Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Monday 5th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

My hon. Friend will be aware that at the Girl Summit in July the Prime Minister announced our intention to introduce mandatory reporting of this unacceptable practice. We are consulting on how best to introduce the new duty. Alerting the police to cases of FGM will allow them to investigate the facts and increase the number of perpetrators apprehended. The NHS will support anyone affected by FGM and will offer appropriate advice and procedures when needed.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

In October the Immigration Minister said, in response to a National Audit Office report, that he intended that this country would join the Schengen information-sharing agreement, which would provide our border posts with information about people involved in serious crime—such as the person who murdered the son of my constituent, Mrs Elsie Giudici—during the course of the year. Is that facility now available, and if not, when does he expect that to happen?

[James Brokenshire]

We are finalising the arrangements for joining the second-generation Schengen information system for the benefits that I have identified and to which the hon. Gentleman refers. I regard it as an important enhancement to our work in identifying those with criminal records. It is being advanced and I expect it to be in place very shortly.

UK Visa Applications (Malawi)

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Hollobone. We are debating in the presence of the Malawian high commissioner to the UK, who is here to observe our proceedings. I am pleased to have been able to secure this debate this afternoon. I am grateful to the Home Office Minister for being here to respond to it. I am aware that he has a full range of responsibilities. Although Malawi is important to me and to many other Members of this House, I am sure that it is not necessarily at the top of his agenda. I took the opportunity earlier to provide him with a list of the points I want to raise, so I hope he will be able to respond to at least some of those points this afternoon.

I declare an interest as the co-chair of the all-party group on Zambia and Malawi. I chair the Malawi part. As I am sure Members are aware, Malawi has strong links, through David Livingstone, with Blantyre in my constituency in Lanarkshire. That is the basis for my interest. It is a long-standing interest also shared by many of my constituents, which is why I am keen to pursue some of the issues this afternoon.

I should also say that I am indebted to the Scotland Malawi Partnership, a non-profit organisation in Scotland that works to ensure that relationships between projects and communities seeking to support Malawi are well linked up. It works as a resource for a range of charities, some large and some very small, that support communities in Malawi. It has provided me with some of the case studies and detailed information that I want to touch on this afternoon.

This is not a new issue. Through the all-party group, I have been involved in meetings with the Minister’s colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development over the past year to express some of these concerns. Each time, they have said that they understand that there are frustrations, acknowledged the issues and said that the matter was really for the Home Office. That is why I am grateful that a Home Office Minister is here. I hope that he will be able to respond to some of these issues.

As the Minister will be aware, there was a short general debate on Malawi last week in the other place. In the debate, Lord McConnell, the former First Minister of Scotland, who was involved in the founding of the Scotland Malawi Partnership, and Lord Steel, the former Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament—I visited Malawi with him and others last year—raised the frustrations that had been expressed to them about the way in which the visa system operates for applicants from Malawi. They did so in the context of a much wider debate on Malawi, which focused on the UK’s relationship with Malawi and the strong community relationships with Malawi that exist in many parts of Scotland.

The context is significant for this debate, because the point I want to get across to the Minister is that there is real concern that the relationship is being undermined by the frustration, the difficulty, the bureaucracy and the cumbersome nature of the visa application process, which enables people to visit the UK in support of many charitable, educational and religious projects at a community and local level. The nature of that relationship is important, particularly because with Malawi, due to issues that are rightly of concern to the UK Government, it is not possible for there to be direct grant aid from Government to Government. A lot of the aid and support is channelled through charitable and other projects. That makes the issue even more significant, and the frustration is in danger of undermining the relationship.

As such, there appears to be a contrast between some of the language and ideals that the Government say underpin their international development efforts and those that inform the way in which this aspect of the immigration system works. They talk about inclusion and equality as core principles, yet it is near impossible for anyone other than the wealthiest of the urban elite in countries across Africa to secure visas to visit the UK. These visits are often for legitimate purposes. In many circumstances, all the costs are being met by reputable charitable organisations and groups in the UK. They are more than happy to provide any assurances that are needed that the visitor will be there for those purposes and will be able to return at the end of the visit.

