Police Reform

Debate between Sarah Jones and Stella Creasy

Thursday 13th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

May I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for his robust attack on a policy that his own party introduced as part of the coalition Government in 2010?

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman that the impact of our police and crime commissioners has been negligible. I do not think that is true. In many cases, they have done a good job in quite difficult circumstances. The innovation we have seen from our PCCs and the partnerships that they have sought to build have been good. It is not the individuals and teams that we are criticising today; it is the structure.

The hon. Gentleman asked about funding. The PCC election savings sadly will not be coming to the Home Office; they will obviously, and rightly, go to the Treasury. The savings that we are making, through police and crime commissioner functions and the efficiencies we want to drive, are significant—at least £20 million—and we want to reinvest that back into policing, as I think everybody would want us to do.

The hon. Gentleman talked about making sure that the right safeguards and the right model are in place. Police and crime commissioners will continue for the next two years in the areas where we do not already have mayoral processes in place, so we have a good amount of time to work with colleagues on how the new structures will work. That said, there is already a process under way of moving police and crime commissioner functions into the mayoral structures; that is already happening.

At the moment, there are 37 police and crime commissioners. Six force areas will move to the mayoral model in 2027, and there will be more in 2028, depending on how the Bill progresses. The idea is that we see this progress, apart from, as I said, in Wales, which has a different system and does not have the mayoral model.

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the work that the Minister is doing on reforming how the police can engage with our local communities, because all of us want to see a closer relationship in that regard. May I press her on what lessons she is learning for my part of the world? In London, the challenge is at a borough-wide level. My own borough commander now requires me to submit freedom of information requests to find out about policing in my local community, and will only meet me twice a year. Panels of people are selected to meet the police, and often their presentations are death by PowerPoint to my local community. The Minister makes a very powerful case about police reform. What lessons can we learn from this process—not just in restructuring to work with mayors, but to work at a very localised level so that we can restore people’s confidence in policing?

[Sarah Jones]

London is different in many ways due to its size and scale, and policing is therefore structured differently. I expect all local leaders to meet their Members of Parliament regularly, because that is how we can hold them to account and work together. Members of Parliament attend surgeries, have public meetings and talk to our communities, so we understand a lot of the issues that police chiefs face, and it is helpful for them to have those conversations and to learn from one another. I encourage all our police chiefs to make sure that they have good relationships with their local Members of Parliament, because those relationships make up a very important part of our structures.

North Sea Energy

Debate between Sarah Jones and Stella Creasy

Thursday 6th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

The right hon. Gentleman paints a lovely picture of walking up the hill in his constituency� I am sure we would all enjoy doing that. He makes an important point about solar. We need to make sure that we are taking people with us and doing the right things, which is what we are trying to do. We know that even if we pushed as far as we could on solar, it would still account for less than 1% of the overall land and the same proportion of our agricultural land�it is a small amount. He is right to want to make sure that his constituents have an environment that they like and enjoy. It is equally right to say that we will need infrastructure in our communities, and that people should see a benefit where we ask them to have infrastructure. There is the solar taskforce, which is looking at all these issues.

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is good to see the Government taking a very sensible approach in the consultation to working with our European partners on how we develop renewable energy and get energy costs down. As with so many other areas, our constituents have paid higher bills because the previous Government refused to work with our European counterparts. Can the Minister give us a bit more detail? As we look to expand our capacity to create renewable energy, she will be very aware that there is a risk of an �800 million charge because of the variation between our emissions trading schemes. Can she also tell us a bit more about what working with the North Seas Energy Co-operation might entail, and whether we might rejoin that organisation to help drive down bills further for our constituents?

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend raises a number of thorny issues relating to ETS, for which I am responsible in the Department. We have been having lots of conversations about how we progress, what the EU does, what we do and what we need to do moving forward. These things are enormously complicated, because pulling a lever here will have an unintended consequence over there, so we are treading carefully, as she would expect.

On the EU partnerships and the new relationships that we have with our partners, they are incredibly important. Today the Prime Minister is with the Taoiseach in Ireland, and we are agreeing an energy partnership. We will be working together in the Celtic sea and the Irish sea to speed up progress on wind turbines by using data and our resources to look at our marine landscape and get to a point where private investors can invest quicker. These things are worth doing, and we will certainly carry on doing them.

Public Order Bill

Debate between Sarah Jones and Stella Creasy

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that we have voted in this House and the other place for the safe access zones. As someone who prays, I understand why we need to introduce that legislation. However, the amendment mentions not just silent prayer but “consensual communication”. How on earth do we define consensual communication? There is no definition.

[Stella Creasy]

We must be clear that nobody is banning praying. We are saying that there is a time and a place to do it appropriately, which balances with people’s human rights. There has been some concern that, somehow, the buffer zones will take up police resources. Does my hon. Friend agree that, actually, amending the buffer zone legislation—as the amendment intends—would mean that more police resource would be needed, because it would become so unclear what was and what was not harassment, even when women repeatedly say that praying in their face is not acceptable?

[Sarah Jones]

I completely agree. Having talked to the police for nearly three years in this role, I know that they want clarity. The amendment provides not clarity but unbelievable confusion, whereas a 150-metre zone provides clarity, and that is what the police want.

The Bill remains an affront to our rights. The Government’s own impact assessment shows that it will not have much effect. It is our job as parliamentarians to come up with laws that solve problems and really work. The Bill does not do that, so the Opposition will vote against the Government tonight. We agree with the Lords, and I urge every Member to look to their conscience and do the same.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Sarah Jones and Stella Creasy

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

The aim of the amendment is to try to make misogyny a hate crime in whatever form it comes, and to be as inclusive as possible in that definition.

[Stella Creasy]

Does my hon. Friend agree that given that “gender” is defined in legislation—indeed, the Government rather helpfully defined it in their consultation document, so we have a definition of “gender”—it is therefore important that we focus on perpetrators? The point behind hate crime is that I could be a victim of antisemitic abuse whether I am Jewish or not. It is about the motivation of the perpetrator. By recognising that sex or gender can motivate hostility based on misogyny, we are ensuring that no perpetrator could have a defence where they demean a victim, and no perpetrator can avoid that hostility being reported because somebody wants to put them in the trans box rather than in the misogyny box. The amendment is inclusive, but it ensures that it protects women, whether they were born or become one, using definitions that already exist in law.

[Joanna Cherry]

rose—