Commercial Sexual Exploitation

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

There have been huge advances in the battle for women’s equality in recent decades, but on some issues, we have gone backwards. Chief among them is commercial sexual exploitation. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Siobhain McDonagh)]

Order. I ask that Members leave the Chamber quietly, out of respect for the Adjournment debate.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

Giving someone money, accommodation, food, a job or other services on the condition that they perform sex acts is sexual exploitation and abuse, yet the global trade in sexual exploitation—perpetrated primarily against women and girls—is bigger than ever before. Sex trafficking is the most profitable form of modern slavery in the world, while violent, misogynistic pornography is consumed on an unparalleled scale, mostly by men. This was not an accident, and it was not inevitable: we could and should have done so much more to protect women and girls. Instead, the past 14 years have been a veritable golden age for pimps and pornographers.

Immigration and Home Affairs

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)]

As this is my first time being returned to Parliament, I would like sincerely to thank all the House staff for making the process so smooth for me and all our new colleagues.

I am delighted to say that this King’s Speech has filled me with hope. We have suffered over a decade of Tory neglect, mismanagement and chaos. We have endured five Prime Ministers, seven Chancellors, 10 Education Secretaries, 12 Culture Secretaries and 16 Housing Ministers. Finally, we have a Labour Government with a plan to put politics back into the service of working people. We have a plan to save the NHS; nationalise the railways; reform benefits; recruit more teachers; properly fund councils; invest in green energy; clean up our rivers; provide children with breakfast in school every day; prioritise women’s health; reduce the gender pay gap; create a national care service; and bring transparency and accountability back to public office. It finally feels like the adults have entered the room, but I am under no illusion: the hard work is just beginning.

Nine months ago, I stood in this Chamber, albeit on the Opposition Benches, to respond to the King’s Speech in despair at the levels of crime and antisocial behaviour impacting our communities in the Erdington constituency. My constituency has the highest rate of knife crime in the west midlands. People contact me almost daily about Erdington high street. Residents have made it very clear that they are frightened to go into the high street. I hear the same story time and again: our high street has become unrecognisable. Where we used to have thriving small businesses we now have empty shop fronts, drug dealing and violence, so we have our work cut out. Labour has inherited chaos in community policing. Huge issues in our criminal justice system mean that not only is crime not being prevented, but it is not being punished either. That is why I welcome the new neighbourhood police guarantee.

When we speak about crime and antisocial behaviour, we must also talk about community mental health. As a district nurse and an independent lay manager—I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—I know how mental health services have been decimated, and how badly our communities are suffering in silence when it comes to their mental health. We cannot prevent crime without talking about mental health and improving community services, and I was glad to see provisions to modernise the Mental Health Act and make it fit for the future.

This King’s Speech shows Labour’s commitment to change: a commitment to higher growth and cheaper bills, a commitment to put the NHS back on its feet, and, crucially for my constituency, a commitment to create safer streets. It is vital that we crack down on antisocial behaviour and violent crime in our communities so that everyone can feel safe, and I am delighted that the King’s Speech pledges to create new respect orders, to halve serious violence in the next decade, and to take strong action to tackle violence against women and girls and knife crime.

When I stood here nine months ago, I said:

“We need to stop the decline and start fighting for a better future.”—[Official Report, 15 November 2023; Vol. 740, c. 742

Well, that fight starts now.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Siobhain McDonagh)]

I call Paul Kohler to make his maiden speech.

[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech—although I must admit to a degree of trepidation following the excellent maiden speech of the hon. Member for Glenrothes and Mid Fife (Richard Baker). It was a compelling, poignant and witty speech, as were so many of those that went before.

It is a huge and humbling honour to be elected to represent and serve the people of Wimbledon, a name that is synonymous with strawberries and cream, grass courts and tennis, but a constituency that includes so much more, extending from Morden underground station in the south—where you, Madam Deputy Speaker, have your constituency office—to Old Malden in the west, where the Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece “Ophelia” was painted by Sir John Everett Millais on, or more accurately in, the Hogsmill river.

Wimbledon is a suburb of London, but has two farms, a village, a wonderful common, the occasional Womble, three professional and many amateur theatres, two cinemas, the Wimbledon College of Arts—part of the University of the Arts London—and vibrant small businesses, many of them in the arts and hospitality. It has a park designed by Capability Brown, although that is currently under threat from the All England Club—Members should see my early-day motion for further details—and the beautiful River Wandle, when it is not blighted by that running motif in so many Liberal Democrat speeches, sewage. Its housing stock ranges from grand mansions to crumbling social housing. It has one of the most affluent and well-educated electorates in the country, but also a 38% deprivation rate, despite the best efforts of excellent local charities including Dons Local Action Group, Wimbledon Guild and Faith in Action. It is also a diverse and harmonious constituency, boasting one of the largest mosques in Europe, a beautiful Buddhist temple, a Reform synagogue, Europe’s first fully consecrated Hindu temple, the Papal Nuncio, and Christian churches and places of worship of almost every denomination.

As well as hosting the world’s premier tennis tournament, we are home to England’s most progressive football club, AFC Wimbledon—a club which knows that fans, not the money men, are the beating heart of any team, and a club which embodies the values at the heart of the Government’s eagerly awaited and much anticipated football governance Bill. That is unlike, it pains me to say, my own team, Crystal Palace, which has previously argued against the reforms heralded in the Bill, much to my shame. That is not to mention the shame of my constituents, who have just learned that their MP is a Crystal Palace fan.

I am playing a dangerous game here, because, as our defeated opponents now know and we will no doubt know some day, constituents are not slow to show their displeasure. A few weeks ago, I knocked on one door and asked the gentleman who answered if he had decided for whom he was going to vote. “I like her,” he said. “Her—the Conservative?” I replied. “No, her,” he responded. “What, the Labour candidate?” “Yeah, I like her. I don’t like him much.” “Who?” “Him. I don’t like him.” “What, the Lib Dem?” “Yeah, I don’t like him.” “You mean me?” “I don’t like him.” “That’s me.” “I really don’t like him.” “That’s me!” “What, you?” “Yes.” “Oh. Nothing personal, mate.”

But politics is personal, of course. Not infrequently, it is much too personal, although my Conservative predecessor, Stephen Hammond, and I stayed the right side of the line most of the time. We saw each other as opponents, rather than enemies. At this point, I must pay tribute to Stephen, who was a hard-working and committed constituency MP—due in no small part to the prodigious efforts of his office manager, his wife Sally, who ran a tight ship and a very efficient operation. Quite bizarrely, while Stephen and Sally are now tasked with letting staff go and dismantling that very office, I am kept busy trying to replicate their exact set-up. How is that sensible, efficient or cost effective? Surely it would make more sense for every constituency to have a permanent MP’s office that is staffed by caseworkers who, as in a department of state, move seamlessly, along with the ongoing casework, from the outgoing MP to the incoming MP. But it is what it is.

As liberal Wimbledon’s first ever Liberal MP, I will, despite the distractions, work tirelessly to represent my constituents and their values. As an academic lawyer, I will do all I can to defend the rule of law, which is under threat from our badly neglected and crumbling civil and criminal justice system. In particular, our prisons and probation service are in crisis. May I take this opportunity to congratulate the Prime Minister on the inspired appointment of James Timpson as Prisons Minister? There can be no one better than the chair of the Prison Reform Trust, who has walked the talk throughout his professional life, to lead a national debate on the role of prisons and imprisonment. We need to explore more effective alternatives to prison, including house arrests and curfews, while putting the victim at the heart of the criminal justice system by fully embracing restorative justice—something that I know from personal experience can have a transformative effect on victims, as it did on my family, with the added bonus of dramatically curtailing rates of recidivism.

There is much more I would like to say—for example, about the need to restore neighbourhood policing, which, as the Home Secretary said earlier, was decimated under the previous Government. Somewhat more parochially, there is an urgent need to guarantee the long-term future of Wimbledon police station, which, six years after my judicial review quashed the Mayor of London’s decision to close it, remains under threat, despite the Casey report making it clear that local police stations are critical to the success of neighbourhood policing. But those discussions will have to wait for another day.

