Nationality and Borders Bill

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

Committee to withdraw immediately; reasons to be reported and communicated to the Lords.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In yesterday’s debate on P&O Ferries, the Secretary of State for Transport confirmed that both he and the Business Secretary had written to P&O Ferries with a deadline of 5 pm today asking a number of questions about whether it had committed a criminal offence and whether a criminal prosecution would be proceeded with against it. Obviously, that deadline has passed. P&O Ferries has responded and the Government have published its response, but I am seeking your guidance as to whether the Government are planning to make a statement on what action they will now take against P&O Ferries, whether they will be proceeding with a criminal prosecution, and what action they will take to ensure that this does not give a green light to bosses all over the world that they can come to this country and trample roughshod over hard fought for British workers’ rights.

Draft Private Security Industry (Licence Fees) Order 2020

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2020 General Committees

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

The Opposition are happy to support the order. May I place on the record our willingness and keenness to support the Government to ensure that we can pass statutory instruments like this in the future without having to gather in Committee, so that the staff and we can socially distance?

Question put and agreed to.

Immigration (Citizens' Rights Appeals) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 General Committees

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. The Labour party welcomes the regulations, as we have been calling for some time for the right of appeal to be put in primary legislation. It was good to hear the Minister laying out the Government’s case, on which we are pleased to support them.

The instrument provides for a right of appeal when settled or pre-settled status has been denied, but we have some specific questions about the regulations. The explanatory note is clear that the appeals process will apply only to those who applied for settled status “on or after” 31 January 2020. Frankly, that is absurd. It raises concerns for those who began the application process prior to 31 January. The Government have made it clear that they have received more than 3 million applications under the EU settlement scheme as of January 2020. Is the Minister really saying that the majority of people who have applied to the scheme will not have a right of appeal, and is that consistent with the withdrawal agreement? This issue will affect those who applied before the qualifying date and whose applications have not yet been decided on, and who want to make sure that they have a right of appeal if they are refused. Those people will wait months for a decision and will be understandably concerned about the fact that if they are refused close to the deadline, they will have little time left in which to apply again and ensure that they receive a right of appeal.

That will obviously create some practical difficulties. The individual may try to withdraw their first application to make a fresh one, or they may simply make a duplicate application to the scheme without withdrawing their first, which could seriously overburden the system. I would welcome clarification from the Minister about what people should do in that situation.

It is vital that applicants have a right to legal representation and are not put off by a time limit. Will the Minister confirm what rights to legal representation applicants will have, and can he guarantee that there will be no refusals where applicants’ entitlements have not been exercised?

A challenge of the settled status programme is the requirement on people who did not need documentation prior to January 2020 to demonstrate a long paper trail. People who began their time in the UK in houses of multiple occupation, or to whom employers did not provide payslips, face additional barriers through no fault of their own. The requirements and demands of the settled status scheme need to be reviewed. At the time of the referendum, everyone was clear that should the UK vote to leave, EU citizens who were already here should be welcome to stay. That promise needs to be honoured and must not be undone by bureaucratic burdens that have an impact on the most vulnerable.

The Government’s own watchdog raised significant concerns about the Home Office’s ability to reach the most vulnerable individuals who are seeking settled status. Appeals obviously cannot be seen in isolation from the difficulties engulfing the EU settled status scheme. An estimated 200,000 EU citizens are yet to apply for settled status. Obstacles to applying include age and a lack of access to digital technology, while some may not even know they are not already British citizens. The over-65s, of whom just over 50,000 have applied for settled status, will clearly have the most difficulty in applying.

If the Government are serious about reaching those groups, why have they still not committed to funding beyond March the network of 57 charities that were granted Home Office funding to do just that? Charities have said that they are being forced to cut back on that service because the Department has refused to guarantee any funding beyond this month. Previously, they were granted £9 million by the Department to provide practical support to the group of 200,000 vulnerable or at-risk people applying to the scheme. A failure by Ministers to provide further funding will undoubtedly leave a gap in provision.

Praxis, a charity that was granted funding to help homeless people apply to the scheme, has three caseworkers dedicated to providing such support, but is being forced to consider ending their contracts because there is no guarantee that the work can continue beyond March. That is not right. We know the dangers of erecting administrative hurdles and failing to explain the UK’s complex immigration status to those who have a right to be here. The Government must avoid enhancing those obstacles.

