Hotel Asylum Accommodation: Local Authority Consultation

Simon Fell Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to Liverpool City Council for the work that it is doing. We have set out a funding package for the council. I will be happy to keep in touch with the hon. Lady, if we are in a position to go further than that. I have always taken an interest in Liverpool and in trying to support it to ensure that it has better public services.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

My council was notified that it would be in receipt of 70 gentlemen on 22 December—not the best time of year to muster statutory services and get the third sector involved to give them the support they need, but none the less it stepped up and did it. I pay tribute to the Furness Multi-Cultural Community Forum for what it has done, but those 70 gentlemen have faced challenges: we have a growing far-right presence in town, they are socially isolated and they are not getting the support they need. What will move them out of hotels and get them contributing to society is getting through the backlog, which now stands at 122,000. Will the Minister please explain what the Department is doing to chow through that backlog and get people contributing to society rather than languishing in hotels in our communities?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we must power through the backlog, which has been allowed to reach an unacceptable level. We will do so by raising the productivity of teams and improving the management that oversees them. We will also look at how we prioritise cases, because some will have much higher grant rates than others. Anything further we can do to improve the situation, we will do. Improving the backlog is not the source of the issue; the source of the issue is the sheer quantity of people crossing the channel illegally. As much of our effort as possible needs to be focused on that, rather than on the symptoms of the problem.

Asylum Seekers Accommodation and Safeguarding

Simon Fell Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

It is a pity the hon. Lady takes that approach because I take my responsibilities to children, whether accompanied or otherwise, very seriously. We have put in place a wide range of support mechanisms. I mentioned earlier the work we are doing for unaccompanied children. The hotels, most of which are in Kent, have extremely sophisticated support. It is costing the taxpayer up to £500 a night for that accommodation, which gives her a sense of the degree of the support we are making available. The best thing she could do is to support her local authority and encourage others to take more unaccompanied children and families into good-quality local authority accommodation, or to find them foster care in the community. That is the task because we need to disperse these individuals as fast as we can across the country. She may shake her head, but I am afraid that suggests she does not understand that the way to resolve this issue is to help the children out of hotels and into the community as fast as we can.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

I am looking forward to my second visit to Manston tomorrow with the Home Affairs Committee. I am glad that the Minister has managed to get the numbers down at Manston. That is really important, but it strikes me that all we are doing is moving a problem from Manston into our communities. To solve this issue, we need to get through the backlogs, allow our communities to rest, and stop creating an environment where the far right can take root in constituencies such as mine and those of colleagues around the House. With that in mind, what measures is my right hon. Friend taking to surge Home Office processing capacity, so we can actually deal with the problem at the heart of this issue?

[Robert Jenrick]

It is essential that we accelerate decision making now within the Home Office. Over the summer, we piloted an approach that would very substantially increase decision making. That has been done in our Leeds office and we now intend to roll it out across the country as quickly as we can. That would take us from an average of around 1.5 decisions per caseworker per week to as many as four per week. We also want, in slightly longer time, to review all the red tape and bureaucracy that surround the process, so we can ensure our system is more streamlined, and to look at why, in the UK, we have a much higher approval rate for asylum than many comparable countries, such as France and Germany. That, at the heart of the issue, is why so many people choose to come here. They shop around for asylum and choose the UK when they are, in fact, economic migrants.

National Security

Simon Fell Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for what he has said. He is absolutely right. There is, sadly, no let-up in the concern about terrorism, and we know that the fact that we do not hear of incidents does not mean they were not prevented by our fantastic agencies in various different ways. The experience that I think must be the most sobering I have had for a long time was walking into my present role and hearing an update on the threats that we face every day, and the different ways in which our fantastic agencies and the officers who serve them have been conducting themselves in order to protect us. They are absolutely the best of us, and we are blessed and honoured to have them working for us and serving our state.

As for the hon. Gentleman’s other points, he will forgive me if I do not go into details. He knows why that is. As the shadow Home Secretary correctly said, it would be inappropriate to discuss operational matters for party advantage.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on cyber security, I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. I am sure he is well aware of the importance of disinformation and misinformation and the harm that it is causing to our country at the moment, whether by undermining our democracy or by spreading conspiracy theories. But if he is in any doubt about that, I recommend to him the BBC series “Death by Conspiracy?”, which shows how our constituents are being hurt, and even dying, as a result of the sharing of disinformation by, often, foreign actors.

