Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Paul Holmes and Yvette Cooper

2nd reading
Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

We have started with £200 million of funding for the next financial year to kick-start the drive to put 13,000 more neighbourhood police and police community support officers back on the beat. Already, police forces have been working with the Home Office on plans for recruiting new police officers and new PCSOs, and for redeploying existing police officers and backfilling by recruiting other officers to take their posts. We will set out in due course plans for the next financial year and that £200 million.

The cuts to neighbourhood policing over the past decade were even worse than we had thought. The previous Conservative Government were so indifferent to neighbourhood policing that they did not even keep a proper count of who was doing that work. Too often, they treated neighbourhood police officers just the same as 999 response officers or local detective teams, and Home Office guidance allowed forces to report some of their response officers as neighbourhood police. The last Government did not have proper checks in place, and as a result, hundreds, even thousands, of officers and PCSOs were miscounted. Later this month, the Home Office and the National Police Chiefs’ Council will have to publish revised force-by-force figures, so that communities can see properly what is happening in their area. This Government take seriously neighbourhood policing, which must be community-led policing in our towns and on our streets.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

I thank the Home Secretary for giving way; it is courteous of her. On miscounting numbers, can I drill down on the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty)? Of the 13,000 new neighbourhood officers that the Home Secretary claims she is recruiting, 3,000 will be diverted from the existing workforce, so they are not new, are they? Will she also confirm that her police funding settlement will lead to 1,873 officers being withdrawn?

[Yvette Cooper]

Sadly, I did not hear an apology for the previous Conservative Government’s massive cuts to neighbourhood policing, which meant that many towns and cities right across the country saw neighbourhood police numbers slashed in half. Communities were badly let down. I am sure that the next Conservative Member to intervene will begin their question with a huge apology for the damage that their party and Government did.

[Paul Holmes]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I am really pleased that the hon. Member is ready to give an apology for the deeply damaging legacy of his party in government.

[Paul Holmes]

I thank the Home Secretary for giving way, but I think she should apologise for not answering the question. There were record levels of policing under the last Government; 20,000 extra police officers were recruited. I ask her again: she said that she is recruiting 13,000 new neighbourhood police officers, but will she confirm that 3,000 of those will be diverted officers? They are not new, are they?

[Yvette Cooper]

Still no apology for the deep damage the Conservatives have done. Let us be clear: they halved the number of PCSOs, and they cut the number of neighbourhood police officers, probably by more than 10,000, but we cannot be precise about that, because their measuring of neighbourhood police officers was so ropey and all over the place that we cannot be certain what the cuts were precisely.

This Government are committed to increasing neighbourhood policing and PCSOs by 13,000. In the first year, the neighbourhood policing increase will be funded by £200 million. That funding is already delivering plans from police forces across the country, which we will set out in due course, to increase the recruitment of new police officers and PCSOs, and redeploy some police officers, whose posts will then be backfilled through the recruitment of other new police officers and staff—[Interruption.] Conservative Members should hugely welcome these measures, because they mean that we will get police back on the streets, and into our communities and neighbourhoods, for the first time in years.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Paul Holmes and Yvette Cooper

Monday 21st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Ensuring that constituency Members are informed is something that I take seriously. It often did not happen in the past, but it is important and it needs to happen. The overall situation that we inherited included an asylum backlog that was increasing because asylum decision making had totally collapsed. We have now increased that decision making so that we can clear the backlog and end hotel use. Sadly, that will take time—because of the soaring backlog we inherited as a result of the collapse in decision making—but we are determined to ensure that we can clear the backlog and save the taxpayer hundreds of millions, if not billions, of pounds.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

Given the Home Secretary’s claim that she would smash the gangs, with £540 million to upgrade the Manston centre, asylum hotels reopening rapidly and 14,000 small boat crossings since she took office, is that the plan that she had for her new border commander? Might it be fair to say that it is not going very well?

[Yvette Cooper]

I gently point out to the hon. Gentleman what we inherited from the previous Government. In the first six months of the year, there were the highest number of boat crossings on record because of the total failure of their programme, including spending £700 million on a scheme to send four people—four volunteers—to Rwanda. As for the contract, he may be interested to learn that the first Manston contract notice was issued on 4 December 2023 under the previous Home Secretary for £700 million for six years with no suggested break clauses. The new contract is not only substantially cheaper because we have made savings, but also includes break clauses so that we can close, change or reduce the contract to save the taxpayer money, which the previous Government failed to do.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Paul Holmes and Yvette Cooper

2nd reading
Tuesday 12th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the hon. Member if he can say whether he agrees with the previous immigration Minister or the current one.