To conclude, Madam Deputy Speaker, may I just say that I look forward to working constructively with Members on all sides of the House on these and the many other pressing issues that face us, both now and in the years to come?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call Ben Coleman to make his maiden speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

Rail in public ownership, stronger workers’ rights, a publicly owned energy supplier, a ban on no-fault evictions and an end to the non-dom tax status—these are some of the key foundations to recovery that we can celebrate in this King’s Speech, after 14 years of austerity, privatisation and squeezed living standards, but I want to touch on a few things that were not included.

I was pleased to support the amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson). Removing the two-child benefit cap is the most cost-effective and immediate way for our Government to lift 300,000 children out of poverty. The notion that in the sixth-largest economy in the world we cannot find the money has to be wrong. While the taskforce is good, we must make moves as soon as possible to make this is a reality. If there were a national emergency, we would find the money. If the levels of child poverty at the moment are not a national emergency, I do not know what is.

I was also pleased to support the amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) to end the supply of arms to Israel and uphold international law. The Government have called for a ceasefire and we need to back that up with action.

I will focus the majority of my remarks on the dreadful legislative legacy on civil liberties left behind by the previous Government. If we take simply the broad heading of our liberties, the previous Government curbed the right to protest, to free assembly, to freedom of speech, to organise in trade unions and to freedom from covert operations by the state. The right to vote has been supressed. Religious freedom was attacked through the demonisation of Muslims and Muslim communities. We cannot possibly pose as champions of freedom and democracy while these stains remain on our statute book.

In addition, we should note that the previous Government did nothing to correct the gross imbalance that now exists between employers and trade unions with regard to workers’ rights. They promised to block the gross abuse that led to the scandal at P&O but did absolutely nothing. They also toyed with the idea of regularising the legislative mess around a woman’s right to choose, and so address issues of women’s sexual and reproductive health, and expanding access to safe and legal abortions throughout the country. We cannot repeat these serial failures to act. This is about what it means to live in a free society.

Furthermore, there is a slew of secondary legislation, rules and guidance that infringe or suppress the rights of citizens. There are too many to mention, but I am thinking about the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021, the Overseas Operations Act 2021, the Elections Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023. A running theme throughout those Acts is, in effect, to place officers of the state above the law—whether they be police officers, members of the armed services, members of the security services or others—as long as they were acting under the direction of a more senior officer.

These laws severely curtail the fundamental rights of citizens. Under these Acts, it is officers of the state who decide what is lawful, not the courts. I remind hon. and right hon. Members that placing agents of the state above the law is almost the very definition of a police state. It is authoritarian and anti-democratic. It is not the legal basis of a free and democratic society. The same is true of any claim that is made that officers of the state determine the law. They do not; their duty is to uphold it. Over time, I would confidently expect each and every one of these pieces of legislation to face legal challenges, including, if necessary, in the European Court, because they are so flawed and draconian.

If our democracy is going to work for everyone, it has to include everyone. Our party has already made important commitments to extend the franchise to young people by bringing in automatic voter registration. Scrapping the exclusory voter ID laws that the Tories introduced is another urgent priority to strengthen engagement in the democratic process. A survey by More in Common estimates that more than 400,000 people were prevented from voting in the general election due to these undemocratic rules. The same research shows that people of colour were 2.5 times more likely to be turned away. Let us be clear about this: any law that disproportionately stops black and brown people from participating in our democracy is racist. The voter ID laws were introduced on the pretence of tackling voter fraud, yet between 2017 and 2022 there were just 18 convictions. Compare that with the 400,000 people blocked from voting at the ballot box.

There are so many things that we want to see. I want to congratulate the Prime Minister on his announcement that there will be an early repeal of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. This, too, is an anti-democratic, authoritarian measure that places members of the armed forces above the law. The Prime Minister’s announcement on this should be a model for the rest of the legislation that I have mentioned.

It is also very important to look at some of the actions that the previous Government took. They rushed legislation through in a very hurried way. In fact, they gave us a model for doing things in the future. I wish to point out that the people of this country voted against that Government, so let us repeal all of their awful legislation both quickly and decisively.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Siobhain McDonagh)]

I call Frank McNally to make his maiden speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the new Member for Coatbridge and Bellshill (Frank McNally) on a fantastic speech, and congratulate all those we have heard from today across the House. It is evident that this Parliament is going to be a vital and vibrant forum for debate, and it is refreshing to have not only so many new faces, but clearly so much ability here.

They say that a week is a long time in politics, and perhaps the last fortnight feels like a lifetime. We have seen optimism surge across the country, palpably improved, because the public see a Government with purpose and acting at pace. We have seen 40 new Bills introduced through the King’s Gracious Speech. An electrifying pace has been adopted, and I commend both the Prime Minister and the whole Front-Bench team for the work they are doing. From halving violence against women and girls to the scrapping of the Rwanda proposals, from putting in place special measures against water companies to the football governance Bill, the list goes on.

However, it is the legislation aimed at addressing the instability and insecurity in our country, while delivering prosperity, that I think is so important. That instability is felt by people, businesses and public authorities and is perhaps seen by other national Governments, and our economy experienced catastrophic consequences from the kamikaze Budget 18 months ago. I welcome the legislation that has been put forward to achieve that goal.

That insecurity manifests itself in many different ways. We see 14 million people living in poverty, 4.3 million of them children, and 1 million, incredibly, living in destitution. We see insecurity of tenure and the rise of no-fault evictions, which is why legislation for renters’ rights is so important, and the insecurity of leasehold, hence the importance of the legislation on leasehold and commonhold. We see the insecurity of work, the zero-hours contracts and the loss of rights in the workplace that people suffer. That is why the employment rights Bill will be so important.

It is all down to the economy. What we can do with the economy, in addressing and repairing the corrosion wrought by austerity, is so important. I believe the means will now be at our disposal, through the establishing of a national wealth fund. We have seen sovereign wealth funds in many other countries and what they have done to transform those countries. I believe the legislation addressing pension schemes, unlocking the wealth that we have here, will be an important contribution to that. Something like less than 2% of the £2.5 trillion of pension fund assets run by 30,000 often very small schemes is invested in UK. That is such a small proportion. There will be benefits for the UK, but also for our wider economy.

Above all, we will address and reform planning legislation and infrastructure, bringing more affordable housing to our towns and cities—particularly towns such as Warwick and Leamington, where we have relatively high property costs. The King’s high school site, right in the heart of Warwick, has lain dormant for five years because the developer has not got around to developing it.

The legislation to deliver GB Energy will be so important for transforming the energy mix in this country, doubling our onshore wind, trebling our solar energy production and quadrupling our offshore wind. The great grid upgrade, for which National Grid has been pushing for so long, will be so important. Critically, it will bring down bills by an average of £300 per household while addressing climate change at the same time.

I believe that education is at the core of what we can bring, along with a modern industrial strategy. The work being done by the Education team is so important. What can our universities bring to this equation? Higher education is so important, and universities are real dynamos—generators of wealth and prosperity—in our region through their scientific research, the development of new materials and research projects, and the new energy clusters. This is a new Government of energy, ambition and public service who will put country first, party second.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Siobhain McDonagh)]

I call Helena Dollimore to make her maiden speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tahir Ali]

No, I will not. You need to go back to your constituents and explain that. I will not take any interventions.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Siobhain McDonagh)]

Order. I draw the hon. Member’s attention to the fact that when we use the word “you” in this House, we are referring to the Chair.

[Tahir Ali]

I apologise for not using the correct word, and with that I am out of time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Thank you.

I apologise to all hon. Members who have not been called to speak today, but we must now start the wind-ups. I call the shadow Minister.

Crash-for-cash Insurance Fraud

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for securing this debate about crash-for-cash scams. South-west London has been a target for organised crime gangs seeking to scam constituents in both of our patches, so this is a much-needed debate. The more attention we give the issue, the less likely our constituents are to be the victims of an insurance fraud.

