Public Order Act 2023

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Joanna Cherry

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry]

That very much seems to be the case.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) said, the Home Affairs Committee will be conducting an inquiry on this tomorrow and hearing evidence. I am pleased that both the Chair of the Justice Committee and myself, as Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, have been asked to join in that inquiry. I am very much looking forward to getting to the bottom of the question of whether political pressure was brought to bear, because I want to be clear: it would be absolutely unacceptable if political pressure had been brought to bear on the police. That sort of thing should not be happening in a democracy.

I will wind up in a minute. I have been speaking so far in a personal capacity, but, as Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I wish to point to our legislative scrutiny of the Public Order Act and of part 3 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The Joint Committee is a cross-party Committee of six MPs and six peers—Tory, Labour, Liberal Democrat, SNP and Cross-Benchers. We produced two unanimous reports saying that both Bills, as they were then, went too far in cracking down on the right to protest and did not get the balance right under articles 10 and 11 of the European Court of Human Rights.

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

I hesitate to tangle with the hon. and learned Lady on matters of law, but, given all that she has said, would she also support the repeal in Scotland of what some might say are even more draconian measures that surround protests? For example, protesters have by law to give 28 days’ notice to the police if there is to be a protest. The offence of malicious mischief has been used against Just Stop the Oil protesters, which has an unlimited fine and unlimited prison sentence. In 2021, the Scottish Government applied for restrictions to be placed on protests around the Scottish Parliament building where we have seen many arrests and, indeed, people banned for long periods for protesting. I just wondered whether her Committee or, indeed, she had a view on those matters.

[Joanna Cherry]

My Committee’s job is to scrutinise what happens in this Parliament, not what happens at Holyrood. However, I want to correct the right hon. Gentleman. It was not the Scottish Government who asked for powers to restrict protests outside Holyrood; it was the corporate body of the Scottish Parliament that asked for those powers, and I am on the record as having criticised that, so I am consistent in my position here.

I wish to go back to what the Joint Committee on Human Rights said about getting the balance right under articles 10 and 11. We said:

“The current rhetoric around protest tends to downplay the importance of the right to…protest”

and instead focuses on discussions about balancing the rights of protesters against the rights of members of the public. We saw two problems with that. First, it often leads to the right to protest being given insufficient weight in the balancing compared with the rights of the public. Given that the right to protest is protected by the convention, it should be facilitated by the state so far as possible.

The second problem with this balancing is that it automatically assumes the rights of protesters are inevitably in conflict with the public interest. But that is not the case, because while protests may cause inconvenience, they are also fundamental in a democratic society to facilitate debate and discussions on contentious issues, and that in itself is of value to the public generally. We reminded the Government of the state’s duty to facilitate protest, a positive duty, and the police’s negative duty not to interfere disproportionately with protest.

I support the repeal of the Public Order Act because I believe, and a cross-party Committee that I chair supports me in that view, that it went too far, that it breaches articles 10 and 11 of the ECHR and also that there is plenty of existing legislation that the police have at their disposal to deal with disruptive protests that spill over into violence or become, in a sense, out of control. Therefore, this Act is unnecessary. I think that it was performative and that it will have a chilling effect on the right to protest in England and Wales, which is deeply regrettable.

Extreme Heat Preparedness

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Joanna Cherry

Monday 18th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

Again, that is the responsibility of another Secretary of State, but I am more than happy to look at—[Interruption.] I came here to talk about the next 36 hours; about my responsibility, which is the Civil Contingencies Secretariat; and about the co-ordination that is taking place across the Government. However, as the right hon. Gentleman suggests and as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), we do need to try to adapt ourselves to the weather patterns as they emerge.