With that in mind, will my right hon. Friend agree, within the taskforce, to look at the role of legal but harmful content and keep it under review? Will he also ensure that we look at the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and its possible reform? Some of the people who are working hard daily to keep us and our businesses safe are currently under threat of legal action just through doing their jobs.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I thank my hon. Friend for his work on the all-party parliamentary group. He is to right to highlight the threat of disinformation and, indeed, the way in which cyber is being used against us. I am not entirely sure whether it was flattery or mere coincidence that as soon as I took this job, the BBC ran a series of programmes called “The Capture” in which the Security Minister—rather better-looking than me—had managed to annoy a certain hostile power of which we have been speaking this afternoon, and was subject to a number of cyber-attacks. I very much hope it was coincidence, not prediction.

Computer Misuse Act 1990

Simon Fell Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Dr Wallis) for securing this debate. Once upon a time I also applied for it, so I am glad that one of us got through the lottery.

I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on cyber security, and this is an issue that we have looked at time and again. We have looked at specific reform of the CMA, and frankly, with almost any issue we concentrate on, we keep coming back to the challenges that the CMA brings up for professionals. As others have done, I thank CyberUp for the support it has given, both to the APPG and in advance of this debate. When reforms are made to the CMA, it will be due in no small part to the advocacy that CyberUp and industry have put behind this.

My view is that the CMA is holding the UK back and making us less secure. It needs reform, and the urgency is very keenly felt in the industry. It is frankly ridiculous that we are reliant on a piece of legislation that came into force at the time of Windows 3.0, before Google and Amazon, and crucially before the internet had come into common use.

In the last meeting of the APPG on cyber security we had Ciaran Martin, the former head of the National Cyber Security Centre, before us, and we asked his view. It is hard to articulate how much he rolled his eyes when I asked the question, but clearly the view of those who operate in this space is that the time for change is now.

As it is currently written—I apologise, Sir Mark, for going over some of the same ground—the CMA inadvertently criminalises a large proportion of vulnerability and threat intelligence research that UK cyber-security professionals must carry out to protect the UK from cyber-threats such as the one affecting No. 10 that is in the news today, ransomware attacks and those from state actors such as Russia.

Let us be clear: the legal jeopardy that cyber-security professionals face is not theoretical but very real. We have heard from professionals who have been at the sharp end of the law for merely doing their jobs—probing weaknesses in order to fix them. At a time when the world has never been more connected, and there is inter-reliance between news, messaging, shopping, banking, security and leisure—the web of systems that hold modern society together—we need to ensure that the laws are fit for purpose and fulfil the roles they were enacted to achieve. I firmly believe that this one does not and we are the poorer for it.

It is worth spending a little time putting this in context and detailing the main challenges of an unreformed CMA. Cyber-security professionals identify vulnerabilities in products and services and work with manufacturers and vendors to fix them. They detect cyber-attacks, gain insights into attackers and victims, lessen the impact of incidents and prevent future ones. The Government’s “National Cyber Strategy 2022” recognised the value of that important work. It committed to building valuable and trusted relationships with the cyber-security researcher community to deliver a reduction in those vulnerabilities. But the CMA is currently a block to that, irrespective of the intent or motive of those doing the work. That leaves the UK’s cyber defenders having to act with one hand tied behind their back, because much of their defensive work requires interaction with compromised victims’ and criminals’ computer systems where owners will not give access or explicitly permit such activities.

Another aspect is that the Act is having a really damaging impact on the cyber-skills pipeline. In 2018, the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy concluded that a shortage of “deep technical expertise” was one of the greatest challenges faced by the UK in relation to cyber-security. This year’s national cyber-security strategy made explicit the need to grow and improve sectoral skills in order to build UK resilience to threats. But we should be clear about the chilling effect that the CMA is having on doing that and the challenges that it throws up. The sector needs a diverse range of minds in order to continue to grow and to adapt to a changing environment. High-profile prosecutions enabled by the CMA for little more than pursuing public interest investigations reinforce negative stereotypes that may deter some from pursuing a career in cyber-security. If the UK is to meet the challenge of closing the cyber skills gap, it needs to stop criminalising the activity, and ultimately talent, that is needed to promote the industry and grow its share of the global cyber-security services market, which is currently dominated by North America. That will not only grow cyber skills in our own economy, but help to build cyber resilience and better defend the UK.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend pointed out, there are relatively simple tweaks that we think could be made to this legislation that would make a big difference in this space. They would unlock huge opportunities for the sector and our national resilience. As has been mentioned, the inclusion in the CMA of a statutory defence, not a blanket one—I think my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) was absolutely right on that—would give cyber-security professionals acting in the public interest a clear defence from prosecution. That would provide legal clarity for individuals, the industry and the state. We can learn much from our international partners in this space about how to achieve a fair balance and enact safeguards to ensure that new freedoms are not abused by those who are not on the side of the angels. I am talking about a clear framework that measures the defensibility of an action, proportionality, intent and competence and looks at a harm-benefit profile. They are the sorts of principles that we should be considering when looking at reform.

