Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-ninth sitting)

Debate between Sarah Olney and Kit Malthouse

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Olney]

I am grateful for that intervention, but the crucial point is the vote in Parliament, so that MPs get not only an opportunity to consider whether sufficient progress has been made—as per new clause 40—but a vote to confirm that they are content for the legislation to proceed.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am sure the hon. Lady understands that a vote of that nature would not necessarily be binding, or compel the Government to do anything, but there would be other opportunities for the House to consider the legislation in debate and vote on it. She knows that there are a number of ways to do that, including via a Backbench motion or an Opposition day.

[Sarah Olney]

I refer to my earlier comments: there are few enough opportunities for MPs to have any further control over how this legislation is going to be implemented. I do not think that it is asking too much to want a further opportunity to be mandated, and not left—dare I say it—to the vagaries of the Backbench Business Committee. There are Opposition days, but this is cross-party, conscience issue. I can speak only for my own party, but I think there are a number of other issues that the Opposition would want to use those debates to address. Taken together, these amendments would ensure that Parliament is properly informed if the Secretary of State decided to commence the scheme before the four-year auto-commencement deadline.

I want to address how the Bill will be implemented in Wales. On 23 October 2024, in anticipation of the Bill being published, Senedd Cymru debated a motion calling on the Welsh Government to

“a) support the principles of assisted dying; and

b) support Westminster parliament to introduce a compassionate assisted dying law in England and Wales.”

The motion was defeated 19 to 26. Among those who voted against were a number of Welsh Government Ministers, including First Minister Eluned Morgan, and I believe that in three political parties—Labour, Plaid and the Conservatives—there was a majority against. In that context—as Professor Emyr Lewis, who gave evidence to the Committee, has stated—it would be constitutionally wrong to pass the Bill without the consent of the Welsh Senedd. He believes that this is different from other instances where legislation has been passed by Westminster against the will of Wales:

“This is not the equivalent, for instance, of trying to re-base the UK’s internal markets following the chaos of Brexit. When the UK Parliament passed Acts ignoring refusal of consent from Cardiff or Edinburgh, it did so in what were considered to be the interests of the economic coherence of the UK. This Bill, however, is a different sort of creature. It is a Bill which would bring about a profound change in the law relating to life and death, where there are strongly held (and expressed) moral, religious and cultural views against as well as in favour. How can it be constitutionally appropriate for the UK Parliament to pass such a Bill for Wales, when the Senedd has indicated its opposition by democratic vote after a thorough debate?”

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-eighth sitting)

Debate between Sarah Olney and Kit Malthouse

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Olney]

The issue is who is commissioning the service. The issue is not the doctors or how they are recompensed for the work that they do, but who is doing the recompensing and what their incentives are. If the process is part of an NHS-provided service where it is agreed that it is a compassionate end of life choice, and where it is properly regulated within the wider NHS service and connects with other NHS services, that is one thing.

If the person commissioning that doctor has any kind of incentive around making a profit—and any profit-making organisation will be incentivised to increase the amount of profits that it makes—then, however carefully regulated, there will be subtle influence, pressure, coercion or persuasion that assisted dying is an option that patients should choose, or possibly not-so-subtle influence, to take the example from the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford. Under other circumstances, in an NHS model, that may not have been a solution they would have been persuaded to choose. It is that issue of persuasion and of incentives that really troubles me.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I am not clear: is the hon. Lady suggesting that doctors who operate in the private sector are less ethical than doctors who operate in the public sector?

[Sarah Olney]

I think I said very clearly to the hon. Member for Stroud that it is not about the doctors. It is about the people who are commissioning them. I absolutely do not believe that about doctors operating in the private sector, who in my experience are often the same doctors as the ones in the NHS. It is about who is commissioning them and who is asking them to carry out this work, and whether those commissioners are motivated by a profit incentive as opposed to the incentive in the NHS to provide the best possible care.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Olney]

It clearly remains to be seen, but that may be an outcome as we do not yet know what model we are proposing for the delivery of assisted dying. Perhaps doctors will feel pressured to deliver an outcome because that is how the model has been set up. If we have a model that incentivises profits, particularly if we do not have a similar service within the NHS itself, it is quite possible that that will happen. It will not necessarily affect the care that doctors give to patients at the end of life, but the point is that we do not know.