That said, this is a problem that Governments around the world are having to face. In the event of extremes of temperature, it is hard to adapt the infrastructure to deal with very cold and very hot incidents and their frequency. Much has been said about the impact of heat on the railways, and people have asked why they can continue to function in hotter countries. In Italy, for example, more concrete is put into the sleepers, with the result that the rails are less likely to warp, but that does not do the Italians much good in the event of extreme cold, when they face problems similar to those that we face in the next 36 hours.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

The extreme heat is accentuating the travel chaos that is currently being experienced across the United Kingdom. Flights are being cancelled at short notice, with many of our constituents left stranded, and some trains are seriously overcrowded. I experienced that myself yesterday when trying to get from Edinburgh to London. Will the right hon. Gentleman speak to the Secretary of State for Transport to ensure that airlines such as British Airways and train companies such as Thameslink are taken to task for the failures in the service that they provide, and that they are made to compensate our constituents appropriately?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am sure the hon. and learned Lady will be pleased to know that I am meeting the Secretary of State for Transport this very afternoon, to ensure that our plans—not just for the next 36 hours, but for the next few weeks—are in place from a governmental point of view, and that we issue exactly the sort of challenge to the private sector that she has requested.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Joanna Cherry

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I propose first to talk about some of the key changes made to the Bill in the other place as a result of amendments brought forward by the Government, then to turn to the Lords amendments with which, sadly, the Government disagree for various reasons.

The Bill as passed by this House already included a number of significant measures to tackle violence against women and girls, and we have added to them during the Bill’s passage in the Lords. Lords amendments 13 to 15 make it clear in the Bill that domestic abuse and sexual violence are included within the meaning of the term “violence” for the purposes of the serious violence duty. It was always our wish that the serious violence duty should be all-encompassing, but following representations by Baroness Burton and others who were concerned to emphasise its importance, we are happy to agree to this being included in the Bill. The accompanying statutory guidance, which will be subject to public consultation, will make it clear that local areas, in drawing up their strategies to prevent and reduce serious violence, can and should include measures to tackle domestic abuse and sexual violence based on their local assessments.

With regard to Lords amendments 34 to 55, on Report in this House the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), reiterated the Government’s commitment to ensuring that the provisions of the Bill relating to the extraction of information from electronic devices are accompanied by strong privacy safeguards. These Lords amendments deliver on that commitment. Among other things, they add a new clause setting out the conditions that must be met in order for a device user to be treated as giving agreement to the extraction of information. These changes will increase victim confidence and ensure that the individual’s right to privacy is respected and placed at the centre of all investigations.

Lords amendment 56 will create new offences to criminalise recording images of, or operating equipment to observe, a person at a time when they are breastfeeding, without the person’s consent or reasonable belief that they consent. On Report, the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) made a powerful case for introducing such offences. Although at that time we made it clear that the Law Commission is currently reviewing the law in this area, we do believe that this amendment will ensure that parents are protected from non-consensual photography and can feel safe to breastfeed in public, ahead of the publication of the Law Commission report later this year.

Another compelling argument was made on Report last July by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who is sadly not in his place, to address concerns that the time limit for bringing prosecutions for common assault or battery involving domestic abuse is unfairly short. Currently a prosecution for common assault or battery must be brought within six months of an offence occurring. However, victims of domestic abuse may often, understandably, take some time to report an offence, leaving the police and the Crown Prosecution Service with little time to conduct an investigation and prosecute the offender. In some instances, the time limit has expired before the victim even approaches the police. To address this issue, Lords amendment 57 will extend the time limit for commencing a prosecution for common assault or battery involving domestic abuse so that the six months runs not from the date when the offence occurred but from when it is formally reported to the police through either a witness statement or a video recording made with a view to use as evidence. A prosecution must be commenced within an overall limit of two years of the offence. This amendment will make a real difference to victims of domestic abuse and stop perpetrators hiding behind an unfair limitation on victims’ ability to seek justice.