The regulations do not provide for appeals when the Home Office rejects an application as invalid, rather than refusing it because it does not meet the requirements of the rules. That mirrors the Home Office’s fairly long-standing approach to invalid applications under free-movement law. An invalid application could be, for example, one from an applicant whose identity or nationality is disputed by the Home Office. The Home Office has already rejected 3,000 applications as invalid, but has yet to provide a breakdown of why those applications were invalid. I would be grateful if the Minster responded to that.

Will the Minister confirm that people who are eligible for the settlement scheme but who are not covered by the withdrawal agreement—particularly those who came under the Zambrano or Surinder Singh routes—will have a right to appeal under the regulations? During the passage of the 2020 Act, a Home Office Minister gave an assurance on the Floor of the House that they would.

Will there be a time limit on the right of appeal? The deadline for settled status will be 31 June 2021, but the Government have been clear that they will continue to accept applications beyond that date if someone has a good reason for not having applied. Will the Minister confirm that people who apply to the scheme after 31 June 2021 will have the right of appeal?

Finally, will the Minister confirm that EU citizens’ rights will be protected while their appeals are pending, to ensure that those with outstanding appeals after 31 June 2021 will not be subjected to the hostile environment? EU passports will no longer be proof of right to rent or work in the UK, for example, so someone with an outstanding appeal will not be allowed to do those things. If those questions are answered, we will be happy to support the regulations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

I would say it is probably slightly more cumbersome and somewhat more costly to apply for another nationality than to apply for free to the EU settlement scheme—to provide basic proof of identity and of having lived in the United Kingdom, which a person could literally do with a letter they have received. When I visited the team in Liverpool, someone was using as evidence a letter they had received about their tax payment from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. That was combined with an identity card and checks on criminality. I should be clear that a very, very small number of people so far have been refused on criminality grounds. EEA citizens have been a valuable part of our community, and we should not define them by a small number of offenders. That letter was being used for pre-settled status, as that person had only just moved to the United Kingdom, but it is a lot easier to apply for settled status than to get citizenship of another country.

Fair points were made about Home Office funding for the 57 organisations not going beyond March. We expect to make an announcement on that very soon, which will provide some certainty for those operations.

[Louise Haigh]

I would be grateful if the Minister could be a little more definite on the timing. Those organisations are laying off people as we speak, which is hindering their ability to reach the most vulnerable groups.

Child Protection

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

This report is utterly damning and should shame us. It finds that the current system of protecting the most vulnerable children in our country is unsustainable, that the approach of police forces is not proactive enough, and that vulnerable children are simply not being identified or protected, with resources and the failures and variability of partnership working being identified as key concerns. The report comes on the same day as a leaked Government report into the drug trade, which shows that vulnerable children are falling into the grip of gangs at an unprecedented rate. Those are two sides of the same crisis that is reaching into every town and community across the country.

The Children’s Commissioner has been sounding the alarm for several years now. She found that 2.3 million children are living with risk because of their vulnerable backgrounds, and as many as 1.6 million of those children have patchy or no statutory support whatsoever. After a decade in which the safety net that vulnerable children rely on—Sure Start, family support services, speech and language therapy, behavioural support, social services and probation—has been picked away, it is becoming far too easy for the most vulnerable to be preyed upon by serious organised criminals.

It is thoroughly unacceptable that the police are not recognising or evaluating risks to children well enough, as the report has found. Children living in care are not being properly protected. Schools are becoming too eager to expel and off roll. Pupil referral units are becoming recruiting grounds for vicious criminals. The total lack of both mental health and residential care beds has led to too many children being inappropriately detained or being ferried around the country in the backs of police cars. This is a whole-system failure, and the consequences for children and families are stark.

Over £880 million has already been lost from children’s and youth services since 2010. The flagship early intervention fund announced by the former Home Secretary last spring was supposed to make funding available for critical support to steer young people away from serious violence, but answers to parliamentary questions have revealed that more than 60% of bids from police and crime commissioners for these projects, including 24 in London alone and one to tackle the vicious exploitation known as county lines, have been rejected. The former Home Secretary had previously promised to do everything in his power to tackle county lines exploitation and the vulnerable children swept up in it, but he then quietly rejected a £1.3 million bid from West Mercia, Staffordshire and Warwickshire to fund a project designed to tackle exactly that. In total, the Government are funding only 29 diversion projects nationwide.

