Dover and Portsmouth: Protests

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

Of course people are scared and angry about the fact that, as they see it, the borders are not secure. As the right hon. and learned Lady will know from her time in the Home Office, we have come some way since then, and have improved the system significantly. More than 1,000 boats and engines have been seized, system-wide arrests are up by 70%, 48,000 crossings have been prevented, there has been a 40% increase in French boots on the ground, and we have increased surveillance technology. There has been a huge 42% drop in the number of boats coming over, and we have removed more than 80,000 illegal migrants and foreign criminals. People are right to express a view, and it was disingenuous of the right hon. and learned Lady to suggest that I was calling those people racist, when I had made it very clear that there were people in Portsmouth who were concerned, and that local residents were coming out because they were angry. We have heard about that, and the actions of those people are very different from those of the racist thugs we see in other places—and who were there as well—and from the whipping up of hatred online. We will continue to bear down on illegal boat crossings.

Let me pay tribute to Kent and Hampshire police. Kent police dealt with 1,300 calls to 999 on Saturday, and Hampshire police dealt with 1,000. While these incidents were going on, a lot of work was being done to keep us safe across the counties.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

We should be opposed to gangs wherever we find them, whether they are gangs of smugglers or mass gangs in Southampton and Dover, and I wish that this House was a little more united in its resolve to oppose both types of gang. Peaceful protest strengthens our democracy; what weakens our democracy is intimidation and the abuse that we have seen. This Government passed the Crime and Policing Act 2026 because we wanted to tackle concealment linked to criminality. Those powers apply in police-designated areas where protest is happening under certain conditions. In Southampton and Dover, we clearly saw concealment linked to criminality in non-police-designated areas. Will the Government consider extending the parameters of the 2026 Act to tackle that?

[Sarah Jones]

We keep all legislation under review when it comes to public order, and there is a big piece of work that Ken Macdonald—Lord Macdonald—has done for us, which we are considering. There are other powers on face coverings in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, but we will always look at these things.