Offensive Weapons Bill

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 28th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

My colleague sitting next to me is quite right: my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley is always helpful.

Government amendments 56, 62 and 63 are minor amendments and have been included at the request of the Scottish Government. It is fair to say, as I said in Committee, that my officials have had a good working relationship with the Scottish Government on this Bill. These new amendments are intended to facilitate the operation of the new offences within the Scottish legal system. Under the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 provision is made for matters of routine evidence in criminal proceedings. These provisions operate so as to allow to be admitted into evidence certain routine matters by virtue of a certificate provided by an authorised expert. That means that if the accused person does not provide at least seven days’ notice of an intent to challenge the evidence prior to trial it is admitted without any further proof being necessary. Given that many prosecutions in this area may be at summary court level, requiring expert testimony in these cases as a matter of course would be unduly expensive, so these amendments will ensure that the new corrosive offences included in the Bill are subject to the existing matters of routine evidence provisions.

Amendments 57 and 58 will limit the new offence of possession of an offensive weapon in section 141(1A) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 to possession “in private”. That is to prevent overlap with existing offences. In shorthand, the aim of clause 24 is to prohibit the possession in private of offensive weapons as defined by section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988—for example, zombie knives. Amendments 57 and 58 clarify this to mean in private, because it is already against the law to possess any bladed article—which is obviously wider than the definition of offensive weapons—under section 139 of the 1988 Act.

The approach that we have taken to the new possession offence in the Bill is to mirror the defences that already applied to the manufacture, importation, sale and general supply of curved swords. The burden of proof for the defences that apply to the current legislation for manufacture and so on is to show that the defence applies. Therefore the burden of proof for the defences provided for the new possession offence in the Bill will also be to show that the defence applies. However, the burden of proof for the defence in relation to possession of an article with a blade in public is to prove, which is a higher burden, so to avoid inconsistency we are limiting the new possession offence in the Bill to places other than a public place. In this way, we will continue to rely on existing legislation for possession in public, and the new possession offence in the Bill will apply only in private.

I shall turn now to amendments 59 and 61, and to the Opposition’s amendment 22. Amendments 59 to 61 clarify the wording of clause 25 so as to include “religious reasons”, rather than “religious ceremonies”. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who tabled amendment 22 and worked with me and my officials to get the law into a better place. This included facilitating discussions with representatives of the Sikh Federation last week, and it was a pleasure to meet them. We can now ensure that the Bill does not inadvertently prohibit the possession and supply of kirpans as part of the observance of the Sikh faith.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I should like to thank the Minister for her response to the amendment on the possession of the kirpan, the religious sword that is used by Sikhs. My hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) and I represent a large Sikh community, and they have been very concerned about the omission in the Bill. We would also like to congratulate the all-party parliamentary group for British Sikhs on the work that it has done, and we thank the Minister and the Secretary of State for their willingness to listen and to act on behalf of the Sikh community.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I want to make it clear that it was never the Government’s intention to worry anyone or inadvertently to criminalise acts of faith in that way. I hope that the Sikh community and those who represent them understand that we did this with the very best of intentions.

TOEIC Visa Cancellations

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey.

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) on securing this debate, and I congratulate him and other colleagues who have covered many of the core issues that are important to this debate; I will try not to repeat all those excellent points, because they have already been made. I thank Migrant Voice for the briefing that it has provided for our debate today.

It strikes me that the TOEIC issue is yet another example of the hostile environment that has been created by the immigration section of the Home Office in recent years. It certainly affects many of my constituents. Like other Members who are here today, I represent constituents who come from many diaspora communities—some short-term and some long-term.

An urgent question on Windrush was asked in Parliament earlier today by the shadow Home Secretary. Other examples of the hostile environment include section 322(5) of the immigration rules; the removal of appeal rights for many applicants; the exorbitant cost of applications; and delays, often lasting years, in making decisions. Most worrying of all—I see this in my surgery week in, week out—are completely bizarre and arbitrary reasons for the refusal of perfectly reasonable applications to come here to visit or live, or for leave to remain, or for citizenship. It is a completely unacceptable environment, and it is not just about Windrush.

