Domestic Abuse Bill (Second sitting)
Victoria Atkins ExcerptsThursday 4th June 2020
(4 years, 1 month ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Domestic Abuse Bill 2019-21 View all Domestic Abuse Bill 2019-21 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 4 June 2020 - (4 Jun 2020)
The Chair
Thank you very much for joining us. We will now hear oral evidence from Somiya Basar and Saliha Rashid. We have this session until 2.45 pm. Please introduce yourselves, and then I will invite members of the Committee to ask you questions.
Somiya Basar: Ladies and gentlemen, I am Somiya Basar.
Saliha Rashid: My name is Saliha Rashid. I am a survivor of gender-based abuse, and I am also a campaigner. I am here today representing a group of survivors that have been part of Women’s Aid’s “Law in the making” project.
Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
Q
Saliha Rashid: Yes, I come from a community where, growing up, I was always told that because I am blind and a woman, I could not have high aspirations or become independent. When I sought support to become free of this and to become independent, I found many barriers. There was a lack of understanding in relation to disability and issues around gender-based violence. I found that services were not accessible. There was a lack of information in accessible formats.
As a group of survivors, we come from a diverse range of backgrounds, and we have had different experiences, but, quite commonly, we have all experienced reaching out to a system that has failed to support us—a system that has been unable to meet our diverse needs and, for many of us, a system has been re-traumatising and re-victimising.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Saliha Rashid: I think that for disabled survivors there needs to be a statutory duty conferred on all organisations to provide information in accessible formats. I support the campaign by Stay Safe East around repealing the carers’ defence clause in part 5 of the Serious Crime Act 2015, which is on domestic abuse. I think that awareness-raising is a key priority for our group, because we have found a lack of awareness around these issues, both within statutory and non-statutory services.
Jess Phillips
Q
Saliha Rashid: No, I think there need to be adequately funded services for disabled survivors, as well as for survivors from other minority groups, such as LGBT survivors and BAME survivors.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Lucy Hadley: We really welcome the Bill. There has been a long wait to see it here in Parliament, and we are really pleased that it is back. The current context shows how urgently we need to improve protection and support for survivors. There is currently a real postcode lottery in access to support across the country, which is one of the main reasons why the domestic abuse commissioner can make a massive difference to survivors and their access to support.
The impact of covid-19 has been clear: women are telling us that abuse is escalating but it is harder to leave. At the same time, 85% of the service providers we spoke to in March said they had had to reduce or cancel elements of their service provision. The pandemic has landed on top of a difficult funding crisis for our sector. It is vital that the Bill brings forward the legal protections and support that survivors need, and that that is backed with the sustainable funding that life-saving specialist domestic abuse services require across the country. The domestic abuse commissioner, in mapping that provision and monitoring services, can make a real difference in access to support for survivors.
Andrea Simon: I agree. The domestic abuse commissioner in particular is a welcome addition to the Bill. We welcome the powers to ensure that public bodies respond to the commissioner’s recommendations, and the commissioner’s remit in tackling the postcode lottery in service provision.
I think you heard earlier, when the commissioner gave evidence, that we must go further in terms of resourcing a wider range of the community-based services that VAWG victims rely on. It is currently a crucially missed opportunity in the Bill that we do not have a statutory duty that speaks to that wider provision.
It is really important for the End Violence Against Women Coalition that the Bill sets up the crucial principle of equal access to protection and support for all survivors of domestic abuse. We cannot have a situation in law that leaves certain victims behind. In particular, we highlight that migrant victims of domestic abuse are currently left out of the protective measures proposed in the Bill.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Lucy Hadley: Yes, we do. There is a wider question about the mechanisms through which funding is delivered, and it is also about the amount of funding. We currently see year-long funding pots, and commissioners who do not take a strategic approach to domestic abuse and violence against women and girls service provision. We need to overhaul not only the means of long-term, three to five-year funding—secure funding, across the different public bodies that fund support for survivors, whether they are local authorities, police and crime commissioners or the healthcare sector. We also need to ensure that we are funding these services in a more secure way, stopping competitive tendering where it is no longer required, and ensuring that local authorities and other public bodies are held accountable forfunding these services securely and in the long term. That is where the commissioner can really help.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Lucy Hadley: I think the protection order could be really welcome. Our main concern, and what we hear most of all from survivors, is that poor enforcement is the problem with the protection order system. There are a range of protection orders—non-molestation orders, occupation orders and the domestic violence protection order—and survivors’ No. 1 concern with that is poor enforcement.
