago I had a summit meeting with the leader of the council and others, where I spoke about off-road motorbikes.

It would be useful if we could do something. The police and the police and crime commissioner tell me that there are not enough resources, and they have to put the resources where they need them. There are pots of money, such as the safer streets fund, but is that really the way to tackle those problems? This must be done far more broadly than it is now. Of all the antisocial behaviour incidents, I deal most with off-road motorbikes, and I know that this goes on across the whole west midlands. It does not happen only in my area, which is why we should look at what we are giving to police forces and say, “This is a problem up and down the country. We need to tackle it.” I would work with anybody to try to tackle it.

In a tacit admission of the damage that they have inflicted on policing, the Government introduced the police uplift programme. Although any uplift in officer numbers is welcome, let us be clear that this will still not take West Midlands police back to pre-austerity levels of policing. We lost 2,221 officers in the west midlands during the austerity years, and although the force is due to get back more than 1,200 officers through the police uplift programme, that still leaves a shortfall in the west midlands of more than 1,000 officers compared with 2010 levels.

[Kit Malthouse]

rose—

[Colleen Fletcher]

I have nearly finished and I have already given way.

When launching the uplift programme in 2019, the Prime Minister said:

“I have been clear from day one I will give the police the resources they need”.

If his rhetoric is to match reality, and if he is to meet his pledge to level up, the Prime Minister must return the 1,000 police officers to the west midlands. Sadly, there was no commitment in the Queen’s Speech to either resource the police properly or tackle the antisocial behaviour problems on our streets effectively. I fear that once more on crime and justice, the Government have failed West Midlands police and failed the people of Coventry North East.

[Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)]

I want to address the Queen’s Speech in regard to the position on justice. Justice is a light-and-shade issue; it is not all black and white. I am not surprised by the lacklustre Queen’s Speech and Government programme. I have not been surprised by the policies of Conservative Governments since I was a teenager. I am disappointed that we are yet again facing the same challenges that were visited on Scotland when I was younger. However, the tone from Government Members today is that of a punitive Government who are focused on punishment, not justice. That was personified by the behaviour of the Home Secretary when she opened the debate, with her dismissive and graceless attitude towards her counterpart on the Opposition Front Bench, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). From my perspective, this needs to be addressed from a position of understanding the light and shade of justice.

Many of the drivers of criminality are social in nature and include such things as poverty, destitution and grinding hopelessness. I cast my mind back to my teenage years, when Thatcherism stalked the streets of Scotland and destroyed many of the communities there—proud mining communities, industrial communities—as cuts and closures were visited on them.

I was a Labour voter when I lived in London, but when I returned to Scotland I was gripped by the progress that had been made with devolution and by the team, record and vision, as it was known, of Alex Salmond’s early SNP Government. The significant advances that they had made in improving the quality of life of the Scottish people seduced me and encouraged me to believe in Scottish independence. The other factor that drove me to that conclusion was the election of a Conservative Government in 2010, enabled by the Liberal Democrats, which motivated me sufficiently to move out of the health service and into frontline politics.

The UK Government’s legislation does not fit the aspirations of Scots. Their immigration policies drive down inward migration, but in Scotland we need more people, not fewer. As for policing the streets, crime and justice is largely devolved in Scotland, but the drivers of criminality are the responsibility of this place, which has legislated to drive people into deprivation and destitution. The police’s job is made all the harder in Scotland because we do not have the normal powers of an independent country.

Let me set out a couple of the key issues. We have a serious problem with drug-related deaths in Scotland. People do not wake up one day and say, “I’m going to become a drug addict”; addiction is the result of grinding poverty, hopelessness and lack of opportunity, which are controlled by this place. If we are to improve those people’s quality of life, we must have the full economic powers of an independent country. We must also make progress on moving drug-related problems from the criminal justice system to public health.

[Kit Malthouse]

I recognise that the nationalist imperative is that all that is good in Scotland is down to the nationalists, while all that is bad is down to the UK Government. With respect to what the hon. Gentleman says about drug deaths, however, would it not be interesting to understand why the problem is so much more severe in Scotland than in England and Wales? I do not think that the UK Government have necessarily discriminated between them over the past 30 or 40 years. Certainly, for the past decade or more, all the tools required to get on top of the problem of drug deaths, which I acknowledge is very severe in Scotland, have been in the hands of the nationalist Government. Presumably the hon. Gentleman is putting as much pressure on them as he quite rightly puts on us to come together to solve the problem.

[Neale Hanvey]

Drug deaths are not an isolated issue that exists in a bubble. The opportunities to correct them require the full economic levers of an independent country. While the problem exists, the remedy is retained by this place. The issues cannot be isolated. I certainly do not say that all is rosy in Scotland and that an independent country would flourish spontaneously, but independence is a gateway to different choices, different policies and different politics. It is not a panacea; that is not the argument that I am making. I will cover some of the Minister’s other points as I make progress.

There is another issue that affects crime and justice in Scotland and is a very good illustration of why Scotland needs the full economic levers of an independent country. Harnessing Scotland’s vast energy resources must benefit the Scottish people, not Her Majesty’s Treasury as it does currently. How can it be that in an energy-rich country such as Scotland, our people are fuel-poor and hungry and our pensioners survive on the lowest pension in the developed world? There are uncomfortable truths for those on the Government Benches. It is absolutely clear, from the Queen’s Speech and from the actions and words of Conservative Members, that this Government will prioritise the profits of energy companies over the wellbeing of the people whom they are supposed to serve. The chancellor’s economic policies are making inflation worse, not better.

There are alternative choices. For instance, the Chancellor could reduce council tax by a quarter, at a cost of £10 billion a year. That would reduce the retail price index by 1%. He could halt skyrocketing energy bills with a 50% cut. That would cost another £10 billion, but it would take another 1% off the RPI. Every time the RPI goes up, so do the interest payments to global financiers on index-linked gilt debt. A 1% RPI increase puts £5 billion on to those interest payments, but equally, 1% off the RPI saves £5 billion. The Chancellor—if he had a conscience—and a Government with the political will could reduce energy costs and cut council tax immediately. Her Majesty’s Treasury could finance the additional £10 billion with the windfall tax on the energy companies’ profits. Saving £10 billion for the financial markets and £10 billion from a windfall tax could fix many of the problems that we face immediately. All it takes is political will and a determination to improve the lives of the people you are supposed to serve.

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[Gerald Jones]

I absolutely agree with that point, because we have seen too many examples, particularly in rural and isolated areas, where communities are left without any access to cash. The opportunity for banks and other financial institutions to work together is long overdue.

As we know, the Tory record on crime is shocking. We have heard again today that crime is up, charges are down, criminals are getting off and victims are being let down by the Conservatives not taking crime seriously. We have seen an 18% rise in total crime over the past two years. Quarterly recorded crimes are now at their highest point on record, at 1.6 million. As the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), told us earlier, the overall charge rate has fallen from 15.5% in 2015 to just 5.8% in 2021, meaning thousands more criminals getting off and more than 1 million theft cases being closed without a suspect being identified—and there is no sign of things improving.

