Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Thomas-Symonds and Kit Malthouse

Monday 18th October 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I commend my hon. Friend for engaging with his constituents on what, very often, is easily the closest subject to all of our constituents’ hearts. He will be pleased to hear that we are now approaching the halfway mark on our 20,000 extra police officers, which obviously represents a gross recruitment of something over 20,000. I hope that he will feel the effect of the now well over 100 police officers recruited by Derbyshire constabulary on the streets of his constituency in the weeks to come.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I first met Sir David Amess when I entered this House in 2015 and he approached me, as a new Member, to ask how I was and how I was settling in. That conversation captured the essence of Sir David, who was a kind, thoughtful and generous man, always cheerful and smiling. He was dedicated to the service of his constituents, he had passionate beliefs and he worked across party lines on causes that mattered to him and those he served. He was respected and held in affection across the House, and we on the Opposition Benches send our condolences to his wife Julia, and to all his loved ones and parliamentary colleagues.

Sadly, another Member of this House, James Brokenshire, was taken from us too young. I worked with James on a number of security issues, and he was a man of firm beliefs, staunch integrity and unfailing good humour. He pursued causes with passion and respect, and represented politics at its best. We on these Benches send our sympathies to his wife Cathy, and to all his loved ones and parliamentary colleagues.

I would also like to send my best wishes to Lynne Owens, thank her for her work as director general of the National Crime Agency and wish her a swift recovery from her recent surgery.

Mr Speaker, I am grateful to your office and to the Home Secretary for the work on MPs’ security since the heinous crime that was committed on Friday, but I wonder whether she Secretary could offer some more details on the review. Can she confirm when the review she has announced will be completed, and what she will do to ensure that any recommendations are applied consistently by police forces up and down the country?

Windrush Day 2021

Debate between Nick Thomas-Symonds and Kit Malthouse

Thursday 1st July 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for calling this debate and my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) for his co-sponsorship. I also thank colleagues from across the House for their insightful and passionate contributions to this vitally important subject.

Last Tuesday, on Windrush Day, we came together to celebrate the Windrush generation. Events were held all over the United Kingdom and the sight of the Windrush flag flying above so many buildings, including here in Parliament—and, as we learned, Luton town hall—was a splendid illustration of what Windrush means to this country. The arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury docks 73 years ago was a signal moment in our history. It has become a symbol of the rich human tapestry that makes this country great. The passengers on that ship, their descendants and those who followed them have made and continue to make a unique and enormous contribution to the social, economic and cultural life of the United Kingdom.

As someone who was brought up in the constituency of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) and who has spent many years in city and local government in central London, I have shared triumph and tragedy, hate and love with the descendants of and members of the Windrush generation, and seen what an enormous contribution they make to our national life. As the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) and others noted, many have been at the forefront of the fight against covid, working in the NHS, our emergency services and in other key frontline roles.

The Windrush generation have helped to shape our country. This is their home. Without them, we would be immeasurably diminished; and yet, despite all that, some of them suffered terrible injustices at the hands of successive Governments of all flags. The fact that so many people were wrongly made to feel that this country was not their home is a tragedy and an outrage. I know that the scars run deep. This sorry episode will not be forgotten, nor should it be. This Government have done and continue to do everything in our power to right those wrongs. I will set out some of the steps that we have taken.

In April 2018, the Home Office established a taskforce to ensure that individuals who have struggled to demonstrate their right to be here are supported in doing so. Since then, we have provided documentation to over 13,000 individuals, confirming their status. In April 2019, we launched the Windrush compensation scheme to ensure that members of the generation and their families are compensated for the losses and impacts that they have suffered because they were unable to demonstrate their lawful status in this country.

I reassure Members that we are absolutely committed to ensuring that everyone receives the maximum compensation to which they are entitled. My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe mentioned a cap of £100,000. There is now no cap on the amount we will pay out. Since April 2019, we have offered more than £32.4 million, of which £24.4 million has been paid across 732 claims. They have been accepted by the individuals and, as I say, paid. I reassure Members that everybody who accepts and receives a payment also receives a personal letter of apology from the Home Secretary.

We are determined to get this right and that means taking action to improve our approach, where necessary. In December, in response to feedback from members of the community, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary overhauled the compensation scheme so that people would receive significantly more money more quickly. The changes have had an immediate impact. Within six weeks, we had offered more than we had in the previous 19 months. Since the end of December, we have offered an average of £5.2 million a month and have paid more than seven times the total amount that had been paid out before then.