It seems bizarre that as we launch the National Cyber Force in Lancashire and as my local town deal brings a university campus focused on cyber-security in Barrow, the legal framework that will enable these people to do their jobs and practise their craft is lagging behind. It is clear from the national cyber-security strategy that, as a country and a Government, we do not lack aspiration in this space, and that is a really good thing. It is the burden of advanced nations to have to defend these new frontiers, but we must ensure that the framework is in place to support our good efforts and deliver on the opportunities that the strategy speaks about. A very good step would be reforming this Act and ensuring that those acting in the public interest have protection from unjust litigation. Doing that would make us all safer.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

While we are on the subject of the new cyber-security centre, I too am very pleased that it is coming to Lancashire; it is next door to my constituency. Like Mr Baker, I am proud to have studied computer science at master’s level—in my case at the University of Manchester—so I am very pleased with the developments and the way that things are going forward. We will hear from the Front Benchers now.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Simon Fell Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

I rise to speak in broad support of the Bill, which offers a comprehensive reform of an asylum system that is broken and dysfunctional in part.

It is clear that a system is needed that is fair to those in genuine need but firmly against those who break the rules and the criminal gangs who seek to exploit some of the world’s most vulnerable and desperate people. Access to the UK’s asylum system should be based on need, not the ability to pay for people smugglers. All too often, it is they who gain, not the individuals who are being trafficked.

My constituents have been rightly enraged by the images of abandoned boats on the south coast and they have not been backwards in making their demands for change. They do not want to pull up the drawbridge, but they expect that we should have a system that cares for those in need and which exercises genuine control over who enters the country and in what circumstance. Mine is a community of strong ties, which has welcomed families from afar with open arms, but it also a community that, frankly, has been shocked to find it would appear that we do not have control over who enters and leaves our country, so I applaud my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary’s determination to improve the UK’s position.

Imagine, for a moment, the lived experience of some of the people arriving on the UK’s shores by boat—a boat not fit for purpose and overpacked with families with a bursting need to leave their homes. Such people sold most of what they owned to pay for a journey that is likely to be illegal from beginning to end and have paid what money they have gathered to criminals who care not a jot for their safety or whether they make their end destination. These are people who are drip-fed stories of a land of milk and honey on these shores by gangs who want to extort as much money as possible from them by making the journey longer, by encouraging them to travel through safe countries to the UK. The gangs do not care about their charges; they care about their wallets. This is a system that must be reformed and the most valuable tool to do that is to bear down on those who enable it: the vile criminal gangs at its heart.

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s determination on that aspect of the Bill in particular, but I would also welcome the Government giving some consideration to strengthening an area linked to that—that is, joining up the powers that they might employ to gather information from across different silos, such as law enforcement, the private sector and the public sector. We know that these gangs are linked to lots of different types of criminal activity, whether it is money laundering, human slavery or even common scams, so we need to break down those silos to work more effectively and tackle them.

I also welcome that the Government have been clear that we stand by our moral and legal obligations to help innocent people fleeing cruelty around the world. This is rightly the cornerstone of our immigration policy. Continuing the resettlement of genuine refugees, family reunion and improving the reception processing system are welcome measures.

I would also argue that there is another side to this that needs watching: if we choose not to reform the system now, we risk stoking up outrage and fear on our shores. I have already seen in my constituency some of the effects of this. We have had hateful right-wing propaganda distributed on the streets using some of the imagery from the south coast. Our cenotaph in Barrow was recently defaced, and we have had a few—very few, thankfully—isolated incidents of racism on our streets. The people responsible are the exception and the fringe, but we must be in no doubt that by tackling this issue fairly, we remove some of the tinder that could light a dangerous fire at home.

I broadly welcome the measures in the Bill. It is beyond time to reform our broken asylum system and replace it with one that is fair and offers a hand up for those in genuine need and targets those who seek to exploit some of the most vulnerable in the world.