Lords amendments 59 and 60 will ensure that the police’s processing of personal data in non-crime hate incident records is made subject to a code of practice issued by the Home Secretary. The amendments will address concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), also sadly not in his place, in this House and by Lord Moylan and others in the other place by bringing parliamentary oversight to this process. The College of Policing is currently responsible for producing non-statutory hate crime operational guidance. The Government’s statutory code of practice, once in effect, will replace the relevant section of this guidance on non-crime hate incidents. The college’s guidance will remain in place until the new code enters into effect. When drafting the code, the Government will work closely with policing partners, including the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council, to make sure that it will respect the operational importance of recording non-crime hate incidents to help to keep vulnerable people and communities safe while balancing the need to protect freedom of expression.

Let me turn to the Lords amendments that the Government cannot support—at least, not in their current form. Lords amendment 70 would require the Secretary of State to establish a review of the prevalence of, and the response of the criminal justice system to, the offence of administering a substance with intent under section 61 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003—commonly known as spiking. The Government share widespread concern about the offence that has prompted this amendment, whether spiking of drinks or spiking by needles, and we are taking the issue extremely seriously. I particularly commend my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) for bringing forward his recent ten-minute rule Bill on this issue. Everyone should be able to enjoy a night out without fearing that they will be a victim of this dreadful crime.

In September 2021, the Home Secretary asked the National Police Chiefs Council to review urgently the extent and scale of needle spiking. It is clear from what the police have told us that this behaviour is not exclusively linked to sexual activity and that it demands a response that goes beyond the criminal justice system. We have therefore tabled our amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 70, which is drafted more broadly than the Lords amendment and is not linked to any specific offence. It will require the Home Secretary to prepare a report on the nature and prevalence of spiking and to set out the steps that the Government have taken or intend to take to address it. In this context we are also exploring the need for a specific criminal offence to target spiking directly, as my hon. Friend recommended in his ten-minute rule Bill. The Home Secretary will be required to publish this report and lay it before Parliament within 12 months of Royal Assent. In preparing the report we will want to take into account the findings of the current inquiry by the Home Affairs Committee. This approach addresses the concerns that prompted the Lords amendment but in a way that enables the Government to consider the issue in the round.

Lords amendment 72 seeks, in common parlance, to make misogyny a hate crime. Hon. Members may be aware that in December last year, at the Government’s request, the Law Commission provided recommendations on the reform of hate crime laws. Looking very carefully at this issue, it found that adding sex or gender to hate crime laws may prove “more harmful than helpful”, as well as “counterproductive”. The principal reason is that it could make it more difficult to prosecute the most serious crimes that harm women and girls, including rape and domestic abuse. Obviously such an awful unintended consequence is not the intention of those who tabled the amendment in the other place. As such, the amendment seeks to exclude certain offences where the risks to their prosecution are acute.

The Law Commission looked at every possible model and unfortunately also found the one proposed in the amendment unsatisfactory. Time is short and I do not want to dwell on all its problems, but the review identified that to reflect sex and gender in some offences but not others would make the law very complex and imply that very harmful excluded offences such as rape are less serious, would result in tokenistic coverage of many misogynistic crimes, and would create new inequalities in how different groups are protected by hate crime laws.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

The inner house of the Court of Session, Scotland’s highest court, has recently clarified that in the Equality Act 2010 “sex” does indeed have the meaning set out in section 11—that is, that it refers to one or other sex, male or female. Does the Minister share my concern that this amendment has that definition of “sex” but the word “gender” is undefined? Is he aware that many feminists feel that gender is not the same as sex and that in fact gender is a tool of sex-based oppression?

[Kit Malthouse]

I acknowledge some of the problems with the amendment that the hon. and learned Lady sets out. I think it is Women’s Aid that rejected the amendment and said that it would do more harm than good on the basis that she outlined: it is not specific about targeting crimes against women in particular.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend has put her finger on the button of the problem. It is not that we are unsympathetic to the issue—of course we are not. I just do not see how, given the views of large organisations and of the Law Commission, somebody could, with any conscience, vote for something that they are being told might be damaging. I understand that the hon. Member for Walthamstow is exercised by the issue—as are all hon. Members present—but we hope to address it in other ways and to look seriously at the further offence that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon has urged us to look at and bring it forward in future.

