European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Tom Brake and David T C Davies

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker—perfect timing.

I hope that I am wrong, but I believe that the decision that the country took on 23 June will result in the biggest self-inflicted wound since our disastrous intervention in Iraq. That wound is festering and it will leave the UK permanently economically weaker, even after it has healed. I believe that, when Members of Parliament believe that a course of action is going to be a catastrophe, they have a duty to harry, assail and oppose the Government, not to acquiesce.

I respect those who voted to leave. They had, and have, genuine grievances about a lack of jobs or education prospects, and concerns about the changes they see in our society, including concerns about immigration. The Brexiteers claimed that leaving the EU would address those concerns by stopping the cancellation of urgent hospital operations—paid for, presumably, by the tsunami of cash that was going to come to the NHS post-Brexit—improving teacher shortages in our schools and boosting housing supply. It will not do any of those things. In fact, it will make them worse. I doubt that even the leave campaign’s most prominent pledge, to reduce immigration substantially, will be achieved. Why would it be? After all, the Prime Minister has spent many years seeking to reduce the level of non-EU immigration, and nothing changed there.

What leaving the EU will do with certainty is diminish us as a nation and reduce our influence and international standing. That has already happened. Brexit has forced our Prime Minister, a born-again hard-line Brexiteer, to line up with Trump—indeed, to walk hand in hand with him. While European leaders and Canada condemned his Muslim ban, our Prime Minister’s initial response was to say, “Not my business.” Worse, she immediately offered him, with indecent haste, a state visit—far quicker than any other US President—which I am sure had absolutely nothing to do with her desperation to secure a trade deal, any deal, with the protectionist Trump.

In “The Art of the Deal”, Trump says:

“The worst of times often create the best opportunities to make good deals.”

To translate that for Conservative Members, the worst of times for the UK create the best opportunity for a good deal for the US.

Jobs are at risk. Six months after the vote, there is still no analysis of how many jobs will be lost after we come out of the single market.

[David T. C. Davies]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tom Brake]

I will not give way.

The Liberal Democrat position is very clear: the people voted for departure, not the destination. Now the Government must give them a chance to vote on the destination. If that guarantee were forthcoming tonight, I would vote with the Government.

The Riots

Debate between Tom Brake and David T C Davies

Thursday 13th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

I declare an interest as a serving special constable with the British Transport police. Because of the time and my own interest in policing, I want to frame my comments around that.

I congratulate hon. Members on both sides of the House. The debate has been thoughtful and has done away with a lot of the generalisations that were made at the time. For example, I cannot tell the House how much I welcome the fact that nobody has talked about single-parent mothers. If there is one thing that I personally loathe, it is the demonisation of single-parent mothers in generalised fashion. Instead, we have heard, rightly, about the problems of families. We have heard about the issue of absent fathers: it takes two people to create a child, and if one of them is absent it is often the father, so if we are going to demonise anyone let us start with them rather than the mothers. Thank heavens we seem to have moved on from demonising the mothers.

I found the speech of the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) interesting, and I was surprised how much I agreed with much of what he said, although I see things from rather a different perspective: to me, the issue was not a race one at all. In following the riots on the television and, on one night, with a mobile support unit, they did not come over to me as a black issue—it was definitely a black and white issue. I did not notice anything with the Asian community, but perhaps that was a misconception. Certainly I and the police officers I worked with on the Wednesday night, when things had gone quiet, did not see it as a black issue at all, but as very much a problem for black and white communities. In fact, on that Wednesday night, our first response to a 999 call was to do with a group of white extremists—members of the English Defence League or something—in south London. As it happened, on the way to that call, because the Met had already taken over, we were diverted to deal with black youths in Lewisham. Perhaps that is my misconception though: I did not notice it in the press, but the right hon. Gentleman did, so I must take that on board.

The right hon. Gentleman made an important comment about getting more black and Asian people into the police force. I served for a while in Stockwell and have policed in Brixton. I was not comfortable with the fact that, often, the only police officers on duty were white, but a lot of police officers felt the same way. If we asked, the vast majority of police officers would answer that they really wanted black and Asian people to join the police—they really want the police to be representative because it makes their lives easier. I have spoken to black and Asian people—I spoke about this recently to a DJ who I imagine is quite influential—who say that they still do not trust the police. I gained an impression a little from the right hon. Gentleman that he felt the same way. May I just say this? In any organisation consisting of thousands of people, one will find some idiots—there is no doubt about it—but the vast majority of police officers are not racist and do not judge people by the colour of their skin.