Racist Abuse on Social Media

Simon Fell Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

If I may, I will just explain to the House where the Home Secretary is today. She is at this very moment hosting a long-standing meeting with charities on the frontline of tackling violence against women and girls and with the survivors of those crimes, so I hope the House will instead put up with me answering this urgent question. However, I know that the Home Secretary would reject many, indeed all, of the allegations that the right hon. Gentleman has just made about her conduct. She has been relentless—relentless —in pursuing social media companies to ensure that they take much tougher stances, as we all expect, not just on racism online, but on child sex exploitation, terrorism and other offences. So I do not accept his accusations across the Dispatch Box.

On the online safety Bill, this is a landmark piece of legislation. The Government have been very careful to ensure that the Bill receives the scrutiny of the House, and that is why we are taking the confident step, I would say, of opening up the draft Bill to pre-legislative scrutiny. We do not do that for every Bill, but we want to get this Bill right. The House will remember that we did exactly the same with the Domestic Abuse Bill, and the Bill was made all the better for it. I am delighted that Labour has now, I understand, provided the names of its Committee members, so that the pre-legislative scrutiny can take place at pace. However, I underline the message that this House, but also the public, are watching the behaviours of online companies very carefully, and any company would be very wise to set out what it plans to do in relation to meeting the expectations of this place and of the public when it comes to conducting their systems in a way that is clear and that prevents the sorts of abuse we have seen this weekend.

On football banning orders, again the right hon. Gentleman will have heard what the Prime Minister said very clearly at PMQs about the work the Government are conducting in relation to football banning orders. It is complex because we know, for example, that some of the trolls who have targeted some members of the team over the weekend are overseas, but we very much want to work with football clubs and others to ensure that these orders have the powers that we all want them to have. As I have said throughout—and this is the golden thread that runs throughout our work on tackling online crimes—what is illegal offline is illegal online, and that is the principle we will be adopting throughout the online safety Bill.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her statement and for calling out some of the vile racist abuse that our brilliant players have had to face. On Sunday night, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate identified and reported 105 Instagram accounts that racially abused members of the England football team. As of this morning, only six of them have been taken down, so while we are getting warm words from some of these social media companies, that appears to be all we are getting from them at present. Can my hon. Friend therefore confirm that the online safety Bill will be brought forward with speed, and that those who post this abuse online will be held to proper account?

[Victoria Atkins]

My hon. Friend highlights some of the very practical responses that social media companies can take right now; they do not need to wait for the online safety Bill. I read with some dismay and anger a report in the i paper today about how Instagram had applied its own rules—community rules—in relation to offensive emojis and indeed highly offensive words that were sent to players, but the social media companies themselves have to explain how exactly their community rules accord with the expectations and indeed the law of our country. May I, however, just make the point again that we are not alone in this? This is a challenge facing every democratic society in the world, and it is by working together, as we are doing with our voluntary principles on tackling terrorism and child sexual exploitation, that we are going to be able to make real progress against these companies and against this hatred.

Grooming Gangs

Simon Fell Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con) [V]]

I appreciate the opportunity to speak in this important debate. In my constituency, this is very much a live issue, and it is causing considerable concern. There are ongoing investigations in my constituency on these issues and a pending trial. I will be very careful with my remarks, so as to protect that crucial work. If we ever hope to see justice, and for communities such as ours to be able to heal, that process must be able to play out in full.

I do not think it is unreasonable to ask the question of how widespread grooming activity is and how and where it links to child sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse cases. I also do not think it is unreasonable when people express a lack of faith in the system, as they have to me in conversations and surgery appointments. There are clear examples of where the system has not worked and victims have been let down time and again. There is a clear appetite for more information and for faith to be restored in the process. I firmly believe that the only way we will get there is through transparency—through making the failings of the past visible and demonstrably learning our lessons from them.

I want to concentrate the remainder of my remarks on a different aspect of this debate: those with vested interests stirring up tensions to suit their own ends. This is not to deny in any way the powerful and awful cases of CSE and CSA that exist and that must be stamped out whenever they occur. In Barrow, we have seen the sharp end of these vested interests. They take the vacuum of information that forms when investigations start or court processes begin, and they exploit people’s fears. They exploit their worst natures, and they fill the void with misinformation and conjecture that serves no one but themselves.

At the height of the first lockdown, in the middle of the pandemic in Barrow, we had the indignity of the far right turning up, stoking up tensions in our town and leading physical protests and convoys of vehicles down the A590, all the while proclaiming that they were doing it in the pursuit of justice. But of course, they were not. Instead of shining a light on injustice, they shone a light very brightly on themselves. They talked up the causes and the division that they promoted, and then they left, leaving people who are sat at home by necessity, spending too much time on Facebook, with questions. Those with books to sell and media reputations to burnish should be ashamed of themselves for exploiting the fears of communities such as mine, who have legitimate worries and concerns.