In our Law in the Making project, which engaged a group of survivors in the development of the Domestic Abuse Bill—you heard from one of those survivors earlier—one woman told us, “My last 11 years were built on 13 harassment warnings, four restraining orders and one non-molestation order, averaging a breach a month.” It is not easy to get a protection order, and when we do get them they are not enforced, time and time again. For us, the key concern with the DAPO is the implementation and the enforcement, and that applies to the new requirements on perpetrators, whether they are requirements to attend a perpetrator programme or to attend drug and alcohol programmes. If that is not in force, and there are not the resources to ensure that the programmes that people are accessing are safe, well monitored and enforced by the police, we are concerned that the orders will not do what they promise to do.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Lucy Hadley: Yes, and that is really important. It has been a problem with the DVPO to date, and it is really welcome that that is included.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Q
Andrea Simon: I would say that it does not go far enough in enshrining one of the key principles of the Istanbul convention: article 4(3), which speaks specifically about types of discrimination and how the implementation of the convention by parties should involve taking measures to ensure that the rights of victims are secured without discrimination on any of the grounds that are listed in article 4(3). One of those grounds is migrant status; we do not feel there is enough legal protection in the Bill to ensure that there will not be discrimination in the provision of services and support to migrant victims. To remedy that, it is important to insert the principle of non-discrimination into the Bill. That should be applied to any statutory duty on local authorities, or a wider statutory duty on public authorities to ensure that when they are discharging their responsibilities under the Bill, they are doing so mindfully and in accordance with the requirement under the Istanbul convention not to discriminate against certain categories of victim.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Suzanne Jacob: Drive is a very important tactical intervention against perpetrators of domestic abuse. It deals specifically with high-harm and high-risk individuals, which means that they pose a risk of serious harm or murder to one or more family members. It is making a difference, and we are extremely proud of the consortium of organisations and funders who have supported it. It has been a very good team effort so far.
Drive responds to one particular cohort of those who use abuse. There is a very broad spectrum of individuals who use abusive behaviours in their family life. With 80-plus other organisations, we are calling for not just Drive but DAPOs and other really important tactical provisions to be set within the context of a comprehensive strategy about the perpetrators of domestic abuse. In exactly the same way, for years we have had a really concerted strategy called Pursue around counter-terrorism, and we have had the same for organised crime. It is overdue, and it could be a really good sign of the Government’s ambitious intent to have a strategy around those who use abuse.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Suzanne Jacob: I think it is really helpful. We are very supportive of the amendment, which Members will have seen, around quality assurance for those programmes. Quality as well as quantity is vitally important when it comes to perpetrator responses, because the risks are very great and we know that, as with any industry, you can get the corner shop or backroom options, trying to do things on the cheap, which is not safe and not effective. So we very much welcome the provision and we would like to see something further, and something solid, in there about the quality assurance process for that.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Ellie Butt: We really welcome that amendment. It is something that we worked with other organisations in this sector and the homelessness sector to bring about. It is important particularly for survivors without children, who currently are not entitled to priority need automatically. It will be an enormous help for that group of survivors and we welcome it.
I think there is a lot more to do around housing for survivors of domestic abuse. Hopefully we will come on to talk about it, but the legal duty for refuges is particularly crucial, because there still are not enough places to meet demand; but, yes—absolutely—it is brilliant that that change is being made, and it will offer protection to that particular cohort.
Victoria Atkins
Thank you. Colleagues will have lots of questions, so I am going to draw myself in, as it were, now.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
Q
Ellie Butt: We really welcome the creation of the role of domestic abuse commissioner and the appointment of Nicole Jacobs, who I think is already doing brilliant work in this field. We think her particular strength will be understanding what service provision is going on, mapping that and looking at its quality—the gaps—and reporting and making representations to the Home Office and Parliament about it.