[Paul Holmes]

I am grateful to the shadow Home Secretary for asking me questions; she overestimates my ability. Talking of Christmas turkeys, this morning the Leader of the Opposition gave an interview on Radio 4 that, typically, contained no policy whatsoever. Can she outline how she would reduce immigration and tackle the problems that she is castigating this Government for, given that everything she says she would do, the Government are already doing?

[Yvette Cooper]

The trouble is that they are not—they are just not. The scale of the Government’s operations to go after the criminal gangs is tiny. The £300 million that the Government have already committed to Rwanda is a third of the budget of the National Crime Agency. They are prepared to put that investment into Rwanda—into this tiny scheme that will affect only a couple hundred people—but are totally failing to invest sufficiently in tackling the criminal gangs, working with Europol and going after the supply chains. There are warehouses of boats across Europe that the European police forces are totally failing to go after, which our party has said we would go after. We would work with Europol and get new security arrangements in place, which again, the Government are failing to do.

Instead, we have the former Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman), who signed the last agreement and brought forward the last piece of legislation, saying that the Bill is fatally flawed and will not stop the boats. Yesterday we had Back Benchers saying that the Bill should have been pulled because it is partial and incomplete, and the Home Secretary—who privately called this whole thing “batshit”—is out to bat for it today, even though he knows it will not work.

This is the Tories’ asylum crisis. Five years ago, we did not have a major problem with dangerous boat crossings, but they let criminal gangs take hold along the channel. They failed to work with France at the beginning when they had the chance, and they let smugglers spread their tentacles along the coast, organising dangerous boat crossings that undermine border security and put lives at risk.

At the same time, the Tories let Home Office decision making collapse. They decided to downgrade the skills and experience of caseworkers, then shrugged their shoulders when productivity dropped. They failed to return people—they have let returns collapse, down by 50% compared with the last Labour Government. The next Labour Government, if we are elected, would set up a new major returns unit with, 1,000 additional staff to increase returns. Rather than the total number of returns collapsing and the Government failing to return people who have no right to be here, our party would introduce a new returns unit to make sure we have proper enforcement. [Interruption.]

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Paul Holmes and Yvette Cooper

2nd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I give way to the hon. Member for Eastleigh, who has been patient. I will then make some progress before I take further interventions, because I am conscious of the time.

[Paul Holmes]

As is her right, the shadow Home Secretary is outlining her objection to this piece of legislation. She asked my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) whether he would back her proposals, so could she do the House a favour and outline her proposals—or is this another example of her consistently opposing and not coming up with any fresh ideas herself?

[Yvette Cooper]

Indeed, I am very happy to. I hope the hon. Member will support our proposal for a cross-border police unit to go after the criminal gangs and bring up those convictions, which have totally collapsed on the Conservatives’ watch. I hope too that he will support our proposals for a fast track for Albania and other safe countries, which Ministers are not doing. [Interruption.] This is interesting, because the Immigration Minister says, “Oh, we are already doing it,” except that they are not. Only 1% of the cases from Albania have been decided. The Home Office is not taking fast-track decisions on safe countries such as Albania, for all the promises the Government made. Even where they have the powers to take action, they are not doing it. I hope the hon. Member will also support our proposals to work on not just return agreements with France and other countries, but family reunion arrangements and reforms to resettlement schemes to make those work.

Instead, we have a Bill that is a con and that will make things worse. We have been clear that the Home Secretary has nowhere that she can say she is going to return people to. Last year, the Government made exactly the same promises when they said that 18,000 people would be inadmissible because they had travelled through safe countries, yet just 21 people were returned. Of those the Home Secretary said were inadmissible, just 21 were returned. Now she wants to say that everyone is inadmissible, but if she still manages to return just 0.1% of them, the reality is that she will have tens of thousands of people left. She is simply creating misinformation and conning those on her Back Benches, who have been cheering for the things she says but will see them unravel in practice.

The Home Secretary says this legislation means that she can return people to designated safe countries such as Albania, but she can do that already. She does not need this law to do that. She already has the power to fast-track Albanian and other cases. We have been calling for it for months, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees proposed it two years ago and the Prime Minister even promised it before Christmas, but it is not happening and 99% of those cases are still in limbo.

Just 15 people who had arrived in small boats were returned last month. That is the equivalent of 180 a year, when over 10,000 people came from the designated safe country of Albania. The real problem is that Conservative Home Office Ministers just do not have any grip on the system that they are supposed to be in charge of.