[Joanna Cherry]

In support of the English Law Commission—hon. Members should be aware that the legislation applies only in England and Wales—in Scotland, when the Scottish Government were looking at introducing hate crime legislation, they rejected misogyny as an aggravating factor after submissions from Rape Crisis, Women’s Aid and Engender in Scotland. Baroness Helena Kennedy is now chairing a panel to look at that with a view to reporting. There are arguments on either side.

I am most concerned that if we are to have an aggravation based on sex or gender, gender must be defined. We already have a protected characteristic of transgender identity, which is very important, but in this Lords amendment, sex is defined but not gender. Does the Minister agree that, in future, we should define what we mean by gender so that people know what it means?

[Kit Malthouse]

There are a number of definitional issues within the Lords amendment that produce fatal flaws, but I absolutely commend the spirit behind it. It comes from a good place and from a concern that we share. Given that legal expertise advises us against it and advises us to pursue another course, that is our intention and that is what we will do.

I turn now to Lords amendments 114 to 116, which relate to the piloting and national roll-out of serious violence reduction orders. I assure the House that we want to pilot them robustly, which is why the assessment of the pilot will be conducted by an independent evaluator and the Government will thoroughly consider the report’s findings before any decision is made to roll them out across the whole of England and Wales.

The report of the pilot will be laid before Parliament, but commencement regulations are not generally subject to any parliamentary procedure and the Government do not agree that that approach should be changed for SVROs. To assuage the concerns that have been raised in relation to the pilot, amendments (a) and (b) in lieu of Lords amendments 114 to 116 will set out in the Bill a non-exhaustive list of matters that must be addressed in the report of the pilot.

Lords amendments 141 and 142 seek to create two new offences to tackle so-called sex for rent. We are clear that exploitation through sex for rent has no place in our society and is a revolting phenomenon. We therefore fully understand the motivation behind these amendments. There are existing offences in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 that can and have been used to prosecute this practice successfully, but we do recognise the need to do more to stamp out this abhorrent practice and to support those at risk of exploitation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

I do not know who is throwing the red meat here, but it is certainly not me. Obviously the hon. Lady has a constituency that will lap up her remarks, no doubt released on social media. In truth, the police have been asking for some time for improvements to the elderly public order legislation. We put the measures through consideration by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, which felt they were proportionate and sensible for us to pursue.

[Joanna Cherry]

The Minister is implying that the police and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services in some way wanted this new noise trigger. Will he accept that I am correct when I say that neither the police, nor Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, requested the noise trigger at all?

[Kit Malthouse]

The inspectorate obviously would not request that because that is not its job, but we certainly asked it to look at the balance that we are trying to present with what I think are relatively modest improvements to public order legislation. Indeed, from memory of the report, it felt we should go further, which we are unable to do because of the structure of the Bill. That means that on the rare occasion where noise is causing other people’s rights to be impinged on, and where worship or business or residence is impossible, we would seek protection.

Police National Computer

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Joanna Cherry

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that the initial assessment was some optimism about the ability to recover this data, not least because it is held in a number of areas. We will not have the full picture until we get to the end of this week, once we have analysed the report and, of course, looked at the data that we should have deleted but have not because of this error. However, he is quite right that we should be optimistic about that and recognise that all is not lost. There are other ways that this data can be cross-checked, in particular as part of a police investigation. We are working with our policing partners to ensure that they make full use of that, so that they can proceed as usual with their investigations.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP) [V]]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. Two weeks ago, the Home Secretary was boasting that the United Kingdom is now a safer place because of Brexit. However, before it was disbanded by the Government, the Select Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union heard detailed expert evidence explaining why the United Kingdom is not a safer place as a result of the law enforcement part of the Brexit deal. One of the key reasons is that we have lost real-time access to Europe-wide databases on criminal records, DNA, fingerprints and, indeed, intelligence. That is not just my view but the expert view of Lord Ian Blair, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, and Lord Peter Ricketts, the former National Security Adviser. Now that situation has been further exacerbated by this loss of important fingerprint, DNA and arrest history records, which the police use for real-time checks on our own UK-wide databases.

