Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rupa Huq and Sarah Jones

Monday 26th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

Of course that comment is racist. We know that race and religious hate crime is rising and we are very concerned about that. We have taken some legislative action when it comes to protests, around things like cumulative impact and places of worship. We have our social cohesion plan, “Protecting What Matters”, and we have invested record amounts of money—sadly, we have had to do so—to protect religious spaces for the Jewish community, the Muslim community, and those of other faiths including Sikhs. We have put in £250 million to protect our Jewish communities. There is more to do, but we are certainly in agreement that that was racist, and we need to tackle all forms of hate crime.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

This month has tragically seen a fatal shooting in East Acton. I know that, as they used to say on “Crimewatch”, these things are incredibly rare, but at a community meeting I went to, which also involved the council and the police, it still felt very raw. There is consternation that the gangs, violence and exploitation unit, which has been instrumental in solving previous murders, is being wound up. I wonder whether the Home Secretary, or one of my other hon. Friends in the Department, could meet me and the borough west commander to find a way forward.

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend is right that statistics are not the answer to everything, but gun crime has gone down in the last year in the new stats that have come out, so we are making progress. She is right, of course, to be concerned about the awful incident in her constituency. I am always happy to meet her and others to talk about such matters. We are putting funding into tackling county lines, into knife crime concentration funds and into our violence reduction units. All that funding is helping us to make progress when it comes to both knife crime and gun crime.

Public Order Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Rupa Huq and Sarah Jones

Committee stage
Tuesday 14th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Jones]

My point is that where the police needed to intervene at Greenham Common, they intervened. Where they needed to arrest and charge people, they arrested and charged people.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I am not quite sure what the previous intervention had to do with it. Is it not the point that, after the passage of time, people who were criminalised for what they did are now seen as valiant? Not far from here, there is a statute of Viscount Falkland in St Stephen’s Hall. The statue’s foot spur was broken off by suffragettes in, I think, 1912. At the time, that was a locking-on offence, because they attached themselves to the statue and the police took them away. The foot spur has never been replaced because it is part of our history, and we now see the suffragettes, the women at Greenham and the anti-apartheid protesters as valiant people who were on the right side of history. This clumsy offence gets it all wrong by getting heavy-handed at an early stage.

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Not all lockons are a criminal offence and nor should they be, but where people are locking on in a way that is dangerous and disruptive, that should be an offence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rupa Huq and Sarah Jones

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

10. What steps he is taking to promote human rights in discussions with his counterparts in other countries.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

11. What steps he is taking to promote human rights in discussions with his counterparts in other countries.