Antisocial behaviour continues to blight our communities. I have spoken in previous debates about the difference under the last Labour Government, when all local wards—I was a county councillor at that time—had a police officer and one or sometimes two police community support officers. We do not have to hark back to “Dixon of Dock Green” to find a time when people knew their community bobbies, as we had that in the period of the last Labour Government up to 2010. At that time, the neighbourhood policing teams provided meaningful engagement and deterrence in communities before issues got out of hand. We now have the same-sized teams covering five or six wards, and the sheer lack of people on the ground makes it impossible for them to tackle issues effectively, despite their best efforts. Labour would strengthen legal protections for victims of antisocial behaviour to give victims of persistent, unresolved antisocial behaviour new rights, and we would give the police and local authorities stronger powers to shut down premises being used for drug dealing or consumption. Although we have seen more police officers recruited, we still have thousands fewer than we had before the Tories started cutting them in 2010. I am grateful that in Wales we have the support of the Welsh Labour Government on this. Although they do not have responsibility for policing, as it is not devolved, they have provided funding for 500 PCSOs—that has increased to 600 in this Senedd term.

Before I leave the topic of policing, I would like to put on record again the issue of the apprenticeship levy paid by Welsh police forces. In England, funding for the police education qualifications framework, which includes apprenticeships for uniformed police officers, is provided through the national apprenticeship levy. In short, English police forces are fully reimbursed by the Government for the cost of training police officers. In Wales, the Home Office has reimbursed only half that cost, leaving Welsh police forces with a shortfall of more than £2 million.

[Kit Malthouse]

I acknowledge the issue that the hon. Gentleman is raising. However, I am sure he would want to acknowledge that although the UK Government do collect the apprenticeship levy, as he rightly points out, the money is passed to the Welsh Government, who then have declined so far to pass it on to the police forces affected. He is right to say that the Home Office has stepped in to fund it this year and in the past, but I urge him to speak to his Labour colleagues in Wales to get them to pass on the money, which has been given to them, after being taken from the police forces in the form of the levy.

[Gerald Jones]

The Minister really should go away and do his homework. This issue was taken up by his colleagues in the Wales Office team and correspondence has been exchanged. I appreciate that this is a long and complicated issue, but the Home Office is responsible for it, and it should take up its responsibilities and fund the four police forces in Wales in the same way as other police forces are being funded. Welsh police forces are being short-changed, and the responsibility lies with the Government.

Let me return to the cost of living crisis. I urge the Government to listen to the concerns that we have heard over and over again today. There is an urgent need for the Government to listen and to take action on things such as cutting the VAT costs on energy bills and introducing a windfall tax. Those practical steps have been offered to the Government and they really need to take them on board and take action now, for the sake of families right across the United Kingdom.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

It seems only a matter of weeks since we were in this place fighting against the UK Government’s now-successful attempts to restrict some of our most precious and long-held fundamental rights. It seems only a matter of weeks because it is. In the previous Session, we battled against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which will strip people of their right to protest, among other terrifying measures; the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022, which has serious implications for access to justice and the accountability of public bodies; and, finally, the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which is set to treat asylum seekers and refugees in ways that I can describe only as nightmarish. It is exhausting to stand here today facing an almost identical set of challenges in the new legislative programme. Rather than see the Queen’s Speech as a unique opportunity to help people to tackle the cost of living crisis and put some compassion back into the system, the UK Government are just adding to their attacks on people’s rights.

A constituent and friend of mine, Joanna, is a cleaner. On Monday, she said:

“So wages have gone up and my company added a wee bit extra, so not too bad. But today I got my wage slip and my national insurance contribution is now more than my income tax contribution, and it’s taken me back to exactly what I was earning before.”

What in the Queen’s Speech will tackle the issues that everyone out there is worrying about? Energy bills are spiralling out of control, the cost of the weekly shop is absolutely skyrocketing and the impending climate crisis is ever-present. There is nothing in the Queen’s Speech to tackle any of that. It is being left to the likes of my constituent Mandy Morgan, who dreamed up the Scottish Pantry Network and has opened nine shops in the past year. The network charges people a £2.50 membership fee for £15-worth of food, and that food is fresh fruit and vegetables and fresh meat and fish. The network is not just for poor people; it was set up for environmental reasons as well and tackles food waste. When people go into the network’s beautiful shops, they do not have to worry that somebody is going to know that they are on their uppers. I pay tribute to Mandy Morgan for everything she has done and to all the volunteers and staff who work for the network. There are, though, troubles ahead for them, because they are struggling to access the food that they need, and an increasing number of people need their help.

Instead of tackling such issues, the Government are attacking people’s rights. We know the old saying about divide and conquer: who do the Government want people out there to blame for all this? As usual, it is those who are already the least powerful and often completely voiceless. This Government thought it was perfectly acceptable to mention, alongside reference to those poor, desperate refugees who are forced to cross the channel in the most perilous of conditions, what they say are plans to help the police to make the streets safer—in the same paragraph of the Queen’s Speech. That is a consciously cynical ploy to conflate the two in people’s minds. It is a deliberate attack on asylum seekers and refugees.

This Tory Government’s shameless propaganda says that anyone who flees persecution and tries to get to safety on these islands is a criminal. And it is working: many people on these islands are doing everything they can to welcome and support refugees—I thank and pay tribute to them, and I thank God for them—but many people repeat the tropes that the Government have so cynically created. It is cynical, deliberate and strategic. We need only to listen back to some of the similarly worded interventions in the last debate on the Nationality and Borders Bill from Government Back Benchers who had never previously shown an interest.

Today, the attacks have moved to those of us who support refugees. I was disgusted to hear the Home Secretary refer to those of us on the Opposition Benches as defenders of “murderers” and “paedophiles”. I understand that it is apparently okay to do that in this place as long as it is not directed at an individual, so I will be writing to her and asking her whether she believes me to be a defender of murderers and paedophiles. I encourage everyone in here to do the same because we deserve an answer.

This Queen’s Speech was primed to reinvigorate the Brexit vote, but perpetuating the myth that Brexit is somehow reclaiming our sovereignty is just ridiculous. Doing it at the cost of trashing our rights is plain scary.

I wish to talk briefly on three of the many Bills that I feel most concerned about in this Queen’s Speech. The first is the Bill of Rights. It is no secret that the Justice Secretary has a long-held disdain for human rights, or, to put it another way, for people having rights. His book, “The Assault on Liberty: What Went Wrong with Rights” is illuminating if not wholly depressing. Let me give one quote from it:

“The spread of rights has become contagious”—

well we can’t have that—

“and, since the Human Rights Act, opened the door to vast new categories of claims, which can be judicially enforced against the government through the courts”.

Let us not forget the footage from the same year, 13 years ago, which saw him look into the camera and say:

“I don’t support the Human Rights Act and I don’t believe in economic and social rights.”

Well, I do, as does my party, which is why human rights are entrenched in Scots law. I thank my lucky stars that we have them, more so now than ever. They make sure that, to some extent, we can all stand shoulder to shoulder in society, that we share some of the same rights of access to justice, and that we can all call out the Government—whether it be this one, the Welsh Government, the Scottish Government, past Labour Governments, future Labour Governments or any public body—when they act in a way that undermines our rights. Who on earth would want to do away with that? These are not some legal concepts out of reach for most; they are entrenched in our modern psyche, and people know that they can rely on them to protect them at their most vulnerable moments, or when they need to face the might of the state. That is what the Tories do not like. They do not want people to know that they can be held to account in the courts, and they do not want to be scrutinised. I predict that, when they are out of office, they will perform a complete U-turn on this.