Immigration policies and processes must be fair and transparent; they should also benefit the UK and the countries that migrants come from. I want to give as an example one of my constituents; he is not a student, but he has still been hit by the TOEIC issue. Back in December 2012, he applied for a visa as a tier 1 entrepreneur migrant. It took a year for his application to be refused, and at that hearing in December 2013 he gave oral evidence in English, in the presence of a barrister from the Home Office and a judge of the first-tier tribunal. Nobody at that hearing raised any concerns about his English language ability. The appeal was allowed at that time. My constituent—Mr A—waited for the implementation of that decision. He waited a year and three months, but he was refused on the basis that he had submitted a TOEIC test certificate that was cancelled by the Home Office.

My constituent, Mr A, had a partner in his entrepreneurial team, whom I will call Mr B, who was not a constituent of mine. The TOEIC certificate from Mr B was cancelled by the Home Office, but Mr B was given the opportunity to retake the English language test, whereas Mr A was not. Subsequently, Mr B had his application granted. Why, with two parallel applicants coming into the same situation to work together, was one refused the opportunity to retake the English test and one not? It is important to note that Mr A is competent in English, as in 2010 he passed the IELTS—International English Language Testing System—exam in Pakistan, with a 5.5 band. Like other Members, I have met many of those affected, and all the people I have spoken to have been perfectly able to converse in very clear English. A simple remedy, in the case of any doubt, would be to allow them to retake the English test. I certainly have no doubt about the competency in English of those I have met who have been affected.

I have written to the Home Office with a number of questions. Why does it not allow a retake of the test? Why does it take so long to get a reply, even after a case is won at the first-tier tribunal? As Mr A applied for his visa in 2012 under the old category, why did the Home Office not just grant him an in-country right of appeal according to the law at that time?

My constituent is an entrepreneur, not a student, but there is an impact on all those affected: on students—not just on them personally but on universities—on families and on the UK’s reputation around the world. How does it affect a student’s personal reputation in their home country and community, especially in those areas that have particular respect for British ways and the British state—the Commonwealth countries—when they have to tell their family and community that the British Government have told them they have cheated? These are good people who want to study and work, to bring prosperity both to their own communities and countries and to Britain, yet they have effectively been condemned out of hand by a Government and a country for which they and their communities have deep respect. That is shattering the UK’s reputation as well as shattering lives.

In this country, life has become unbearable for those who have been refused on this basis and cannot study, work or rent—they often have their driving licences removed. They are caught between a rock and a hard place: do they stay here or go home in shame? If they stay they can continue to fight, and that is why we are speaking on their behalf today.

The Government should address a number of recommendations. One thing that I and others have said is: why not just offer a repeat, trustworthy English language test? We should clear the students’ names and remove what is, effectively, a criminal allegation against them. We should put an immediate stop to detention and deportation until a decision is made and a correct process is implemented, and issue clear instructions to universities to reinstate and readmit students and allow them to complete their studies without the need to resubmit costly financial and other evidence for a new visa. In future, universities should have the power to decide on student admissions, including the type of accredited or recognised English language test that is used. The Government should not have been involved in this process. Universities should develop their own processes, including using Skype or other technology to interview students before they leave their country, to ascertain their level of English. For non-student applicants, such as my constituent, there are other ways in which that can be done, but Skype is an obvious opportunity.

Other recommendations include issuing a students’ rights Bill to protect their rights in the event of a university shutting down or a test centre failing or closing, and changing students’ visa sponsorship, so that they get a visa to study for a particular UK university but can transfer it if they need or wish to move university. A recommendation that is relevant not just to this debate, but to many other debates in this place, is to remove students from the cap on net immigration. Those students who have been deported or have had to leave the UK should be given the opportunity to resit the test in their own country and to have their names removed from the allegation list, so that they can get on with their life, go back to studying, take up employment, develop their business and regain their dignity. Finally, students and others who were deported or who have left the UK should be allowed the option to return to complete their studies, their work and their entrepreneurial activity, following the above processes.

British Citizenship Fees: Children

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I absolutely agree that it is profiteering. The Home Office tends to deny it is profiteering because it spends the money elsewhere, but the fact that profits are reinvested does not mean that they are not profits in the first place. It is outrageous to take the approach that the Home Office is suggesting. It is also contradictory, because it is saying that kids entitled to British citizenship should pay more so that other British citizens get to pay less. Both groups are British citizens. There is equivalence between them. The Home Office argument almost suggests that one form of citizenship is superior to another.