Despite this progress, as a number of Members have claimed, a number of people would rather see the compensation scheme moved from the Home Office to an independent body. However, taking such action at this stage would risk significantly delaying payments to people. The first stage in deciding a claim for compensation is to confirm an individual’s identity and eligibility. This is linked to their immigration status. It would be difficult to decouple that from the Home Office without increasing the time taken to process an individual’s claim and issue payments. There would also be considerable disruption to the processing of outstanding claims while the new body was established and made operational.

That is not to say we are operating without external scrutiny—far from it. For those dissatisfied with their compensation offer, an independent review can be conducted by the Adjudicator’s Office, a non-departmental public body that is completely independent of the Home Office. The scheme was set up and designed with the independent oversight of Martin Forde QC in close consultation with those affected by the scandal. Our approach was informed by hundreds of responses to a call for evidence and a public consultation. Earlier this year, we appointed Professor Martin Levermore as the new independent person to advise on the Windrush compensation scheme and ensure it is easy to access, fair and meets the needs of those affected. We continue to listen and respond to feedback about the scheme to ensure it is operating effectively.

We are not complacent, however. We recognise the need to resolve claims more quickly. Some people have been waiting too long for that to happen and that is not acceptable, as the Home Secretary noted in her letter.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

In two years and three months, the Home Office has resolved 687 claims. Does the Minister seriously think that any other system properly set up would be that slow?

[Kit Malthouse]

As I outlined, the current total is actually 732 claims, but it has been too slow. That is why, as I said, the Home Secretary took direct action in December last year and we have seen a significant acceleration in payments thus far. We hope that that progress will continue.

As a number of Members mentioned, the death of 21 individuals before we were able to offer them compensation does weigh extremely heavily on all of us and is a source of sorrow and regret. We are working with their families to ensure that compensation is paid out, while recognising that doing so can never provide adequate consolation. Now we have completed the implementation of the December changes I referred to, we are committed to reducing the time between submission and decision over the coming months. To do that, we are recruiting additional caseworkers and directing resources to maximise final decision output, as well as improving the evidence-gathering process by revising our data-sharing agreements with other Departments on our forms, guidance and processes.

We also continue to do all we can to raise awareness of the Windrush schemes and encourage all who are eligible to apply. Last year, we launched a national communications campaign and the Windrush community fund, which was designed to reach further and deeper into the communities who were affected. We have now held 180 events, reaching 3,000 people.

Last year, we also published the Wendy Williams “Windrush Lessons Learned Review”, to which a number of Members referred, which laid bare the failings and mistakes that led to the Windrush scandal. Each of the 30 recommendations has been grouped into different themes that are being delivered across the Home Office to ensure the lessons from the review are being applied across the Department. Despite what was asserted, Ms Williams did not say that the Home Office was paying “lip service” to her review, and she will be returning to the Department in September to review our progress. Alongside that, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the permanent secretary are also leading an unprecedented programme of change to ensure the Home Office is representative of every part of the community it serves. Our ambition is to transform the Department into one that puts people before processes, an organisation that has fairness and compassion at the heart of all it does.

The Windrush scandal is a stain on this country’s conscience. We owe it to those who suffered as a result to deliver lasting and meaningful change, and to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. I am happy to say on Windrush Day, as we celebrate that generation today and hopefully in the years to come, that the Department for Transport is currently investigating whether the anchor from the Windrush can be recovered and restored to become a fitting memorial to that generation, in the hope that we will all aspire to the aspiration of my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) that in the future the colour of our skin will matter no more and no less than the colour of our eyes.

Policing (England and Wales)

Debate between Nick Thomas-Symonds and Kit Malthouse

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

It is nice actually to take an intervention. That is not something we can do regularly in House debates at the moment, but on the point raised by the hon. Gentleman in his attempt to criticise the Mayor of London, I have to say that the Mayor of London has been taking action on violent crime. The rise in violent crime is right across the country. In terms of prioritising police officers for the vaccine, that is precisely the case I am putting to the Government. They have been saying warm words about that, too, and I am asking them to make good on those warm words that I know they have been uttering to police representatives for some time. We would all agree about the dangers that police officers put themselves in every day, which is why I am asking for this action to take place.

Moving back to the funding of the commitment on police recruitment, as ever with this Government, the devil is in the detail, and the policing grant is no different. I point out, first, that when the Prime Minister pledged to increase the number of police officers, he did not make it clear to voters that a significant proportion of it would rely on increasing the council tax precept by £15 a year, at a time when family finances are very hard-pressed. In his opening remarks, the Minister described it as flexibility; I would describe it as a Government who are not putting the needs of families first.