I do love the positive spin though—the Bill of Rights will defend our freedom of speech. Really? That is just as long as we are not outside this place with a megaphone, or stood at the gates of a fracking site. Our freedom of speech will end right there if Government Members get their way. It is nonsense to imply that the perfectly functioning Human Rights Act has somehow stifled our freedom of speech when it has in fact codified protections for freedom of both speech and assembly under articles 10 and 11 of the European convention on human rights. As with so much legislation forced through this place, there is little evidence to support much of what the Government claim in respect of reform of the Human Rights Act. There is an agenda; there are facts, and then there are Government Ministers determined to bend, manipulate and skew the evidence to fit.

Why should the Government be allowed to dictate who can access justice? That is completely at odds with the rule of law and our international obligations to anyone who seeks refuge on these islands. When will the Government realise that this is not what people want? People are lying under immigration control vans to stop deportations. People are physically running to gather together to protect others from Border Force officers. We all know about Kenmure Street in Pollokshields, but last week, on the day of the council elections, SNP council candidates Marianne Mwiki and now Councillor Simita Kumar, stopped campaigning for themselves and staged their own Kenmure Street protest, along with activists from Edinburgh SNP and hundreds of their fellow citizens from all parties and none, when Border Force vans came looking for someone. We just have to look at the number of emails that have come flooding into our inboxes on the Rwanda plan to know that this is not what our constituents want.

Of obvious concern to anyone in Scotland is the adverse effect that this Bill will have on the devolution settlement. The rights enshrined in the Human Rights Act are at the very core of the settlement and, as Scotland’s Equalities Minister Christina McKelvie MSP said this morning:

“Changes must not be made without the explicit consent of the Scottish Parliament.”

The Scottish Government want to enhance and extend rights protection, but the UK Government want the opposite. What could the solution possibly be? We will no doubt be debating this for many months and, although we may be exhausted with it, we are very much up for that debate. However, I do not understand why anyone would believe this measure will somehow cut our ties with the European courts; rather than our rights being brought home, we will be forced to go to Strasbourg to enforce them. Our human rights should not be embroiled in the Tory Brexit fantasy.

On the Public Order Bill, it is no surprise to see the eleventh-hour amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 that were vehemently voted down by the House of Lords returning in the Queen’s Speech. Is this the way it is going to work now—democratically rejected clauses will be repackaged and grouped together to form next year’s legislation? If the Government can do that after just a few weeks of being told no, what on earth is their argument against Scotland’s right to go to the people and revisit the question on Scotland’s independence after nine long years? They are leaving themselves with no arguments for refusing a section 30 order; that will not stop them refusing of course, but they have no valid arguments. It is one rule for this Tory Government and another for everyone else. It is a brazen thing for the Home Secretary to do. These clauses did not go unnoticed by the public; they sparked outrage and protest during the passage of the policing Act, and rightly so. The Government are deluded if they think that the people who were willing to stand outside this place and risk arrest and imprisonment are going to lie down and accept this Public Order Bill. They are also deluded if they think that those Members on this side of the House and in the other place will roll over and accept defeat.

[Kit Malthouse]

One of the arguments put in the House of Lords around the clauses the hon. Lady refers to is that they had not been adequately scrutinised by the House of Commons; that is the main argument behind why they were knocked out and, by bringing them back, we will be allowing that scrutiny. I am interested in the hon. Lady’s view, however. As she will know, there is currently a protest outside a fuel depot in Scotland where protestors have locked themselves on. Does she support the arrest and removal of those protestors, and their prosecution, and if they are prosecuted and convicted, what penalty does she think they should get?

[Anne McLaughlin]

The Government are constantly doing this: they are constantly trying to suggest that, because we do not like the draconian laws that they want to bring in, we somehow support everybody’s right to do whatever they want without any penalty. I am not going to get dragged into that. Instead I tell the Minister that we will continue to fight this issue, because what they are doing is wrong; no matter how dispiriting it gets, we will continue to fight them. Today, on the 41st anniversary of the death of the late, great Bob Marley, I would like to use one of his quotes to explain why:

“The people who were trying to make this world worse are not taking the day off. Why should I?”

We should not, and we absolutely will not. If the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 was a step too far, this Public order Bill is a leap into the realms of a dystopian nightmare.

I want to take a moment to say how pleased I was to see my friend and colleague my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Amy Callaghan) back making a speech yesterday. It was emotional for all of us, and not least for her parents and her partner—her fiancé—who were watching up in the Gallery. I was particularly pleased to hear my hon. Friend express support for a fully inclusive ban on conversion therapy for all LGBT people. I absolutely concur with her: absolutely nobody should be subjected to conversion so-called therapy.

I will finish my remarks by saying that I am disappointed. Of course much of this Queen’s Speech was predictable, but these measures are not manifesto pledges becoming reality; they are the result of personal agendas and are attacks on the most vulnerable people on these islands. As I asked earlier, where is the compassion? Where is the helping hand or the reassuring support from a Government who are at least partly responsible for the cost of living crisis?

Scotland wants to do things differently—as, I appreciate, do many non-Scottish National party Members on the Opposition Benches. We do want to offer that helping hand; we do want to act with care and compassion; and we do want to welcome people in need, not throw up the shutters and turn them away. The Scottish Government do all of those things, but they do so with one hand tied behind their back. I am ready for this year’s challenges but I am also raring for our independence referendum, because when the people of Scotland recognise that the only way to stop tinkering around the edges of dreadful Tory policies and to stop having to spend millions of pounds on mitigating the effect of those policies, thus leaving the Scottish Government with a lot less money to do the things that we as a country want to do, and they reach the conclusion that the only way to have full control over the kind of country we are is to vote yes to independence, I predict that that is exactly what they will do.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

It is my pleasure and great honour to close this day of debate on the Gracious Speech, with a particular focus on preventing crime and delivering justice. The past two years have been immensely challenging, but thanks to the efforts of public servants across our criminal justice system, the public have been protected and justice has continued to be served.

As the Minister for Crime and Policing, I want to start by paying tribute to our brave police officers for their tireless commitment to keeping the public safe, which has remained steadfast throughout the immense challenges of the pandemic and as we continue our covid-19 recovery. As a joint Minister between the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, I know that hard work and dedication have been no less evident at the other end of the system, from our court staff, legal professionals and the judiciary. Their efforts have kept the wheels of justice turning so that we can drive down the court backlog, rebuild a better, stronger system and bring swifter justice for all.

I have listened to today’s long debate with interest and I am grateful to Members on both sides of the House for their contributions. There was clearly a common theme across pretty much all the speeches this afternoon—that is, a strong concern, shared by the Government, about the cost of living challenge being felt up and down the nation, bringing difficult choices to houses and homes across the country. The Government have moved quickly to inject £22 billion through various means into people’s pockets, particularly focused on households who have less money to spend on a daily basis. I know that the Chancellor and the Prime Minister are monitoring the situation on a daily basis.

Over the next few months, the cost of living will be even more of a challenge, given the Bank of England forecast, and it is the duty of all of us in Government to do what we can to alleviate the burden on our fellow citizens. This is a Queen’s Speech laying out a legislative agenda for the next Session, rather than a Budget laying out a fiscal or taxation agenda, but I am confident that when it comes to that point, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will do what he needs to do to support households in this country, as he has done in the past.

