(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
Commons ChamberThere is a powerful group of Ministers working very hard on that. Not least among them is my colleague in the Home Office, the Minister for Safeguarding, who is leading the wider work on violence against women and girls. There is a whole programme of activity, whether by Ministers or officials, across DSIT, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to make sure that we get these things right. They are complex, and they involve Departments working together, stepping up and taking responsibility for this work, which is very much ongoing. We want to get this right; that is why we have set the 12-month timescale. The important thing is not only the outcome of that work, but the power to make regulations, as we will, that give effect to that outcome.
Lords amendment 311, introduced by Lord Walney, seeks to grant a power to the Secretary of State to proscribe organisations deemed to be extreme criminal protest groups. The Government understand the concerns expressed in both Houses about the sustained impact of criminal activity by certain protest groups, and, where such conduct meets the threshold for a proscription order under the Terrorism Act 2000, the Government will act, and have already acted. However, we are not persuaded that the introduction of a proscription-lite regime is necessary or proportionate in instances where that threshold is not met. This view is shared by Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, who recently expressed concerns about the adverse consequences of this amendment for the established proscription regime in the Terrorism Act 2000. I urge hon. Members to read the four-page note that he published online last week.
My hon. Friend will recognise, though, that many of us are concerned about the integrity of the concepts of terrorism and terrorist organisations, and the importance of people’s ability to protest the concept of proscription. Those are two very different things. Does she recognise that concern, and will she look at how we can better delineate those two things, so that people can express their concerns about the concept of proscription and how it is evolving under this Government without facing arrest for wanting to have that conversation?
My hon. Friend will have debated these issues in this place, and I think there will always be a debate about the right to protest and where we draw a line in this country. I am very happy to have further conversations with her on that wider issue. Jonathan Hall set out in his letter—I can pass it on to my hon. Friend, if she has not seen it—why he does not think that this amendment will work, and that is why we are not persuaded on this occasion. I am, of course, happy to have further conversations with my hon. Friend on this.
Turning to Lords amendment 333, tabled by Baroness Buscombe, I fully agree that the Government, local authorities and law enforcement agencies need to do all they can to tackle money laundering and associated criminality on our streets. The high streets illegality taskforce, announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in her most recent Budget, will examine the use of enforcement powers in this light, including the closure power. It will have a £10 million budget to support its work. While we support the principle of extending the duration of closure orders, we should first consult to avoid any unintended consequences on legitimate businesses or residential premises. Accordingly, amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 333 will enable us, following targeted consultation, to extend the maximum duration of closure orders and, if necessary, to make different provision for commercial and residential properties.
I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn), and for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt), have been campaigning on high street illegality, and will no doubt speak about it later. I want to assure them and others in this place that we know that we need to go further, as we will, not just on this measure, but on the wider challenge of high street illegality. We will be very keen to work with Members in this place on that work.
I do not agree with my hon. Friend. This was announced by the Home Secretary after the Heaton Park attack, when lots of protests took place immediately after the attack. The cumulative disruption and the impact that had was there for all to see. We have no desire to reduce people’s right to protest, and nor would we ever. There is a lot of misinformation about this change in the law, implying that we are in some way increasing the bans on protest. To be clear, the rules on banning protests are very strong, and bans can be introduced only in very significant circumstances. Indeed, we have no rules to ban assembly, so the idea that we are banning protest is just wrong.
We are responding to communities who have recently been feeling the pain of repeated protests, sometimes outside faith organisations—synagogues, in particular. In those cases, we believe that the police should look at the impact of cumulative disruption when they, and not the Government, are deciding whether to impose conditions on those marches.
Many of us recognise the picture of pain that the Minister is painting, especially following the terrorist attack, but good legislation requires debate, scrutiny and specification. One of the concerns that many of us have is the lack of definition of “cumulative”. Will she set out now, on the record, what the Government intend by the concept of “cumulative”, so that people can understand how this proposed test would be met?
I am pleased that we are debating this issue today, which is what we should be doing here, and I am sure that hon. Members will be talking about it more in the several hours that we have to debate these issues. This already exists in law, in that the police are able to look at cumulative disruption when considering whether to impose conditions. We are not redefining “cumulative” at all, or changing the parameters of sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act; we are simply saying that when the police are looking at whether to impose conditions, they must look—rather than they can look—at cumulative disruption. That is a small change that will make a big difference to people who are currently scared and intimidated by persistent protests, outside mosques and Jewish places of worship in particular.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I should conclude. I hope that I have demonstrated that we have sought to engage constructively. As I have said, I urge the House to support all the changes that we are suggesting together today with the Government amendments brought from the Lords.