If this report is not the catalyst for the Government to get serious, nothing will be. We know from the Prime Minister’s short time in office that he goes missing when things get tough and there are difficult questions to be answered. When it comes to protecting the most vulnerable children, we simply cannot afford for him to do so again.

Turning specifically to the report’s findings, the Minister knows as well as I do that data sharing comes up repeatedly in serious case reviews and in response to child protection. Despite specific amendments to the Data Protection Act 2018 that allow the sharing of data for safeguarding purposes, it remains an issue. What more can we do to break down the organisational and cultural silos that are preventing data sharing and stopping organisations working together to protect children?

With police forces and services facing unsustainable demand, what resources will the Government put in place to tackle that need and properly fund local authority children’s services after £880 million was taken from their budgets? Given that the report praises the approach in Wales to adverse childhood experiences and the collaboration of the four forces there with local services to provide targeted early support, what plans do the Government have to replicate such an approach in England? We have consistently said that implementing a public health approach to meeting that crisis will require leadership from the Prime Minister down. That can be done, but it requires political will to bring together and co-ordinate the agencies, Departments and police forces that can make a difference in identifying and protecting children earlier. Clearly that is happening in some local authority and force areas, but it is far too inconsistent, so will the Prime Minister now convene a taskforce, led from central Government and chaired by him, to bring together the services and identify the support that will have a tangible effect and ensure that the national strategy on child abuse is led from the heart of No. 10?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Lady for her response and questions. She knows, I hope, about the early intervention work that we have been investing in. There is enormous agreement across the House and in all the agencies we work with—those that work on the frontline with young people who are at risk of serious violence or sexual exploitation or both, or other forms of risk—that early intervention is absolutely key to this, because we want to prevent harm in the first place.

Over the past few years, we have invested £22 million in the early intervention youth fund, which is supporting 40 projects endorsed by police and crime commissioners across England and Wales. The projects include work with children and young people at risk of criminal involvement, and organisations safeguarding those at risk of gang exploitation and county lines, or those who have already offended to help divert them into positive life chances. At least 60,000 children and young people will be reached through the fund by the end of March.

The £200 million youth endowment fund is targeted at funding and developing early intervention projects over 10 years, and it undertook its first grant round last year. Twenty-three successful applicants were identified, and the interventions range from intensive family therapy to street-based and school mentoring programmes. The 23 projects are located across England and Wales and will share £17.1 million over two years, and of course the fund has a further eight years to go.

I am pleased that the hon. Lady mentioned the adverse childhood experiences work in Wales. The Home Office helped to fund that work, because we want to test and pilot to see what works, so that other agencies and local authorities can learn from best practice.

The hon. Lady rightly raised data sharing. All of us involved in the arena of preventing and trying to prevent child exploitation will agree with me when I say that if I had a pound for every time people talked to me about collaboration and data sharing, believe you me we would be able to spend even more money than we already are on intervention projects. She rightly and kindly referenced the fact that we included a specific section in the 2018 Act to give professionals the certainty that if they are sharing information for the purpose of safeguarding vulnerable people, they are perfectly entitled to do so and, indeed, should do so. We are beginning to see culture changes in some of the agencies we are working with, but she is right that far more needs to be done. Reports such as this one will hopefully drive that change.

The hon. Lady knows that we are helping to invest in violence reduction units in police forces across the country. That will also encourage the use of data sharing, and the forthcoming serious violence Bill will put in statute the duty of various agencies to work collaboratively to prevent serious violence. I have always been clear that that will have a trickle-down effect on other types of criminality, violence and sexual violence.

In conclusion, the report sets out some real challenges for policing, as we have said, but it also shows that there have been improvements. I am keen to emphasise that, so that we have a fair debate about the issues that have been raised.

Policing (England and Wales)

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the three excellent maiden speeches that have been made today, on the centenary of Nancy Astor’s maiden speech, and to hear such strong new female MPs speaking so powerfully about their constituencies. I concur with what my colleagues have said, particularly about the hon. Members for Newbury (Laura Farris) and for Hertford and Stortford (Julie Marson)—how proud their parents will have been of them and how touching it was to hear them speak about their parents’ public service.