We cannot fully explore that matter in Committee, because we do not have the full clarity of exactly how the process will be delivered, so we cannot examine the proposed model and identify its potential risks and pitfalls. That continues to be a real concern. Perhaps doctors will feel that pressure; perhaps the service will be precisely designed to encourage them to, for example, diagnose someone with having fewer than six months to live even when it is a slightly more subjective judgment and a different doctor operating in a different system may come to a different view.

[Kit Malthouse]

That is an extraordinary claim to make against doctors.

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

I am just trying to wrap my head around the argument. We already know that integrated care boards and other commissioning bodies have incentives given to them when they commission services, so it would be in their interests to diagnose or produce a demand for a service in a particular area. There is already an analogous situation within the NHS; I do not see how that is any different.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-seventh sitting)

Debate between Sarah Olney and Kit Malthouse

Committee stage
Wednesday 19th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Kit Malthouse]

Obviously the hon. Lady is a London MP, but I gently point out that particularly in a London context—and in other urban areas—someone’s postcode is actually a very poor indicator of socioeconomic status. I represented central London as a London Assembly member for eight years and, in large parts of central London, there is social housing in the same postcode as extremely expensive houses running into the many millions.

[Sarah Olney]

I know: the Barnes ward in my constituency is one of the most unequal wards in the country, so I fully appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s point. As I say, that is the socioeconomic indicator that I have for now, thanks to the failings of our predecessors to include it in the Equality Act, but I am open to amendments on Report if anybody has something more compelling. I do think that it really matters that we look at the socioeconomic status of people who are seeking an assisted death, and I welcome feedback—and, as I say, further amendments—on how that particular part of clause 29 could be improved.

Lastly, I included whether someone has a disability, which obviously has come up many times in the written and oral evidence. That is why I specified those characteristics in response to the evidence that we received, and why I am keen to press amendment 273 to a vote.

Amendment 273 agreed to.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twenty-third sitting)

Debate between Sarah Olney and Kit Malthouse

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Kit Malthouse]

And the panel.

[Sarah Olney]

The point is that we want to preclude the possibility, at whatever stage it might happen, that somebody could deliberately render themselves terminally ill by the voluntary stoppage of eating—

[Kit Malthouse]

But they already are terminally ill.

[Kit Malthouse]

Forgive me, Sir Roger. Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sarah Olney]

I will.

[Kit Malthouse]

I share the confusion of the hon. Member for Spen Valley. By the time we get to clause 13, my understanding is that the two doctors and the panel are already satisfied of the person’s eligibility, so they are by definition terminally ill. I do not understand why they would then seek to render themselves doubly terminally ill by adding the characteristics the hon. Lady is talking about. Maybe I am getting confused. I could understand the hon. Lady’s case if she had made it way before, but at this stage the person has been through two doctors and the panel and got permission to go ahead. I do not understand why they would then starve themselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Olney]

The point is that they may take the opportunity to use the further provision that exists for people whose death is expected within one month.

[Kit Malthouse]

But they do not need to if they have got to this stage.

[Kit Malthouse]

Sorry, Sir Roger.

[Sarah Olney]

I take the point, but I still think it is necessary to have this additional safeguard to close a loophole that means that people could render themselves terminally ill within the space of a month and use the opportunity presented by the additional provision in the Bill for reducing the 14-day waiting period. This is a real concern of people who have reviewed this legislation. There is a possibility, as has been seen in other jurisdictions, that people could—I do not necessarily want to adopt the right hon. Gentleman’s language—hasten their eligibility for assisted dying through this particular method. All I am asking is that we close the loophole so that people will not be tempted to follow that very damaging path.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Bambos Charalambous.)

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Nineteeth sitting)

Debate between Sarah Olney and Kit Malthouse

Committee stage
Wednesday 5th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Naz Shah]

Is the hon. Member aware that in nine of the 10 cases that went before the Court of Protection, the young ladies were deemed not to have capacity, but the judge still decided that it would not be in their best interests to feed them, and they were put on palliative care pathways?

[Kit Malthouse]

They did not have capacity.