I raised an example at a business statement in the House just two weeks ago. Christian Aid held an event in Parliament to highlight the impact of climate change on some of the poorest countries of the world. Representatives from organisations working with Christian Aid from the Philippines, Bolivia and Malawi were due to be at the event, but the Malawian representative was unable to attend due to problems securing a visa. Sadly, that is not unusual. I have heard examples—I know of some personally—of teachers, charity workers and people working with Churches being unable to fulfil long-standing partnership engagements in communities across the UK, including in Scotland, because of the changes to the application system for visas from Malawi.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I have come along to endorse what he is saying. I have constituents and organisations in my constituency that are involved in the Scotland Malawi Partnership and want their concerns raised in the House. I hope that the Minister can respond to them. As my hon. Friend has set out, it is not just about projects in Malawi and similar projects elsewhere; this issue is of great concern to those involved in that partnership. I hope we can get some results from the Minister this afternoon.

[Tom Greatrex]

My hon. Friend makes a good point on the growing sense of frustration felt by many of those involved in Malawi on the difficulties people have had in securing visas to visit the UK. I am sure that the Minister will be able to respond to some of these more detailed points as we develop them this afternoon.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Would it not be odd if citizens in Malawi were being deprived of visas to come to the UK when those against whom corruption allegations have been made were still able to secure visas?

[Tom Greatrex]

I assume that the hon. Gentleman is alluding to the ongoing investigation into the misappropriation of aid funds in Malawi and more widely. He makes an important point. The examples I am talking about are individuals involved in projects, partnership arrangements or exchange visits, often with schools or Churches and other organisations. They are not part of that wealthy elite. In many cases, they struggle to secure a visa when they have a legitimate reason to visit the UK and are support the underlying Government policy on aid and development in Malawi. He makes that point very well.

A recent example, provided to me by the Scotland Malawi Partnership, is the experience of Donald Osborne, who has worked with Malawi for a number of years. He was organising a visa for a Malawian teacher to visit Scotland, and the application was rejected not once but twice, and without any notification. That speaks to the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

Malawi is 170th out of 187 in the human development index. In Malawi, around 60% of the population live on £1 or less a day. For every 1,000 children born, 68 will die before the age of five. Only 16% of children will have the opportunity to attend secondary school. The partnerships that Malawi has with the UK, in my constituency, in Edinburgh and elsewhere across the UK, promote development to address those issues through a person-to-person model. The relationships between individuals, communities and families enhance the effectiveness of Government-to-Government relationships to tackle poverty. Some of those relationships have been under strain as a result of the events to which the hon. Gentleman alluded.

Many aspects of the visa process make it extremely difficult for Malawians to visit the UK. Lord McConnell highlighted in the other place last week how damaging the application process can be. He asked the Government whether steps could be taken to improve the system. The revised system provides a remarkably long, complex and often confusing process. The online process requires details from the applicant and the sponsor and has a detailed application form that requires an extraordinary level of supporting evidence and runs to 15 pages. That it is online is a clear difficulty for many people living in Malawi, as access to the internet is often difficult, time consuming and expensive. Power supplies and connections are unreliable and unpredictable.

I completely understand the need to be thorough—the process should be thorough—but the Government need to be aware that an online system, which seems straightforward from our perspective in the UK and in Europe, is very much more difficult for those applying from Malawi, particularly those doing so through the third-party contractor that has been running the system. I know that the operator of that system changed relatively recently. How many complaints have been made about the online system? Are the Government aware of the proportion of Malawians who have regular access to the internet? Was that taken into account prior to the changes to the system being introduced through Pretoria? Do the Minister and the Home Office have data available on the number of online applications that are started but never completed?

There is also a lengthy series of offline processes, which include posting passports to another country for assessment. At every stage, the process seems to confuse and frustrate many prospective applicants. The minimum cost for applications is £144, including the basic visa charge. It costs £59 just for an appointment. That translates to some 2,500 South African rand or some 107,000 Malawian kwacha, which is more than 30 times the weekly wage for the average Malawian and for which there is no refund if the application is unsuccessful. Indeed, I have heard of many cases in which repeat applications have been made, so how much money has been taken through unsuccessful visa applications, in particular from people from Malawi?