I will start by declaring an interest: in retrospect, I understand that I have been the victim of a crash-for-cash incident. About eight months ago, I was driving through Tooting on a residential road when a moped came out of nowhere, overtook me and stopped right in front of me. I was not travelling very fast—it was a residential road—so I did an emergency stop and managed to avoid hitting the moped.

Immediately, the driver dropped the moped and began to shout and point at me. I pulled over to see that he was okay, but I was absolutely confused because I knew I had done no damage to his moped and that he too was not hurt in any way. I just did not understand what was going on. He dragged me over, took my details and took photographs of me, of my car, which showed no signs of damage, and of his moped. I gathered myself to take pictures of his moped and watched him drive off on it, and I thought no more of the incident. Then, some time later, I received a letter from a solicitor demanding large amounts of money because of the need for the driver to use a replacement vehicle.

Not until a constituent came to my advice surgery and went on to describe exactly the same sort of case did I really understand what had happened, and I feel pretty stupid now. My constituent, Ms T, told me that she had spotted a stationary moped on a residential road. Then, when she turned to exit a junction, the moped sped up and lightly tapped her car. The driver then threw his bike to the floor and started shouting at her. He immediately took photographs of Ms T’s car, but he fled the scene before she could take down any of his details. Lo and behold, she was then contacted by her insurers, who let her know that the driver had made a claim. Only then did I realise that both my constituent and I were among the 170,000 people targeted every year by organised crime gangs as part of crash-for-cash scams.

Since then, I have met representatives of Allianz and LV= insurers—not my own, I hasten to add—and learned that crash for cash is a slick operation that targets women: specifically women on the school run, as the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington said, because the gangs feel that they are less likely to put up a fight. That was the experience of Ms T, who was driving near a school at 10 am when the incident happened, and it is the experience of four in 10 people who fall victim to this. There also seem to be hotspots, with criminals targeting the outskirts of major cities and, specifically in south-west London, Thornton Heath, which, although it is part of Croydon, abuts my own constituency.

The scam is valued at about £392 million a year. It is big business that is only getting bigger—Allianz has reported that the crime has increased by 25%. What can we do about it? The first thing is the Government’s fraud strategy. The crash-for-cash scam is not even mentioned in that document, but if we are serious about our plan to stop fraud at source and pursue those responsible, that would be a sensible first step.

The next step is the job of the insurance industry: we need insurers to do a thorough job of investigating opportunistic insurance fraud and to let constituents know that they may have been a victim. In my own case, when I gathered myself and realised what had happened, I sent my insurers photographs and the short video. I said that I thought that I had been the victim of a scam. They wrote back to say that I would need to go to court and there was only a 50:50 chance of my being successful.

Finally, we need much more public awareness so that potential victims know how to look out for the scammers. If drivers know the signs of an unfazed driver with pre-written insurance information, they can let the police know and stop this at source. It might seem like a trivial issue, but it is a business worth £392 million a year and all our constituents will be better off if we can stamp it out. It is not a victimless crime. All of us trying to reinsure our cars know how much car insurance premiums are increasing. We must ensure that the law-abiding drivers of this country are not victims of higher premiums because of opportunistic organised crime.

Oral Answers to Questions

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Monday 22nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

I disagree with the hon. Lady’s characterisation that the Government have been too slow to act on Russian state threats. Following the invasion of Ukraine last year, the UK introduced trade sanctions in relation to internet and online media services, preventing designated entities from using platforms to connect with UK audiences online. The Government designated TV-Novosti and Rossiya Segodnya on 4 May 2023, choking off the Russian Federation’s ability to disseminate misinformation across the internet through its state-sponsored RT and Sputnik brands. There has been a lot of effort and a lot of work to counter Russian state disinformation.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman)]

Fraud is a despicable crime that accounts for more than 40% of all crime in England and Wales. The Government’s fraud strategy will do far more to block fraud at source by working closely with the private sector and law enforcement. The Online Safety Bill obligates tech platforms to protect users from fraud, and we will consult on banning cold calling for financial products and clamp down on number spoofing. We will ban devices that let criminals send mass scam texts or disguise their number when making scam calls. New powers will take down fraudulent websites.

I have told police forces that I want tackling fraud to be a priority, and a new national fraud squad with 400 new investigators will go after the worst fraudsters. We will change the law so that more victims of fraud get their money back, and Action Fraud will be replaced with a state-of-the-art system.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

My constituents Mrs L and Mr M, from Hong Kong, came to the UK on a British national overseas passport. They came to see me because they had been paying into a pension for the whole of their careers and sold their home before coming to the UK, but because of their BNO visa status, their bank account was frozen at the direction of the Chinese state, in contradiction to Hong Kong law. They are not alone; the Home Office has issued BNO visas to more than 160,000 Hongkongers who have moved to the UK. Does the Home Secretary think it is right that at the behest of the Chinese communist party, BNO passport holders are being denied access to their own money, from their own bank accounts—

Macpherson Report: Twenty-two Years On

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Third Report of the Home Affairs Committee, Session 2021-22, The Macpherson Report: twenty-two years on, HC 139, and the Government Response, HC 274.

It is an enormous pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Ms McDonagh. I am grateful to the Liaison Committee for allocating time for this debate, although I am well aware that events outside this place may be occupying hon. Members’ time this afternoon, so we do not have many Members present.

I am very pleased to see that we have a Home Office Minister with us, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove); I was worried when I heard that the former Policing Minister, the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), had been promoted to the position of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. I send my congratulations to him. I am very pleased to have the Minister here, and I am sure he is fully apprised of all the issues that I will raise.

I am sorry that the Home Affairs Committee felt the need to hold this debate. When we produce a report, it is normal to get a response from the Government within eight weeks. In this case, it took eight months. The Committee applied to the Liaison Committee for a debate in which to discuss the report, because we were concerned to ensure that the important issues we highlighted were raised in this place, and had not yet had a response from the Government. We subsequently got a response, and we are disappointed, shall we say, that the clear calls that we made on the Government in our very detailed and evidence-based report were not always heeded. We are pleased to have this opportunity to discuss some of the shortcomings of the response with the Minister.

This debate is particularly timely in the light of recent events, including the report on Charing Cross police station by the Independent Office for Police Conduct. I thank the former Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, now the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), for leading the Committee during this inquiry.

I want to set the report and this debate in the proper context. Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager, was murdered on 22 April 1993 in an unprovoked racist knife attack in Eltham, south London. The inquiry into his murder, led by the late Sir William Macpherson, uncovered major failings in the police investigation and in the way Stephen Lawrence’s family and his friend Duwayne Brooks were treated. Many of the findings and the subsequent 70 recommendations made by the Stephen Lawrence inquiry focused on long-standing issues that remain relevant today.

The Committee’s inquiry was prompted by concern that in some areas, in the words of Baroness Lawrence,

“things have become stagnant and nothing seems to have moved.”

Our inquiry sought to assess progress against some of the most important Macpherson report recommendations on: community confidence; tackling racist crimes; recruitment and retention of black and other ethnic minority officers and staff; race disparities in the use of stop and search and other powers; and the late Sir William Macpherson’s overall aim of

“the elimination of racist prejudice and disadvantage and the demonstration of fairness in all aspects of policing.”

The Committee found that policing today is very different from 23 years ago. Since the Macpherson report was published, there have been important improvements in policing, including significant improvements in the policing of racist crimes, commitments made to promoting equality and diversity, and good examples of local community policing.

At this point, I ought to acknowledge the work of our police officers and staff. Across the country, police forces work hard each day to tackle crime and keep all our communities safe. Police officers and staff work immensely hard to deliver fairness in policing, to support black and minority ethnic victims of crime, to tackle racist hate crimes and to support community cohesion. The important role the police play in our communities is the reason the Home Affairs Committee produced the report.