In conclusion, the Home Secretary has to all intents and purposes deprived far too many kids of their right in law to register as British by setting a fee for registering citizenship, which he has described as,

“a huge amount of money to ask children to pay”.

There are not even any fee waivers for those kids brought up in care, never mind a broader opportunity to apply for a reduction where the fee is unaffordable.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I have been approached by the London Borough of Hounslow, which has a large number of people who were born all over the world. The local authority has many children in care whose parents were not born in the UK, so they have to apply for British citizenship. The local authority has to pay this extortionate fee, which means tens of thousands of pounds coming out of the children’s services budget, which is already terribly overstretched. The lead member and the officers have told me that they resent their overstretched budget being used to subsidise national Government. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with them that it is unacceptable?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I agree entirely. It makes no sense. In short, I am asking—I think most hon. Members are asking—that the cost of the application be no more in any case than the administrative cost to the Home Office; that where there is an inability to meet the financial cost, there should be the opportunity to apply for a fee waiver; and that no fee should be applied in instances such as the one the hon. Lady suggested—when children are in the care system.

In conclusion, if the Prime Minister is serious about remedying “burning injustices” and if the Home Secretary genuinely wants a fairer system of fees, this is a clear and obvious place to start. I hope the Home Office and the Immigration Minister look at this again.

Immigration Rules: Paragraph 322(5)

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I also thank the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for securing this excellent debate. I will try not to repeat the points that have been made by her and others. I declare an interest: I was chair of Barrow Cadbury Trust, which funded the Migrants’ Rights Network from its inception, and the MRN has been part of the group of organisations that has supported the work in Parliament today as well as at other times.

On Friday, I met a group of constituents in my surgery that included both individuals and couples who have been affected by the new operation of the immigration regulations. They are all from India and are highly qualified, well paid and well respected IT professionals. They came to answer this country’s skill shortage—a shortage that has not gone away. They work in our large and reputable companies such as Sky and Royal Mail, and one of the affected people they know even works for HMRC. Today, the Government launched a programme to attract tech entrepreneurs to the UK, yet the Home Office is effectively sending home high-skilled tech people who contribute so much to our economy. I must also say that they are, of course, net contributors to the Exchequer.

After the Windrush scandal, this is yet another example of the hostile environment operating at the Home Office. Many have been refused for spurious reasons. Those without the right of appeal cannot work, cannot take up the offer of promotion, cannot rent a flat and may lose their driving licence. Even those with pending appeals or judicial review applications who can work are losing jobs because nervous employers have asked them to resign. Many cannot travel to see family and cannot explain to their family why they cannot visit them. One person I met was told by the Home Office that he could get his travel documents to attend his brother’s funeral if he withdrew his application.

Given these people’s age profile, many have small children, or they want to start a family but cannot do so because they are in limbo. They told me, “We love this country and we don’t want to leave, yet we feel we’re just numbers. You”—not me but this Government and, they feel, this country—“want to attract talent from across the world, yet you don’t respect those of us who are here. This is affecting the reputation of the UK around the world.”

Some are refused not for tax problems but because, with their employer’s permission, they have extended their leave beyond 28 days to 45 days, or for maternity leave.

Women’s Suffrage Centenary

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

Gosh, it has been an interesting day of stories, what with boat clubs and golf clubs and the militant march of women. I hope that that will happen soon. That is why we are taking action on the gender pay gap and insisting that companies report by April this year. In my conversations with companies that are putting reporting in place, it is clear that they are surprised at the revelation of a gender pay gap and they are then proposing action. In one example, after a company discovered that many more men than women were in higher-paid jobs, it put in place training programmes. Those concrete actions will help to eradicate the gender pay gap.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her statement about the grant programme to celebrate women’s suffrage. Will she confirm that the programme will celebrate the sacrifices of the suffragettes and the work of the thousands of women and men across the country who campaigned painstakingly for decades for women to be given the vote? Will she also confirm that the scheme will look not only backwards to celebrate but forward at the work that still needs to be done and which many Members have mentioned today?

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that this funding and these projects must be about looking forward. We want to celebrate the past and the achievements to date, but we also want to keep up the pressure and the change and to work with the new generation to ensure that they have the opportunities to come forward. The purpose of these grants is to encourage local organisations to bid, so that they can make such proposals. I hope that organisations from Brentford and Isleworth will do just that.

Police Funding: London

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hurd]

I will not give way, because the hon. Lady did not have the courtesy to turn up for the beginning of the debate.