Furthermore, in any station, police officers do not want to get into a situation in which half of them are sitting on one side and half on the other, whether because of skin colour, religion or something else. That is not a good idea for a police officer. If police officers have to press the orange “help urgently required” button, they do not want to think that half the other officers will not come because of things they have said or done in the police canteen earlier. Believe me, and I think that I speak for most officers, when I am in the police canteen I want all those officers to be my friend because I want to feel that they will come for me if I need their help, and vice versa. There is not as big an issue as perhaps there was 20 years, and I urge anyone in the black and Asian community, and in particular in the Black Police Association which had a policy of actively discouraging black and Asian people from joining the police, please, to get behind the police. If there are problems, black and Asian people can change them by joining the police and being part of the police service—it would help us all very much if that happened.

Various speakers have talked about stop and search. I have stopped and searched a lot of people over the past five or six years. It is embarrassing to stop and search people if they are not found with anything. I have always attempted to do stops and searches with as much courtesy as possible, and in an apologetic way, but there may be officers who have failed to do that, which is highly regrettable. They are making their jobs and those of their colleagues much harder if they fail to stop and search people courteously. I find it hard to believe comments by the right hon. Member for Tottenham that officers are no longer obliged to note down if someone gets injured in a stop and search. As well as a stop-and-search form, an officer is expected to fill in his personal notebook, and any officer who failed to put in a personal notebook that someone had received an injury would definitely be in breach of duty. That notebook is inspected by inspectors regularly.

Getting rid of stop and account was a good thing because, frankly, if someone came up to me and asked for the time and I answered them, technically they could demand a stop-and-account form, which led to all sorts of spurious cases in which officers were filling out long forms because people were trying to waste their time. There is no reason why police officers should not be able to go up and speak to someone. I agree, if they are going to undertake a search of any sort, that there ought to be some record, and there still is.

One of the great problems, however, is that it is quite difficult to stop and search people outside section 60 or section 44 areas. I can think of numerous instances, such as one in Liverpool street when I stopped someone for committing an offence for which I would not expect to carry out an arrest—begging, in this particular case. I then did a police national computer check and the person had a long record of carrying knives, violence and drugs. Under the circumstances, a quick stop and search might seem quite reasonable—not a strip search or an invasive search but an airport-style pat down of the people in question, just to check that at that moment they did not have a knife or drugs on them. Police officers, however, are not allowed to do so and, because of that, many people are walking around London with knives and guns because they know that it is actually difficult outside section 60 or section 44 areas for the police to stop them. The first time I was able to carry out a search—I will not go into the details, but the set of circumstances allowing me to do it were strange—I found a handgun on the 16-year-old involved, which made me think that there must be a lot of other 16-year-olds walking around with handguns who were pretty safe from being caught.

There has been some mention of tactics. One of the criticisms of the police has been that they did not get involved—when the car was on fire or whatever—at an early enough stage in the proceedings. Again, I look at it from the police officer’s point of view. They feel the pressure from politicians in rooms such as this. We have seen a number of riots over the past few years, and outbreaks of mass disturbance. After some riots, we have seen police officers criticised for their use of force. When people talk about robust policing, let us not mince our words: what we are talking about, at the extreme, is the police officers rapping their batons and walking forwards in an aggressive and forceful fashion. That is how they are trained to do it; they are trained to look forceful because at the moment that the baton comes out nothing less than an aggressive approach will work and remove people. The problem with that is that, as the police officers are walking forwards, they have their batons up and are getting ready to strike, and that is the photograph that will appear in the Sunday papers the next morning: the great British bobby looking out aggressively, probably shouting, and with a large metal baton ready to strike someone. The police officers might actually be quite scared as they are doing it; they do not really want to be in that position and they do not want to strike anyone but, once they are in that position, they do not really have much choice other than to go forwards. Yet, opening up the Sunday papers the next day, members of the public in suburbia and Members of Parliament see the picture and say, “This is an outrage! How dare the British police officer go for them! Look at how aggressive they were!” The police are trained to be aggressive: we spend two days a year training to look aggressive, because we hope that the aggression will put a person off and get them to move backwards. But no one sees that, just the photograph. Police officers therefore come under incredible criticism.