Having said all that, I want to be clear that our inquiry also identified persistent, deep-rooted and unjustified racial disparities in key areas, including a decline in confidence and trust in the police among some BME communities, lack of progress on BME recruitment, problems in misconduct proceedings, and unjustified racial disparities in stop and search. In those areas, we proposed urgent action. We found that there had been an increased focus in policing on race inequality since the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in the United States of America in 2020, which again shone a spotlight on race injustice across the world. Reforms announced by individual forces, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services and the IOPC are, of course, welcome. However, it should not have required video footage of the murder of a black man by a police officer and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests to concentrate the minds of the Government and the police on the imperative of race equality.

We are extremely grateful to everyone who contributed to our inquiry. We recognise that, for some, that involved retelling difficult and painful events. We would particularly like to thank Baroness Lawrence, Dr Neville Lawrence and Duwayne Brooks for their time and contributions. I also particularly thank the young people who shared their experience of the police with the Committee and who, along with the many other contributors to our inquiry, provided invaluable evidence that underpins our recommendations and conclusions. I thank our specialist adviser, Dr Nicola Rollock, and our specialist adviser on policing and the former chief constable of Greater Manchester police, Sir Peter Fahy, for their valuable input.

Although the report was extensive and we covered many issues, I will focus my contribution on four key areas that the Committee considered. First, I want to focus attention on confidence in policing among BME communities. The Macpherson report called for it to be a ministerial priority that all police services should

“increase trust and confidence in policing amongst minority ethnic communities.”

However, all these years on, evidence to our inquiry showed that there is a significant problem in black communities with confidence in the police, particularly among young people. The report noted:

“Adults from Black and mixed ethnic backgrounds are less likely to have confidence in the police than adults from White or Asian backgrounds and the confidence gap has widened over the last few years.”

Our report also noted that 67% of white adults said they believed the police would treat them fairly

“compared to 56% of Black adults. All victims of crime should feel confident in turning to the police for help.”

It is of deep and serious concern that black people have much lower expectations than white people of being treated fairly and with respect by the police.

Data for England and Wales also suggest that the confidence gap between black people and white people in their local police is even greater among young people. In May 2019, we held a private roundtable with a group of young BME people from London aged 17 to 30 on their experiences, their views of their relationship with the police, and the use of stop and search. This was not universal, but the majority of participants told us that their experiences with the police had been negative, and that they did not feel confident in approaching the police for protection. The former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick, told us that,

“in London, following police encounters with young people, she often saw officers sending the young person off with a smile on their face.”

Indeed, our report added that

“She said that it was the police’s responsibility to ensure that ‘each interaction’ with a young person was as positive as possible”.

By contrast, a young participant at our roundtable told us that the Metropolitan police’s stop and search procedure was

“more hostile than professional”.

He said it was difficult for young people to trust the police due to their stereotyping of BME communities as likely criminals.

Our inquiry also found a lack of data on confidence by ethnicity at a local force level. That makes it much harder to hold local forces to account for concerns about BME communities’ confidence in the police. Concerningly, we found that increasing trust and confidence in policing is not being treated as a policing priority, or a ministerial policing priority.

I am pleased that the Government have agreed on the need to monitor trust and confidence in policing, both nationally and locally, and that they have improved the way in which they collect and use data, including on stop and search and community confidence. However, their response did not say how the Home Office is monitoring confidence among black and minority ethnic communities in policing locally. I hope the Minister can provide us with an update on progress, specifically on how his Department is working with police forces to collect data on confidence in policing.

I turn to the issue of recruitment and progression of BME officers and staff. Throughout our inquiry, we heard concerns about community confidence in the police, the use of certain police powers, and wider racism in policing. Communities’ concerns about the racial disparities that we identified are exacerbated by the lack of BME police officers and staff at all levels of the police force.

The Macpherson report recommended that police forces be representative of the communities that they serve, and that targets be set for recruitment, progression and retention of minority ethnic police officers. However, the 10-year target set by the then-Home Secretary included a target for overall minority ethnic representation of 7% in the service by 2009. That was not met. Our report highlighted that even by 2020, BME officers represented just 7.3% of the police service across England and Wales. That figure is now 7.6%, but that is still far below 14%, which is the percentage of the population in England and Wales who identify as BME. Concerningly, under-representation is most marked in senior ranks. Only 4% of officers at or above the rank of chief inspector were from BME backgrounds; that figure is now 5%. 

We found that police forces across the country have failed to do enough to increase BME recruitment, retention and promotion for decades; there has been a lack of focus, consistency and leadership on driving that recruitment and promotion for far too long. Shockingly, our analysis suggests that, at the current rate of progress, we will not have a properly representative police force in England and Wales for another 20 years. Just think for a moment: that would be four decades after the Macpherson report raised the seriousness of this issue, and nearly half a century after the murder of Stephen Lawrence. 

More positively, we found that some forces—notably Nottinghamshire and Greater Manchester—are making significant progress in increasing BME recruits by taking positive action such as having targeted recruitment campaigns, working on youth engagement and outreach, and working with local community and faith leaders. However, the vast majority of forces are still failing to recruit enough BME officers to ensure that the proportion of BME people in the force is the same as the proportion in the local population. 

I am therefore disappointed that the Government have rejected our recommendation to agree minimum targets for the recruitment of BME officers, so that constabularies reflect the composition of their local populations and we achieve at least 14% BME representation of officers nationally by 2030. Instead the Government response suggests that

“forces should be striving to become more representative of the communities they serve”.

That is not good enough. I would therefore be grateful if the Minister outlined what work the Home Office is doing to monitor how all 43 forces in England and Wales are working to reflect the composition of their local populations. Could he tell us what proportion of police forces are currently representative of the communities they serve? Also, what work has the Home Office planned to improve BME recruitment in policing when the uplift programme ends in 2023?

On police misconduct and discipline, during our assessment of the progress police forces have made on the Macpherson report’s recommendations about diversity in the police workforce, we repeatedly heard concerns about the higher likelihood of BME officers resigning voluntarily or being dismissed from their force. There is a clear racial disparity in the number of officers being dismissed from police forces—BME officers are more than twice as likely as white officers to be dismissed—and in the number of BME officers subjected to internal disciplinary processes. It is extremely troubling that the disparity has been allowed to continue for so long without serious action being taken by police forces to investigate or address the problem, so we welcomed the work by the NPCC to instigate reforms, including improvements to training, misconduct guidance, welfare support and addressing the lack of BME officers in professional standards departments.

We also noted the NPCC’s 2019 report on disproportionality in police complaints and misconduct cases for BME officers and staff, which identified that 63% of Home Office police force professional standards departments had no BME police officers or staff. That is deeply troubling and totally unacceptable. Our recommendation is that forces must address unacceptable racial disproportionality in their PSD composition. More positively, we welcomed the work done by some forces to draw on BME advisers and seek to address the lack of BME representation in PSDs, as reported in the NPCC’s recent review. However, we urged all forces to address the problem and demonstrate progress by the end of 2021. Additionally, we recommended that the NPCC conducts a review on this issue and reports within a year.

I am pleased that, in their response, the Government recognise the risk posed by a lack of appropriate BME representation on a number of PSDs. It is also encouraging that ethnic minority representation on PSDs has risen by 2% since 2020, but clearly there is a lot more to do. The Government response said that the NPCC is working across policing to ensure appropriate representation and involvement of minority ethnic officers in decision-making processes in professional standards departments, so can the Minister update us on the progress, and provide details of both the Government’s work and that of the NPCC to address ethnic diversity in PSDs?

Finally, I want to discuss the use of stop and search. We heard troubling examples of stop and searches being conducted in a manner that was deeply alienating and uncomfortable. Many of the young BME participants that the Committee heard from in a private roundtable session felt that they were unjustly targeted by the police from a young age, which led to mistrust. One such participant, Witness M, who reported that he was first arrested at the age of 13, told us that he was “nearly stabbed” in 2018 but did not want to speak to the police when they asked if he was involved, due to his negative experiences with the police from such a young age.