Furthermore, the move to a cashless system has made applying for UK visas in Malawi difficult for many people. In debates in the other place, Lord Steel explained the issues with a cashless system. International credit cards do not exist in the same way in Malawi, and it is illegal to pay in rand without the specific permission and authorisation of the national bank. The Government are therefore asking people to pay in a currency to which they have limited access. That has become a barrier to visa applications and has also worryingly led to an increasing number of industry intermediaries, who make onward electronic transfers on behalf of applicants, often involving high fees and cursory regard to the system’s robustness and whether applications are ever formally concluded. That is but one aspect of the system that causes discrimination based on wealth.

The Minister will be aware that many Malawians do not have an internationally recognised credit or bank card, but I wonder whether the Home Office took that into account when deciding how the system would work. Has any consideration been made of how much industry intermediaries make each year through charging to make electronic transfers? Are there any concerns about the quality of those transactions and the potential for fraud in the visa application process? We are told that the solution is for the UK sponsor to pay the fees, but that rarely works. The IT system regularly crashes and is unclear, making it hard for the sponsor to be able to get to the appropriate place in the application and make the payment. How many UK sponsors have been unable to pay fees for applications? What is the figure as a percentage of all applications?

The system also means that all UK visa applications from Africa are now handled in regional hubs, which causes delays as passports, birth certificates, bank details and other essential documents are sent back and forth across the continent, not always reliably. Decisions are then made by those who have almost no knowledge of the country concerned. Applicants have even had to fly across the continent to collect their passports in urgent situations. I understand that the move to regional hubs was partly about efficiency, but the Government should be concerned about reliability. How has the move to regional hubs affected the time scale involved in securing visas? What is the current backlog of the hub in Pretoria?

In last week’s debate in the other place, Baroness Northover stated:

“Poorly paid people from Malawi are not discriminated against in applying for visas. There is no income threshold.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 October 2014; Vol. 756, c. 858.]

While it may be correct that there is no income threshold, that is not the same as there being no disincentive based on income. For example, applicants must demonstrate that they have sufficient funds to cover the costs of their visit and to return to Malawi, meaning that more than 90% are simply not rich enough to be allowed to accept an invitation to the UK. They must also prove that there is a strong reason for them to return to Malawi, through either employment or family ties, but Malawi has a great deal of poverty and a lack of formal employment—85% of Malawians are subsistence farmers. Often, the events that people want to come over and take part in are run by organisations that are willing and able to provide any necessary assurances that the event is the reason why the applicant wants to come over and that the person will return, but that is almost impossible to prove in the application process. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to that.

Before I conclude, I will outline one recent example. Members will be aware of the work of Mary’s Meals, which feeds many people in Malawi and across poorer parts of Africa. The head of programmes for Mary’s Meals in Malawi, which currently feeds 690,000 children, was refused a visa on the grounds that he was likely to abscond, despite letters from the charity’s UK chief operating officer, as well as the country director, providing reassurances about the work that the individual was undertaking.

In conclusion, I return to my central point about the frustration caused by the visa system, how it operates, its cashless nature, which is inadequate for many Malawians, and the implications and consequences. Thousands of people in the UK are involved in projects and community initiatives to support Malawi, often on a local, project-by-project basis involving schools, Churches and community organisations. They want to help, support and underpin the work that the UK Government’s aid programme is engaged in delivering to one of the poorest countries in the world. The Scotland Malawi Partnership is a phenomenal organisation that is helping to facilitate that. It is not an unreasonable group of people, but it has repeatedly highlighted the concerns and the scale of the problem.