[Sarah Olney]

I am grateful for that intervention and, dare I say it, for the one from the right hon. Gentleman. That is the whole point about eating disorders: there is a very fine line to be trod between people who have capacity, people who lack capacity and people who have capacity but who can still be allowed to make an unwise choice, which is obviously a huge risk for people with eating disorders. I find that risk very much magnified in the Bill as it is currently drafted, which is why it is of the utmost importance that it provides specifically for the possibility that somebody is suffering from any kind of mental health illness, and particularly from an eating disorder—but I do not see such a provision at the moment. I heard the arguments that were made when I raised this issue in earlier sittings, and I very much welcome amendment 6, but it deals only with capacity; it does not talk about mental illness.

To conclude, amendment 363 is a crucial safeguard that would prevent assisted dying from becoming an unintended route for people suffering from mental health conditions, such as eating disorders, to end their lives prematurely. It would ensure that requests for assisted death are based on genuine, rational decisions, rather than symptoms of a treatable disorder. By aligning with best practice from other jurisdictions and addressing a critical gap in the UK’s current approach, it would strengthen the ethical foundations of the assisted dying Bill and better protect vulnerable individuals.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Debate between Sarah Olney and Kit Malthouse

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Kit Malthouse]

I will make two points in response to my hon. Friend. First, I am not sure that it is entirely accurate that burden is the primary purpose. It is certainly the case that when people going through this process in other jurisdictions are surveyed and rank their reasons, burden may be one. We heard that in some of the evidence that we had from overseas, but as I said at the start of my remarks, it depends what we mean by “burden”. Personally, I think it is perfectly legitimate for me to want to spare my children from witnessing, knowing or even learning that I may have died in a particularly unpleasant way. I may therefore wish to go a few weeks before that eventuality and say goodbye to them, gathering them around my deathbed—we heard very movingly about this from one of the witnesses—to say farewell while I still can, before my body is ravaged by the final stages of the disease that is destroying me. I do not think that relieving them from a traumatic burden is anything negative.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not accept that “burden” here encompasses many different types of burden. One that weighs heavily on many of my constituents is financial burden—in particular, the cost of care at the end of life. That is very directly something that they would wish to relieve their children and descendants of. Does he not accept that the word “burden”, while I hear what he says about it being imprecise, nevertheless contains many different examples, rather than just the one to which he referred?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady is quite right, and she makes my point very neatly for me: the language here is so wide-ranging that it could be anything. Other provisions in the Bill deal with exactly the concerns she expresses. A specific part of the Bill talks about people benefiting financially and how they may not participate. We had a long discussion about coercion and pressure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who has made the case much more eloquently than I could have done. She is quite right. We have heard endlessly from witnesses and others that simplicity is best, and that by inserting this kind of complexity, we create yet more difficulty.

I have two other things to say. From the point of view of autonomy, the amendments are trying to police the thoughts of the individual who comes forward in a way that, as I said, may mean that they become guarded in conversations with their physicians. One of the things that I have learned over the past 10 years or so, and that we have heard from witnesses, is that many people who are in extremis at their end are very determined that they will achieve a death other than what nature has laid out before them. That determination comes through from those who go to Switzerland, often in the teeth of the wishes of their family. They will go in secrecy, not telling anyone, because they do not want to put anyone else under threat of criminal prosecution.

We have heard lots of stories over the years—some were mentioned on Second Reading—of people who have killed themselves in terrible circumstances, again, secretly determined that they will not go through that end. My concern is that if we insert such amendments into the Bill, we start to police the conversation in a way that means that people determined to achieve an assisted death will do other than have a free and frank exchange in a sensitive way with their physician. Instead, they will try to tread the path to get what they want.

For example, if the issue was physical pain, the conversation might go: “Why do you want an assisted death?” “Well, of course it is just the pain. It’s all the pain. That is all I want—I’m just frightened about the pain.” “Are you doing it for the benefit of others?” “No—absolutely not! I am doing it completely for myself.” We can see how people might start to modify their conversation, rather than having what should be a sympathetic, empathetic, conversation between doctor and patient about where they should go.

My concern is that, as with a previous grouping, this attempt to micromanage and police the conversation, at the same time as attempting to police the way people should be thinking, threatens the whole concept of assessment and relationship, which we have heard about from many physicians—that is done on a daily basis in not dissimilar circumstances, where life and death is at stake. That complexity and those extra layers, in my view, start to make the Bill less safe.