We have had a variety of contributions this afternoon, falling broadly into three categories. First, there were the constructive contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) talked about antisocial behaviour in his constituency, a theme we heard from several hon. Members. The three graces—my hon. Friends the Members for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) and for Dudley North (Marco Longhi)—expressed strong support for the Public Order Bill. The general theme was expressed pithily by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough:

“We want criminals to be scared of the law. We do not want the law-abiding majority to be scared of criminals”—

a sentiment with which the Government heartily agree. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) made his usual vigorous and wide-ranging contribution, illustrating neatly why his part of the world is becoming more of a Conservative stronghold with every month that passes.

Our friends from Northern Ireland, on the other side of the Irish sea, also made constructive and thoughtful contributions and expressed support for our measures to deal with guerrilla-style protests. I heard very clearly their concerns about the Northern Ireland protocol; I know that the Prime Minister and the Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland and for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs are engaged intensively in trying to solve the problems that the protocol is bringing to that part of the country.

Happily, from the Opposition Benches, the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) took us through the very welcome renaissance in the fortunes of St Helens, a town that I know well from my upbringing in the north-west. He seemed to miss the bit of his speech where he was grateful for the Government’s contribution to that renaissance—not least the £360,000 that theusb council received to help with rough sleeping in the town, with which it has been remarkably successful. The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) was very gracious about the Government’s work in his constituency, which I hope is bringing great prosperity and success to his part of the world. I am grateful for his contribution.

Then, I am afraid, we had a variety of contributions that were all variations on the theme of “Everything Conservative bad, everything fill-in-the-blank-for-my-party excellent, good, brilliant silver bullet-style solutions.” The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) seemed to be happy for protesters to be punished through the civil courts but not the criminal courts, which is a rather confused stance. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) really needs to reflect on how the various problems with crime in her city that she raised should be the priority of the Labour police and crime commissioner; I hope that she will have an assertive conversation with her, as she was assertive in her contribution. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) blamed the Government, strangely, for members of Action Fraud catching covid; hopefully they will recover soon.

It is always good to hear from the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon). It is excellent to know that the Corbynite heart of the Labour party is beating strongly. Fear not, my friend: your time will come again, we all hope. In the vigorous contribution from the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), among the expected attacks on us there was food for thought about the perhaps more sensitive issues that we will have to face during the Session.

A couple of west midlands Members, not least the hon. Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher), put the fall in West Midlands police numbers down to the Government. In fact, there is very little that we can do if there have been Labour police and crime commissioners who have not prioritised the maintenance of police numbers over the past 10 years. Many police forces across the country have the highest number of police officers in their history—not least the Metropolitan police, because those who have had custodianship of the finances of that force over the past decade or so have made the right choices. I cannot compensate for the poor choices that police and crime commissioners have made in the past 10 years, much as I would like to. I hope that when we reach the successful recruitment of 20,000 police officers, which I forecast will be towards the end of this year, people will reflect on the decisions that they made over the decade and on where those decisions have put them at the end of the process. Finally, we heard from the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin), who seems to fail to realise that a commitment to net zero is, I am proud to say, a matter of law which cannot be avoided by this or, indeed, any subsequent Government.

That brings me to the chief dystopians, the pair on the Opposition Front Bench. In his closing speech, the hon. Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed) went into some kind of weirdo rant at the end, filled, I am afraid, with misrepresentations and—am I allowed to say “half-truths”? I do not know whether or not that is parliamentary language.

The strange thing is that so eager are the Opposition to attack, so eager are they to push for all-out frontal assault, that they forget the collateral damage. In their speeches, they attack the police; all those brave police officers are, apparently, callous and uncaring. As for the Home Office, the thousands of Home Office staff are unfeeling, inefficient, and similarly callous about those who seek their services. Given that most Labour Members represent areas with Labour police and crime commissioners, however, they are actually attacking their colleagues for their lack of thought and care. The general parts of their speeches do not really require a detailed response, not least because these are the same attacks that we heard in the run-up to the 2019 election. As I have said, they were all variations on a theme, and I suspect that we will get the same result at the next election unless they change their tune.

We did, however, hear three thoughtful contributions which struck me in particular. My hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Sir Robert Syms) raised not just crime and justice issues, but the old-fashioned issue of monetarism as a key part of our economic approach. That is something with which I have strong sympathy, and no doubt it will come to the fore as we look towards our cost of living challenge.

My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) put his finger on an issue that has been particularly neglected, and I was interested to hear about the all-party parliamentary group on issues affecting men and boys. He said that if we had 1,000 cars and three went wrong, we would not damn all those 1,000 cars but would try to work out why the three had gone wrong. I think that was a very strong analogy, and I hope that he and I can work together in the months to come to solve some of the problems that we undoubtedly see in the criminal justice system involving men and boys.

The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), for whom I have enormous respect, obviously had to go through the standard attacks on the Conservative party to satisfy central command in Scotland, but her thoughts on the Bill of Rights, conversion therapy and online rights were well worth listening to, and gave pause for thought. I will be sending copies of her speech to the various Ministers so that they can consider what she said. She is obviously a legal brain to be reckoned with, so we should do exactly that.

It was hard to discern, amid the fury from the Opposition Front Benchers, what they were likely to support in the coming Session, but I am pleased to say that in our part of the Government universe we have a number of Bills which I think will make a significant difference to the British people.

The National Security Bill will enhance the safety of the British public and protect our vital interests from those who seek to do the UK harm, making good on our manifesto commitment to ensure that the security services have the powers that they need. I assume that Opposition Front Benchers will support that. The protect duty Bill will introduce new legal requirements for public locations and venues to ensure that they are prepared for and protected from terrorist attacks; I assume that they will support that as well. I know that they will support the Public Order Bill, because the Leader of the Opposition called for more assertive action during the recent fuel protests, and I expect to see support for it in the Lobby. We have already heard from the Front Benchers that they want to support the economic crime Bill, and we hope to work constructively with them in ensuring that we are all safe online and able to deny the proceeds of crime to those who wish to make money from exploiting our fellow citizens. The Online Safety Bill has been subject to a great deal of discussion in the House and elsewhere about how we should start to police the online world in the same way we police the offline world. No doubt there will be challenges along the way, but I am sure that we can reach a settled view.

I am particularly grateful to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) for her contribution on algorithms. She will remember that we are, I think, the first Government in the world to have a register of algorithms that can be looked at by those who understand them, although I am not saying that I necessarily would. There is scope for the House to come together to protect the vulnerable and, in particular, children, and to ensure that we deal with offending online.

I know that the modern slavery Bill will garner support from across the House. A number of Members from both sides of the House have mentioned their desire to strengthen protections in that area. The victims Bill has been a little time coming, but I am glad to say that it will be laid shortly, I hope, in draft form for pre-legislative scrutiny, as it should be. Everyone wants to put victims at the heart of the criminal justice system, and we have done an enormous amount to support them over the last couple of years, spending significant money on support mechanisms for them, but there is always more we can do. We want victims to be supported, but our primary aim is that there should be fewer of them, and the work that we are doing across the whole of the criminal justice system and policing will achieve that.

Finally, we come to the Bill of Rights, which should ensure that our human rights framework meets the needs of the society it serves and commands public confidence, and that where perceived and actual abuses of our human rights laws are ended, we can restore a bit more common sense to the criminal justice system. We need to strengthen our common-law traditions, particularly now as we exit the European Union, and we have to reduce our reliance on Strasbourg case law.

