Migration and Border Security
Mark Sewards Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
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Yvette Cooper
One of the reasons we are talking to the Iraqi Government and the Kurdistan regional authorities about biometrics and supporting biometric roll-outs is that they make it easier to prevent people delaying either asylum claims being resolved or returns being agreed by not having papers. Where there are biometrics in place, it makes things much faster. That is why we should be working to extend them and why we are working to establish stronger returns arrangements with other countries. That is what we have been doing throughout the summer and why we have seen such a substantial increase in returns this summer, as a result of our putting in the additional resources that were failing to achieve anything when they were put into the Rwanda scheme. We are now putting them into doing practical things as part of returns and enforcement.
Mr Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
In his response, the shadow Home Secretary said that £500,000 was not a lot of money. That is probably because he thought that for £100,000 more you could give free education, housing, university education and vocational training to just four volunteers going to Rwanda. What an absolute waste of money! Does the Home Secretary agree that it is a far better deterrent to actually process people and send them abroad, or should we continue with the fallacy that as a nation we should be bribing people to send them over to Rwanda?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is certainly right that the £700 million for four people is absolutely not good value for money at all. We will always make sure that we are looking for good value for money, as well as getting results.
Respect Orders and Antisocial Behaviour
Mark Sewards Excerpts(2 months ago)
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Dame Diana Johnson
I will certainly add my hon. Friend’s constituency to the list—it is growing, which is always positive. Proposals on retail crime and assaults on retail workers will be included in the crime and policing Bill next year. It is important to remember that people have campaigned for a stand-alone offence for many years, and there is now cross-party support for the offence, thanks to the campaigning of USDAW and the Co-op over many years.
Mr Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
I welcome today’s announcement on respect orders, which will be extremely welcome news for my constituents in Leeds South West and Morley. It is so good to finally have a Government who will deal with the scourge of antisocial behaviour. I have sat with constituents who have been in tears as they explained how their neighbour was making their life hell. Constituents have told me, at my surgery, that the police and the council’s antisocial behaviour teams had no power to act. Respect orders finally offer us the chance to change that. In the Minister’s statement, she said that respect orders would be reserved for the worst offenders. I can think of several people who would fit that criterion, so what reassurance will she give my constituents that it will be applied as liberally as possible?
Dame Diana Johnson
The definition that I gave earlier—causing harassment, alarm or distress—will be used when respect orders are applied for. I ought to say that civil injunctions will remain in place when it comes to housing, so those can be used. Respect orders will be only for adults; for young people, the youth injunction will still be available, and there are sanctions within that. There will be a range of ways that antisocial behaviour can be tackled, using either respect orders or the reformed civil injunctions.
Police Reform
Mark Sewards Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Dame Diana Johnson
If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I have been the Policing Minister for five months, compared with the 14 years that those on his side of the House were responsible for policing. I did not see any action then on dealing with the issues that he raises with me.
I can guarantee that this Government will be looking at the workforce and making sure that we recruit the right people into policing and vet police officers throughout their careers. Because of the shocking cases that we have seen—David Carrick and others—we will take action, which we set out in our manifesto, to have a workforce that is fit for purpose. I know the hon. Gentleman is very new in this place, but he needs to remember the legacy that his Government and his party delivered to us when we arrived in July.
Mr Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
Whenever I speak with residents, business leaders or their staff in my constituency, they all tell me the same thing. Whether it is the staff at Wortley ASDA who have to deal with persistent shoplifting, or the stallholders at Morley market who tell me that they have to deal with crime on the high street in Morley, they all tell me that the police do not turn up and that they never see police patrols in our communities any more. Can the Minister confirm that we will return to neighbourhood policing, that we will see police on our streets patrolling again and that we will have named police officers turn up when things go wrong?
Dame Diana Johnson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; that is the experience that many Members of Parliament will encounter when they talk to their constituents, who feel that there is no point in reporting things because nothing will happen and no one will come. That is why the neighbourhood policing guarantee is so important. We will have those police officers, PCSOs and specials back on our streets. That visible presence will be there, so I can absolutely say that that is part of our safer streets mission and that is what we will deliver.
Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation
Mark Sewards Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Dame Angela Eagle
Our manifesto commitment was not to close all asylum hotels within four months of being elected.
Mr Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
It is truly astonishing to hear the Conservatives come here today to defend their Rwanda policy—£700 million spent on four deportees, or £175 million each. They could have purchased a five-star hotel for each of them. Surely the Minister agrees that the money is far better spent on intelligence, enforcement and, of course, processing, to get the backlog that we inherited down.