Something that I would really like to see, as well, is her bringing in areas of Government that I think currently do not do enough work in this field. For example, the Department for Work and Pensions has an enormous role here. Something that the Bill is going to do is define economic abuse, within the definition of domestic abuse. That is brilliant, but we want to see much more in terms of protecting survivors of economic abuse. We want to see some changes to the welfare benefits system to bring that about, including making advance benefit payments grants, rather than loans, for survivors of abuse, and the single household payment system being made into a separate payment system. I think Nicole has the capacity in her role—or whoever might follow in that role—to look at what those Departments, which we do not usually hear about when we talk about domestic abuse, are doing. I think there is an awful lot of potential there.
It is also important, though, to recognise that her role is currently a part-time role, with a relatively small budget. She can do lots in bringing issues to light and improving our understanding, but major gaps still need to be rectified through changes to the law and funding, and policy as well.
Jess Phillips
Q
Lyndsey Dearlove: I spent a couple of years as a MARAC co-ordinator, and I managed a MARAC in London. In that time, the provision of support for young children was about whether they met the threshold for social services, and in that instance, the support was about keeping them safe. At no point was there any offer of provision to enable children to look at their own mental health and examine their traumatic experience, because that provision just did not exist within the community.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Lyndsey Dearlove: A multi-agency risk assessment conference falls very much in line with the co-ordinated community response model, which is about bringing as many organisations together as possible and them all seeing that domestic abuse is a core issue. It entails a group of individuals who are named by their organisations to present and represent the cases on which they work. The majority of MARACs focus on the entire family: provision is put in place to keep the victim safe along with their children, but they also focus on prevention and holding the perpetrator to account.
When MARACs work well, they can be really effective. However, one of the challenges with MARACs is that although we have a huge need for people’s cases to be heard, the threshold for reaching and being heard at MARAC is often being deemed to be high risk. Obviously, risk is incredibly dynamic when it comes to domestic abuse, and with MARAC being once a month, your risk can change from day to day: you could have been able to use it, but then you cannot.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Lyndsey Dearlove: I think it is very important for us to recognise it, and it needs to be recognised by the professionals within the criminal justice system. We know from numerous experiences—it is something that victims of domestic abuse tell us nearly every day—that domestic abuse does not end at the point of separation, and that in the criminal justice system, especially around family courts, children are consistently used as a weaponised tool to control and prevent somebody from moving on into a new space.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Giselle Valle: Because in our experience what happens is that the police focus very quickly on immigration status. Once they find that somebody’s immigration status is not secure, they outright deny the service and say, “Just go back to your home country,” or they refer them to the Home Office so that they get sent back to their country. This process ensures not only that the women will not be supported, but that perpetrators are actually getting away with it, just on that basis alone.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Giselle Valle: In our organisation it is quite prevalent. A referral to the Home Office instils such fear that it is really difficult to convince women to go to the police, even when they are supported by our organisation. A freedom of information request—I think it was one or two years ago—revealed that about 60% of police forces in the country make referrals to the Home Office, which essentially closes the door on women who are experiencing domestic abuse and thinking about reporting it to the police, but who realise it would be highly dangerous for them and sometimes for their children, so they refrain from doing so.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Giselle Valle: The question was about referrals to the Home Office. They said, “Yes, we do.”
Victoria Atkins
Q
Giselle Valle: I think the question is about referrals, not about checking immigration status. It is about actual referrals to the Home Office.
Peter Kyle
Q
Lyndsey Dearlove: I think there are two parts to it. The Bill now speaks to big issues, but there are some practical issues that can make a real difference for children who have experienced domestic abuse. Some of that is about looking at their interaction with the NHS and at how they can maintain their appointments. One woman, who has allowed me to tell her story, came into our refuge after she had waited about 18 months for a referral to a speech therapist; she was concerned about her daughter’s speech. The social worker in the area told her that she had to leave and move into a refuge. After arriving in the refuge, she waited another 8 months for a referral to speech therapy. She was then rehoused, but her child was too old to benefit from speech therapy. Having a protected status on NHS waiting lists can be really important and can enable somebody to make the decision to leave and flee, without having that as a hindrance.