We have heard the line-to-take response from Ministers in other Departments, but I hope that the Minister can commit today not only to answering my questions but to re-examining the effectiveness of the system and its processes. This is not about immigration policy so much as the way the system is applied and how it affects people in Malawi. In the short term, will the Minister consider giving the high commission in Lilongwe a front-facing officer to provide face-to-face support to those applying for a visa to visit the UK and guide them through a process that can be confusing, frustrating and incoherent in equal measure? We all understand the importance of ensuring that immigration policy is well designed and robust, but there are real concerns that it is not as effective as it could or should be and that important charitable and support work for one of the poorest countries in the world is being undermined by the system. I implore the Minister to reconsider the matter and to provide a better system in the interests of the people of Malawi and of the UK.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Minister, I advise Members that the debate will conclude at 5.7 pm.

Foreign National Offenders (Removal)

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The prisoner transfer agreements are an important element of dealing with the issue. As my hon. Friend will know, there are still some countries in which we need to finalise the agreements and their approach. The prisoner transfer agreement is an important step and a useful tool and that is why it was one of the measures on the list of those to which we wanted to opt back in.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituent Elsie Giudici’s son was murdered in the most brutal way by a foreign national in his property in Scotland last summer. His mother has contacted me, concerned that it later transpired that the foreign national had a lengthy history of serious violent crime in his own country. The Home Secretary said that this is a serious issue and I believe that it is. The NAO report states:

“Current information held in the UK on foreign nationals who have committed…crimes in their own countries is less complete than most European countries.”

Will she therefore please explain why that is the case and why, four and a half years after she took office, the situation has not improved?

[Mrs May]

Absolutely. That was a serious and terrible case and our thoughts are with the hon. Gentleman’s constituent. We want to ensure that we have the maximum information available on which to act in relation to those with a violent history who try to come into this country and to ensure that we act properly to remove foreign national offenders. Our ability to do that will be improved by tools such as the Schengen information system, which is already being used by other European nations. We have said that we want to be able to opt back in to the system and to start to use it, which we have not been able to do up until this point.

Passport Office (Delays)

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robinson]

I am willing to take even more interventions as I think they are nearly as effective as this couple of photographs—I will not display them, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I will draw Members’ attention to them. They show interview rooms being used not for interview purposes but to store unprocessed files of passport applications in the course of being processed. They say that a good picture tells 1,000 words, so I refer the Minister to those photographs, which I am sure will soon be in circulation.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

On that point, my hon. Friend will be aware that the Scottish school holidays start about a month earlier than in England, and therefore within a couple of weeks. I am sure he shares my concern that when people make applications for passport renewals, they do so on the basis of advice on the forms and website that it will take three to four weeks. Given that passports are not being processed in that time, should advice at least be given for people to allow more time while the chaos is dealt with?

[Mr Robinson]

I take my hon. Friend’s point, but it is not good enough—this is quoting the ineffable Mr Paul Pugh, who has already been referred to—to say that people should not book their holidays until they have their passports. At the present rate of progress, some might not get their passports for a year, and could not book their holidays. Anyway, how could people book now when all the best package deals are gone and the best hotels booked? It shows how out of touch the Passport Office, the Government and Ministers are with the real world of our constituents.

Hillsborough

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I will certainly look into that matter. If I may, I will write to the hon. Gentleman on the issue.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am sure the Home Secretary will recall that when we debated these issues in the House some time ago, the overwhelming sentiment on both sides of the House was that there was a need for full transparency and disclosure, not just as a prerequisite for justice but as a first step towards resolution. In the light of that, may I return to the question of the 13 retired police officers who have refused to comply with the IPCC’s requests for interviews? Does she agree that, rather than it being a matter for those officers to decide, before any interviews take place, that they have nothing to add, the IPCC should be allowed to discover whether that is the case during the process of such interviews?

[Mrs May]

As I said in response to earlier questions, those who have refused to be interviewed so far have been regarded as witnesses, which means that there is no requirement for them to take part in an interview at this stage. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about who should be the judge of whether they have anything to add to the investigation, but as I have said, they are being regarded as witnesses and are therefore not required to be interviewed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Monday 21st May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The Government intend to produce a White Paper. I have said that it will be published tomorrow, so I suggest the hon. Lady waits to see what is in it.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

5. What recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of UK border controls.

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

Security of the border is our top priority. In February, the independent chief inspector published his report into border security checks last summer. We have accepted all the report’s recommendations, and we are implementing important changes to improve the effectiveness of UK border controls.