(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
Commons ChamberI am interested in what the Luton Youth Partnership Service is doing, and perhaps my hon. Friend and I can have a chat about that at some point. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel, but rather support the organisations that already exist. There are some gaps that we are trying to fill. For example, we are running a whole range of pilots across the country where we are intervening with young people who have been arrested but not charged; a lot of those people slipped through the net. We are doing a lot of work in that space, but we do not want to reinvent what is already working. I am happy to talk to my hon. Friend more about her partnership.
I know that the Minister, like me, has had conversations with a parent who has lost a loved one. As an MP, they break your heart. I think particularly today of the mother of Josh McKay, who was murdered in my constituency a few years ago. He was a young man with his whole life ahead of him and a young family. I also thank the Minister for her open acknowledgment of the value of voluntary and community groups such as Street Fathers, Project Zero, Spark2Life and Break Tha Cycle, which do fantastic work in my community with our young people. May I press her on something? She talks powerfully about the importance of making school a safe place, but she will know of the concerns many of us have about the unilateral decision to withdraw school safety officers in my constituency. Headteachers tried to raise that concern. What confidence can she give us that those officers will return? They were such an important part of our fabric of supporting our young people to be safe.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that she does in her constituency, and I send my condolences to Josh’s family, who will still be reeling after their loss. I agree with her that organisations such as Break Tha Cycle and Street Fathers do incredibly important work that we need to support. The target from this Government is that we should have a massive increase in our neighbourhood police officers, and we expect those officers to have a role going into schools and building relationships. We know that those relationships can be powerful. With those neighbourhood officers, we are trying to have consistency and to professionalise the neighbourhood route, so that people want to stay in it, rather than moving on up through the ranks and moving away from it. We want to have some continuity. We are also working to ensure that they are not abstracted, which is the other challenge that we have, particularly in large cities. When we have our proper cohort of neighbourhood officers, those people can be involved in their local schools, as we would expect them to be.
(2 months, 1 week ago)
Commons Chamber
Mike Tapp
I find the framing of this absolutely absurd—it is nonsense. There have been years in planning from the officials and Ministers. As I said, this has been in the public domain for some years. For those looking to travel for emergencies, there are emergency travel documents, and I urge them to explore that through the Government website to see if they are eligible. It is great that the hon. Member’s constituent found out in good time. That says to me that the communications in that instance did work. On the specifics of that case, I ask him to visit the drop-in with officials on Monday and we can go into that further. We should all be very proud to hold a British passport.
The Minister says this has not been mishandled, but I am sure even he would accept there are elements that could have been done better. One of those is to do with babies. I have two constituents—a three-month-old little boy stuck in Italy, and a little girl stuck in Uruguay who was born in Whipps Cross hospital in Walthamstow—whose mothers have dual citizenship and who both want to be back in the United Kingdom within the next month. If they come home with their families, under the current policy they face being turned away or separated from their mothers on arrival. Alternatively, families who have just taken on the biggest cost of all—having a baby—will have to find hundreds of pounds to pay for a certificate that will take months to arrive. In those circumstances, will the Minister at least accept there should be a waiver on the fees for babies so that they can come back home to their country?
Mike Tapp
I thank my hon. Friend for that important point on babies. There is no exemption at this time; I am happy to meet and talk about that further. At the moment, the average turnaround time is nine days, so the four weeks should not be a problem. If there are any problems, please do approach me. We will not separate any families at the border.
(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberThe hon. Lady will see from the strategy that the issue of tech is undoubtedly in there. I agree that, on assessing how well things are going, it seems quite a long time to wait until 2027. I can absolutely guarantee that I will hold tech companies accountable for their behaviours—I think it is quite famously known that a lot of them are not all that keen on me. I will also work with them on what is possible, for example on ensuring that what teachers know is adapted to the modern world—my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) asked about that. We will also need big tech brains on that, so although I will hold them accountable, it will also be important to work with them.
There is ringfenced money specifically for targeting domestic abuse and sexual violence. The strategy contains a commitment to how we give the standards of commissioning when giving out money from the centre down to areas, in order to look at exactly the issue of “by and for”, which the hon. Lady talked about, whether for older people, for veterans support, or for black and minority ethnic groups. All those “by and for” groups will have to be taken account of.