Mr Speaker, you really couldn’t make it up, yet curiously the Home Secretary is nowhere to be seen. Instead, she has sent her junior Minister to take the flak. I have two areas of questions for him. First, was this data cleaning operation in any way connected to the removal of records from the police national computer following the end of the transition period? Does the 400,000 figure include the 40,000 records that were removed from the police national computer post Brexit, or is it on top of that? Secondly, given the UK-wide nature of the database, what discussions have taken place with police forces in the devolved nations? Will the Minister commit to full co-operation with Police Scotland and other devolved forces until this issue is resolved?

[Kit Malthouse]

On the hon. and learned Lady’s two substantive questions, this had absolutely nothing to do with SIS II—the Schengen information system. These were, as I said earlier, deletions in line with our legal obligations not to hold data for people who are not of continuing interest to the police, under legislation that was enacted by this House some years ago. On the conversations with police forces, obviously the National Police Chiefs Council lead has cascaded throughout policing the information required to put in place mitigations. We will also, of course, co-operate as closely as possible, and I will be keeping my opposite number in the Scottish Government informed.

As to the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) and the hon. and learned Lady about the Home Secretary, I can only apologise that they are facing someone who is an inferior to their own status, but they will understand that the Home Secretary has an enormous draw upon her duties. She takes her duties in this House extremely seriously—there is no doubt about it—but I have been much more, I guess, embedded with this over the last few months, as one would expect for a Minister of State who is standing by his Home Secretary, doing her bidding.

Policing and Crime

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Joanna Cherry

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry]

With all due respect to the hon. Lady, whom I congratulate on her recent election victory, I cannot agree with that. It is a political point that the Liberal Democrats repeatedly try to make in the Scottish Parliament, but it is not borne out by experience.

Police officer numbers are up by 1,000 in Scotland despite significant cuts to Scotland’s budget from Westminster. As of 30 September 2019, the total police officers were up 1,022 on 2007 figures. Scotland has more officers per head of population than in England and Wales. The ratio in Scotland is 32 officers per 10,000 members of the population versus 21 officers per 10,000 members of the population in England and Wales. I suggest that the sort of ratio we have in Scotland is something that England and Wales should be aiming for. The present Government’s proposal to increase police numbers simply reverses a position that they enforced at an earlier stage, so it is a bit rich for them to expect to be congratulated on reversing their own policy failures.

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. and learned Lady would not want to mislead the House—I will not put as it as strongly as that—but while she refers to the 2007 figures, the numbers that I have suggest that the number at quarter 4 2019 was actually below that in 2009, so she is neatly avoiding the high point in her maths, illustrating the fact that police officer numbers in Scotland have been broadly flat for a decade.

[Joanna Cherry]

I do not accept that, and I return to the statistic I quoted: police officers stood at 17,256 in Scotland at 30 September 2019, which is up by 1,022 on the total inherited by the SNP Government when Alex Salmond first brought the SNP to power in Scotland in 2007. That is a fact. Of course, there have been fluctuations in the meantime, but there is a significant—[Hon. Members: “Aha!”] No, that is a fact. If the Minister thinks that I am misleading the House on the stats, I challenge him to make a point of order and to bring stats that contradict mine. I can tell the Minister that this is not just about the Scottish National party, because people across Scotland working in the health service, the police and in other areas of Scottish public services are sick to death of glib comments from this misinformed Conservative Government —misinformed by the six Tory MPs that they are left with in Scotland.

[Kit Malthouse]

rose—

[Joanna Cherry]

I will not give way. The Minister has had time, and I saw Mr Speaker urging him to bring his speech to a close, so I will use my time to look at the facts. As we say in Scotland, facts are chiels that winna ding which, translated into English, basically means that evidence-based policy making is best.