Will the Minister confirm why the Government have decided to slow the speed of police recruitment so sharply? He will be aware that police forces across the country were planning for 6,000 officers to be recruited in year 1, 8,000 in year 2, and 6,000 in year 3. However, we now know that there will be 6,000 officers recruited this year and presumably 8,000 in year 3. What is the reason for this worrying slowdown, which will mean thousands fewer officers on our streets?

Also, it will not have escaped attention that there is a sharp decline in the amount of funding that the Government have allocated to recruiting the promised officers for this year. When setting a target for 6,000 officers for 2020-21, the amount of money allocated was £750 million, but for 2021-22 the amount for the same number of officers—6,000—has sharply reduced to £400 million. The Minister may say that that is in part due to so-called front-loading of costs for additional officers.

[Kit Malthouse]

indicated assent.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Indeed, the Minister confirms that is what he would say. However, we know that in fact police forces have been incredibly stretched. Even with the promises of additional officers, there are huge budget pressures elsewhere, and that is why many forces have had to freeze police staff recruitment.

Since 2010, there has been a fall of more than 13% in police staff numbers. Police staff across the board, as I am sure the Minister would agree, play a vital role in keeping communities safe, through key roles such as answering emergency calls from the public, staffing our custody suites, crime analysis and crime scene investigations. That fall also includes the loss of PCSOs, who played and play such a vital role in neighbourhood policing.

Undermining all those functions makes our communities less safe and keeps police officers behind desks and away from the streets where we want them to be. It is little wonder that the number of police officers in frontline roles fell by 16% between 2010 and 2019. These funding pressures are likely to be even more keenly felt when the required £120 million of efficiency savings outlined in the provisional police grant report in December —indeed, they were repeated by the Minister from the Dispatch Box today—come to pass.

The fact that our brave officers have been forced to work with reduced numbers of colleagues and with a pay freeze is particularly galling when such huge sums of money are being wasted on Government inefficiencies. That is why the answer given to the shadow policing and fire Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), at Home Office questions was so revealing. So poor, frankly, is Conservative management at the Home Office that delays to the emergency services network mean that police forces will have to spend an extra £600 million—bringing the total to £1.5 billion—to replace the old radios, while they wait even longer for new equipment.

Perhaps we should not be surprised at the Home Office’s complacent attitude to serious errors or the impact that they can have. Members will have seen the deeply worrying statements and the lack of grip at the Home Office over the catastrophic loss of police data. It is a confused picture that has seen Ministers contradicted by the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s letter and now an independent review having to be held to get to the bottom of what went wrong. One thing is clear: thousands of police records have been deleted and criminals will, in all likelihood, go free as a result of this fiasco. Frankly, more effective Home Secretaries than this one have gone for lesser mistakes on their watch. These errors are not isolated incidents. They are part of a picture of Ministers who have lost their grip on vital issues of national security. We have seen it over the failures on quarantine, the rises in violent crime, and the failure to get a grip of the data deletion, and too often we fail to see the Home Secretary taking charge of these issues and delivering results.

Today, we welcome the fact that Members across the House now all agree that it is vital to at least start to fill the hole created by the Conservative cuts to policing since 2010. None the less, there remain a number of worrying aspects, including the huge general financial pressures for the police; officers being forced off the streets to backfill for police staff; and the slowing down of police recruitment. We will judge the Government by their actions on this, as people are fed up with empty promises. Although we welcome the new police officers and staff joining the ranks, and we thank them for their service, we will continue to campaign for them to have the support they need to keep us all safe.

Police National Computer

Debate between Nick Thomas-Symonds and Kit Malthouse

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the policing Minister for his statement and for advance sight of it, and I am grateful to him for his briefing over the weekend, but I must ask where the Home Secretary is. The loss of hundreds of thousands of pieces of data—data so important for apprehending suspects and safeguarding vulnerable people—is extraordinarily serious. It was the Home Secretary who needed to show leadership and take control. That is what previous Home Secretaries have done in a crisis. On the Passport Office, Windrush and knife crime, whatever their mistakes, Home Secretaries came to and answered to this House; they did not just offer a media clip, as has happened today. This Home Secretary, who is failing on violent crime and failing on the Windrush compensation scheme, with chaos on border testing, and who was found to have broken the ministerial code, will now not even answer to Parliament and the public on this most serious of issues. The Home Secretary likes to talk tough, but when the going gets tough, she is nowhere to be seen.

Will the Minister tell us when the Home Secretary first knew about the data loss and why the public had to find out from the media? Given that the initial reports were of 150,000 items of data, and the figure now seems to be over 400,000, can the Minister be sure of how much data has actually been lost? In his statement, the Minister said that on 10 January the process of deletion was stopped, but will he confirm that the faulty script was introduced into the police national computer on 23 November, meaning that the problem was not identified for 48 days?