I thank all the Ministers for their collective hard work with the Safeguarding Minister. It has been worth the wait for this strategy. She will know that for too long it has been an occupational hazard for women in this country that they get hassled wherever they go and whatever they do. Will she therefore confirm that, as part of the strategy, the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023 will come into force in April next year? That will mean that, for the first time ever, the law will recognise that misogyny causes crimes against women and girls, and the police and courts will be able to do something about it. The Minister will know that Citizens UK, the brilliant Sue Fish, Our Streets Now, the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin), and indeed the former Member for that constituency, Greg Clark, and I have been pushing for that for over a decade because we want to see women and girls as free to walk our streets as men and boys are. Will she tell us how we can now feed into the police guidance on the matter?
Absolutely, I can confirm that. I am more than happy to meet my hon. Friend and the others she has mentioned to discuss what exactly goes into the guidance. We always have to ensure not just that we write nice words on goatskin in this building, but that we make them workable in the real world. I am keen that everything in the strategy does that.
(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberI did not give all the details because, as I said in response to the question from the hon. Gentleman’s colleague, on Thursday I will announce the full details of all the metrics of action plans. They will be placed before the House on Thursday. As for the briefing, we cannot tackle violence against women and girls only “IRL”, as my kids would say, so there has to be an online element—it would be no strategy without it. What the Home Secretary spoke about to the press were Labour party manifesto commitments. It was not new news when we said that there would have rape-related services in every police force; that was written into the manifesto of the Labour party, which the country voted for.
I do not think that anyone in the Chamber can doubt the Minister’s passion and commitment on this topic, and she will recognise the shared sense of urgency across the House. We know that one in six teenage girls experience domestic abuse in a relationship, which means that an equivalent number of our teenage boys are perpetrators. I welcome the discussion about how we can help young men to make healthy choices, and I appreciate that the Minister will be saying more in the statement on Thursday. My colleagues and I all agree that we would love to be here, but we recognise that this discussion will continue. Can the Minister give us a bit more detail about how we can help both young men and young women not to feel judged, but to feel supported and helped to be healthy and to be respectful? That is how we can move forward together.
My hon. Friend shares my passion for this subject, and has done over many years. She is absolutely right: the data shows that nearly half of all teenage relationships between those aged 13 to 17 experience issues of control. What does that mean for both the victim’s group and the perpetrator’s group? As the mother of teenage boys—although one of them is no longer a teenager, because I am getting old—I can say that the idea that we should not support boys in this circumstance has led us to the terrifying statistics that she and I have cited. The strategy will focus very heavily on prevention, because I am sick of just putting bigger, better plasters on scars, rather than trying to stop the scars coming in the first place.
(5 months ago)
Commons ChamberDo I think I will get enough money? Any Minister who stands before the House and says yes to that question is lying. Look, I would, of course, always want more money, but actually there are fundamental problems in our system and in the culture of organisations that more money will not solve. Take us having more police—we have more police now, let us say, than we did 100 years ago, and that has not stopped this happening. There are absolutely fundamental things that need to change. I suppose I am here for a long time, not a good time, in that regard. We have to change absolute fundamentals.
When the Justice Secretary was here before me giving his statement, he announced the £550 million—half a billion pounds—three-year settlement for victims funding, which will increase year on year with the rising rates of inflation. I was very heartened to hear that level of security and those increases. Do I think I will have as much as I would want? Never. Do I think I will have enough and that I will make do? Yes, I do.
I think all our hearts will have been broken by the words of Sarah Everard’s family. The honest truth is that what this report covers did not happen in a vacuum. This weekend women in Walthamstow will hold a vigil to reclaim Hollow Ponds, which is a lovely open space, but there have been repeated concerns about sexual harassment and offences there. I cannot tell the Minister whether those concerns are merited, because my local police, Waltham Forest police, have refused a freedom of information request about the number of crime reports or offences at the site, just as they refused an FOI to explain why they were using community protection notices to deal with violence against women offences. I mention FOIs because the police refused to respond to me, as the local MP, and to local women about how they are dealing with violence on our streets and concerns about street safety, which Lady Angiolini includes in her report.
There is a problem with the Metropolitan police. We have known that for many years, and many reports show that. That is why for many years, many of us have campaigned to make misogyny part of our hate crime rubric, because we have seen the difference it has made to how other police forces approach these issues. The Minister will be aware that it is now nearly three years since this House passed the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023 to bring those measures into power and finally hold organisations like Waltham Forest police to account for their disrespect for the safety of women in my community. Can the Minister give my residents some assurance that misogyny will be implemented as a hate crime and that we will see the cultural change that will tackle the fundamentals she is talking about?