[Sarah Olney]

I want to pick up on the right hon. Gentleman’s point about wanting patients to be able to have a free and frank conversation with their doctors. In a hypothetical scenario, someone suffering from a terminal illness and in the last six months of their life might say to their doctor, “I would like to explore an assisted dying option.” The doctor asks, “Why is that?” They say, to hark back to my previous example, “Because I want to save my children the cost of my end-of-life care bills.” How does the right hon. Gentleman think the doctor should react in that circumstance, given that that is a free and frank explanation of the person’s reasons?

[Kit Malthouse]

The Bill makes it quite obvious that the doctor would not regard that as a legitimate reason to give people an assisted death, if that was their only purpose. As we said before, however, most people have a range of purposes for seeking an assisted death. In my view—certainly in my experience—the primary one is always having the option of control at the end.

Policing in South-West London

Debate between Sarah Olney and Kit Malthouse

Wednesday 7th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) on securing this important debate, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) for her contribution.

I have to say that I am surprised that in more than 12 months as Minister for Crime and Policing, this is the first Adjournment debate that I have done on crime. There have been lots of other debates about process-type issues, or issues of concern to Members, but not about crime, which is a frustration I find myself expressing about much of the policing family. There is lots of talk about process, computers and human beings, and all that is very important, but in the end the product, which is fighting crime, has to be our primary concern.

I am therefore pleased that the hon. Member for Richmond Park has raised this issue from her part of the world. Although it is a very safe part of London and, indeed, a very safe part of the country, that does not mean that we should not pay attention to the concerns of her residents. She should be assured that wherever and however a crime occurs in this country, it is a personal offence to me that it has, and I will be stretching every sinew in the time that I am allowed in this job to do something about it.

I start by offering my congratulations and thanks, along with the hon. Lady’s, to Chief Superintendent Benatar, who is moving on to pastures new. Presumably she is no relation to the pop star of the same surname from my youth, Pat Benatar, whom the hon. Lady may well know; it is an unusual name that sticks in the memory. I also welcome Lis Chapple, who is coming along hopefully to do as fine a job. We should recognise that south-west London in particular has been rocked by a tragedy in the policing family—a terrible, heinous crime that occurred a couple of weeks ago with the death of a police sergeant in Croydon. That is deeply, deeply regrettable and is something that we all mourn.

Moving on to the broad issues, the speech that I was given to read out today, as Ministers are wont to do in Adjournment debates, is not entirely appropriate to what was raised by the hon. Lady, notwithstanding the steers that were given to us. I am going to do what I think is known technically in the trade as winging it.

Broadly, I think the hon. Lady raised four issues. On funding, I am sure she will understand that we stand apart slightly from the police funding in London. The best we can do is to provide significant and generous funding to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime through the police funding settlement, and that is exactly what we did last year. The overall police funding package went up by about £1 billion to £15.2 billion, and a very significant proportion of that went to London. Much of that was to fund an uplift in police officers, as part of the 20,000 extra police officers we will be recruiting over the next three years. The Met allocation is 1,369, which is a lot. I know that recruitment has gone extremely well in the Metropolitan police, and numbers are up 4-point-something per cent. year on year. I am pleased to say that over 92% of those police officers are dedicated to frontline duties, which is a very high proportion.

The hon. Lady rightly pressed me, and there will be more to come. That number is just the Met’s share of the first 6,000, and there are another 14,000 to recruit. I am hopeful we will be announcing the allocation of those soon. It has obviously got wrapped up in the discussions with Treasury colleagues in the spending review, but our commitment to recruiting those 20,000 is rock solid. Indeed, it is a bigger job than 20,000, because we actually have to recruit about 45,000 to backfill those who are retiring during that period to make sure we reach an extra 20,000. That will give us an extremely high number of police officers, not least in the capital.

The hon. Lady raised the issue of covid being a distraction for the police and said it has been a huge burden for them, and indeed it has. The police have frankly done a brilliant job of dealing with a fast-moving and very complex backdrop to their job. They have had to embrace a new role over the past few months that they have never done before. They have done it with alacrity and happily.

The resilience of the police has been incredible, frankly. In many parts of the country, absence in police forces has dropped below pre-covid levels. It is almost as if police officers across the country wanted to step forward and do their bit at this time of national crisis in a way that they perhaps have not done in the past. Many a detective has squeezed into their uniform and got out on the frontline to do their bit for the national effort to fight crime.