We have had a series of greatest hits from the Opposition Benches today, including from several of my colleagues who are well known for their contributions to policing debates. I sometimes feel as though I could do their speeches for them, as this is the fourth police grant debate that I have had the privilege of responding to. I am pleased to have had so many excellent speakers on our side contributing so powerfully.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) spoke about the role of police staff and about how disappointing it was not to see any commitment to funding the reversal of the cut in their numbers. He mentioned how they contributed to victim support and how their loss has meant that the police have been forced to switch to a reactive mode of policing over the past 10 years, which has particularly destroyed neighbourhood and community policing. That refrain has been common among the contributions to the debate today, and we have really felt the loss of those people in our communities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) once again made the plea for Cardiff to have capital city status. It is baffling that it does not have it, when London, Edinburgh and Belfast all have that status and receive the funding that is attached to it. I hope the Minister will address that issue in her wind-up remarks. My hon. Friend also mentioned the proscription of two far-right groups that the Government have announced today. That is welcome, but it should be noted that far-right activity and terrorism have already moved on significantly from when those complaints were first made by the police. I concur with my hon. Friend that the Government need to be much swifter in responding to concerns raised about far-right activity.

I know the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) well, having visited it on several occasions to see the impact of the loss of policing and to meet some of his excellent local police officers, as well as former officers who have been forced out by the Government’s changes in the past 10 years. He talked powerfully about the increased demand and the heavy toll that it takes, not just on the police and their ability to respond but on sickness rates and the mental health of the officers involved. He asked, very fairly, what planet the Minister must be on in asking us to be grateful for today’s announcement. This is something that has been raised constantly: the idea that we should be pleased that the Government are rolling back even some of the cuts that have been made over the past 10 years, and the ridiculous claim that this is the largest investment made in a decade.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) paid tribute to the work of the Welsh Labour Government and their investment in PCSOs. She made an important point, which I do not think the Minister has addressed in previous debates, about the lack of clarity on funding for equipment such as cars, body armour and—the Policing Minister will appreciate this—lockers. She said that the settlement was defined by short-termism, and she is absolutely right. Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) spoke about the pressures of complex crime, from missing persons to child sexual exploitation. Like many Members in the debate today, she made the case powerfully for the reform of the funding formula.

I will come back to the funding formula later in my remarks, but it was telling to note the comments of the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), who has repeatedly spoken out on behalf of his Suffolk force and described the unfair consequences of the funding formula. That also applies to Devon and Cornwall, and I have visited the local police force of the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) myself. I have heard about the digital dogs, and when I talk about them to other police forces they are really jealous about the innovation that has been made in Devon and Cornwall. However, it is quite clear that the funding formula needs to recognise the particular pressures of tourism on forces such as Devon and Cornwall, just as it needs to recognise the demand presented by serious organised criminality that is often masked by supposedly sleepy communities in areas such as Suffolk. In short, the funding formula must follow demand and not the complicated, obscure factors that currently play into it. As has already been said, the Opposition welcome the resources that have been announced today. The Minister knows that, although we have our concerns, which I will touch on shortly, will not be opposing today’s police grant proposals.

I want to start by talking about two opportunities that this announcement presents. The recruitment drive is a generational opportunity to change the make-up and composition of policing. We meet on the 21st anniversary of the publication of the Macpherson report, which was a searing account of how institutions had become divorced from the communities they served. Its publication served as a watershed moment in British policing. The report set targets for the police to reach 7% of the workforce being from the BME community within a decade, but 11 years on from that timeline, we still have not reached that target. Today the BME population in this country is almost 15% and the so-called race gap is now more pronounced than it was when Macpherson was first published. There is not a single chief constable in the country from a BME community, and at this rate of change it will take the Met 100 years to become truly representative. During the last major recruitment drive under the Labour Government, diversity increased, but not fast enough, and the fear is that that will happen again. We cannot wait a century for our police to reflect our society, so I urge the Home Office to use this opportunity of police recruitment to ensure that we see the necessary dramatic change within the next three years. That will happen only if the law is changed and targets are set.