I only wish that writing things on to the statute book changed the culture—it has been illegal to rape someone for quite some time, and it has been illegal to murder for even longer. I only wish that simply putting things on to the statute book made a difference. I would say to my hon. Friend’s police force that I always encourage good communications, including with the women involved. Policing is based on consent, and that is something we hold dear in our country. I implore the police to have discussions with my hon. Friend and the local community—about the community’s concerns and about what the police are going to do. I have seen this work all over the country. Project Vigilant by Thames Valley police is a brilliant example of work done with local businesses and local women’s groups to do exactly what my hon. Friend is talking about; I implore her force to implement a similar scheme.
My hon. Friend mentions the use of community protection notices. In her review, Elish Angiolini has some interesting things to say about what police should be doing in public spaces using certain orders, so I ask my hon. Friend to have a look at some of those things. We will be talking in the violence against women and girls strategy about some of the issues that she has raised today. However, as I have said, just putting things on the statute book does not necessarily mean that, operationally, they will be brilliant. My job is to make sure that before I commence anything, it can actually work in practice.
(5 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberThe powers to revoke indefinite leave to remain are not going to change as a result of this. The hon. Member will know that the specific provisions for foreign national offenders will also be unaffected. Separately, we are going to review the threshold in relation to criminality. The current rules work on the basis that someone cannot qualify for indefinite leave to remain if they have received a sentence of 12 months or more. However, given the changes being brought forward in the Sentencing Bill and others, we will be looking at that threshold in its entirety. He raised a point about retrospectivity, and we will be reviewing that as we review all the criminal thresholds that apply here. He had another question, but—forgive me—I missed it. [Interruption.] If he will write to me, I will come back to him, but I think he was asking about wage thresholds.
The hon. Member made a final point, which I did pick up, about the modelling—essentially, the numbers—and whether a reduction of 61,000 a year is the right number. Let me just say to him that I will be coming to this House on a regular basis to be held to account for the delivery of these reforms and those that I set out on Monday about the asylum system. It is a big package of reforms, taken together. These are the biggest changes to settlement for 40 years, and the asylum package is one of the biggest packages of modern times. The combination of the two will keep modellers and others very busy over the coming months, but I promise the House that we will be transparent on the data, the numbers and what our proposals mean in practice. That will inevitably change as we design the new system, but hon. Members will always get transparency from me in this House.
I agree with the Home Secretary that our immigration system needs reform and that people are concerned about it. I think we should also be very clear in this House that we recognise the benefits of immigration to our country—the talents, the jobs and the entrepreneurship it brings—and that nobody would ever argue that we will bring this country together by tearing families apart. On that basis, it is very welcome to hear the Home Secretary commit to a five-year pathway for partners of British citizens. Many of my constituents have been deeply concerned about that, because they would never wish the state to tell them whom they could fall in love with. However, given that some of those people are on different visas here, can she clarify how the five-year term will be calculated, so that we do not inadvertently end up penalising people who fall in love with somebody who came here on a worker visa, but has been here for five years? Love is love, and let us make sure that in this country we welcome it.
None of the rules about marriage in-country, as it were, are going to change, but if my hon. Friend wants to send me some of her constituency examples, I would be very happy to look at them. It is important to have a distinction between what citizenship unlocks as a set of rights for British citizens and what applies for those who are working here and who may not have settled status but may acquire settled status. I think it is right that we open a question in the consultation about what is unlocked from the British state and for people’s rights here at citizenship as well as at settlement. I would be very happy to discuss these matters with her in more detail, and I am sure I will do so over the next few months.
(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberI urge the hon. Member to look at the detail of the asylum policy statement, the whole point of which is to deal with the pull factors that we know are drawing people to get on a dangerous boat and cross the channel illegally. The upshot of the reforms will be to deal with those pull factors, and he will know that we have said in the asylum policy statement that a relatively small number—just under 10%—of those in asylum accommodation already have the right to work, and in future we will expect them, where they have the right to work, to work.
The Home Secretary is arguing that what will heal this divided nation is to get somebody who we have agreed is a refugee, with a well-founded fear of persecution, to feel a permanent sense of limbo because they will never be able to plan for the long term for them or their family, because their status will always be uncertain because they could still face deportation. Her consultation document, which I have read, talks about using enforced return for families. Last year alone, 10,000 children, many of whom are with their families, were granted refugee status in this country. I know she plans to consult, but given that this involves children, can she be clear with us about whether she intends to incarcerate children with their families as part of enforced return, or to separate children from their mums and dads as part of this policy? How will we continue to uphold the UN convention on the rights of the child in terms of education?