There have also been other impacts. Some of the demonstrations that we have seen, especially in central London, have had an impact on the police, particularly in terms of the extractions that the hon. Lady mentioned, not least because many of those disputes take place out of normal hours—at weekends or whatever—and require overtime, which mean that rest days or holidays are missed that have to be caught up. There becomes a backlog of time not spent policing that is absorbed by that public order duty. We also find that has an impact on the workforce, because, frankly, they become tired. If an officer is busy out fighting crime and then they are called to a demonstration in central London to do their public order duty, often it means they miss that downtime with their friends, their family, or whatever it might be. They become tired and weary, and that has to be rectified, too.

[Sarah Olney]

The Minister makes the point about demonstrations this summer, and obviously I am aware that there have been quite a few. I just wonder whether there have been significantly more than there normally are in any given year. Should the resourcing plan perhaps not take account of that, in as much as if people are being called to these additional duties, the resourcing plan should have enough in it to reflect, as he says, the rest days that they then need to catch up on?

[Kit Malthouse]

I do not think that there have been appreciably more demonstrations. In fact, we may well have seen years in the past when there were bigger demonstrations. However, a lot of the demonstrations this year took place against the backdrop of covid and, as they say in policing, had “potential” and therefore required that a greater potential resource might be appropriate. If the police have intelligence or a sense that a public order situation might get a little out of hand, frisky, or even turn violent, there will often be police officers held in reserve elsewhere, away from the action, to be called up, should they be required. They may well be wearing more body armour or protective equipment just in case things, as they say, kick off. We have seen that once or twice this summer, sadly.

To be honest, that is part of the regret about some of these demonstrations, well-meaning though they may have been, such as the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations that cause so much difficulty. They do absorb police resource—I do not think people realise how much—and very many of those officers are drawn from neighbourhood policing and neighbourhood teams. They are trained to public order standards so that they can be extracted—or abstracted, if you like—and that does cause problems in neighbourhoods, not just on the day, but in the catch-up, because it absorbs rest days, holidays, training days and other days that are naturally part of a police officer’s cycle of existence. There is an element of tail—of absorption —that causes a problem. However, the Metropolitan police—we have been in constant touch with the force, on an almost daily basis—has done a fantastic job from top to bottom over the last few months. It has been really fantastic and I pay tribute to it for the work that it has done.

The other area that the hon. Lady mentioned is antisocial behaviour. While she is hearing from her residents that they have a particular experience that is causing them concern over antisocial behaviour, we have seen a fall in antisocial behaviour across the country over the last few years. During the covid lockdown, the Office for National Statistics could not do its standard crime survey, so it was doing telephone surveys throughout it on crime. The ONS’s results show that about 20% of the people who they called during the lockdown witnessed antisocial behaviour during the three months of lockdown, but, at the same time, 21% said that they saw a reduction in antisocial behaviour during that period, so nationally, the figure is broadly flat. Nevertheless, I understand that in a low crime area, such as Richmond or Twickenham, the impact of antisocial behaviour is amplified because people are used to existing with a much quieter background in that leafy part of London. Antisocial behaviour does have that impact.

While the police should and could play their part, I ask that both the hon. Member for Richmond Park and the hon. Member for Twickenham make sure that their local authority is making full use of the tools that were given to communities and local authorities in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. There is a suite of tools there, such as civil injunctions, criminal behaviour orders, public space protection orders, community protection notices, dispersal powers and closure powers, all of which could be used. Some of the antisocial behaviour to which the hon. Member for Richmond Park referred is related to licensed premises and the consumption of alcohol, and making sure that local authorities have both their licensing policy and enforcement in good shape is critical to success.

[Sarah Olney]

Perhaps it would be helpful to clarify that some of what I described in my speech as antisocial behaviour has been referred to by the police, I believe, as unlicensed musical events or in that sort of category. It is my understanding that there has been a big increase in that across London during the summer, particularly as there have been no licensed musical events such as Glastonbury or other festivals, and nightclubs have all been closed. A lot of that activity has moved to open spaces. That is the experience that we have been having in Richmond and in Twickenham.