The other factor is looking at children’s access to schools and making sure they have that as soon as possible. Within primary schools the time can be quite reduced, dependent on which area of London you are in. If you are talking about secondary schools and GCSEs, getting a child back into school and into a school rhythm is exceptionally important. We now see that children have been forced to travel, pre-covid-19, across two or three boroughs. Unfortunately, in one instance, a gang picked up this young person, whose movement was known because they were going backwards and forwards, and used them to transport drugs. We know those opportunities increase vulnerabilities for children. If we can do some of the really simple, practical measures that can reduce that, they do make a big difference.
Victoria Atkins
Q
The Bill places a duty on tier 1 local authorities to provide support services to domestic abuse victims and their children in safe accommodation. Do you welcome that? What can we do to help you and your colleagues to implement that?
Simon Blackburn: We absolutely do welcome the duty and we want to make sure that local authorities are equipped to enact that duty in an appropriate way. There are a number of points to make.
Although the provision of safe and secure accommodation for victims, survivors and their children is absolutely fundamental, it represents a failure in all the systems. We should not be in a place where that is the only thing that local authorities are doing. There should be early intervention and prevention work taking place to make sure that women are not being removed from their homes and that, wherever possible, it is the perpetrators lives that are being disrupted.
Funding for domestic abuse services comes from the Government to a variety of different actors; local authorities are only one of those. Some funding is distributed directly to the third sector, some to police and crime commissioners and some to parts of the health service. It is important that we think about whether an opportunity ought to apply to those organisations as well. I do not think local authorities are the only people that can fix this.
In broad terms, we welcome the emphasis and the responsibility, but we want to see early intervention, prevention and community-based services given as much weight as accommodation-based services.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Simon Blackburn: It is important that the needs of children are put at the forefront of what local authorities do. In all social work assessments that should come through and be very clear. There will be differences in practice between one local authority and another. There may be a more informal disposal—for want of a better word—such as asking parents to engage with parenting classes or providing family support. The point at which that tips over into the local authority offering a formal assessment of need will vary from one area to another, depending on the services available. What should be consistent throughout is the threshold at which, for instance, a section 47 inquiry begins, because a child is deemed to be at risk of significant harm. That should not vary from one area to another.
In terms of the boards and partnerships that you refer to, I would think there would need to be somebody senior from the children’s social services department on that board. It is also possible that some form of guardian ad litem, or some independent representative of the needs of children, could sit on that board.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Simon Blackburn: It is clear that victims and their children are in need of priority assistance and certainly local councils would not shy away from that. There are, however other groups of people who local councils have been asked to give priority to, such as former servicemen and women, ex-offenders and victims of modern slavery. The council housing and social housing stock can only be so elastic. For instance, in my own local authority in Blackpool, were a victim or survivor to require a four-bedroomed house, I have five such houses and they are all occupied at the moment, with a waiting list potentially between five and 10 years.
We would need to look at some flexibility in terms of funding, and at discharging that duty potentially in the private sector—where, of course, it is not possible for a local authority to guarantee a lifetime tenancy, because we would be dealing with a private sector landlord. Given sufficient stock, absolutely, but we know there are major challenges across the board for local authorities up and down the country in building enough council and social houses. We absolutely would not shy away from the duty.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Simon Blackburn: In terms of the definition?
Victoria Atkins
The definition of domestic abuse in clause 1 of the Bill. What influence do you think that will have on commissioners when they are designing and commissioning services?
Simon Blackburn: I think it is potentially quite transformative. In the past it has been possible for people to interpret domestic abuse very narrowly. The broadening of the definition and the fact that we are taking things such as economic abuse into account certainly enable local authorities and other commissioners, such as police and crime commissioners, to look for more provision of specialist services, as Sara said earlier on, rather than asking providers to deliver things in which they do not necessarily have expertise. Of course, that comes down to the total quantum of money available to deliver on that, but I would welcome the expansion of the definition.
The Chair
I will run through who I have seen so far. I have Rebecca Harris, Liz Saville Roberts, Fay Jones, Liz Twist, Virginia Crosbie, Nickie Aiken and Jess. Rebecca Harris?