Despite successive Tory Governments reducing the Scottish Government’s resource budget by £1.5 billion— 5% in real terms—since 2010, police budgets in Scotland are protected, and police officers in Scotland are getting the biggest pay rise in the United Kingdom. The police budget in Scotland is up by more than £80 million since 2016-17, and that includes a £42.3 million increase in funding for this year alone. Police officers in Scotland are receiving a pay rise of 6.5% over 31 months, compared with just 2% for 2018-19 for officers in England and Wales. As a result—[Interruption.] I am going to continue my speech despite the heckling from those on the Government Front Bench. I know it is deeply uncomfortable for the Tories to hear the facts as opposed to— [Interruption.] These are the facts.

One of the main issues facing Scotland was that, unlike other police forces in the United Kingdom, Police Scotland was being charged VAT. As a result of increased pressure from me and my learned friends, we won back VAT worth around £25 million a year. However, the United Kingdom has yet to refund the £125 million of VAT paid by Police Scotland between 2013 and 2018. I hope that the Government will look at that carefully—[Interruption.] If I may make some progress over the heckling, I point out—[Interruption.] Well, I realise that it is deeply uncomfortable to hear the facts as opposed to the misinformation that this Government like to put forth.

The Prime Minister was asked a series of questions at PMQs about the reality on the ground in Scotland as a result of the impending withdrawal of freedom of movement, but it was interesting that he was unable to deal with them in any meaningful way because he is not across the detail. I assure the Government that I and my colleagues up the road in Edinburgh are across the detail, and they do not have to take just my word for it.

As I said earlier, Scotland had a woeful problem with knife crime. To our shame, Glasgow was for a while the murder capital of the world, but that is no longer the case. We introduced a public health approach to tackling knife crime—an approach advocated by the World Health Organisation—and it has worked well in Scotland to reduce the incidence of knife crime. I am absolutely delighted that so many representatives from this great city of London—the Metropolitan Police, the Mayor and, indeed, members of the Government—have visited Scotland to look at the public health approach to tackling violence. It really has brought amazing results in Scotland, and it is clearly effective when we see that violent crime in Scotland has decreased by 49% over the past decade, and that crimes of handling an offensive weapon have decreased by 64% over the past 10 years.

There is still a long way to go in fighting violent crime in Scotland, but the importance of the public health approach has been that it has recognised that the issue is complex. Were there to be any doubt about Scotland’s success in fighting crime, let me quote what the Conservative and Unionist party’s crime spokesperson said in Holyrood recently:

“It is important to acknowledge that Scotland has turned its record on violence around.”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 20 September 2018; c. 61.]

That turning around of Scotland’s record on violence has happened under the much-maligned SNP Government, who have a great success story to tell in this area.

Let us have credit where credit is due—not for the sake of it, but because facts matter. In the area of policing and knife crime, we must take an evidence-based approach. The success of the Scottish National party’s Government offers lessons from which this Government could learn, and that could benefit the people of England and Wales if the Government were big enough to acknowledge Scotland’s success story and follow our example.

Automated Facial Recognition Surveillance

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Joanna Cherry

Monday 27th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point. The British people want to see the technology used, as he rightly says, in a proportionate way. It is certainly the intention that live facial recognition is used against the most violent and serious criminals, who are often wanted urgently when the police are having problems locating them. One key area of LFR governance will be the surveillance camera code, one of the key tenets of which is that LFR is used proportionately to the offence committed and, specifically, that it is absolutely necessary—that is, the police have no other way of locating that person or have had trouble locating them in the past. We all have a duty to monitor this development carefully, see how it is rolled out and judge it by its results, which we hope will be spectacular.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

As we have heard, there are huge concerns about the impact of automated facial recognition technology on privacy and freedoms such as the freedom of assembly, and about the danger of bias and discrimination because, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) said, there is evidence that AFR technology can disproportionately misidentify women and BAME people, which means that they are more likely to be wrongly stopped and questioned. Those concerns are widely held, including by the independent Biometrics and Forensics Ethics Group, which advises the Home Office on facial recognition.