I hate to say it, but I have no doubt that there is sexual exploitation going on in some of the towns and communities that make up constituencies such as mine. It is a sad fact of modern life. While every single case is reprehensible and requires a proportionate response from the justice system, individual cases do not mean an epidemic or a cover-up, no matter what some of those I mentioned suggest. We have a burning need to restore faith in the processes that surround these investigations and to shine a light on them. The more transparent we can be, the easier that job will be, even if the conversation we must have to get there will be very difficult indeed.

I would like to end by thanking a few of my constituents. During a pandemic, in a lockdown, faced with some shocking headlines that are amplified by social media, the community has pulled together and looked after those most in need. I would especially like to thank Women’s Community Matters in Barrow for all it has done for those who need help most in our community—victims and survivors alike. We have a long way to go to win the public’s trust, and I very much hope that the new tackling child sexual abuse strategy gives us demonstrable results soon, so that that journey can begin.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

It will be obvious to those in the Chamber that it is nearly 6 o’clock, and clapping will be taking place throughout the country and in other parts of this building. Obviously, we will not have any clapping in the Chamber. Indeed, we have already paid tribute at noon today with our one minute’s silence to Captain Sir Tom Moore, who has been such a great inspiration to the country over the last year, and in memory of the many thousands of people who have died. As it reaches 6 o’clock, we will just pause for a moment. We do not need to clap, but we do show our appreciation.

Thank you. I call Tracy Brabin.

Channel Crossings in Small Boats

Simon Fell Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I have already pointed out that last year we received 3,500 asylum applications from unaccompanied children—the highest number of any European country. That is our contribution to the European effort to look after children—more than any other country. I call upon the other European countries operating the camps that the hon. Lady describes to show the same compassion and attention that we do when we look after UASCs in this country.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

My hon. Friend rightly points out that these crossings are facilitated by criminal gangs—criminal gangs who, we should remember, care not a jot about those who are taking such treacherous journeys to our shores. Intelligence from the NCA and other partners suggests that these gangs are not just facilitating people-trafficking; they are linked to money laundering and wider organised crime group activity. What assurances can he give that we are looking at this issue in the round and applying all our intelligence to try to stop these gangs and stop these crossings?

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend is right in his analysis. National Crime Agency officers are embedded in law enforcement units around Europe and beyond to track down these criminal gangs. It is not just an issue in the UK and France. These criminal networks extend throughout Europe, through countries such as Germany, Italy and Greece, often through Turkey and thereafter into the middle east. The National Crime Agency and others are working tirelessly with other law enforcement agencies to crack down on these gangs in exactly the way he describes.

Windrush Lessons Learned Review

Simon Fell Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

As I have already stated, Wendy’s review is important because she described a number of measures that evolved under Labour, coalition and Conservative Governments over decades. It is important that we all look at ourselves, because we must all be better at walking in other people’s shoes. We must all take responsibility for the failings that happened in the past. We are also one community who deserve to be treated with respect. We should therefore all learn lessons from the past.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend referred to changing the Home Office’s openness to scrutiny, which will, quite rightly, lead to the Home Office better understanding the communities and groups it serves. What steps will she put in place to ensure that a similar level of understanding can be applied to the data that the Home Office holds and the impact that changes in policy might have on the people whom the data reflects?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about data, with the type of trends and information that comes through to the Home Office. In fact, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) also touched on data and processes. On scrutiny, we need to look at all aspects—not just policy but information, trends, flows, immigration data and all the sorts of data that come into the Department. We also need the skills to do that. That is part of the change we are seeing not just in the Home Office but across Government, with data analytics and information, in how we as a Government can respond on policy while treating people with compassion and fairness.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Fell Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

We have been very clear in our response to the Migration Advisory Committee report, and we will make sure that our new system serves the whole of our United Kingdom.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

Women’s Community Matters in my constituency is an amazing place. It helps women and families, including those in urgent need, but it is rightly concerned about the availability of refuges locally. There is one in Kendal; if it is full, families have to go out of the area, and often placements fail. We passed a landmark piece of legislation in the Domestic Abuse Bill. Will the Home Secretary look again at the funding and availability of these services in rural areas such as mine?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I commend him for his work locally and for raising this point. If I may, I will write to him with the specifics of what we can do in his local area to provide assistance and financial help.