After one of the riots, a police officer was prosecuted for obeying exactly the instructions that we are all given: tell people to get back, if they do not go back, push them back, if they still keep coming forward, strike them with a baton. It does not matter whether the person in front is a large male or a small female—believe me, a lot of police officers have been assaulted by small females, and we are not trained to make that differentiation. If at all possible, we will protect ourselves from anyone, and rightly so.

[Tom Brake]

Is the hon. Gentleman at all reassured that, in relation to the policing of the riots, I am not aware of anyone having made any complaints about how they were handled?

Policing and Crime

Debate between Tom Brake and David T C Davies

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

Indeed, and I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Clearly, a number of forces around the country are adopting approaches or policies to ensure that police numbers are maintained. Another good example is Cleveland, where by working with Steria the force has been successful in achieving savings of £50 million over a 10-year period; it has been able to achieve 20% reductions in the areas on which they are working by focusing on cutting bureaucracy, increasing mobile access to make the police more effective when they are out in the field, and improving case file preparation, which no doubt leads to more successful prosecutions. When the will is there, much is achievable in making greater efficiency savings and focusing on police numbers. The Government are right to tackle the issue of police terms and conditions. It has been on the agenda for many years, but has never been tackled. It was time for the Government to grasp that particular nettle and progress is now being made.

It was also the Opposition’s choice not to debate one of the most effective ways of tackling crime, which is by cutting reoffending. Community sentences were mentioned in the earlier debate. With community sentences, 51% of people reoffend as opposed to the 59% who reoffend after being given a prison sentence. These are comparable groups of offenders: in one case, with a community sentence properly enforced, there is only a 51% reoffending rate; when a similar group of prisoners are sent to prison for one year or less, 59% reoffend.

[David T. C. Davies]

Is the hon. Member aware that that report also showed that anyone sentenced to more than 12 months in prison had the lowest reoffending rate of all? Is not the lesson we should draw that long prison sentences are more effective than anything else?

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am drawing on one part of the report; he is drawing on another. It is very clear that community sentences, for people who would otherwise have been given a short prison sentence, actually reduce reoffending. That means fewer victims. Surely, if we are having a rational debate, that must be a matter of interest to all Members.

For community sentences to be effective, I underline the importance, as stressed to me by User Voice, of ensuring that rehabilitation is retained within the community sentence scheme. In its view, those sentences are more effective than prison sentences because the rehabilitation component is there. I hope that that will remain part of the community sentences that are going to be issued.

Work in prison is also important. It is effective in tackling reoffending because it gives prisoners skills that they can use, as well as providing—according to the Howard League, which published a report today—something like £17 million that can go into the victims fund. I am sure that everyone would welcome that as well.

Volunteering in prison is potentially just as effective in reducing reoffending as work in prison. Last week the Prison Reform Trust launched a very successful scheme at High Down prison drawing on the skills of listeners, and I am certain that the reoffending rate among former prisoners who have participated in it will be less than that among those who have not.

The Opposition did not, of course, choose to call a debate about the most cost-effective ways of solving crimes. Today I was fortunate enough to visit Crimestoppers, which happens to be based in my constituency. What it is achieving at a cost of £4.5 million has been valued at £120 million. Last year it helped to solve 50 murders. It favours payment by results, because it believes that it has a very successful model. By using the public as a resource, it is able to bring cases to court much more quickly than it could have done had it followed the normal court and police processes.

The Government have set out in a concrete and substantive way what we believe will be effective in tackling crime and what we believe is necessary to deal with inefficiencies in, for example, the back office. I feel that it was incumbent on the Labour Members who tabled a debate on this subject to set out what their alternative would have been, but I am afraid that that has been totally lacking this evening.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Tom Brake and David T C Davies

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

We have heard from many people on the Government and Opposition Benches for whom I have the utmost respect, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel). However, I do not share the enthusiasm of all Government Members for all aspects of the Bill. There are many parts with which I heartily agree, and we have heard a few examples of areas where the current legislation has gone wrong.

Years ago, I was involved in a case in the Welsh Assembly in which a bus driver who worked for a company that undertook school bus runs was told that he might lose his job because 20 years previously he had incurred a minor conviction for shoplifting or a drink-related offence at the age of 19. For 20 years, he had lived a perfectly good life and suddenly he was about to lose his job over that minor offence. Clearly, such examples are totally and utterly disproportionate and I hope that we will do something about them.