I encourage my hon. Friend to look at the detail of the asylum policy statement on our intentions for the protection “work and study” route, which in future will be the route by which refugees can contribute and earn their way to settlement in this country. Of course, it is the express intention of this policy statement to disincentivise people coming on dangerous channel crossings, and to incentivise and to push people towards what will, over time, become more generous, safe and legal routes of entry into this country, with more privileged status when it comes to earning permanent settlement.
Let me say to my hon. Friend on failed asylum-seeking families, because I think that important context was missing from her question, that there are 700 Albanian families at the moment who have made asylum claims and whose asylum claims have failed. The only reason they have not been removed from the country is the policies on not removing families—that is, parents with their children. We are not going to separate parents and their children, but we are going to consult on the removal of support and how we effectively and safely ensure that those individuals are returned. However, we will of course want to see most of those people return voluntarily instead.
(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberMay I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for his robust attack on a policy that his own party introduced as part of the coalition Government in 2010?
I disagree with the hon. Gentleman that the impact of our police and crime commissioners has been negligible. I do not think that is true. In many cases, they have done a good job in quite difficult circumstances. The innovation we have seen from our PCCs and the partnerships that they have sought to build have been good. It is not the individuals and teams that we are criticising today; it is the structure.
The hon. Gentleman asked about funding. The PCC election savings sadly will not be coming to the Home Office; they will obviously, and rightly, go to the Treasury. The savings that we are making, through police and crime commissioner functions and the efficiencies we want to drive, are significant—at least £20 million—and we want to reinvest that back into policing, as I think everybody would want us to do.
The hon. Gentleman talked about making sure that the right safeguards and the right model are in place. Police and crime commissioners will continue for the next two years in the areas where we do not already have mayoral processes in place, so we have a good amount of time to work with colleagues on how the new structures will work. That said, there is already a process under way of moving police and crime commissioner functions into the mayoral structures; that is already happening.
At the moment, there are 37 police and crime commissioners. Six force areas will move to the mayoral model in 2027, and there will be more in 2028, depending on how the Bill progresses. The idea is that we see this progress, apart from, as I said, in Wales, which has a different system and does not have the mayoral model.
I welcome the work that the Minister is doing on reforming how the police can engage with our local communities, because all of us want to see a closer relationship in that regard. May I press her on what lessons she is learning for my part of the world? In London, the challenge is at a borough-wide level. My own borough commander now requires me to submit freedom of information requests to find out about policing in my local community, and will only meet me twice a year. Panels of people are selected to meet the police, and often their presentations are death by PowerPoint to my local community. The Minister makes a very powerful case about police reform. What lessons can we learn from this process—not just in restructuring to work with mayors, but to work at a very localised level so that we can restore people’s confidence in policing?
London is different in many ways due to its size and scale, and policing is therefore structured differently. I expect all local leaders to meet their Members of Parliament regularly, because that is how we can hold them to account and work together. Members of Parliament attend surgeries, have public meetings and talk to our communities, so we understand a lot of the issues that police chiefs face, and it is helpful for them to have those conversations and to learn from one another. I encourage all our police chiefs to make sure that they have good relationships with their local Members of Parliament, because those relationships make up a very important part of our structures.
(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberHaving discussed these matters with senior police officers across the country, I know that they often take independent legal advice, both on the decisions that the police have to make and in testing with the Crown Prosecution Service whether a prosecution is likely to result in a conviction. These are contested areas of public and political debate, which is why I want to review for myself the legislation that is in place. I will report to the House in due course.
I join colleagues in expressing my condolences to the families of those who lost a loved one in last week’s attack. I also put on record—I think this whole House will agree—our support for the Community Security Trust, not just for the tireless work it does every week at shul, but for its cross-community work. So many in our country right now want to divide people by finding points that pit people against each other. That cross-community work is critical to keeping everybody in our communities safe.
On that thread, one common theme that is coming out—I allude to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols)—is a concern about misogyny, and about the record of violence against women that many of those involved in violent offences have. I know that the Home Secretary’s predecessor was pulling together a counter-terrorism strategy that was going to include that theme in looking at antisemitism, Islamophobia and radical Islam. Can she update us on where that review has got to, so that we can be confident that we will get all these people off our streets and improve our understanding?
I can reassure my hon. Friend that the nexus between misogyny and other serious offences, including offences relating to extremism and terrorism, is something we take very seriously. If she will forgive me, having been in the job for only a few weeks, I have not yet reviewed all of the counter-terrorism strategy. Our strategy will now need to take account of the things that have happened in Manchester, but I can reassure my hon. Friend that it will be published in the usual way, and we will of course consider the wider lessons about misogyny and violence against women and girls that can be drawn.