As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary set out earlier in this debate, the first job of any Government is to keep their people safe, which is why we are delivering ambitious reforms to do just that by cutting crime, delivering swifter justice and making our streets safer. We are backing the ever-growing numbers of police with the tools and support they need, making sentences tougher for violent and sexual crimes, strengthening victims’ rights and restoring confidence in the criminal justice system. We will ensure that we strike the right balance in our human rights framework so that it meets the needs of the public and commands their confidence, strengthens our traditions of liberty, particularly the right to free speech, adds a healthy dose of common sense and curtails abuses of our justice system. I commend the Government’s programme on crime and justice to the House.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(David T. C. Davies.)

Debate to be resumed tomorrow.

Independent Expert Panel

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 150D),

That this House:-

(1) takes note of the report of the Independent Expert Panel, The Conduct of Mr Liam Byrne MP, HC 1272 in the last session of Parliament, and the recommendation for sanction of a suspension of two sitting days;

(2) accordingly suspends Liam Byrne from the service of the House for two sitting days, namely Thursday 12 May and Monday 16 May; and

(3) notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 45A, directs that Mr Byrne’s salary shall be withdrawn for two days, from Thursday 12 May till Friday 13 May.—(Mark Spencer.)

Question agreed to.

Forensic Information Databases Strategy Board Annual Report and Updated Governance Rules

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Written Statements

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

I am pleased to announce that I am today publishing the annual report of the forensic information databases strategy board for 2020-21 and the updated Governance rules. This report covers the national fingerprints database and the national DNA database (NDNAD).

The strategy board chair, DCC Ben Snuggs, has presented the annual report of the national DNA database to the Home Secretary. Publication of the report is a statutory requirement under section 63AB(7) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 as inserted by section 24 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012.

The report shows the important contribution that the NDNAD and the national fingerprint databases (policing collections) make to supporting policing and solving crimes. I am grateful to the strategy board for their commitment to fulfilling their statutory functions.

Both the report and governance rules have been laid before the House and copies will be available from the Vote Office.

[HCWS791]

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 25th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

I beg to move,

That this House insists on its disagreement with Lords in their Amendment 73, insists on its Amendment 73C to the words restored to the Bill by its disagreement to that Amendment, insists on its Amendment 74A to Lords Amendment 74, disagrees with the Lords in their Amendment 74B to that Amendment in lieu, disagrees with the Lords in their consequential Amendments 74C, 74D, 74E, 74F and 74G, insists on its disagreement with the Lords in their Amendment 87, insists on its Amendments 87A, 87B, 87C, 87D, 87E, 87F and 87H to the words restored to the Bill by its disagreement to that Amendment but proposes Amendment (a) in lieu of Lords Amendment 73 and additional Amendment (b) to the words restored to the Bill by its disagreement with the Lords in their Amendment 87.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to consider the following Government motion:

That this House insists on its disagreement with the Lords in their Amendment 80, insists on its Amendments 80A, 80B, 80C, 80D, 80E, 80F and 80H to the words restored to the Bill by its disagreement with that Amendment, disagrees with the Lords in their Amendment 80J instead of the words left out by that Amendment but proposes additional Amendment (a) to the words restored to the Bill by its disagreement with the Lords in their Amendment 80.

[Kit Malthouse]

I rise to speak to the motions in the name of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, including the associated amendments in lieu. We return yet again, I have to say with a smidgin of ennui and irritation, to the issue of police powers to attach conditions to protests. It is disappointing that the debate on these provisions continues to be characterised by misinformation about what the Bill actually does and irrationality.

I shall start with the issue of noise. As I said in round 2 of ping-pong, at the Opposition’s behest, we have added provisions to the Bill that can be used to limit noise and disruptive protests outside schools and vaccination centres. I am therefore at a loss to understand why they would not agree to these provisions outside, say, a convent, a hospital, an animal sanctuary or, God forbid, a factory. What happened to the workers’ rights?

It cannot be that a protest can inflict any amount of noise on those living or working in the vicinity for prolonged periods of time, day or night. I agree that it would not be necessary or proportionate, for example, to attach conditions relating to the generation of noise to a procession that will pass a particular location within a matter of hours, but the same cannot be said of an ongoing raucous protest, perhaps encamped in a residential area, which includes the banging of drums and the use of loudhailers. It is intolerable that local residents should have to endure that day and night, and it is right that in those circumstances, the police should have the power to act. I do not understand why those residents’ rights are so lightly set aside by the Opposition. When the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) rises to address the motions, I hope she will answer that question.

I can, however, assure the hon. Members for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson)—they questioned me on this in the last round—that there are no new powers here to restrict what is said and, for that matter, sung. These provisions are simply about the harm caused by excessive noise; the content is irrelevant. Of course, the existing criminal law relating to hate or intimidatory speech will continue to apply.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I have a real concern about Lords amendment 80. I am not sure that my concern, or the concerns of my hon. Friends the Members for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), and for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), have been dispelled. Can the Minister give me an assurance in this House today, on the record in Hansard, that open-air or other events will not be affected? The letter of the law does not give that protection; sadly—this has been done in this country already—officers have the power to arrest those preaching the word of God. I seek an assurance from the Minister that on no occasion and under no circumstances will the opportunity to preach the gospel in the streets of this kingdom be in any way thwarted, reduced or restricted.

[Kit Malthouse]

As I have already explained, what is said is irrelevant for the purposes of this legislation. The Bill merely covers the distress that may be caused by the volume or persistence of the noise. The existing criminal law already covers content. If the content—obviously, not in this case—is intimidating, somehow hateful or incites some kind of violence, there are already provisions against that kind of speech. The hon. Gentleman describes somebody simply preaching the gospel; if they are not causing alarm or distress through the level or persistence of the noise, I cannot see why that would be offensive to anybody, or that the police would use these powers.

I turn to the other provisions in clause 56, enabling the police to attach any condition to a public assembly where such conditions are necessary to prevent serious public disorder, serious damage to property, serious disruption to the life of the community or intimidation. I welcome the belated acceptance by the other place that existing powers in section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 are insufficient, but I am afraid Lords amendment 87J is not up to the task. The police have told us that the distinction drawn in that Act between processions and assemblies is outdated, and it does not reflect current-day challenges of policing dynamic protests that can morph from a procession to an assembly and back again. The current situation prompts all sorts of questions. For example, how slowly would a procession have to move before it becomes static? If protesters walk in a 200 metre circle, is that a procession or a static protest?

It will continue to be the case that any conditions must be proportionate, and necessary to prevent serious disorder and the other serious harms set out in the Bill. None of that, however, is to say that we have not listened to and reflected on the views expressed by the other place. In the last round, we raised the threshold for the exercise of noise-related powers by removing the “serious unease” trigger, and we have tabled an amendment in lieu that will place a duty on the Secretary of State to prepare and publish a report on the operation of the relevant provisions in clauses 55, 56 and 61 within two years of their commencement. In one of our earlier debates, my right hon. Friends the Members for Newark (Robert Jenrick), and for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), stressed the need for a post-legislative review of those provisions, and the amendments would enshrine that in law.