As I have said, this is the fourth police grant debate that I have responded to, and over the past decade too much needless damage has been done. Political choices have led to police-recorded violent crime more than doubling in recent years, and to the loss of 21,000 police officers—far more than under any other Government since the war. Those choices have also led to the loss of 16,000 police staff—the people who keep the police service functioning, who go to the scene to help with investigations and who help to put evidence into a fit state for trial—and of nearly 7,000 PCSOs. The PCSOs are the eyes and ears of community policing, and they are integral to the voluntary intelligence at the core of UK policing. Economic crime is allowed to flourish unchecked.

The recent conversion of the Government to the recruitment of officers has come far too late, and it is pathetic to talk about this being the largest increase in 10 years. The needless damage simply cannot be reversed, and the experience of lost officers is gone for good. Analysis carried out by Labour shows that even if all 20,000 officers announced as part of this settlement were allocated, more than half of police forces—22 out of the 43 police forces in England and Wales—would still have a net loss of officers compared with 2010. In the far more likely scenario that around 13,000 officers will be allocated to the frontline, 60% of our forces would still be down on 2010, with large urban forces such as Manchester, Merseyside and the West Midlands losing out substantially.

That will be exacerbated by the funding formula used to allocate that funding. Everyone knows that the formula is unfair, including the Minister, who set that out again today. It will create the perverse outcome that the forces struggling with the most serious violent crime will see the least recruitment. Greater Manchester is down 1,000 since 2010, Hampshire is down 700, Merseyside 600, Staffordshire 400, and the West Midlands 1,100. Surrey, by contrast, will see an increase of more than 240 on 2010 levels. That cannot be right. Again, today’s announcement should have presented an opportunity for the Home Office to revise the funding formula to ensure that it led to an equitable settlement.

What is more, Ministers have decided to stump up just £153 million of the £360 million police pension costs for 2020-21. This black hole is the equivalent of more than 3,000 officers, and if action is not taken, it is almost certain that police recruitment plans will suffer or that cutbacks will have to be made elsewhere, to police staff and capital. Will the Minister provide certainty to forces today, address the pensions black hole and ensure that the costs are not imposed on police forces?

The change in the Government’s approach today is undoubtedly welcome. Although they are not prepared to accept responsibility for the damage they have done, perhaps they can help address some of the consequences for police officers. Over the past 10 years, and in some of the most unimaginably difficult circumstances, our officers have fought hard to keep our communities safe, but it has taken its toll. In 2019, 2,175 officers voluntarily resigned from the police—the highest number since comparable records began in 1998—hampering police efforts to strengthen forces after nine years of austerity.

Last year, the police cancelled over a quarter of a million rest days, fuelling concerns of a mental health crisis in the police. The Police Federation’s most recent survey found that almost 80% of officers have experienced stress in the past 12 months, with almost half viewing their job as extremely stressful. A recent study found that one in five officers suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder—equivalent to 24,000 officers in England and Wales. For many, policing is coming at the expense of their mental wellbeing, safety and quality of life, and that cannot be right. I ask the Minister to commit to using the forthcoming police powers and protections Bill to tackle the mental health and wellbeing crisis in our police.

This has been among the most difficult decades for policing since the modern police force was founded. We can assure the Government that in the coming years we will be mindful of the promises they have made and determined to see that they are held to them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Last year, Labour attempted to amend the Offensive Weapons Bill to ban the open sale of knives and require shops to lock them behind cabinets, as we currently require them to do for cigarettes. The Government refused those amendments. Last week, Sudesh Amman walked into a shop on Streatham high street, picked up a knife from the display and stabbed two people. This weekend, that shop was still openly displaying knives and machetes by the front door. Will the Government now think again?

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Lady may recall that we said we would keep that under review, because we felt that the measures put forward last year were of a nature that did not target areas that have a particular problem with knife crime. We will keep it under review, but I make the point again that it is the responsibility of shop owners to make sure that if they are selling items such as that, they display them appropriately and, if necessary, keep them under lock and key.

Release Under Investigation

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, and to respond to the debate from the shadow Front Bench. This has been an excellent debate, with Members with vested experience in these issues, which makes it even more profound that there has been so much agreement on the challenges that these reforms to police bail have presented to the criminal justice system over the past three years.