The increase in recorded crime is not all bad news, in the sense that, as the Office for National Statistics makes quite clear, it reflects that the police are better at recording crime and people are feeling more confident to come forward in areas that had been murky and complex before. However, undeniably, there is an increase in demand in some worrying areas, which are increasingly complex for the police to police. The right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) was eloquent, as I would expect, about the culture: the worrying, shocking, callous attitude to violence that underpins some of the violent crime that shocks us across the city, and not just in inner London but in outer boroughs, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romford was eloquent in pointing out.

When the threat changes we have to adapt, and when I say “we”, I mean we: not just parties, central Government, local government and all the statutory agencies, but also the private sector and civil society. This is a shared challenge that we have to meet together to understand what is going on—to be frank, in some areas we do not have a good enough understanding—and to ensure we have the right strategy, the right level of resilience and the right resources in the right areas.

In terms of resources to the police, let us state an old, stubborn truth: we live in very constrained times. That is the political reality of the situation. Within that, the Home Secretary and I will have made it clear that we will continue to ensure that the police have the resources they need to do the job, but we will continue to challenge them to modernise and be more efficient and effective, not least in embracing the power of technology to improve the interface that our constituents have with them, but also to help them be more effective in their work. We do that not just because we have responsibilities to the taxpayer, but because we want the Met to be the best police force in the world. That requires a culture of continuous improvement, which is the hallmark of every successful organisation I have observed.

When we look at the Met’s performance—we would not want to let evidence get in the way of a good bit of shroud-waving from the Opposition—the evidence is this. If we compare its performance in 2008 to 2017, we see that in 2017 there were 100,000 fewer recorded crimes and the same number of police officers. The number of police officers in London is by far and away the highest per head of population in the country, at 359 per 100,000, compared with 252 in Merseyside and an average across the country of 200. There are fewer crimes and the same number of police officers, in a police system that costs the taxpayer almost £700 million less than it did in 2008.

The right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington said it was a vapid idea that the police could do more with less; the Metropolitan police has proved otherwise. In that respect, I pay tribute to Commissioner Dick. As she has said:

“I won’t be waving a shroud, I will be just be giving my professional advice. I think we can make some further savings. I am confident that the Met at the end of my commissionership might be smaller but could be as effective, if not more effective, through amongst other things the use of technology and different ways of working.”

That is the leadership we need to see, not least from the largest force in England and Wales.

I do not want to misrepresent Commissioner Dick, who is clear that she wants more resource, as does every police force in the country, but when it comes to funding, let us be clear and present the facts. The Metropolitan police’s budget for 2017-18 is £2.8 billion, up from £2.7 billion in 2015-16. According to the last figures I have, the Met sits on reserves of £240 million, which is 10% of cash funding. The Mayor, who has been the subject of a healthy ding-dong here, was sitting on total un-ring-fenced reserves of £2.3 billion in 2016. To be fair to the Mayor, by stripping out what he has borrowed, he is still sitting on unrestricted resource reserves of about £300 million. There are choices in this process.

Sexual Exploitation: Protection of 16 and 17-year-olds

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Thank you for your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, and a very happy Christmas to you too. I also thank hon. Members for securing this debate and the Backbench Business Committee for allowing it to happen today.

Many Members have mentioned the excellent Children’s Society report, “Old enough to know better?” They have rightly described the situation for already vulnerable children—those in care, suffering mental health difficulties or dangerously exploiting drugs and alcohol, for example—but I shall focus on mobile and online sexual exploitation, to which all young people with smartphones are vulnerable. By not tackling that effectively, we risk setting another set of young people on the path to vulnerability, serious mental health problems and drink and drugs exploitation. We also have to recognise that many young people, while being victims, could also, if we are not careful, be defined as perpetrators. The law has to be right and work in tandem with other approaches.

I thank Kevin Prunty, an experienced headteacher in Hounslow and executive head of the successful Cranford schools partnership, for helping me to prepare for this debate. He has direct experience of this situation and has some solutions I know he wants to share with the Minister.

The Children’s Society report recommendations apply to child sex abuse wherever and however it occurs, but there is justification for further consideration of mobile and online culture and the ways of helping to prevent the abuse, and to reduce the vulnerability to abuse, of 16 and 17-year-olds. In particular, the report does not address aspects of proactive prevention crucial to success in this field. Some important aspects of child online and mobile safety and of the equalities agenda are totally ignored, not just in the report, but seemingly by all the agencies and initiatives that Mr Prunty has come across.