We have reached a stage of the legislative process where the issue at stake is no longer simply the merits or otherwise of the measures that we are debating. A more fundamental issue is at stake: the primacy of this elected House in our constitutional arrangements. This House has already debated and expressly approved the noise-related provisions on no less than three occasions: on Report last July; on consideration of Lords amendments at the end of February; and again at the end of March. That is not to mention the separate votes on Second and Third Reading of the Bill. I hope and expect that hon. Members will endorse the provisions for a fourth time when we come to the Division. The other place, composed as it is of hereditary and appointed Members without any democratic mandate, has done its duty in asking this House to reconsider this issue. We have now done so and made our position abundantly clear. We should send the provisions back to the Lords again, with a clear and unequivocal message that they should now let them, and the Bill, proceed.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I am sorry that the Minister finds himself bored by the democratic process, but this is the process, and sadly he has to come to the Dispatch Box to engage in this debate. There is one—[Interruption.]

[Sarah Jones]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I do not mind how noisy the Minister is; I do not want to curtail his right to be as noisy as he likes.

We are debating one topic: the right to protest and make noise. We have indeed debated it several times. Members from across the House have spoken passionately about why this issue matters, and why the Government have got this so wrong. One might think that, with crime up 14%, the arrest rate having halved since 2010, and prosecution rates at an all-time low, the Government might spend their time on the bread-and-butter issues of law and order, such as fighting criminals. Instead, they seem intent on criminalising singing at peaceful protests. That suggests that the Government are tired, out of ideas and have no plan, and are searching round for anything eye-catching to distract from their years of failure.

The Lords responded to the Minister’s defence of his policy by voting against it again. Lords amendments 73 and 87 remove the Government’s proposed noise trigger, which would allow the police to put conditions on marches or one-person protests that are “too noisy”. Labour agrees with the Lords, and we support Lords amendment 80, which removes clause 56 from the Bill altogether. As with most Government policies thought up on the hoof, there are many questions about how the proposed powers would work.

[Kit Malthouse]

This is a genuine question. For many years, I was a councillor in central London and a London Assembly member. I am conscious that central London is particularly targeted by protests, which happen pretty much every weekend and often every day of the week. Central London is characterised by a quite dense residential population. Where is the balance between the rights of those residents to the peaceful enjoyment of their homes, and the rights of protesters to protest throughout the night, which the hon. Lady seems intent on preserving? Will she please explain why residents do not deserve some kind of protection from noise?

[Sarah Jones]

I ask the Minister back: where is the evidence that residents have asked for this change in legislation? [Interruption.] I see no evidence that anybody has asked for this change in the law, not least the police—

[Kit Malthouse]

You should see my inbox.

[Sarah Jones]

My inbox—I do not know about the Minister’s—is full of emails asking us to vote against the Government’s provisions today. I have not had a single one asking me to vote in favour.

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend is right. I am proud to have campaigned with Jane Hutt. She knows what she is talking about, and she delivers results—something that this Government could learn from.

Recently published guidance on this bizarre change to the law gives us the helpful tip that

“a noisy protest outside an office with double glazing may not meet the threshold”

in the Bill. The guidance is seriously asking the police to base their consideration of whether a protest is too noisy on how many buildings around it have double-glazed windows. How on earth will the police know? Is it fair to our police if the law is so peculiar that they could interpret it in a million different ways, and would stand accused of bias whatever they did? I urge Ministers to bear in mind the consequences of these provisions on the police officers trying to put them into practice.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, if only so that I can, hopefully, enliven our proceedings slightly. I am a bit confused; the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) seemed to imply that the Minister in the Welsh Government says that there is plenty of legislation to deal with this problem. Is she therefore content for legislation to be used in Wales to control protest noise?

[Sarah Jones]

The point we are trying to make is that there is a balance to be struck between what is reasonable in protests and what is not. We believe that the right to protest is not an absolute right; there have to be provisions in place to ensure that protests are reasonable, and do not put out the public too much. These provisions on noise are almost impossible to interpret—they are really unclear—and the police and the public have not asked for them. There are existing rules to ensure that reasonable, peaceful protest can take place, and the Bill rides roughshod over those genuine rights.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Throughout the proceedings on this woefully drafted Bill, I have maintained that, although it is largely reserved to England and Wales, part 3 on protest will severely restrict anyone from Scotland, or indeed anyone across these islands, from exercising their fundamental and democratic right to protest. None of us can sit back and allow that to happen. What happens here in the coming days will outlive this Government, so the Scottish National party will vote against the Government motions to disagree with the Lords, who have worked tirelessly to help restore some balance to the Bill. I am seriously concerned about what will happen when the Bill is forced through the Lobby, and I know that that worries some Conservative Back Benchers who have been lobbying Members of the other place to allow the Commons the opportunity to think again on protest measures. We are back here to consider part 3 on protest, and rightly so.

The protest measures in the Bill have been the headline grabbers—the clauses most briefed on, tweeted on, reported and debated—and, most importantly, they are the clauses that people are concerned about, because they are a threat to our long-held right to have our voices heard. My office also receives hundreds of emails on a daily basis asking me to stand up and act against the threat to those rights. People are worried not just because of this Bill in particular—although it is terrifying—but because of the context in which it is being pushed through this place.

This week, we will debate the Elections Bill, the Nationality and Borders Bill and the Judicial Review and Courts Bill, each carrying its own threat to our fundamental rights. People know how this works: they know that the Government have seemingly unfettered powers to make any law that they want. Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb put it best when she said:

“Because they have a huge majority…they can afford not to care about how the Bills are written or about their content.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 31 March 2022; Vol. 820, c. 1707.]

The Bill is badly written. No well written legislation would require so many amendments—it borders on the ridiculous. When we are forced to create a database for amendments just to keep track, we know that fundamentally something has gone wrong at the front end. However, it is our job to amend, correct and stop badly drafted legislation and, whatever the Minister says, it is the second House’s job to have its say on that.

I will speak briefly on specific amendments, but I would like to make a general point: all the amendments under discussion clean up ambiguous and badly worded clauses that will, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), said, only force the police into making quasi-political decisions on the spot. Former police chiefs and senior officers have warned against the

“political pressure the Bill will place on frontline officers.”

It has become apparent through these debates that it is not more legislation or laws that the police need or want.

Lords Amendment 73 would remove sections of the Bill that allow the police to intervene and limit processions based on the criterion of noise. We have heard a lot about that today. The Government have got this wrong—they simply have. They have tried to make assurances that powers to act on noise will be used only in the most extreme circumstances, but it is all just too vague. As the shadow Minister said, what kind of law would ask a frontline police officer to assess the thickness of walls in an office or the kind of glazing in a building prior to intervening on a protest? Seriously! It is in the guidance, if Government Members opposite want to check it. Here is a quote from the guidance:

“A noisy protest outside an office with double glazing may not meet the threshold”.

It is not just the way a building is constructed that frontline officers might have to contend with, but the duration of the noise and the type of noise. The list goes on. This is ill-conceived and ill-defined. It will load pressure on to already pressurised police forces and simply will not work. And that is before we get to the crux of the matter: our right to protest is our democratic right. It is not for this Government or any successive Governments to take that away.

We continue to oppose the Government’s apparent concession to remove the term “serious unease” for the simple fact that it is nestled in badly drafted sections and has the unintentional—or possibly intentional—effect of lowering the threshold for police intervention. Removing the term would lower the threshold of “serious alarm or distress” to “alarm or distress”. My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) eloquently made that point in a previous debate, and I stand by his remarks.

We supported Lords amendment 80, to remove clause 56 on public assemblies, and we continue to support it. This is yet another clause rife with hidden dangers, attempting to replace public order legislation that is operating perfectly well. The Public Order Act was careful to delineate and differentiate the conditions that could be imposed on static demonstrations, as opposed to a march or a moving protest, and that was sensible. That reflected the relative ease by which a static demonstration can be policed.