At the time the Committee’s report was published, Home Office data showed that black people were over nine and a half times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched. The latest Home Office data—to 31 March 2021—show that black people are seven times more likely than white people to be stopped. Our report acknowledged that stop and search is an important police power, and the Macpherson report’s conclusion that it has a useful role to play in the prevention and detection of crime still applies. However, no evidence to our inquiry has adequately explained or justified the nature and scale of the ethnic disproportionality in the use of stop-and-search powers, particularly in possession of drugs searches.

At the time of our report’s publication, evidence showed that black people were less likely than white people to have used drugs in the past year, but they were 2.4 times more likely to be stopped and searched for drug possession. Indeed, in its February 2021 spotlight report on the disproportionate use of stop and search and the use of force, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services found that

“Drug enforcement, mainly through stop and search, contributes to ethnic disproportionality despite evidence that there is no correlation between ethnicity and rates of drug use.”

Our report also recognises the importance of the police being able to take action against knife crime, including through stop and search, but highlights that only 16% of reasonable grounds searches in 2019-20 were conducted to find offensive weapons. I am encouraged by the fact that the Home Office’s response confirms that the NPCC has undertaken an initial review of forces’ implementation of recommendations made by HMICFRS in its 2021 report on the disproportionate use of police powers, which the Home Office said

“showed that the majority of forces have already implemented the recommendations or have plans in place to do so.”

I hope the Minister can tell us how many of the 43 forces in England and Wales have implemented those recommendations on the disproportionate use of police powers. Can he also confirm whether that review is in the public domain?

Unfortunately, I have only been able to touch on the surface of the myriad issues we raised in our report, but I hope I have been able to give an overview of what is a very comprehensive report and the issues it raises—some of which, sadly, have not been satisfactorily answered in the Government’s response. Our inquiry has found that the Macpherson report’s overall aim of the

“elimination of racist prejudice and disadvantage and the demonstration of fairness in all aspects of policing”

has still not been met. We have identified persistent, deep-rooted problems where too little progress has been made because of a lack of focus and accountability on issues of race. While that is the case, trust between the police service and black and minority ethnic communities will remain low, and the long-standing Peel principles of fairness in policing and policing by consent will continue to be undermined. The commitments made over the past year by the NPCC, individual forces, and senior police officers to a step change in addressing race equality in policing are important and welcome, but commitments have been made in the past that were not then delivered on. This time needs to be different, or confidence may be permanently undermined.

[Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

I call Anne McLaughlin to sum up on behalf of the Scottish National party.

Nationality and Borders Bill (Second sitting)

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chair]

We will now hear oral evidence from Councillor Roger Gough, from Kent County Council, who is joining us virtually, and Councillor Rachael Robathan, from Westminster City Council, who is here in person. We have until 4pm. Would the witnesses introduce themselves for the record?

Councillor Roger Gough: I am Roger Gough. I am the leader of Kent County Council. I also chair the South-East Strategic Partnership for Migration.

Councillor Rachael Robathan: I am Rachael Robathan, I am leader of Westminster City Council.

[Bambos Charalambous]

Q I thank both witnesses for coming today to give evidence. I just wonder about your experience of the pressures of having to look after asylum seekers in your respective authorities. I know that it will be different for each of you but what pressures have your councils been under?

Councillor Rachael Robathan: Just to give a current picture; we have 638 Afghan refugees who have come in as part of the current settlement in one hotel on the Edgware Road. We have a further 589 refugees who were in Westminster prior to that, spread across five hotels. Our experience is that clearly there is a lot of pressure on local services in terms of identifying health, educational and other support needs. There is not always the advance warning that local authorities would wish to have in terms of knowing about the placements before they arrive. Clearly, as much notice as we can be given from the Home Office, Clearsprings or whoever is placing the asylum seekers is very much to our advantage so that we can prepare and know what we are dealing with.

The other thing to stress is that there are particularly significant issues that arise. For example, over a third of the current Afghan refugees placed in Westminster are children and of those 10% are not with their parents or guardians, and have not travelled with them, so there is an immediate safeguarding issue, which the local authority needs to step in and deal with. While there is funding for the people placed in the hotels, there are undoubtedly significant pressures and concerns about how we support other people. It is unclear how long those refugees will be staying in those hotels. We are working on three months, but it could be longer than that, or it could be less. Those are the main things.

The current Afghan refugee settlement has been more co-ordinated than previous asylum-seeker placements, because there has been more of a joined-up approach. Westminster has a lot of tourist hotels in the centre of our city, which currently are not as full as hopefully they otherwise would be, so in areas where there is an availability of hotels there tends to be a disproportionate placement of asylum seekers, without necessarily the recognition of the pressure that that puts on the surrounding area.

Councillor Roger Gough: As you indicated in your question, clearly we have a very specific set of circumstances in Kent which relate to the Channel crossings and in particular to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. Taking asylum overall first, most of the adult and accompanied child asylum seekers who arrive in Kent do not spend very long in Kent. There has been an exception to that for the last year, which is the use of the Napier Barracks near Folkestone, which has been a source of some challenge and controversy throughout its period of use. Most adult asylum seekers are rapidly moved on and dispersed. For us, the big issue has been unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. As you may know, we have twice in the last year had to suspend full operation of our statutory duties. Between August and, I think, early December last year and again between June and earlier this month, we did not collect young people from the port because our services at that point were put under extreme pressure.

To give an idea of what that means, there was great pressure on accommodation capacity since, this year in particular, we started to see more younger young people––under-16s––than we had in previous years. That certainly put pressure on fostering placements. For the slightly older young people, there was also pressure on some of the accommodation that they were placed in. That meant that young people were being placed outside the county, which clearly has significant impact in terms of oversight, safeguarding and so on. You must then add to that the fact that case loads and the pressure on our social work teams were reaching levels that we viewed as unsafe. Those are the sort of pressures that we were seeing in that area, and we have been working with the Home Office to try to make that a more manageable situation.

Turning to some of the wider areas, adult asylum dispersal, with the significant exception of Napier Barracks, has not been a factor for us very much in recent years. In terms of resettlement schemes, Kent, along with other parts of the south-east, played a full role in the Syrian scheme and is now looking to do so to the greatest possible extent with the Afghan scheme. We have three hotels in Kent that are being applied to Afghan families who are arriving.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Pursglove]

Q Mindful of the breadth of your professional experience in previous roles, how crucial do you think the streamlining of the processing of applications is to tackling some of these challenges?

Tony Smith: We lived through this before. We had something called the new asylum model when I was in the UK Border Agency, before taking the top job in the Border Force. Previously, I was regional director for UKBA London and the south-east, which meant that my teams were the ones who were processing asylum arrivals coming into the country. I was actually responsible for removals.

Yes, we did have targets in the Home Office in those days for enforcement. It was part of my mission to ensure that those who did not qualify to stay, either because they had arrived under safe third country rules, or they were coming on a manifestly unfounded route, were sent back. The trouble is we have seen a good deal of judicial overreach by the European Court of Justice, and significant interpretations and European directives, which kind of hindered those arrangements on returns. We have now got to a point where we are not really returning anybody who is coming across on these boats, and people notice that. If we do not start returning people, the numbers will continue to rise. We need to find a way of segmenting those applicants who we know have a genuine claim for asylum in this country from those who have probably been in Europe for a long time and may have had applications for asylum rejected—they have had a notice de quitter from Schengen, sometimes two or three notices—who are not genuine asylum seekers but who would just like to come to live here. That is not effective border control.

It is going to be really, really difficult, but I applaud the authors of the Bill, because it finally gets to grips with the difficulty of the way we have interpreted the 1951 refugee convention and put up what I think is the right interpretation of it in not conflating two different arguments, which is human smuggling across the English channel by criminal gangs, putting lives at risk, and the genuine need to resettle refugees from different parts of the world.

[Chair]

We only have a few minutes, so I call Jonathan Gullis.