Domestic Abuse Bill
Victoria Atkins Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
I am pleased to announce that today the Government will be re-introducing the Domestic Abuse Bill in the House of Commons.
This landmark Bill will help better protect and support the victims of domestic abuse and their children and bring perpetrators to justice.
The measures in the Bill seek to:
Promote awareness—to put domestic abuse at the top of everyone’s agenda, including by legislating for a statutory definition of domestic abuse, emphasising that domestic abuse is not just physical and sexual violence, but can also be emotional, coercive or controlling, and economic abuse. Statutory guidance will accompany the definition to assist in understanding and dissemination of this important feature of the Bill, including taking account of the fact that the majority of victims of domestic abuse are women.
Protect and support victims, including by introducing a new domestic abuse protection notice and domestic abuse protection order, and placing a new duty on tier one local authorities in England to provide support to victims of domestic abuse and their children in refuges and other safe accommodation.
Transform the justice response, including by helping victims to give their best evidence in the criminal courts through the use of video evidence, screens and other special measures, and ensuring that victims of abuse do not suffer further trauma in family court proceedings by being cross-examined by their abuser.
Improve performance—the new Domestic Abuse Commissioner will help drive consistency and better performance in the response to domestic abuse across all local areas and agencies.
The Bill was originally introduced in July 2019 having had the benefit of pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee of both Houses, chaired by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller). In the Government’s original response to the Joint Committee’s report (CP 137), we undertook to publish a further response addressing the outstanding recommendations; the Government have today published this further response alongside the re-introduction of the Bill (CP 214). Copies of the further response will be available from the Vote Office and it will also be published on the www.gov.uk website.
Part 2 of the Bill establishes in law the independent office of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. Clause 10 makes provision for a framework document which, in effect, sets out how the Home Secretary and the Commissioner will work together. The document deals with, among other things, matters relating to governance, and the funding and staffing of the Commissioner’s office. To assist the scrutiny of the Bill, I have today published a draft of the framework document which has been agreed with the designate Commissioner, Nicole Jacobs.
The draft framework document, together with other Bill documents including a revised impact assessment and policy equality statement are available at: https://www. gov.uk/government/collections/domestic-abuse-bill.
[HCWS144]
Children and Domestic Abuse
Victoria Atkins Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on securing this important debate about a subject that we all clearly care so much about. May I congratulate her on her timing as well? As she said, the Bill is back today.
I am delighted that my very first act as the Minister leading the Bill through the House is to respond to this incredibly important debate about the impact of domestic abuse on the lives of children, not just in the immediate term but in the much longer term. The hon. Lady articulated that extremely well with the example of her constituent Christine, who set out not just the impact on her own life but the long-term impact on the life of her daughter, who is now over the age of 18. I hope that everyone watching the debate realises that we all genuinely understand the impact that domestic abuse can have.
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who, as always, brought the perspective of a vital part of our United Kingdom to the Chamber. He made the point that domestic abuse affects many families in Northern Ireland. I hope he is pleased that we were able to remove from the latest iteration of the Bill the sections we were going to include to ensure that legislation is passed in Northern Ireland. Of course, we were able to do that because the Northern Ireland Executive is back. We have confirmation that the Executive intend to legislate on this important subject locally, which is as it should be. I am delighted by that development.
As was set out, we know that as many as one in five children in the UK are witness to or exposed to this awful crime type in their households. We know too that domestic abuse has a devastating impact on young people. Growing up in a household of fear and intimidation can have serious, long-lasting effects on the health, wellbeing and development of a young person. We know that children exposed to domestic abuse are more likely to experience mental health difficulties, to be excluded from school and to become victims of domestic abuse later in life. I do not for a moment say that is the life outcome of every child—of course it is not—but we must pay attention to the statistics and to the trends that we see in them.
The hon. Member for Blaydon rightly challenged the Government on why the definition has been set at the age of 16 and above. As I hope I have been clear when speaking about previous iterations of the Bill, that is something we have grappled with. In 2012, following a consultation, the cross-Government definition of domestic abuse was amended to include 16 and 17-year-olds, with the aim of increasing awareness of young people’s experience of domestic abuse. Indeed, there was strong support for maintaining that age limit in responses to the domestic abuse consultation we held in 2018, which was part of the foundations of the Bill.