[Kit Malthouse]

I understand the hon. Lady’s point, but I am afraid I disagree with it. In Scottish jurisprudence, Scotland has an advantage over England in that it has a well-expressed and commonly used offence of nuisance. Would she support the use of this legislation in controlling nuisance emanating from a protest?

[Anne McLaughlin]

So many of us have already answered that on so many occasions. There already exists legislation and the powers for the police to control demonstrations that are not peaceful and out of control, but we are not talking about that. The proposed legislation allows the police to make decisions according to very spurious guidance. The removal of the distinction regarding statics demonstration could hand the police unfettered discretion to impose further conditions on static protests, such as the words and slogans that can be used on placards. That is ridiculous. Sometimes they are the best bits! I really wish I had the time to read out some of my favourite words and slogans that I have seen recently, but I do not think the Government would be too pleased about that.

Finally, I want to touch on Lords amendment 87, on one-person protests. The amendment removes the ability of the police to impose conditions on a one-person protest. That was rejected in the last round of ping-pong and the Lords have rightly asked for it to be reconsidered. I have twice now heard the Minister talk in derisory terms about the House of Lords because some of them are hereditary and none of them are elected. The SNP is opposed to the House of Lords on that basis, but his party is not and it puts people in there all the time. If that is the system he supports, he cannot really complain when they do the job they are asked to do. Are we really going to see a law passed today that will allow the might of the state to bear down on a single, individual protester? It is ridiculous, disproportionate and nothing short of bullying. And be careful anyone who even stops to chat to a protester, because they could be snared by the clause, too. How many times have we all stopped to chat to the wonderful array of protesters outside this place, whether we agree with them or not? Well, Madam Deputy Speaker, doing so could soon see you committing a criminal offence.

We are not impressed with the Government’s amendments to lay reports before the House with regard to changes to the Public Order Act. They are lip service posing as concessions. They are better than nothing, but they are not much better.

I understand that time is short, so I will finish with this: we support the Lords in their amendments and fundamentally disagree with the undemocratic way the Government are throwing their weight around. If the Government are intent on dissuading protest, they are intent on silencing voices. From the huffing and puffing coming from the Minister today it is clear he is no fan of democracy, so I am sure he will not mind if I tell him the Bill is undemocratic, unworkable and unfair.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

It was through protest that many of our fundamental rights were won, including the right to vote. Noise is an essential part of protest. What is the point of a demonstration if no one can hear its message? What is it if not a show of strength of feeling? Thousands of people gathered together will inevitably be loud. Make no mistake: the Bill is an assault on our right to protest and our ability to hold the powerful to account. What is to stop a corporation that is being protested against calling the police and claiming that the noise is causing significant disruption in order to shut down the demonstration?

The powers also give huge discretion to police officers. That will make the law on protests completely unpredictable. People will attend protests not knowing whether the noise that they are making is illegal and whether they will go home that evening and have dinner with their family or be thrown in the back of a police van. I have no faith that the police would show restraint with these new powers when other powers have been abused time and again.

In recent weeks Members across the House will have seen the heroic actions of anti-war protesters in Russia and Ukraine. If MPs truly support their right to protest and their ability to make noise, they should vote against these powers. Many Conservative Members also consider themselves great champions of freedom of speech, quick to condemn so-called cancel culture. If they truly believe in freedom of expression, they should vote against the powers.

I would also bet that the majority of Members in this Chamber will at some point have taken part in a protest that could have fallen foul of a noise trigger—thank goodness the Chamber is not subject to these anti-noise laws, because otherwise I expect that would be happening every Wednesday. I urge every Member here to think about those protests, the causes they were championing and the people they were with. If they feel that those protests were legitimate and that they should not have been arrested for making some noise, I urge them to extend the same right to others and to vote down these powers.

[Kit Malthouse]

Let me deal with the closing point from the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) about Prime Minister’s Question Time. She will recall that the Speaker spends quite a lot of his time semi-threatening Members of the House, saying that they should keep quiet so that the voices and rights of Members on both sides of the House can be respected. Control is exercised, as we all make our views known.

As we close this debate, I want to focus broadly on where we agree. We all agree that, in an ancient democracy such as ours, protest is intrinsic to, and a cornerstone of, our rights. The Government are resolute in defending the rights of freedom of speech and of assembly. We should all be able to take to the streets to express our views on the issues of the day. In doing so, it is inevitable that some will be offended, inconvenienced or put out, and we should all accept that as part of the debate.

However, I think we have all accepted, on both sides of the House, that even in a protest situation, controls can and should be mandated and that there is not an unqualified right. As both Opposition Front Benchers—the hon. Members for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) and for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin)—have accepted, in Scotland and Wales there is a legal basis for controlling all forms of protest, including noise. All that we are trying to do is give the police the power to do so in challenging and exceptional situations in England as well.

When one person is exercising a right that infringes on the rights of others, whether it involves the use of hate speech, running on to motorways, endangering lives or generating such a cacophony of noise that it causes alarm or distress, the law must be able to step in—as it does, perhaps for a tenant or resident in Croydon. I would be interested in the view of the hon. Member for Croydon Central on this: if the noise that the resident complained about from the neighbours was Bob Dylan protest songs all day and all night in furtherance of a protest in their home, should that just be allowed? [Interruption.] Well, exactly. The point is that we have to be able to qualify these rights and we have to give the police control in exceptional circumstances.

The time has come to say unequivocally to the House of Lords that enough is enough. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) said, this elected House has made its views on the measures crystal clear four times. It is time for the other place to acknowledge that, accept the amendments that the Government have put forward in the spirit of accommodation and let the Bill pass.

Question put.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

5. What recent discussions she has had with police forces to help ensure that oil depots are able to supply fuel to petrol stations in the context of recent environmental protests.

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

In advance of the recent irresponsible and self-defeating protests, there has been regular engagement with the police, local authorities and industry to ensure that these protests can be managed effectively, and that there is no risk to fuel supply. All fuel supply points are fully operational, and we will continue to work closely with the police and industry to ensure that supplies are maintained.

[Andrew Selous]

Does the Minister agree that while the right to protest is a fundamental liberty, this type of behaviour just infuriates the public, whom we need to get on side with our net zero campaign? It is particularly unfair to the self-employed. If they cannot get fuel for their vehicles, they cannot get to work and they do not get paid. Will he ensure that the police and the law stay on the side of the law-abiding, so that everyone can earn an income?

[Kit Malthouse]

I certainly will ensure that, and my hon. Friend is right to point out the impact, particularly on those who rely on their vehicles for their work, of these irresponsible and self-defeating protests, many of which have been extremely dangerous. It is worth also reflecting on the other impact, which is that hundreds of police officers are pulled away from policing neighbourhoods across the UK, because forces provide each other with mutual aid. We have brought police from as far away as Scotland, the south-west and Wales to help deal with these protests, and that has a direct impact on crime in all our constituencies. We are all committed environmentalists and want less use of fossil fuels, but this is not the way to achieve it.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

6. What recent assessment she has made of the extent of delays at passport control in UK airports.

Drug Crime

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

It is a great pleasure to appear before you, Mr Pritchard, either side of what felt like a parliamentary recess. It is good to be back.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) for securing this debate on an important area of policy. I am sure he will appreciate that the Prime Minister made it a Government priority on, in effect, the day he stood on the steps of Downing Street all those months ago. He and we accept that drug-related crime inflicts a terrible toll on our society. We have heard some horror stories this afternoon. We are determined to turn the tide.

