Victims and Prisoners Bill (Seventh sitting)
Debate between Sarah Champion and Lia NiciThursday 29th June 2023
(1 year, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 View all Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 29 June 2023 - (29 Jun 2023)
Sarah Champion
They are being deceived, and we are all being deceived. The confidence that a DBS check should give us is not there: it does not exist while this loophole exists.
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making a fantastic point. Does she agree that we should not restrict this to driving licences or passports? It should include citizenship cards—in fact, perhaps we should use the term “any form of identification that is used”.
Victims and Prisoners Bill (Fifth sitting)
Debate between Sarah Champion and Lia NiciTuesday 27th June 2023
(1 year, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 View all Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 27 June 2023 - (27 Jun 2023)
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)
We are all very concerned about the example given by the hon. Lady. Why are the conductors and British Transport police not reporting those children to the police? That does not seem to be to do with the Bill; it seems to have something to do with what is happening in our criminal reporting processes.
Sarah Champion
Sadly, they are reporting it to the police, but the scale of the issue is so enormous and the resources are so intensive that nothing happens. I suggest the hon. Lady speak to her conductor. Normally what happens is that the child will be offered some support, but will then be very up front with the conductor, saying, “No, no—it’s my bag!” and so on. The child then gets off and there are not the resources to have a member of the British Transport police there, and that genuinely is not a criticism of them; I think there are only 4,000 officers for the whole country.
Sarah Champion
British Transport police are the specific police for incidents that happen on the railways and transport networks. Even if we were looking at the Metropolitan police—I am going back and forth to London—the scale of the issue is so enormous that there is not the capacity to deal with it.