The concern is that lowering the age limit below 16 risks blurring the line between child abuse and domestic abuse between adults. Abuse perpetrated by an adult towards someone under 16 is classified as child abuse. We argue that the distinction needs to be maintained because, as colleagues will know, many interactions with social services and so on may flow from that definition.
We note that the Joint Committee on the Draft Domestic Abuse Bill, which scrutinised the draft Bill in huge detail and heard evidence from many witnesses, concluded that an age limit of 16 is the right one, but we are absolutely clear that the impact of domestic abuse on young people needs to be recognised properly, and that we must ensure that the agencies are aware of it and know how to identify and respond to it.
Jess Phillips
Are we therefore to assume that any child under 16 who suffered as a victim of domestic abuse, either directly or indirectly, would meet the threshold for child abuse and therefore should be reported to children’s social care immediately by all the authorities that we would expect to report that? For example, should every schoolteacher who hears about something like that report it as child abuse? If so, what will the Government put in place to ensure that children’s social care can deal with that?
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Lady will appreciate that I cannot give a broad-brush answer for each and every case; clearly, every case must be treated on its facts. However, the definition of harm in the Children Act 1989—again, the Joint Committee looked at that very carefully—includes
“forms of ill-treatment which are not physical”
as well as
“impairment suffered from seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another”.
We are therefore clear that the definition of harm in the 1989 Act includes witnessing and experiencing coercive control. From that, we concluded that the most effective way of trying to act on the Committee’s recommendation with regard to that definition is to amend the Department for Education’s statutory guidance, “Working together to safeguard children”. I hope that helps to clarify the point.
We are also clear that the impact of domestic abuse includes the impact on children living in households where abuse is conducted, teenage relationship abuse—the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) mentioned that—and abuse directed towards siblings and parents, which is perhaps one of the most hidden forms of abuse in a crime already typified by concealment and hiding.
We are seeking to address the very real points and concerns raised by Members and, indeed, others outside this House in a number of ways. First and foremost, the statutory guidance, which will sit alongside the definition in the Act—when it is passed, I hope—will specifically address the adverse impact of abuse on children. We are working closely with key charities such as Barnardo’s, Action for Children and the Children’s Society as well as the domestic abuse commissioner—the commissioner designate, I should say—the Children’s Commissioner and many others to ensure that the guidance makes the impact on children clear.
To answer the question from the hon. Member for Blaydon, we will publish a draft version of the statutory guidance ahead of the Commons Committee stage to assist in scrutiny of the Bill. I genuinely encourage hon. Members and their networks of experts and survivors to consider that draft guidance and feed back to us on it, because we want to get it right.
Importantly, the Bill as introduced today includes a new statutory duty that will require tier 1 local authorities in England to provide support to domestic abuse victims and their children in refuges and other safe accommodation. That will result in the right level of tailored support for victims and their children across the country at the time of need, with improved recovery rates and the release of bed spaces as people rebuild their lives more quickly. We will ensure that local authorities receive appropriate financial support to meet the proposed duty.
Kate Osamor
Will the Minister expand slightly on the authority that the Government will be giving to local authorities? Will that include mothers who have no recourse to public funds but are experiencing domestic violence?
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Lady knows that there is already provision under the domestic violence concession in some circumstances. I am pleased that she raised migrant women, because, as I hope she knows, alongside our introduction of the Bill the Government published today our further response to the Joint Committee’s recommendations, and in that we set out our response to this particularly difficult situation. She will understand the complexity involved. At the moment, I am afraid, we are still reviewing the consultation responses, but we have said that we will set out our conclusions before Report stage in this House.
One of the key functions of the domestic abuse commissioner will be to encourage good practice in the identification of children affected by domestic abuse as well as the provision of protection and support to people, including children, affected by domestic abuse. Under the terms of the commissioner’s appointment, they are required to have a thematic lead in the heart of their office to represent the interests of children. We are working with the commissioner to address some of the important points raised on community-based services and how those can be provided better across the country.