[Kit Malthouse]

Yes, the hon. Lady is right. We have seen a surge in unlicensed music events across the whole country as two things happened. First, young people have a natural desire to be sociable, but for them, the rock concert/festival schedule was abandoned. However, at the same time, in one or two instances, there is perhaps initial evidence to show that those involved in the drugs industry are co-ordinating these events as a natural place in which they can sell drugs. Dealing with that was behind the regulations that the Government introduced to impose £10,000 fixed penalty notices on those who organise such gatherings. As she will know, a number of those penalty notices have been handed out. With unlicensed music events, the police have powers to confiscate equipment, and they very often do so. Sadly, however, despite the fact that such equipment costs several thousand pounds, they are under a duty to return it in time. I did wonder whether we could either take our time returning it or find some other use for it, to act as a suitable disincentive to organising such events, but the £10,000 fixed penalty notice was apparently more powerful.

Since then, there has been a reduction in unlicensed music events. Some of that has related to—let us say—assertive action by the police, and the change in the regulatory environment. It has also, frankly, related to the weather. As the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), who is sitting in the Whip’s place, will know—he has been, in the past, a special constable of some note—the police often refer to their greatest friend and ally in fighting crime as PC Rain. The weather will, we hope, have a depressive effect on such events over the autumn.

Alongside all the powers, however, the hon. Lady is quite right to say that there is an urgent desire in London, in particular, and in the whole country for a greater sense of police presence. People want much more assurance that public space is governed and controlled. That desire is a large part of what lies behind our pledge to recruit 20,000 more police officers.

[Kit Malthouse]

I recognise the issue that the hon. Lady raises, but as a former cabinet member for finance in a London borough for five years, although I understand the funding pressures on councils, much of their financial fate lies in their own hands. During my time in local government in the capital, we saw, let us say, variable performance from a financial point of view. There were those who managed their finances well, and those who did it not so well.

I have not looked recently at the balance sheet of Richmond Council, and I would be happy to have that discussion if the hon. Lady wishes. Nevertheless, it is not terribly expensive to put in place, for example, a public spaces protection order. Such an order could be used somewhere like a park, where antisocial behaviour is taking place. The order can insist either that certain activities do not take place or, indeed, that certain things should take place, and the breaching of it is an offence. If Richmond Council wanted to focus on that, I am sure that it could. The council has, obviously, changed hands politically a number of times, but in my day it was never known for being on the back foot, under either Conservative or Liberal Democrat control, when it came to protecting its residents. I hope and believe that it will step forward this time as well.

Both hon. Members raised the issue of privately funded police forces. I am a Conservative, and I believe in freedom of association. I would therefore not want to restrict the ability of private individuals to gather together to protect themselves in a particular way. We see that happening in other parts of our world. For example, the Jewish community in this country has its own protection organisation called the Community Security Trust, which mounts guards and protection outside synagogues every Saturday because they are a particular community who feel that they might be targeted when they are on their way to worship their God. That is legal, allowable and perfectly reputable, as far as I am concerned.

[Sarah Olney]

Does the Minister not accept that there is a difference between arranging a private security firm to protect private property and arranging a privately funded police force to patrol a public area?

[Kit Malthouse]

Actually, the Community Security Trust is not a security organisation. It is a voluntary organisation and, as I understand it, members of the community volunteer to be part of the CST to protect their own community. It does require some funding, but it is nevertheless very organised and they train very well. It is a remarkable organisation. In fact, it has worked with other faith groups and talked to them about their own safety, because sadly, many faith groups are often the target of extremists.

Of course, we have private security firms who cater to businesses and others at events and concerts—like those rock concerts that have not happened this summer—and who do that kind of work, so I am hesitant to condemn it. However, the situation that the hon. Lady is talking about, which we have seen elsewhere in the capital, not least in St John’s Wood over the past 10 or 12 years, is undesirable. It would be great to be in a position where people did not feel a compulsion to do those things because the police presence was such that they felt a sense of governed space and security, and my hope and ambition is that, over the next three years, that is exactly where we will get to.

Question put and agreed to.

Automated Facial Recognition Surveillance

Debate between Sarah Olney and Kit Malthouse

Monday 27th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on police use of automated facial recognition surveillance.