I am delighted to see the Government acknowledge those challenges in the consultation announced today, which was clearly in direct response to the calling of the debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), making this one of the most successful Westminster Hall debates I have ever taken part in. Some important points have been made. My hon. Friend made the point that there has been a lot of focus recently on automatic early release, particularly relating to terrorism. It might shock hon. Members to know that, according to the latest RUI figures, between 2018 and 2019 there was a 540% increase in suspects of terrorism offences released under investigation or bailed without condition.

My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate made particular reference to domestic abuse victims, and there has been significant scrutiny of that precisely because of the vulnerability of the victims involved and the fact that the suspects in their cases are free to contact them without condition. Major concerns about investigative capacity were also raised. We can change RUI and we can put conditions on it all we like, but that will not address the real root causes of the issues at the heart of our criminal justice system—the crisis in detective numbers, the enormous boom in digital and forensic requirements attached to investigation, and the total lack of capacity in the police force and the Crown Prosecution Service alike.

The Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), neatly summarised the loss of the three safeguards for the suspect, the victim and the public. All have been removed under the current system because of the explosion in RUI and the complete drop in police bail. He also made the sensible suggestion that RUI should apply only in cases where unconditional police bail would otherwise have been applied. The problem, as the Law Society points out, is that risk assessments are simply not being carried out across police forces and are certainly not applied consistently.

The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) made similar points about the proportionality of the system, describing it as a dismal failure. I think it was well intentioned, but it has indeed been a dismal failure. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) made important points about legal aid and the intention of the reforms, which I hope the Minister will respond to. I welcome the hon. Members for North West Durham (Mr Holden) and for Bury North (James Daly) to their places. Both spoke passionately from their opposite experiences of the issue, but with similar passion and on the similar challenges around particular types of offences. It is inconceivable that RUI should be applied to rape and violent offences, and there can be little justification for it.

The Government’s announcement of changes is welcome and requires careful consideration. We know of cases in which individuals arrested for serious crimes have been investigated for many months—if not years in some circumstances—with no conditions and no timeframe attached to those investigations. To my knowledge, this is the first time the reforms have been debated in this Chamber since they were introduced in 2017. It has been something of a silent crisis, but its cause is obvious: abandoning the time limits, monitoring and conditions that underpinned police bail inevitably led to a severely underfunded police force taking the much less cumbersome option of releasing under investigation.

That has been demonstrated in the figures. Not only have we seen a huge increase in the hard numbers, but the average length of time spent under investigation under this system has in some cases quadrupled in some forces, so a reform designed to reduce the amount of time individuals languish under police investigation has ended up extending it considerably.

This was both foreseeable and foreseen. The Government’s consultation on the reforms said:

“respondents expressed concern that enabling release under investigation would not solve the underlying issue of an extended period of uncertainty for suspects… Indeed, some respondents were concerned that, without even the minimal level of scrutiny brought by the current process of granting and extending bail, there would be the potential for non-bail cases to take even longer to resolve with priority given to cases where bail would need to be justified to the courts.”

The hon. Member for Bury North highlighted that this has not only led to but encouraged or incentivised delay.

[James Daly]

What does the hon. Lady think about pre-charge advice? It is one of the reasons—it may be a good reason—for delays in the system. Does she feel that pre-charge advice plays a positive or negative role in this process?

[Louise Haigh]

It contributes to the delays in the system. Clearly it has had a role, alongside these reforms and issues around capacity and resources across the whole system.

It is shocking that 93,000 suspects of violence and sexual assault were released under investigation since 2017. The Secret Barrister tweeted this week:

“The primary driver behind the drop in prosecutions for sexual offences…is that lack of police resources means suspects are being released under investigation (RUI’d) for *years*.”

The Government’s reforms did nothing to address the reason people were languishing on police bail; they simply gave the old problem a new label, while investigations became more complex and time consuming due to digital explosion. We are now seeing cases in the Crown court for offences dating as far back as 2017. While suspects are left under the cloud of suspicion for years, victims of serious offences are denied closure and live in fear of being confronted by their accused.