In terms of helping children above and beyond the law, the statutory guidance and so on, legislation can achieve so much, but much more needs to be done to address the impact on children. That is why in 2018 we launched the £8 million fund for children affected by domestic abuse, which funds projects that support children experiencing domestic abuse at home, focused on early intervention and reducing the impact of domestic abuse on children’s physical and mental wellbeing. Those projects are making a difference. We see those services really helping children and young people across England and Wales, supporting them through innovative practices and therapy.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) rightly raised the issue of schools. She will know of Operation Encompass, and we are funding the national roll-out of this fantastic project, which gives the police a set of simple procedures to enable them to communicate quickly and effectively with schools in relation to any pupils who may have been exposed to domestic abuse the night preceding the start of the school day. We all know examples of where the project has had a real impact. It will help schools provide timely and effective help to the pupils involved. Whereas children’s social care intervenes only in the most serious cases, Operation Encompass enables every child to receive support, regardless of whether an incident is recorded as a crime. We have also provided £220,000 to develop and pilot a training programme for children and family social workers to improve awareness of coercive control, indicators of domestic abuse, and how best to support families.
Many Members have raised the impact and role of the family courts, not just in today’s debate but in more general discussions. That is a critical part of our addressing this hidden crime. The welfare of the child is the family court’s paramount concern when making any decision about their upbringing, including with whom the child is to live or spend time. The law is clear that the presumption in favour of contact with each parent will apply unless there is evidence to the contrary, such as in cases that may involve domestic abuse. We have revised a practice direction to set out procedure for the courts to follow when dealing with applications for child arrangement orders where domestic abuse is alleged, which makes it clear that the presumption of contact can be explicitly displaced—
Victoria Atkins
I am so sorry; I have about 30 seconds left.
We have an expert panel to gather evidence to better understand how the family courts are responding, because we understand the concerns that hon. Members and survivors have expressed. The panel is working through a body of evidence and we expect its findings and recommendations for next steps to be published this spring.
I thank the hon. Member for Blaydon again for raising the issues in this debate as well as all people not just in this place but outside who are working so hard to support the victims and survivors of domestic abuse, including children. We are committed to getting this Bill right. With their help, we can.
Child Protection
Victoria Atkins Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement on Her Majesty’s inspectorate of police, fire and rescue services’ thematic report on its national child protection inspection programme. This important report was published today and summarises the findings of 64 inspections and re-inspections of police forces’ approaches to child protection since the programme began in 2014.
Keeping our children safe is an absolute priority for this Government, and we welcome Her Majesty’s inspectorate’s work in this area. Protecting vulnerable people should be of utmost importance to the police, and we are committed to ensuring that police forces demonstrate continued improvement in this regard. The activity of our independent inspectorates is critical to our ability to monitor progress and drive change. In the five years since it began, the national child protection inspection programme has been a vital source of independent scrutiny and challenge, and it has been instrumental in driving improvements in the way the police work with vulnerable children. As we know too well, this is an area of police work in which we have seen some of the worst failures in the past.
The report notes that
“we have continued to see an unambiguous commitment from police leaders, officers and staff to the protection of children.”
The report recognises improvements—in some cases, significant improvements—in the service received by children at risk. In every case, when inspectors returned to a police force that had previously been inspected, they saw progress being made and better outcomes for children. They saw examples of good, innovative work, such as the programme in Wales to provide early support to children exposed to adverse childhood experiences. Officers are better at understanding the signs of vulnerability and recognising children who are at risk. We welcome the positive findings in today’s report.
The report is clear, however, that more needs to be done. Although the police have a better understanding of risk, their resources are too often focused on areas of acute risk. Not enough is being done to spot the earliest signs of risk and prevent those risks from escalating. There are concerning findings around the detention of vulnerable children. Children are too often being detained in custody when they should not be, and they are not being appropriately safeguarded in those situations. There are inconsistencies in how forces manage dangerous offenders, and the escalation in the prevalence of digital technology in offending is a significant challenge, meaning that it is taking too long to identify and safeguard children who have been the victims of sexual abuse online.