We need to work in key areas, with cross-political support, to help schools and parents to safeguard children much more effectively than is possible merely by amending the law. The guidance says that child sexual exploitation can occur through the use of technology without the child’s immediate recognition. The definition of child sexual exploitation in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 includes merely the recording of an indecent image of a young person. The key findings of “Old enough to know better?” focus on strengthening the law. This age group is particularly vulnerable and inadvertently more vulnerable because of the potential for clumsy, inappropriate or disproportionate use of regulation and legislation.

It is right to strengthen the law to afford these children the same protections as younger children, but it is the continuum with the circumstances prior to the age of 16 that makes them so vulnerable as they mature, particularly online. Tackling offenders and strengthening the law, while important, are only a small part of what needs to be done and are not, on their own, the real solution. Merely strengthening the law will do little good for the majority and will not address those who could become victims. We need to protect children earlier, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) said, and proactively to prevent abuse.

The law in this area is designed primarily to tackle the serious offences committed particularly by adults against young people. The Children’s Society report and the work of most agencies and organisations tasked with online safety, although extremely valuable, focus too narrowly on already vulnerable children and fail to address the context of young people’s lives more widely. The recommendations in the report focus on reaction rather than prevention. I want more resourcing, more strategies and action to provide an appropriate adult presence—not necessarily the police—in the mobile and cyber world, in which many young children spend huge amounts of their time growing up without us.

In this respect, the law must not be used where young people are engaging in unwise activities, which many do, that relate to the expectation and culture of a mobile and cyber environment in which appropriate adults have virtually no presence and where we too often leave the young people abandoned to fend for themselves. Here is a quote from Mr Prunty on the issue:

“In running schools and elsewhere, I always contend that a strong positive culture must dominate any community, including online and mobile, because in its absence there will never be a vacuum and instead street culture will fill the void.”

In strengthening the law for 16 and 17-year-olds, steps must be taken to ensure the system does not end up targeting and criminalising young people who are in fact victims themselves. It will also require significant training and support for the police and others whose response to such crimes appears already to be under-confident and variable. Mr Prunty’s schools subscribe to a restorative justice approach, and this may be appropriate in cases where mitigating factors are considered.

Naïve online activity by 16 and 17-year-olds, which would also be subject to any strengthening of the law, such as online and mobile communication between peers, will be most frequent, is perhaps more detectable and could be easier to prosecute. It is important to remember, however, that in most cases 16 and 17-year-olds will actually remain victims even when they break such laws in the context and environment of the school and the world they occupy.

The vast majority of our young people are already mobile and already online victims in a largely unsupervised cyber world. Although the internet gets considerable attention from safeguarding organisations and in training, mobile activity and mobile-based abuse are, in fact, even more rife yet also more neglected by adults. Parents, teachers and other adults responsible for the routine safety of children are often best placed to supervise and guide young people, but they are largely absent from this dangerous environment. We tend to operate in Facebook, but young people are not on Facebook so much nowadays. The mobile world, and to some extent the dark web, get less attention, yet these are really part of most young people’s experiences—day and night.

I believe that the figures quoted in the Children’s Society report are actually a huge under-representation of the scale of the underlying problem. It is the underlying problem that contributes to a culture and environment that make identified sexual offences more probable and possible. In effect, it normalises them in the minds of young people, especially girls. I contest that a much larger proportion of 16 and 17-year-olds—boys and girls to differing degrees—experiences sexual and other harassment, abuse and pressure, and for many this is regular and unrelenting. Sometimes they take part in it, too. This normalisation, with no appropriate adult presence to challenge it, is what leads to the lack of reporting of sexual and other mobile, online and cyber-abuse. I support all the recommendations in the report, but feel that they are insufficient and incomplete without recommendations aimed at establishing a different online, mobile and cyberculture and skilling up children, parents and other adults.

I am short of time, so in conclusion I welcome the Minister’s announcement of the What Works review and hope that she will consider the specific issues of mobile and online sexual exploitation. I hope she will look not only at the already vulnerable children, but at the policies of all those who work with all our children, so that consistent, deliverable and effective solutions can be achieved, rather than just punishment under the law.