Tackling Stalking

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his broad welcome for the Statement on stalking made by my honourable friend Jess Phillips in the House of Commons yesterday. It is important that we get former senior police officers such as him endorsing that approach, so I welcome his endorsement and thank him for it. He will know that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have today reconfirmed the provision of an additional 13,000 neighbourhood police officers. That will help at a local level with a range of issues, but I take his point about the need for specialist support.

As I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, I cannot give a commitment on resources today because December’s police settlement, next year’s settlement and the spending review have not yet been announced. However, the specialism to which the noble Lord refers will form part of the needs and assessment review. The Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing need to look at those issues, and again, that will be part of the mix going forward. I assure the noble Lord and the House as a whole that the Government wish to address this serious issue. They have taken steps to do so in this Statement, and welcome contributions on how that can be built upon.

Ultimately, we will be judged by the test of whether we reduce the number of reported incidents, increase the number of incidents that are followed up and increase the number of prosecutions, as well as, in the longer term, taking steps to ensure that young boys, as they grow into young men and adults, have respect and understand their role in society. That is a longer-term issue that we need to be working on. I take the noble Lord’s points and I hope I have answered them as best I can, but they are issues we will return to.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s repeat of the Commons Statement. It is right that the Statement should focus on the victims of this horrendous behaviour, and that that is the heart of the response. However, we have to ask ourselves what we are getting wrong as a society that causes people to perpetrate this sort of behaviour. I do not think it is just about evil people; it is learned behaviour, and learning is part of how we raise people in this society.

The Statement touches on that issue, as did my noble friend towards the end of his last reply. It refers to the need to engage with the perpetrators, to consider the root causes of the behaviour and to address it. All of that needs more attention and more resources, particularly but not just in the sphere of mental health. I was particularly struck by the reference by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, to someone who had been in prison seven times because of this behaviour. My assumption is that nothing happened in that prison to address those behaviours, and unless we get that right, dealing with the outcomes is the wrong end of the issue.

Immigration (Guidance on Detention of Vulnerable Persons) Regulations 2024

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2024 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its work in scrutinising the regulations and to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for tabling this debate. I have the privilege of being a patron of a charity in Sheffield called ASSIST, which works with people who are seeking sanctuary and who have been refused asylum; it provides accommodation, information, advocacy and other support.

Just last week, I met a man called Victor, a former client of ASSIST. I have his permission to tell his story. Victor is from Zimbabwe. In 1980, he was among those who greeted with joy the nation’s independence and the election of Robert Mugabe as the first democratically elected Prime Minister of that country. That year, Victor embarked on a career in banking of 20-plus years; he became very senior. However, through the 1980s and into the 1990s, he became increasing disenchanted with the Mugabe regime and then opposed to it. Finally, in 2008, after a warrant was issued for his arrest on account of his political dissent, he sought asylum in this country. Victor was eventually granted leave to remain in 2022 and was united with his wife after a 14-year enforced separation. So, in the end, his has been a good news story.

However, in 2019, Victor experienced detention. Reporting in one week as required, he was in effect arrested and assigned for deportation. The decision came out of the blue, with no notice and no explanation. It was apparently arbitrary. In Victor’s case, deportation did not follow. He had by then lived for 10 years in Sheffield, which sets itself out to be a city of sanctuary, and he was known and valued. Within four days, 70,000 people had signed a petition for his release; he was indeed swiftly released and, within another two years, had been granted leave to remain.

I summarise his story because the inhumane way in which the detention and deportation process is operated makes every person subject to it vulnerable. At the time of his detention, Victor was a resourceful and accomplished adult male in good health. He was not vulnerable, according to the definitions in these regulations, but the impact of his detention on his well-being made him vulnerable. It was terrible at the time and remains considerable today. In other words, until the whole process of detention is managed in a way that is humane, consistent, fair, transparent and accountable, every immigrant and asylum seeker detained will be vulnerable.

I am deeply concerned that these regulations expressly remove the intention to reduce the numbers of people in detention who are vulnerable in specifically acute ways. As the Minister will know, the previous Government appear to have accepted just one of the Brook House inquiry’s 33 recommendations. I would welcome confirmation from the Minister that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, requested, the detention review will revisit that inquiry report to ensure that all the recommendations are given due consideration for implementation.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I support the need to discuss and debate these regulations. The issues have been laid out more than clearly by my noble friend Lady Lister. This stems from the Shaw review, reinforced by the subsequent Brook House inquiry.

The principle that we work under—I am sure that we all agree with it—is that the detention of people with severe mental health conditions amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment. I hope we can all agree on that. It has been defined as such by the European Court of Human Rights, but the issue runs wider than that. There should be—indeed, there must be—a clear presumption that people at risk because of existing or potential mental health problems should not be detained. “Detained” is a euphemism; they are, in effect, imprisoned. We imprison people as a punishment, so the need to avoid providing these people with punishment is clear.

The statutory guidance was established in 2014 and has been reviewed. One could not object to the review at all; I hope that my noble friend the Minister will accept that a full and adequate review is reasonable. The problem with this review is that it is driven— it says as much in paragraph 5.4 of the Explanatory Memorandum—by a wish to avoid “undermining lawful action” to remove people from the UK. That is the most concerning statement in the EM. Such an objective is totally at odds with the general principle that we should not imprison people with severe mental health conditions when they have committed no offence. The story it tells us is one of an attitude in government of wishing to prioritise the need to remove people from the UK rather than protecting people who are vulnerable.

The statutory guidance clearly represents its purpose: a weakening of the guidance originally given. One particular example, which is clearly a major issue here, is the issue of a second opinion. As the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee concluded, the data

“does not provide compelling evidence either way on the need for the second opinion policy”.

We do not really know what the effect of the second opinion policy would be, except that it will result in people remaining in detention for longer; that is the one known effect of having a second opinion policy. Clearly, that in itself suggests that it is something to be done with great care and attention.

Another problem is that there is a general belief among a number of the voluntary organisations most closely involved in these issues that the consultation process on the new statutory guidance was woefully inadequate. It was short, there was a lack of information and there was no equality impact assessment.

The upshot of all of this is that I hope my noble friend the Minister will accept that the statutory guidance requires review and reconsideration, and that it should be driven by the clear presumption that we do not lock up people with severe mental health conditions.