The Scottish Government are employing an approach that involves a comprehensive, up-to-date legislative framework and a regularly updated code of conduct with strong oversight through a commissioner. In that way, my colleagues in Edinburgh hope to ensure that the use of the technology is proportionate, necessary and targeted, and that it respects human rights, privacy and data protection rules. Will the Minister follow suit?

Finally, so far as I am aware, there is no evidence that the use of this technology in the manner contemplated is effective in fighting crime. If I am wrong about that, will the Minister direct me to the evidence that says that it is effective? If not, why not employ less risky measures, such as following the Scottish Government’s example and employing more police officers in a meaningful way?

[Kit Malthouse]

The identification of individuals at large, by any method, is a standard policing technique—whether it is done by a human, a machine or, indeed, a member of the public—so increasing its effectiveness is absolutely key. I am pleased that the Scottish Government are mirroring many of the arrangements that are being put in place in the rest of the United Kingdom to deal with this technology because, as the hon. and learned Lady said, it has enormous potential for us. We have seen the successful use of the technology in pilots elsewhere. I was even told of an occasion on which a police force—I forget which it was; it might have been South Wales police—advertised the use of live facial recognition at a rock concert where in the past there had been significant problems with what they call “dipping”, which is in effect the pickpocketing of wallets and phones. The mere advertising of the technology resulted in there being no offences committed.

Operation Midland Independent Report

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Joanna Cherry

Monday 7th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

My right hon. Friend raises some important issues, not least the much-debated challenge of pre-charge anonymity. The guidance is clear that those against whom allegations have been made pre-charge should generally be kept anonymous until they are charged. However, I am sure that he will accept that it is appropriate in certain circumstances for the police to release the name of somebody who is suspected of a crime, not least, for example, if they are conducting a manhunt looking for a suspect in a murder.

My right hon. Friend also raises the influence or otherwise of us and other public figures on police investigations. In his long years as a constituency MP, he will no doubt have had cause to write to the police on numerous occasions with regard to investigations into his constituents or on the behalf of his constituents, which is a perfectly legitimate thing for him to do. However, we all have a duty to bear in mind the protections and privileges that are afforded to us in this place and to use them as wisely and judiciously as possible

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

False allegations of sexual assault and abuse may be rare, but they do happen. They harm not only the wrongfully accused, but those who have been the victims of sexual assault and abuse by making it less likely that they will be believed, and I say that based on my experience of three years as a sex crimes prosecutor in Scotland’s national sex crimes unit. Does the Minister agree that the police owe it both to the victims of sexual crime and to the principle of innocent until proven guilty to carry out their investigations professionally and thoroughly without fear or favour? What steps will he be taking to reassure the victims of sexual crime that the mess that the Met has made of this case will not jeopardise future cases? Finally, there can be few things more serious than misleading a court, which is particularly serious when it is done by a police officer, so what repercussions will there be for the officers who unlawfully obtained warrants by misleading the court?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. and learned Lady raises an important point about the continuing confidence of victims to come forward. As she quite rightly says, false allegations not only betray those against whom the allegations are made, but those who come afterwards with similar allegations, who will naturally feel, in the wake of a large and difficult situation like this, that they are less likely to be believed. That is absolutely not the case, and we will do our best as a Government to continue the increase in public confidence, which has seen a significant rise in the number of historical allegations of child sexual abuse, into which an inquiry is under way already. People should have no fear that they will not be taken seriously.

The Home Secretary has commissioned an inspection of the Met police to ensure that it is learning lessons and embedding exactly the measures to which the hon. and learned Lady aspires. Once that concludes, the inspector will no doubt make a report available to the House, and I would be more than happy to come and update the House in the future.

Off-patent Drugs Bill

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Joanna Cherry

Friday 6th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I am slightly confused. Doctors are absolutely responsible for what they prescribe, but only if they do so negligently. The hon. Lady would not expose herself to litigation if she had, for instance, used the dye on a patient who then suffered from anaphylactic shock if that had been an appropriate and responsible thing to do given the patient’s condition at the time.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

There is a risk.