[Jonathan Gullis]

Q Thank you, Ms McDonagh. We are really grateful to hear that more needs to be happening with the French, and recent events seem to be improving matters. Mr Smith, why do you believe that people are choosing to come to the United Kingdom rather than claiming asylum in France, Greece and other parts of the European Union?

Tony Smith: That is a great question. It is called the pull factor. A number of books have been written by people probably better qualified than I am that talk about what that pull factor is. I think there are number of reasons why people would quite like to live in the UK rather than in mainland Europe. Personally, I think the main one is communities. We have a significantly diverse range of communities across the UK where people can feel comfortable in terms of getting the support they need. We are generous—I would not say very generous—in our treatment of asylum seekers. We have hosted conferences in places like Hungary and Croatia—countries where, if you were to ask asylum seekers, they would probably say that you do not get a very good deal from the Government who are supposed to be protecting your welfare, whereas you will get that in the UK; you will also get good legal representation and a very full hearing. These are all things that we should be very proud of, but I think inevitably it does mean that more people want to come to the UK.

The other element is language. English is the second language for many, many people from different parts of the world, which means that this is still—you might not believe it—a very desirable place to come and live. People are prepared to pay a good deal of money to get here on the basis that not only would they have a better life if they came here, but their broader family would have a better life. It is a genuine aspiration for a lot of people.

That is the nature of immigration and border controls. There will be a dividing line. You are going to create legislation and a set of rules. You are going to get people in front of you who do not want any border at all and who think we should let everybody in. You are going to get other people here who want to build a fortress around Britain. That has always been the case, but in 40 years at the Home Office—I was one of those civil servants who stayed in the Department; I did not bounce around Whitehall like they do nowadays—I never once worked for any Government who said that they were prepared to approach a fully open border and free movement across our borders. In fact, the vast majority have sought to tighten up our immigration and borders system, or at least to make it firmer but fairer.

We cannot lose sight of the firmness bit. There will be a need to arrest people, and there will be a need to deport people. That does not sit well, does it? It does not feel nice, but if you are going to have an effective border control, you have to be able to enforce your laws. At the moment, there is a feeling that with this particular cohort, we are not really doing any enforcement at all.

Safe Streets for All

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I would like to raise the issue of the planning Bill. I do so not to exacerbate the problems with the Bill on the Government Benches, but to merely point out that it will not achieve the Government’s intention to build 300,000 properties each year. The last year in which 300,000 properties were constructed was in the mid-1960s, when half those properties were being built by councils and housing associations. Without a real effort to build social housing, those numbers cannot be achieved. If we continue to rely on one of the most expensive forms of production in the world, reliant on crumbs from the developers’ table to get that number of units, then the hopes and aspirations of hundreds of thousands of people in this country will not be met.

There is a connection between the lack of social housing and the exponential increase in the number of people living in temporary accommodation. We have 100,000 children living in temporary accommodation right now. What does temporary mean? To me, it means maybe six months or a year. To the families in my constituency placed in temporary accommodation, we are talking about four, five or maybe six years, and possibly longer for those families entering such accommodation now.



Many people will have heard me mention that there is a code of guidance, which states that temporary accommodation should be provided to families who are homeless, that it should be provided in their home borough, and that it should allow people to continue in their work and children to continue at their schools. But as constituency MPs, we know—particularly those of us in London—that that is not happening. People are being sent hundreds of miles away, breaking their families, their support structures, their work and their education, with enormous social impact.

I say to the Government, not as a partisan message: please consider introducing a formal legal regulator for temporary accommodation—an Ofsted of housing, if you like, that will ensure that local authorities live by the existing code of guidance. Only if councils know that there is a regulator about to come in will they try to address the problem that they have. If we wish to support those families, but also to reduce the spend and the consequences of the shocking temporary accommodation that families are currently living in, we need a regulator to be there to watch.

Immigration and Nationality Application Fees

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab) [V]]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) for securing this debate. I know that she shares my sincere admiration for the tireless dedication shown by our frontline doctors, nurses and carers over the last year. Our treasured NHS truly is the pride of our nation.

I was shaken to hear St Helier hospital staff on “Channel Four News” in January comparing their wards with war zones. A critical incident over Christmas had resulted in the hospital diverting patients to Kingston Hospital and St George’s Hospital, because they were using more oxygen than the vaporiser could deliver. The staff at St Helier hospital are doing a remarkable job, but they face the most testing of circumstances.

So earlier this month I joined nurses from the Royal College of Nursing on a call to hear about their experience. I met Kathryn and today I will tell her story. Kathryn is an NHS nurse from the Philippines. Staff from her NHS trust flew out to her country six years ago to recruit dozens of nurses, sponsoring their initial three-year working visas. For Kathryn, moving almost 7,000 miles away from her family meant the opportunity to support her family. We invited her here to do an essential job that puts her at risk of losing her life, but Minister, we then charge her excessively for that privilege.

Every three years, Kathryn faces a new £1,000 visa fee. She was one of the lucky ones whose employers covered her health surcharge, a cost that has soared to hundreds of pounds for her peers. Receiving just an entry-level salary, Kathryn sends as much money back home as she can afford, and supporting her family became even more important when her mum was hospitalised earlier this year.

After almost six years in the UK, Kathryn is now able to apply for indefinite leave to remain, but the clock is ticking and she needs to save the £2,500 required before her visa renewal is due this winter. If she cannot save enough money in time, she pays a fresh cost of £1,000 to renew her visa and she will have to start saving again from scratch. But how can she save when she earns so little? Every penny is vital and Kathryn resorted to withdrawing from the NHS pension scheme before the pandemic. Maybe the Minister can see why the 1% pay rise is a bit of a kick in the teeth.

Then along came covid. Kathryn was redeployed to the accident and emergency department, facing intolerable pressure, but so many of us owe our lives to A&E staff. One of her colleagues lost his life. He was just 33 and the breadwinner for his parents back home. He had worked to ensure that they could afford to send his siblings to school. In his memory and without using his own funds, his colleagues had to collect enough money to be able to send his ashes home. With no NHS pension scheme and consequently no death in service benefit, Kathryn came to work every day worrying how she would be buried if she were to die.

Asking people from poorer countries to help run our NHS is not new, but charging them large amounts of money for the privilege is. So I say to the Minister: Kathryn risks her life at our invitation and is charged exploitative costs to do so. Does he really think that is right or fair? Why should her sacrifice cost her so much?

No Recourse to Public Funds

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered No Recourse to Public Funds.

I begin by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating the debate in our first week back in Westminster Hall. It is great to be back, and it is very good to see you in the chair, Ms Nokes. I am very pleased to see the Members who have come to take part in the debate, and I am pleased to see the Minister in his place as well. I particularly want to thank the hon. Members for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) and for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) for their help in applying for the debate.

In a Liaison Committee hearing on 27 May, I told the Prime Minister about a couple in my constituency. Both of them work and they have two children, both born in the UK and holding British passports. The husband’s employer did not put him on the job retention scheme, so he had no income. His wife was still working, but her income was less than their rent. They have leave to remain in the UK but no recourse to public funds, so they could not get any help at all—a hard-working, law- abiding family being forced into destitution. I explained that to the Prime Minister, and he responded:

“Clearly people who have worked hard for this country, who live and work here, should have support of one kind or another”.

In my view, the Prime Minister is absolutely right: they should have support of some kind. Unfortunately, however, the Prime Minister’s view is not the policy of the Government.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

May I ask my right hon. Friend whether that suggests to him that the Prime Minister has probably not an advice surgery in a very long time? Does my right hon. Friend think that any London MP would be unacquainted with the facts of no recourse to public funds?

--- Later in debate ---

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I want to pursue the problem that what looks like a resolution—offering status on the basis of no recourse to public funds—has instead created an industry of people involved in trying to help families in those circumstances, and increased the workload of the Home Office when that is the very last thing it needs.

