Dover and Portsmouth: Protests

Debate between Sarah Jones and Tom Hayes

Monday 7th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

Of course people are scared and angry about the fact that, as they see it, the borders are not secure. As the right hon. and learned Lady will know from her time in the Home Office, we have come some way since then, and have improved the system significantly. More than 1,000 boats and engines have been seized, system-wide arrests are up by 70%, 48,000 crossings have been prevented, there has been a 40% increase in French boots on the ground, and we have increased surveillance technology. There has been a huge 42% drop in the number of boats coming over, and we have removed more than 80,000 illegal migrants and foreign criminals. People are right to express a view, and it was disingenuous of the right hon. and learned Lady to suggest that I was calling those people racist, when I had made it very clear that there were people in Portsmouth who were concerned, and that local residents were coming out because they were angry. We have heard about that, and the actions of those people are very different from those of the racist thugs we see in other places—and who were there as well—and from the whipping up of hatred online. We will continue to bear down on illegal boat crossings.

Let me pay tribute to Kent and Hampshire police. Kent police dealt with 1,300 calls to 999 on Saturday, and Hampshire police dealt with 1,000. While these incidents were going on, a lot of work was being done to keep us safe across the counties.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

We should be opposed to gangs wherever we find them, whether they are gangs of smugglers or mass gangs in Southampton and Dover, and I wish that this House was a little more united in its resolve to oppose both types of gang. Peaceful protest strengthens our democracy; what weakens our democracy is intimidation and the abuse that we have seen. This Government passed the Crime and Policing Act 2026 because we wanted to tackle concealment linked to criminality. Those powers apply in police-designated areas where protest is happening under certain conditions. In Southampton and Dover, we clearly saw concealment linked to criminality in non-police-designated areas. Will the Government consider extending the parameters of the 2026 Act to tackle that?

[Sarah Jones]

We keep all legislation under review when it comes to public order, and there is a big piece of work that Ken Macdonald—Lord Macdonald—has done for us, which we are considering. There are other powers on face coverings in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, but we will always look at these things.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sarah Jones and Tom Hayes

Monday 5th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

T5.   Because of antisocial behaviour, including drug dealing and public injecting, Upper Charminster community action group has activated a community safety trigger, and this month we will have a case review. I thank the group and Queen’s Park councillor Sharon Carr-Brown for their focus on antisocial behaviour. Will the Minister set out what the Government are doing to tackle antisocial behaviour in Bournemouth and beyond?

[The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)]

Antisocial behaviour is a scourge that has gone untackled for too long. We are funding hotspot policing in our town centres and other areas in which antisocial behaviour is rife; that is having an impact. Our neighbourhood policing guarantee, which will mean 3,000 more police on our streets by next March, will have an impact. We are introducing respect orders, which will be a really useful tool to tackle prolific antisocial behaviour offenders. The message has to be loud and clear: we will not accept this behaviour, and the police are responding.

Police Reform

Debate between Sarah Jones and Tom Hayes

Thursday 13th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I join the hon. Member in praising her local team. She is right to talk about staff. There are about 1,000 staff who support police and crime commissioners. We will work with them to transition—where they need to be transitioned, and where they carry out statutory functions that we need to continue—to local authorities. It is not by any means the case that they are all losing their jobs. It is very important to stress that the function continues as is for the next two years. We will continue to work with staff, and I will be talking to police and crime commissioners about the transition a lot, I suspect.

The hon. Member highlights one of the challenges of the move to the mayoral model: there is legislation going through Parliament, and some decisions are yet to be made. I am very happy to work with her on how things will work going forward, but we are very clear about the model that we want to introduce. Where there are moving parts, we will work as best we can to make sure that we get the right outcomes.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Having sat on a police and crime panel, let me say that I am thrilled to see the abolition of the police and crime commissioner model. This will save £20 million a year, which is the equivalent of an extra 320 special constables. In my area, the Liberal Democrat council is introducing pointless town councils, which raises local taxes. We as a Labour Government will bring down local taxes by abolishing the PCC role, which is very good news.

I want to put on record my thanks to Dave Sidwick, who has been an excellent police and crime commissioner. He is Conservative, and I am Labour, but it does not matter. We work together in service of the public, and that has yielded very good results. I must confess to having regularly experienced difficulties accessing my chief constable in Dorset. Could the Minister please set out what she thinks are reasonable expectations when it comes to a chief constable engaging with local Members of Parliament, particularly on important issues to do with policing and community safety?

[Sarah Jones]

I repeat what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy): it is incredibly important that chiefs have a good relationship with their local Member of Parliament. It is a two-way street; Members of Parliament bring a huge amount of insight, from all their conversations with constituents, about what is important to their local community and what its fears are, and about where crime is occurring. It is very important that police chiefs have that relationship with them, so that we can help each other to deliver better services.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sarah Jones and Tom Hayes

Tuesday 29th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Green jobs are great jobs, and I welcome the £43 billion of private investment in clean energy since the election of this Labour Government. In order to bring down our industrial energy prices further, what steps will the Government take to get us on to clean energy that we control and off the fossil fuels that are in the control of dictators?

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend is right to point out the huge amount of private sector investment that is coming in with clean energy. This is why, in the industrial strategy, clean energy is one of the growth-driving sectors where we have seen 10% growth in the economy. We are also seeing hundreds of thousands of jobs, which the Conservatives now seem determined to oppose. We will introduce the clean energy of the future, and that is why we are pushing for clean energy by 2030. That will bring down bills, give us energy security and create really good quality jobs.