[Tom Greatrex]

I thank the Minister for that reply, but given that up until as recently as last week people are waiting up to three hours to come into the country through Heathrow, should not the Minister, instead of accepting whatever this week’s excuse is—whether it be the royal wedding, the snow, the rain, the wrong type of rain or the wrong type of wind—accept that it is his responsibility, and get on and sort the problem out before the Olympics?

[Damian Green]

I am happy to assure the hon. Gentleman that we have already introduced more staff at peak times and established mobile teams that can be moved around. Within a couple of weeks, a new control room will be operating at Heathrow, which will enable us to have better real-time information about what is happening in each of the terminals. We are already seeing considerable improvements. If the hon. Gentleman does not want to take that from me, he should take it from Colin Matthews, the chief executive of BAA, who said at the Home Affairs Select Committee last week:

“we can detect some improvement in the last week or so since that announcement was made.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. POLICE.uk, our street-level crime mapping website, has received more than 430 million hits since its launch at the beginning of the year, which translates to well over 40 million visits. We are adding new information on crime types and, from next year, justice outcomes. It is an important part of our transparency programme, and it demonstrates that the public want, and make use of, this information.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

T7. When does the Home Secretary intend to review the definition of an “air weapon” under the Firearms Act 1968?

[Mrs May]

I shall come back to the hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] I am sorry, but I did not actually hear the question. I understand that he said “air weapons”. Is that right?

[Tom Greatrex]

indicated assent.

[Mrs May]

May I write to the hon. Gentleman and set it out to him clearly?

Hillsborough Disaster

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in the debate, and I start with a confession: I was one of those—there were close to 140,000 of us—who signed the e-petition. I was not sure whether we were supposed to be able to petition ourselves, but I did it, and I hope that it does not get me into too much trouble.

I want to place on record my appreciation, which I know is shared by many others—everyone in the Chamber and, I am sure, all those listening and watching at home and in the Gallery—for the unstinting dedication and commitment to the issue displayed by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram). He spoke with great feeling and passion in opening the debate, having over the past 22 years been involved in a long campaign for justice for the 96 victims of the events of April 1989.

Many others have expressed their views as fans of Liverpool, as people present at the game on that day, or as people who represent communities and individuals personally affected by the disaster, and we have heard the power of their testimony this evening. We have heard of the impact not only on Liverpool and the surrounding area, but on Sheffield, and one particular part of it that will, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) said, for ever be associated with the most senseless, tragic and unforgivable loss of life, when people left their home that afternoon to watch a football match and never returned.

As others have said, in debating this issue we should not forget the context of the time. Football had been scarred by trouble in and around grounds for close to 20 years. Facilities were often poor, owners were often disinterested in their clubs and, I have to say, Government at the time saw football as some sort of national disease, rather than a sport. It is sometimes easy to be nostalgic for football in the pre-premiership era, especially when that coincides with one’s formative years, but football in the 1980s was alien to many people. It was often unloved, unappreciated and unwelcome.

Thousands of people in this country watch football matches at weekends. They did in the 1980s, too. On 15 April 1989, I was among those who did. Like those at Hillsborough, that afternoon I stood on a concrete terrace, largely unchanged since it was opened decades earlier, with metal crash barriers and high, angled fences between the pitch and the crowd. It was my good fortune that, unlike those people at Hillsborough, I was standing on a terrace that was largely empty. There were 4,949 other people on that day in grounds that were licensed to hold 30,000-odd. All 4,950 people who arrived at Craven Cottage that day left for home alive; that is how it should be at every football match, but that afternoon for 96 people it was not.