I do not think the answers to this problem are complicated—some have been clearly expressed by hon. Members today—nor does it require an endless Home Office review. There is a place for release under investigation, but it must be used proportionately. The open-ended overuse of RUI has made a mockery of justice. Clearly, time limits must be introduced to prevent the perverse situation where victims and suspects are waiting too long.

The Government’s proposed mechanism to do this via codes of practice with no judicial oversight requires careful thought. The risk is that unless the codes of practice are strictly applied by officers, timescales will slip again. The police must be encouraged to use police bail where necessary to protect victims, particularly in cases of violent of sexual offences.

We look forward to engaging fully with the consultation in the coming weeks and months, but the elephant in the room is the crisis in the criminal justice system, and this consultation alone will not fix that. The problem is rooted in the utter mess the governing party has made of criminal justice, from the explosion in violent crime due to the reduction in police numbers, to the crisis in the probation system and our prisons, meaning that offenders are leaving prison even more likely to reoffend. All of that has meant detectives and investigators are dealing with an impossible caseload while facing a crisis in numbers.

The Minister knows that the recruitment pledge will only help marginally, because there is no commitment to replace the 16,000 police staff and investigators who have been lost. The party of law and order has veered so wildly on criminal justice that it is hard to believe that Ministers can maintain a straight face when they claim to be tough on crime. The cut of 20,000 police officers is now being reversed. Probation was privatised, but now it is nationalised. Bail reforms were introduced, but now they are reversed. On the central task of any Government—to keep the public safe—this Government have been shambolic. The silent crisis in bail reforms requires swift action, which we will support, as we will always support any proposals that help to correct some of the enormous damage that has been committed over the past 10 years.

Policing and Crime

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

This has been a fantastic debate, featuring some very experienced and well-rounded views and speeches from Members in all parts of the House. We have been blessed with two excellent maiden speeches. As a former special constable in the Metropolitan police, I am delighted to welcome another former Metropolitan police officer. I hope that, in future, the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Allan Dorans) will regale us with some tales from his days as a detective inspector. He gave a passionate account of his constituency, and I know that he will serve his constituents well in this place—as, I have no doubt, will the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), who made an articulate, thoughtful and interesting speech. It is not often that the House sits in silence, and I congratulate the hon. Gentleman.

We also heard excellent speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens), for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) and for Newport East (Jessica Morden), all of whom spoke about the Welsh Government’s work in securing neighbourhood policing and a commitment to PCSOs despite brutal budget cuts over the last 10 years. In particular, they put forward really thoughtful defences of the work of police staff and the important roles that they play. We heard an excellent speech, as ever, from my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), who is seeking to build on her work and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on the protect the protectors campaign, which, unfortunately has not borne the fruit that we would have liked it to over the past few months. My hon. Friend made some important points about pensions and the disincentives for progression within the police, which I hope the Minister will respond to when she sums up.

The hon. Members for Fareham (Suella Braverman), for Mansfield (Ben Bradley), for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) and for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook) spoke about their constituency experiences of antisocial behaviour, burglary and knife crime. It is welcome to hear Members from the Conservative Benches speaking openly about these issues in their constituencies and, in some cases, to hear their Damascene conversions to the need for additional officers on the beat in our communities. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) paid a welcome tribute to South Yorkshire police and the Durham constabulary, with which I would agree, although I am afraid I did not agree with much else in her speech. The hon. Member for Watford (Dean Russell) made an important point about the need for the criminal justice system to put victims at the heart of the system, which unfortunately has not always been done over successive Governments.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) made a typically powerful speech on the need for a long-term public health approach—an issue that was, as she said, conspicuous by its absence from the Minister’s opening remarks. I hope that when the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) sums up, she will say something about the continued need for the Government to commit to a public health approach. I also agree with what my hon. Friend said about how important the “Victoria Derbyshire” show has been in the campaign for the Government to commit to a public health approach. The hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) spoke powerfully about the particular types of crime in his constituency, including violent crime and rural crime, which often mask organised criminality.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) spoke typically about her experience and expertise on child sexual exploitation and her disappointment, which I share, in the Government’s failure to come forward with a national CSE strategy and in South Yorkshire police’s unwillingness to name the officer that the Independent Office for Police Conduct found had repeatedly let down CSE survivors. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) gave a barnstorming speech on the consequences of officer loss and of cuts to Sure Start, drug services and mental health services. As always, she made a passionate case for drug consumption rooms. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) also made a compelling speech about the cost of losing neighbourhood policing from our communities.