The Minister said in his statement on Friday that

“the loss relates to individuals who were arrested and then released with no further action”.

This is serious in itself. For example, let us consider cases of domestic abuse: when suspects are released, the data becomes very important to protecting victims and making further arrests. In a letter, Deputy Chief Constable Malik, the National Police Chiefs Council lead for the police national computer, said that the deleted DNA contains

“records…marked for indefinite retention following conviction of serious offences.”

This is, therefore, not only data on individuals released with no further action; it includes data about convicted criminals, so will the Minister now correct the statement that he issued on Friday?

Will the Minister confirm whether 26,000 DNA records and 30,000 fingerprint records held on separate databases have been deleted? Will he assure the House that the engagement with the PNC to delete the Schengen information system—SIS II—database was unrelated? What is the full impact on the UK visa system from the data loss, and how is it affecting ongoing police investigations and intelligence gathering?

The PNC and the police national database are due to be replaced by the national law enforcement data programme, but the assessment by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority is that the successful delivery of the project is in doubt. Is it still in doubt? If so, why? There are reports that 18 months ago senior police outlined that the Home Office was not investing in the PNC and that it presented a significant risk to the police’s ability to protect the public. Was that warning heeded?

Finally, if it is not possible to recover data via the process currently under way, what contingency plans are in place to seek to recover the data via other means? Does the Minister accept that maintaining the security of this vital data is critical to addressing crime, bringing criminals to justice and keeping our communities safe, and that if the Home Office is not doing that, it is failing the public?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Gentleman has given me a long series of questions, which I shall try to answer as efficiently as I possibly can. Once the error became clear to the team, they escalated it up through the Home Office, first of all on Monday, and then through Wednesday into ministerial and other offices, in accordance with normal protocols.

As to the scale of the data, while the figure of 400,000 has been quoted, that is an accumulation of the various bits of information that may or may not have been deleted. As I said, a number of bits of information may apply to one individual, so the number of individual records on the PNC that might be affected could be smaller, but we will not know exactly until later this week, once the programme that is being analysed has come to an end.

As for when the script was introduced, that was indeed six weeks prior to what is called the weeding date, which is when the deletion was due to take place. That is standard practice, to load the script into the system some weeks before it is due to run. It did not run until the Saturday, when the error within it became immediately apparent.

As to the records that are affected, I am informed that the records that have been deleted are those that relate to people who were apprehended or put under investigation by the police. When there was subsequently a declaration of no further action to be taken, if there were prior convictions or offences on the police national computer, my information—what I have been told thus far—is that that those will remain. Only information relating to that specific incident, which was no further action, may or may not have been deleted. To a certain extent, that helps to mitigate some of the risk.

It is also worth pointing out that, as I said in my statement, there are other databases, both locally and those held nationally, such as IDENT the fingerprint database or the national DNA database, which may also be searched. The PNC draws its data from a number of other databases and when, because of our legal obligations, a deletion request is put on to the police national computer, it cascades deletions down through the other databases in accordance with the law. Those subsequent deletions were halted immediately, and that should help us, we hope, with recoverability of the dataset.

The hon. Gentleman asked about SIS II. That is indeed unrelated, and visa processing was suspended for approximately 24 hours. Everybody whose customer service threshold could not be met as a consequence of that was informed, but processing was resumed pretty quickly. We are assessing the impact on ongoing police investigations, while we analyse the report that has been run, which will give us the full picture of what has actually happened on the system.

Having said that, policing partners and the Home Office have put in place mitigations, not least informing other police forces—as Nav Malik did—that they should be making subsequent checks of their own and other databases, not least the police national database, which is a separate database from the police national computer and holds intelligence and other information.

On the national law enforcement data project, the replacement of the PNC, while that process has had its fair share of problems, it is fair to say we have undergone a reset. There is now a renewed sense of partnership working between the Home Office and the police, to make sure we get that much needed upgrade in technology correct.

The hon. Gentleman’s final point was about accepting the maintenance of data. He is absolutely right: we accept that it is very important that we, and indeed police forces and other governmental bodies that hold people’s personal data, do our best to maintain its integrity and to do so as faultlessly as possible. In these circumstances, we were attempting through this code to comply with our stringent legal obligations to delete personal data where it cannot be held by us or by other databases. Sadly, human error introduced into the code has led to this particular situation, which we hope is rectifiable. I am more than happy to keep the hon. Gentleman updated, as I did on Saturday afternoon, when I briefed him.