Many of us who were at the football on that day left knowing that something had gone terribly, badly wrong in south Yorkshire that afternoon. We were soon to find that football was about to change for ever. I will never forget the sense of emptiness, and of the irrelevance of the spectacle of the match that I was watching, as we stood on the terrace and heard—in those days, it was from people with radios—first that there was a pitch invasion at the FA cup semi-final; then that the game had been held up; then that people were spilling on to the pitch; then that there was a riot; then that people were injured; and then that advertising hoardings were being used as stretchers. It was only over the course of the evening and the next day that the scale of what had happened in Sheffield became apparent. Even then, reports—media reports, briefings from the police, statements from football authorities—all to a greater or lesser extent suggested that the deaths were precipitated by drunken fans, supporters arriving late, or spectators without tickets, or with the wrong tickets.

The undercurrent was obvious: it was the fault of fans—violent thugs who knew no better. The most infamous manifestation of that was the disgraceful reporting in The Sun that week, which we have heard about. As others have said, there were made-up quotes, invented incidents and fictional accounts designed to blacken the name of people who were in Sheffield to watch a football match. That is absolutely disgraceful.

Given that background, it is little wonder that the terminology of injustice is used because it is unjust for people to be condemned without evidence. It is unjust to be publicly blamed as culpable of the deaths of those one stood with watching a sporting fixture. It is unjust to be written off by authorities seeking to avoid responsibility. That sense of injustice needs to be addressed today.

As we all know, although Lord Justice Taylor dismissed many of these stories out of hand as baseless, and firmly established the culpability of South Yorkshire police in his report, that sense of injustice remains today. It remains because of the claim by the match commander David Duckenfield that fans forced open the exit gate that led to the crush in the central pen, when that was his own terrible decision. It remains because of the disappearance of CCTV tapes from the control room—tapes showing what happened in the Leppings Lane end of the ground. It remains because of the verdict of accidental death rather than unlawful killing.

Many others have spoken of various inadequacies and the fact that the police fixation with alcohol seemed to have the upper hand. A sense of injustice remains because of the statement by the then Prime Minister’s press spokesman that he had “learned on the day” that the cause was “a tanked-up mob” of Liverpool fans. It remains because of the records of police officers’ statements having been doctored by senior officers of South Yorkshire police. It remains because the documents placed in this House seem incomplete—there are no memos between senior police officers, or the police and their solicitors, for example. It remains because of the Government’s discussions during those days still not having been released.

That sense of injustice can be righted only by the full and complete disclosure of documents held by the Government, South Yorkshire police and the other relevant authorities. Where doubt remains, that disclosure can help to bring clarity. Where suspicion lingers, that disclosure can help to bring confirmation. Where there is still grief—I know there is still grief—that disclosure can help people to move towards resolution.

One of the great privileges of being a Member of this House is the opportunity to stand in the Chamber and speak up for what is right. There are countless examples of Members of this Chamber doing that in our history and helping to right historic wrongs. This evening, it is important that the House speaks with one clear and consistent voice. Those who should have been given answers 22 years ago, who feel the pain every day of their lives, who are here today and watching the debate in such numbers deserve the truth. They deserve the full truth and they deserve it now.

Metropolitan Police Service

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Home Secretary rightly said in her statement that confidence in the police—for both the public and serving police officers—must be of paramount concern in getting to the bottom of these allegations. She has just shared with the House information about other police forces, but has she had any contact with the Scottish Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill, about how these types of inquiry can range across Scottish police forces as well as those for which she is directly responsible?

[Mrs May]

I have not had such interaction with the Scottish Justice Minister, but I am happy to alert him to the steps that we are taking in relation to forces in England and Wales so that he may look at that in relation to Scottish forces.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting this issue, which is at the heart of the call handling pilots launched at the start of the year to identify vulnerability, and to ensure that there is better join-up between the police, local authorities and the health service in order to ensure that where there are specific issues, they are identified more speedily and more effectively. Bullying and intimidation linked to disabilities are utterly reprehensible and unacceptable, and the system needs to improve to identify where these problems are occurring.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

T9. Will the Minister inform the House of when his Department intends to review the current definition of an air weapon under the Firearms Act 1968?