I am less keen when I hear people talking about a police state. I declare an interest as a serving special constable in the British Transport police. I assure Members that when I go out it does not look like a police state. I have conducted many section 44 stop and searches, and I do not recognise the descriptions that have been given. I would challenge the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who is not currently in his place, to ask the gentleman who says that he was stopped and searched every time he stepped out on the streets of London to produce the written evidence. Written evidence there most definitely will be, because every stop and search of that nature required about 20 minutes of paperwork.

One problem with section 44 stop-and-searches was that they were carried out entirely at random and were never actually picking people up. The police officers themselves were not enthusiastic about doing them, because they knew that they would annoy a member of the public who was probably not doing anything at all, incur at least 20 minutes of paperwork and be most unlikely to get anyone for anything.

Section 44 is going, which is fine, but the Government ought to consider the fact that the other stop-and-search legislation is not adequate to catch people who are clearly breaking the law. For example, on many occasions— I assure Members that I mean many, many occasions—I have stopped people for committing offences that were never going to be arrestable. The first thing that a police officer does in that situation is to check whether the person in question is known to the police for anything and whether they have a previous record. Very often it turns out that they do, and that there are warning markers indicating that they regularly carry knives, guns, drugs or other illegal paraphernalia.

At that point, faced with somebody who has committed an offence that will not get them arrested—perhaps begging or abusive language—but who regularly carries guns, knives or drugs, one would think that the officer would have the power to search them, but they do not. Unless the police officer can actually see the knife or drugs sticking out of a pocket, there are no powers to search somebody. The officer cannot take account of a person’s previous record. If we are going to get rid of section 44 stop-and-search powers, which is absolutely fine, we should at the same time ensure that people who are likely to commit offences or carry illegal apparatus can be properly searched.

We need to let the police know that when they see people acting suspiciously, they will still the have the power to stop and search. A lot of police officers, myself included, having undergone courses such as the behaviour spotting one—it is called BASS, but I will not bore Members with the details of what that means. It is about spotting people behaving in a suspicious fashion. Many police officers I have spoken to still feel uneasy about simply going up to somebody to stop and search them, even if they have been displaying obvious signs of acting in a manner that is likely to mean they were about to commit an offence.

Members of the public might feel that the police are for ever stopping and searching them—every time they go out on the streets of London, according to one Member—but police officers actually feel very nervous about going up to people to stop and search them. They feel that they are likely to get complaints if they do so. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will think about that. I have tabled amendments in the past suggesting that officers should be able to take account of somebody’s previous criminal record in deciding whether to conduct a stop and search, but I have not succeeded thus far. I do not know whether I have any more chance under the current Government than under the previous one—I suspect possibly not.

[Tom Brake]

The hon. Gentleman has referred to me both since I came back into the Chamber and, I understand, while I was not here. I would be very happy to introduce him to the baroness in question at the other end of the building, who will explain to him precisely what her son-in-law experienced. Then he will be able to make his own judgment.

[David T. C. Davies]

I would be delighted. I believe the hon. Gentleman said that every time that baroness’s son-in-law set foot on the streets of London, he was stopped and searched. The first thing that I would ask him would be, “Did you ask for the copies of the pink slips that have to be lodged every time you are stopped and searched?” If he was stopped and searched there will be a record of it, and we should be able to prove whether that happened every time he set foot on the streets of London. I look forward to pursuing the matter.

The issue of previous criminal records brings me to that of DNA, on which I have some sympathy with Opposition Members. I do not think that there was anything fundamentally wrong in collecting people’s DNA. I have done it myself, and I will be quite honest in saying that I am not sure that the Government have got it right. I asked the Home Secretary earlier whether she accepted that, as a result of the change, people who had committed crimes would be able to get away with it. She said that that was not true. I have the utmost respect for her, but I am very direct and I must say that I do not believe that and cannot accept it.

We see in the Bill that the Government have decided that anyone who is arrested for specific types of offences—terrorism, drugs, violence, rape and that sort of thing—will have their DNA kept indefinitely if they have a previous recorded offence. The Government recognise that keeping people’s DNA is useful when they have been arrested for offences such as murder, rape, violence or terrorism even if they are not convicted, which I welcome. However, it surely follows, therefore, that DNA can also be useful in respect of less serious offences, such as burglary or taking a vehicle without consent. We should make it clear to members of the public that we are increasing their rights and liberties, but that there is a cost—that is obvious, and we should be honest about it. One cost is that some burglars and car thieves will not be caught.