Every Friday at my advice surgery, in my pack of papers I bring applications to remove a “no recourse to public funds” restriction on a visa. The people I meet are principally women whose children have British citizenship or women whose children were born here and are now over the age of seven. In the main, those women work. They are the carers; they do the jobs that we do not want to do, mostly on zero-hours contracts. They can manage to get by as long as their relationships stay more or less stable, but once those relationships break down and the men go, they can no longer afford their housing and to support their children; they lose the support network that allows them to be able to work antisocial hours, evening and weekends, because there is nobody to look after their children.

It is interesting that most of the MPs present represent London constituencies that have really hard-pressed children’s services departments. We Members get in touch with children’s social services, and then they get involved and do the assessments. They pay for the housing, support and continuing care out of the money that they get to look after children who are in the gravest need in our country, whose safety, security and health are threatened. A local authority strapped for cash, such as mine, can spend half a million pounds a year, which is dwarfed into insignificance by comparison with a Hackney, a Haringey or an Islington, or any of the councils represented in the room. That money does not go to the children who are most in need because we are supporting families who have the “no recourse to public funds” restriction on their visas, which is something that the Home Office introduced. Then, we develop another industry of voluntary sector organisations that do their best to get the restriction removed. I thank Jenny Allison and her team from Commonside Community Development Trust, and Gillian Thicke and James Saville from Christian Care, who spend most of their time trying to get the restrictions removed.

The policy of no recourse to public funds is not cheap, because it simply shunts the spending to another public body that is unable or ill equipped to give help and support. We are also stimulating the industry that allows landlords to rent out individual rooms in houses to families, because these people cannot afford anything else. Once they are in those circumstances, it is impossible to get out of them. I can tell legions of stories about mums with three or four children living in tiny rooms. If we took a photograph of them and put them in the national papers, nobody would believe that people in our country are living in those circumstances. No matter how privileged we are—we are all privileged people—we know families who live in such circumstances. We must have all had this experience with people who work with us or do work experience with us: we show them the way that people live in our country, and they cannot believe it.

This policy is not a cheap option. I understand that there has been an increase of 600% in applications to the Home Office to have the restriction removed. It costs civil servants, it costs time and it costs crises. I would argue that we are not saving the taxpayer any money by doing this. We are humiliating people who work hard and putting their children in circumstances that we would not wish on anybody’s children. Desperate people and desperate women will do desperate things to support their families if they have no other means of doing so. We are fuelling some pretty terrible practices and some pretty terrible crimes, and we should stop doing it.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Chris Philp)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I only narrowly avoided serving under the chairmanship of Ms Nokes, one of my predecessors in this role, as several Members have mentioned this afternoon.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) and, of course, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) on securing this afternoon’s important debate. Everybody who has spoken has contributed with great sincerity and passion, and I have been listening carefully to everything Members have said. Where I have, occasionally, been on the phone, I have been texting officials asking various questions in follow up on points that have been raised.

I will start by laying out some of the historical context to the “no recourse to public funds” policy. It has existed since the Immigration Act 1971, and the principle that underpins it is that it would not be reasonable for people who have arrived here very recently or on a temporary basis to be able to access the full range of benefits available to somebody who is settled here or a citizen. If we look at the categories of people to whom the NRPF condition applies, it is people such as visitors, those who are here on a holiday visa, students, people who come here to study, and workers who are here for a short time or, in some cases, a longer time. There would be an inherent unfairness if, having literally just arrived, people were able to fully access public funds.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Can the Minister add to his list women whose children are born and brought up here and are UK citizens, and are going nowhere?

[Chris Philp]

I was going to come to that point. It is a very reasonable question to raise. Let me just finish my point, and I will come on to address the point that the hon. Lady has raised, entirely understandably and rightly.

It is worth mentioning that, of course, refugees are not subject to the NRPF condition. A couple of hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), talked about the time it takes to make decisions. I am not sure if he was referring to asylum decisions or another kind of decision, but I make it clear that anyone claiming asylum or anyone granted asylum is not subject to the NRPF condition, and neither are people who are granted indefinite leave to remain.

Crime and Antisocial Behaviour: Small Towns

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Derek Thomas]

I welcome that intervention. I assure my hon. Friend that every person in Cornwall knows that argument. For a long time, including before we came to power, resources have been concentrated in Exeter and Devon, rather than in Cornwall, and that has always been a bone of contention. We have argued strongly that resources are needed right down as far as Penzance and the Isles of Scilly.

There is no doubt that in towns in Cornwall, there has been a rise in crime—sometimes violent crime, but certainly drug-related crime. I have talked about the change in the way that things are happening, and certainly drugs are moving around differently. The Government and the police and crime commissioner have made resources available, and have concentrated them in areas such as Penzance and elsewhere in Cornwall where people just did not feel safe. Things were going on in broad daylight that would not have gone on in the past. I completely accept that as we reduce numbers and the visibility of the police, other things are allowed to happen, which much be addressed.

Money has been poured in, and we have seen improvements, although there is still lots to do. The key thing is to communicate to the public that they must report every incident they see, even if they sometimes feel that that is not acted upon. The police tell me that the intelligence they collect is really useful in helping them get to the root of the problem, rather than just deal with the individual on the street corner causing a problem.

I pay tribute to Cornwall Council, the safer communities teams and the police in Cornwall for working together effectively over the past 18 months or so to address these problems, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) said, that has sucked resources from other parts of my constituency. I ask the Minister to consider the audit that the hon. Member for Batley and Spen recommended. As resources have been reduced and focused on areas with particular problems, we have begun to see low but concerning levels of crime, antisocial behaviour, and alcohol and drug misuse in our very small towns, and people are not used to that. I represent a town that was always awarded the title of safest town in the country, but now people come to me because they are concerned about things going on—at night, but also in the daytime—that they are not used to seeing. When that happens, it does not just make life uncomfortable for people, but harms the individuals who are caught up in that behaviour. There are opportunities that were not there before.

I ask the Minister to have a look at what is going on in very small towns where we are seeing problems. She should speak to police chiefs about how they will address that, and about what resources they can be given to put people on the street and to engage with the community. I have hosted meetings in St Ives and Helston with businesses, local communities and the police to talk about how communities and businesses can know when to report stuff, what to report and who they should report it to. It is really important that the police know where their resources are needed.

No one in this Chamber would deny that people deserve to feel safe and live in a place they can feel proud of. When they see concerning levels of antisocial behaviour and drug and alcohol misuse, their feeling of pride and safety is significantly compromised.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman also consider the impact that antisocial behaviour has on local businesses and restaurants? After a stabbing in Mitcham town centre only two weeks ago, the restaurateur of the local Italian restaurant said that his business dropped by 20%. Even though the stabbing was linked to gang issues that were of no consequence to the rest of the community, it made people feel unsafe, and they no longer wanted to go to his restaurant.

[Derek Thomas]

I welcome that intervention. High streets are in big enough trouble as it is without all this stuff going on. In St Ives and Penzance, people started to put stuff on Facebook. People who know St Ives will know that it is a massive tourist attraction, as are Helston and the Lizard. I am concerned about what the people putting stuff on Facebook are doing to their local economy by suggesting that those towns are not places to visit. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that there is a real impact on the local economy, which we must obviously work to support more effectively.

We do not want our families and children to be confronted by these problems or—dare I say it?—dragged into them. Policing is obviously important, but keeping people safe is about much more than how the police do their job and how visible they are. Will the Minister also look at what can be done to support local initiatives, often in the voluntary sector, that work with the police and the local authorities to nip these issues in the bud, and to support people who would otherwise be drawn into the criminal justice system or engage in behaviour that can be a slippery slope? We have all seen that in families that we represent.

Can the Minister talk to police chiefs about what is going on in rural areas? There is growing concern, and it is absolutely right that we nip the problem in the bud. I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the issue; it is the right debate to have. Hopefully, we can work across the House to make our constituencies safer, and to make them places of which we can be proud.

--- Later in debate ---

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Gray; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) on securing this important debate.