I should like to start on a positive note by welcoming the investment. We have been calling for it for some time, and it offers a generational opportunity to change the make-up and composition of our police with what has the potential to be a watershed moment for diversity in policing. At the current rate of progress, the Metropolitan police will remain disproportionately white for another 100 years. There is not a single chief constable from a black or minority ethnic community, whose representation among the senior leadership is pitifully low. During the last major recruitment under the last Labour Government, diversity increased but not fast enough. We cannot wait a century for the police force to reflect our society, so I would be keen to hear what specific plans the Policing Minister has in place to ensure that this recruitment round will allow diversity to increase far beyond where we are today. Policing can never be effective unless officers understand the communities that they police, but sadly, that understanding and that presence in our communities have been profoundly undermined by the last 10 years of austerity.

There can be no doubt that the consequences of the past decade have been severe: 21,000 officers, 16,000 police staff and 6,800 PCSOs have all gone, and the consequence of those choices—and they were choices—has been the crime that we have seen rising nationwide year on year for the last seven years. Knife crime is at record levels, and police-recorded violent crime has more than doubled. Swingeing cuts across the criminal justice system have led to the lowest-ever prosecution rates across all offences, and in the words of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, rape has been effectively decriminalised, as just 1.4% of offences are prosecuted. There can rarely have been a more challenging climate for our police or a more fundamental failure of the last three Conservative Governments to keep their citizens safe and to deliver justice. In that context, it is extremely welcome to witness the Government’s recent conversion on the necessity of recruiting additional officers. However, the know-how that experienced officers have brought to the job over the past 10 years is gone for good.

Ten years of unnecessary cuts have permanently changed the picture of crime. The former Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan police, whom the Minister mentioned earlier, found that fraudsters “operate with impunity” because the police are not adequately equipped to investigate cases, and millions of victims are being failed. In our towns and cities, ruthless organised criminal gangs now trade children as part of a profitable enterprise. The Children’s Commissioner estimates that 27,000 children between the ages of 10 and 17 are part of a gang, and this is about not only police cuts, as we have heard time and again, but the soaring numbers of children who are in care, who are homeless or living in temporary accommodation, who are excluded from school, and who cannot rely on youth services or social services. All that has left them lacking in resilience and support and horribly vulnerable to the exploitation of gangs. It will take more than recruiting officers, as welcome as that recruitment is, to bear down on the complex picture of crime in this country.

What is more, under current plans officer numbers will not even be restored to 2010 levels. Resources will be allocated via the outdated and inadequate funding formula, which the Government have been promising to reform since 2015. The Policing Minister himself said:

“For many years it has been an unspoken secret—something that senior police officers sniggered about behind their hands—that the formula that was put in place 10 years ago was so manifestly unfair, but nevertheless politically sensitive, that politicians would never have the courage to meddle with it. During the four years that I was deputy Mayor for policing, there were constant complaints about the police formula and nobody really had the cojones, if that is parliamentary language, to get a grip on it.”—[Official Report, 4 November 2015; Vol. 601, c. 1060.]

Does the Minister wonder whether using what he called a “manifestly unfair” method to fund his recruitment pledge is the right thing to do? When will he get the cojones to reform it?

In the absolute best-case scenario, where 20,000 of the new recruits go to local forces, 22 of the 43 forces, many experiencing the most punishing levels of violent crime, will not see their numbers restored. The reality is that the spending review confirmed that territorial police officers will not be the whole picture and that other national priorities will also take their share, which would leave a staggering 25 police forces down on where they were 10 years ago: Greater Manchester down 1,000, Hampshire down 700, Merseyside down 600, Staffordshire down 400, and the West Midlands down 1,100.

Across the length and breadth of this country, communities that will have heard the Prime Minister’s promise to restore police numbers are set to be badly let down. Is this not fundamentally a question of trust? Are those not the same communities that heard the Prime Minister’s promise to invest in them and then witnessed the local authority fair funding review cut £320 million from hard-pressed councils? Will those communities not have the right to ask whether promises made seem, for this Prime Minister, harder to keep?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call the Minister.