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service (Kit Malthouse)]

The Government are supporting the police and empowering them with the tools they need to deliver on the people’s priorities by cutting the crime that is blighting our communities. We have already pledged 20,000 more officers, new powers and the biggest funding increase in a decade, but embracing new technology is also vital and we support the use of live facial recognition, which can help to identify, locate and arrest violent and dangerous criminals who may otherwise evade justice.

Live facial recognition compares the images of people passing a camera with a specific and predetermined list of those sought by the police. It is then up to officers to decide whether to stop and speak to those flagged as a possible match. This replicates traditional policing methods such as using spotters at a football match. The technology can make the search for suspects quicker and more effective, but it must be used strictly within the law.

The High Court has found that there is an appropriate legal framework for the police use of live facial recognition, and that includes police common-law powers, data protection and human rights legislation, and the surveillance camera code. Those restrictions mean that sensitive personal data must be used appropriately for policing purposes, and only where necessary and proportionate. There are strict controls on the data gathered. If a person’s face does not match any on the watchlist, the record is deleted immediately. All alerts against the watchlist are deleted within 31 days, including the raw footage, and police do not share the data with third parties.

The Metropolitan Police Service informed me of its plans in advance, and it will deploy this technology where intelligence indicates it is most likely to locate serious offenders. Each deployment will have a bespoke watchlist made up of images of wanted people, predominantly those wanted for serious and violent offences. It will also help the police to tackle child sexual exploitation and to protect the vulnerable. Live facial recognition is an important addition to the tools available to the police to protect us all and to keep murderers, drug barons and terrorists off our streets.

[Sarah Olney]

We must not allow the UK to become a society in which innocent people feel as though their every movement is being watched by the police. We must not throw away UK citizens’ right to privacy or their freedom to go about their lawful business without impediment.

An independent review of the Met’s facial recognition trial was published last July, and its conclusions are damning. Does the Minister agree with the report that the legal basis for this roll-out is questionable at best and is likely to be in conflict with human rights law? According to an analysis of the Met’s test data, 93% of supposed matches in the four years of trials have been wrong. As well as being inaccurate, facial recognition technology has been shown to be much less accurate in identifying women and ethnic minorities than in identifying white men. This means that women and black, Asian and minority ethnic people are much more likely to be stopped without reason than white men. Given that a black person is already 10 times more likely to be stopped and searched than a white person, does the Minister share the Liberal Democrats’ concern that this technology will increase discrimination and further undermine trust in the police among BAME communities?

The biometrics commissioner, the Information Commissioner and the surveillance camera commissioner have all raised concerns about facial recognition surveillance, and all three have argued that its impact on human rights must be resolved before a wider roll-out. What steps has the Minister taken since those warnings to examine and address the human rights issues they raise?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady rightly raises a number of issues that need to be addressed in the operation of this technology. I assume she is referring to last year’s statement by the Information Commissioner’s Office. The commissioner reviewed the Met’s operation and raised some concerns about how it was operating the pilot of live facial recognition. Happily, the ICO put out a statement on Friday saying that it is broadly encouraged by the fact that the Met has adopted some of its recommendations in this deployment, although she is right that the ICO remains concerned about the legal basis.

Since the ICO report was published, we have had the judgment in a case brought against South Wales police’s deployment of this technology, in which the High Court found there is an appropriate legal basis for the operation of facial recognition. However, I understand that there may be an appeal, and there is a suspended judicial review into the Met’s operation, which may be restarted, so if Members do not mind, I will limit what I say about that.

As for disproportionality, there is no evidence of it at the moment; the Met has not found disproportionality in its data in the trials it has run, and certainly a Cardiff University review of the South Wales police deployment could not find any evidence of it at all. The hon. Lady is, however, right to say that in a country that prides itself in being an open and liberal society, we need to take care with people’s impressions of how technology may impinge upon that. As she will know, live facial recognition has an awful lot of democratic institutions looking at it, not only this House: the London Assembly has a policing ethics panel; we have the Surveillance Camera Commissioner and the Information Commissioner; and there is a facial recognition and biometrics board at the National Police Chiefs’ Council, which brings people together to look at these issues. There is lots of examination to make sure that it is used appropriately, and I am pleased to say that the Met will be operating it on a very transparent basis. As I understand it, the Met will be publishing information about which data was gathered and the success rate, and other information that will allow the public to have confidence that where the technology is deployed to identify wanted criminals it is having the effect intended.