Our unwavering commitment to addressing the problem was, as a number of Members have pointed out, set out in our drugs strategy, “From harm to hope”, published last December. That strategy is underpinned by a landmark set of investments totalling about £3 billion over the next three years. The plan comes in support of our general policy of levelling up across the whole of the UK. We want to see people living longer, healthier lives in safe and productive neighbourhoods. Our approach couples tough enforcement with renewed focus on breaking exactly that cycle of addiction mentioned by so many Members today.

We plan to achieve that difficult challenge with three simple strands of work. The first is to attack every single stage of the drug-supply chain. The hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) asked what is different about our approach to drugs this time. From an enforcement point of view, we have shifted the emphasis carefully away from the notion of mass arrests—which, as he and a number of Members have pointed out, simply results almost immediately in replacement—much more to attacking the mechanics of the business itself. If our job is to degrade or restrict the supply of drugs into a particular area, we have to ensure that that is done in a way that means that no one can step in to replace and repeat the operation. Attacking the business and the supply chain is critical. We also want to ramp up our investment in treatment and recovery—we have been given hundreds of millions of pounds to do that across the whole of England and Wales—and, critically, to support those people ensnared by addiction to rebuild their lives, ensuring that they get off the roundabout in and out of the prison system, once and for all.

Alongside that, we want to address wider demand and to see a generational shift in society’s attitude towards drugs. For example, we will expand and improve the use of drug testing on arrest and diversionary schemes, such as out-of-court disposals, and undertake work to understand how communications can be used to change behaviours and drive down the use of recreational drugs.

We plan to publish a White Paper proposing a new range of sanctions particularly aimed at those who still choose to take drugs on a casual, non-addicted—whatever you want to call it—recreational basis, recognising that they play a huge role in stimulating demand for drugs across the whole of England and Wales. I will host a summit next month, bringing together experts and representatives from a range of sectors, to discuss the levers and interventions needed to drive down demand across the country, reduce harms and change societal attitudes. We recognise that as we enforce against supply, we must also do something to reduce demand.

[Ronnie Cowan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am quite short of time, so I will not, if the hon. Member does not mind.

Our 10-year, whole-system strategy, which we are implementing, is a fundamental reset in our approach to tackling illegal drugs, which is what a number of Members have called for. We expect to see results, as do the public, and that is why we have set out clear and ambitious metrics to drive progress. Those cover a number of areas, including closing more than 2,000 county lines over the next three years, seeing a 20% increase in organised crime disruptions and preventing and reducing drug-related deaths.

Much of this debate has been about county lines, and it is worth reflecting on the despicable way in which those criminals exploit young people—as outlined by the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Lyn Brown) and my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley—recruiting them as runners to transport drugs and money around the country. We are clear that the targeting, grooming and exploitation of children for criminal purposes is deplorable, and we are committed to tackling it.

We will continue to invest in our successful county lines programme, which has resulted in more than 7,400 arrests and 1,500 line closures. Critically, more than 4,000 vulnerable people have been rescued from that horrific trade. We are also providing specialist support and funding to help young people who are subjected to, or concerned about, county lines exploitation, and to ensure that they get the protection and support they need.

We have been focused on dismantling the county lines model for well over two years and, as I have outlined, we have had real success. However, complacency is the enemy of progress, and we will continue to protect those most vulnerable and be clear to those gangs that we will keep coming at them again and again. On that note, I was pleased to hear that the Home Secretary visited the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley to discuss drugs and other matters.

[Ms Lyn Brown]

Could the Minister please refer to the child criminal exploitation definition and the Online Safety Bill?

[Kit Malthouse]

I will come to those in a moment. The hon. Lady will be interested to know that I had a meeting with the Children’s Society just this morning, in my capacity as a constituency MP, to discuss those issues. I am giving consideration to its proposals. We recognise that this trade particularly exploits young people. In my own constituency, we have had some appalling events—young people stabbed and, in one case, killed, where neither victim nor perpetrator was from Andover. Both, in various ways, were victimised and exploited in the drugs industry.

Many Members have mentioned that if we are to have an impact on drugs, we must have a co-ordinated set of actions. We recognise that the complexity of the drugs problem means that we absolutely must be effective in co-ordinating those other partners—local government, other treatment delivery partners, enforcement, prevention and education. They all must come together to form a coalition as a foundation of our strategy, and they are often best placed to establish the priorities and to devise ways of working to address the needs of their local communities as quickly and effectively as possible. This spring we will publish guidance for local areas in England on working in partnerships to reduce drug-related harm.

But we have not been waiting for our strategy or the guidance. I will finish by highlighting some of the work we have been doing already. Alongside the very assertive work we have been doing on county lines in Keighley and elsewhere, some 18 months ago we established a set of projects in 13 areas of the country that are most exploited by drugs gangs and that have the most appalling drug use statistics. Project ADDER, which stands for addiction, diversion, disruption, enforcement and recovery, has been running since November 2020. In effect, it brings together all those people who are focused on dealing with the drugs problem to focus in the same place, at the same time, on the same people, so that all their work can be leveraged. Those projects have had positive results. In particular, law enforcement plays a big part in restricting the amount of drugs in a particular geography, making sure that as the therapeutic treatments come alongside those individuals, they are less likely to walk out of their appointment with a drugs councillor and into the arms of a dealer. There have been big increases in disruptions and arrests in those areas, as well as a large increase in the numbers of people referred to treatment, and some heartwarming stories of people who have been rescued and brought into a better life.

[Ronnie Cowan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Kit Malthouse]

I do not have time, I am afraid.

When I visited the Blackpool project, I was very pleased to hear from a senior police officer who is helping to run it that, in her nearly 30 years of service, she had never felt more hopeful about dealing with the drugs problem in Blackpool.

In calling this important debate, I think my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley is looking for a sense of the priority that the Government assign to this problem. We are investing enormous amounts of public money and massive amounts of political leadership time, right up to the Prime Minister, who I will be meeting over the next couple of weeks to talk about our drugs strategy and where we will go next to make sure that over the next 10 years, we see a reduction in drug use, drug deaths and drug crime across all our constituencies, but most particularly in Keighley.

Independent Office for Police Conduct Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2022 Written Statements

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

I am today, along with my the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), publishing the 2020-21 annual report and accounts for the Independent Office for Police Conduct [HC 1237]. This will be laid before the House and published on www.gov.uk. The report will also be available in the Vote Office.

[HCWS757]

Home Department

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Ministerial Corrections

The following is an extract from the statement on the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel Report on 23 March 2022.

[Kit Malthouse]

One of the improvements that the inspectorate did note that the Metropolitan police has achieved over the past couple of years is an elimination almost of the vetting backlog, which just three or four years ago stood at something like 37,000, astonishingly.

[Official Report, 23 March 2022, Vol. 711, c. 381.]

Letter of correction from the Minister for Crime and Policing, the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse):

An error has been identified in the response given to the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck).

The information should have been:

[Kit Malthouse]

One of the improvements that the inspectorate did note that the Metropolitan police has achieved over the past couple of years is an elimination almost of the vetting backlog, which just three or four years ago stood at something like 16,000, astonishingly.