Perhaps more controversially, I would say that most people do not see themselves as living in one city or town. Even within a city, they see themselves as living in towns. In my constituency of Mitcham and Morden, people live in Mitcham. They do not live in the borough of Merton or in London, but in Mitcham. That is the area that they are concerned about.

Although Merton is regarded as the fourth safest borough in London, to people living in Mitcham that does not wash when they see escalating antisocial behaviour in the town centre and how petty crime quickly becomes serious crime if left unchecked. If I have time, I will also talk about the sale of air guns in high street shops and the desperate need for more school police officers.

Mitcham town centre is unfortunately a hotbed of antisocial behaviour in the heart of the suburbs. Unchecked antisocial behaviour is the first step on a very slippery slope to the level of crime that we have heard described in the debate; the gulf between antisocial behaviour and serious crime is not as large as many of us allow ourselves to believe. There are small steps between noise and nuisance, drinking and drunkenness, and inconvenience and illegality.

When such antisocial behaviour goes unchecked, it begins to foster and grow. That is about what becomes normal and acceptable, and what goes unchallenged—for example the drug takers who routinely gather outside my constituent Alberta’s backyard in Mitcham, or the street drinking and urinating that has become commonplace in the town centre, or the atmosphere of noise and nuisance that street drinking encourages. All of that often goes unpoliced.

Why does antisocial behaviour go unchecked? It is because we no longer have enough bobbies on the beat to control it. The simple truth is that there is no substitute for a visible police presence in the community. Is it any wonder that Merton alone has lost 90 police officers since 2010, when the Met has been forced to make more than £700 million in cuts in that time, with a further £325 million to be cut by 2021? So much for the end of austerity. The challenge that that depleted force faces is alarming. It simply does not have the support or resources from this Government to challenge the crime that is frightening our streets.

Mrs. B wrote to me to describe how understandably terrified she was when she looked out of her kitchen window and saw a group of young men on bikes with 40-inch machetes. Mr. G wrote to me in horror last month after seeing a man attacked with yet another machete, less than 24 hours after multiple stabbings nearby. He said:

“I’m angry that this has happened where I live and in such a blatant way. I feel sad at how cheap life would seem to these people. And I’m absolutely frustrated with the disintegration of any real responsibility from the state on this issue.”

How many more people need to die on our streets? How many more families need to grieve the tragic loss of a loved one? How many warnings need to be given? We simply need more police on our streets.

In the light of the spread of violent crime across our country, we in this Chamber all have a responsibility to ensure that our streets are safe. That is why I am so furious to report that a store in my constituency is selling guns—yes, guns. Cash Exchange is—legally, I must say—selling airguns in my constituency. We do not have rolling fields; we do not have a rural culture. We have airguns masquerading as sub-machine-guns, which are sold to people who want to look intimidating and frightening on our streets, and it is done legally. Why is the display of those weapons permitted by law? Why is their sale not licensed by the police? Why are the Government not taking active steps to ensure our safety? We do not need those guns in shops in suburban south London.

This is not just about our streets, but about our schools. National funding cuts and high vacancy rates have led to the decline of our treasured school police officers. My local headteachers wrote to me describing school police officers as instrumental to building relationships within their school communities, breaking down the barriers that some families have with the police, and ensuring that more youngsters leave school with a positive view of the police. Sessions and workshops led by officers are important, but they simply do not provide a like-for-like alternative for the school police officer who those youngsters get to know and trust.

Two of the secondary schools in my constituency now share just one school police officer; the other secondary school shares an officer with a school at the other end of the borough. There is a total of just seven officers for Merton’s secondary schools and further education college. That is simply not enough. This is not about point scoring but about the safety of our young people. Adequately funding our police force so that school police officers can be retained is essential to ensuring the safety of those young people.

I ask loud and clear: bring back bobbies on the beat; stop the sale of airguns on our high streets; and stop the loss of schools police officers from our secondary schools. The first duty of any Government is to ensure the protection of their citizens. By that measure, the failure of this Government is devastating.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

There are two minutes for Mr Jim Shannon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that it is a community effort, in spite of the importance of law enforcement. That is why, in our Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, we put in place six powers, some of which can be exercised not just by the police but by local authorities. We appreciate that there will be different solutions to different problems in different areas.

The debate is about “rising crime”. I fully recognise the concerns that Members have raised, but I must remind them of the analysis by the independent Office for National Statistics, which sets out that most people are not victims of crime, and that the likelihood of becoming a victim remains low. We also recognise that there has been a genuine rise in serious violent crime, and there is a range of actions under way to tackle that.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Does the Minister realise how maddening the comment, “You are not likely to be the victim”, is to our constituents? If somebody is stabbed in their street or there is a drunk and disorderly person in their shopping centre, they are the victims, and that has an impact on their behaviour.

[Victoria Atkins]

That is the finding of the Office for National Statistics. We have to work on the evidence; that is the way in which we formulate policy. It is a great shame that the hon. Lady was not able to join the briefing session I held yesterday for colleagues from across the House, to update them on our actions to tackle serious violence. She would have seen the range of activity going on, not just in London but across the country, to tackle crime and the causes of criminal activity. Although the statistics are very worrying at the moment—that is why we are acting as we are—it was acknowledged yesterday in the meeting that there is a cyclical element to them. We saw similar spikes in serious violence in the mid to late 2000s. We bore down on them, and we need to ensure that our actions have a similar impact.

In our serious violence strategy, we put a much greater focus on steering young people away from crime while continuing to promote a strong law enforcement response. We are investing in early intervention projects—my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) made that important point. I am delighted to tell the hon. Member for Batley and Spen that West Yorkshire is receiving more than £1 million until March next year to allow the police, community safety partnerships and others to work together on a programme of early intervention projects to prevent serious violence in the county.

We have also launched the national county lines co-ordination centre, and its work has produced huge benefits; in a single week in May, there were 586 arrests, and 519 vulnerable adults and 364 children were engaged with for safeguarding purposes. I am sure that many colleagues are conscious of the exploitation of young people by criminal gangs. On serious violence, we are looking at how gangs communicate in the 21st century and helping the police to tackle gang-related activity on social media.

We recently passed the Offensive Weapons Act 2019, which tightens up the law on the sale of knives and corrosive substances. We are in the middle of a consultation, to which I encourage hon. Members to respond, on a new legal duty to underpin a public health approach to tackling serious violence. We have introduced a new £200 million youth endowment fund that will be delivered over 10 years. It is locked in. That money will be invested, and it will support long-term interventions with children and young people at risk of involvement with crime and violence. We are conducting an independent review of drug misuse, which will report its initial findings to the Home Secretary in the summer.

As colleagues have mentioned, we have established vehicle theft and burglary taskforces to bring together Government, the police and industry in order to improve our response to those crimes. With reference to burglaries, we are looking at building standards and whether we can design out crime, as has happened in the past with vehicle theft. We continue our work with moped-enabled crimes; in London there has been a heartening decrease in that type of crime. That shows that working across civil society, industry and local authorities can really bring dividends. Colleagues will also be aware of the announcements about retail crime we made recently with regard to the Offensive Weapons Act. I very much hope that we will be able to announce the results of that consultation in due course.

Hon. Members also mentioned the impact of antisocial behaviour. We absolutely recognise the impact that forms of antisocial behaviour can have, which is precisely why we introduced the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. The point of the six powers in that Act is that they are flexible and give local forces and local authorities discretion in how they deal with instances and patterns of antisocial behaviour in their areas.

In summary, we very much recognise the impact of crime on not just big cities, but market towns, urban towns, if I am allowed to use that phrase, and villages. That is precisely why, as well as putting in place the suite of measures that we have touched on in this important debate, we have secured an extra £1 billion of funding for the police. That is already enabling police and crime commissioners, including in West Yorkshire, to increase the recruitment of police officers.

As always, I thank hon. Members for their contributions. I very much look forward to debating this issue again in the future. I think we all recognise that concerns about the safety of our constituents and our communities are central to our work here, and to our taking a collegiate approach across the House to ensuring that our country is a safe and comforting place in which to live.