These are serious matters, and I want to set out the steps the Government are taking to address them. As the Home Secretary stated yesterday, we are an ambitious and dynamic new Government with law and order at our heart. Our mission is clear. It is to deliver on the people’s priorities: to cut crime and to protect the public. We have recognised the huge demands placed on our police forces, and we are addressing these pressures with the recruitment of an unprecedented 20,000 additional officers over three years. We are investing a further £1.1 billion in policing next year—taking the total up to £15.2 billion—with the help of police and crime commissioners using their precepts. The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary are driving a united Government response with a new cross-Whitehall crime and justice taskforce to ensure that we use every lever at our disposal to fight crime. However, as today’s report makes clear, the rise in high-harm crimes such as serious violence and child sexual abuse is having a particular impact on the most vulnerable, requiring more from our police officers. They need to be able to look beyond the obvious and to develop a deeper understanding of risk.
We have worked with the College of Policing and are providing £1.9 million of funding to develop a more comprehensive package of training for first responders, so that they are better able to identify signs of vulnerability and provide support to victims. We have also funded the police’s own vulnerability, knowledge and practice programme to develop policing best practice in response to vulnerability as a whole. The programme is recognised in today’s report for its work to evaluate best practice in early intervention. We have introduced stronger multi-agency child safeguarding arrangements with shared responsibility between local authorities, police and health partners for the local strategic response to safeguarding, including harms such as child sexual exploitation. Again, these reforms, which were implemented in every local area in England last September, are recognised in today’s report as a key opportunity to deliver the kind of systemic change we need to see.
In relation to the inappropriate detention of children, we will look carefully at the recommendation and do what we can to ensure that vulnerable children receive an appropriate service from the police. We will continue to monitor the effectiveness of the 2017 concordat on children in custody, which sets out the statutory duties of the police and local authorities and provides a protocol for how transfers should work in practice.
Today’s report also recognises that the nature of risk is changing, and investment in officers and changing police culture are only part of the solution. That is why we are investing in new capabilities to tackle the exploitation of vulnerable children through crimes such as child sexual exploitation, child criminal exploitation and county lines. Last year we announced a £30 million investment in funding for work to tackle child sexual abuse and exploitation in 2020-21. The new funding will include investment in the child abuse image database—CAID—which the Home Office has developed in collaboration with UK law enforcement. CAID is a single database of indecent images of children which enables UK law enforcement to work collaboratively to safeguard children and bring people to justice. The new funding will allow us to deliver upgrades to CAID, including a fast, forensic tool to rapidly analyse seized devices and find images already known to law enforcement; an image categorisation algorithm to assist officers to identify and categorise the severity of illegal imagery; and a capability to detect images with matching scenes to help to identify children in indecent images in order to safeguard victims.
We have announced £25 million of targeted investment across 2019-20 and 2020-21 to strengthen the law enforcement response to county lines and increase the support available to the children, young people and families who are affected. This is in addition to establishing the national county lines co-ordination centre, with £3.6 million of Home Office funding, and providing a range of support for county lines victims. We also recognise that by the time children experience these forms of exploitation, the harm has been done. Police and other services need to spot the signs of risk and intervene earlier. Through our £13 million four-year trusted relationships programme, we are trialling 11 innovative projects in England working to protect vulnerable 10 to 17-year-olds who are at high risk of sexual exploitation and other forms of harm. We want to do more, however, which is why this year we will be publishing a first-of-its-kind national strategy to tackle child sexual abuse and exploitation.
We welcome today’s report. The protection of vulnerable children from harm is of the highest priority to this Government, as it should be to our police forces, and the inspectorate’s work in this area is vital in shaping our work in the future. The Home Secretary intends to meet inspectors to discuss today’s report and understand what more we and the police can do to ensure that children receive the highest levels of protection in the future. I commend this statement to the House.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
This report is utterly damning and should shame us. It finds that the current system of protecting the most vulnerable children in our country is unsustainable, that the approach of police forces is not proactive enough, and that vulnerable children are simply not being identified or protected, with resources and the failures and variability of partnership working being identified as key concerns. The report comes on the same day as a leaked Government report into the drug trade, which shows that vulnerable children are falling into the grip of gangs at an unprecedented rate. Those are two sides of the same crisis that is reaching into every town and community across the country.
The Children’s Commissioner has been sounding the alarm for several years now. She found that 2.3 million children are living with risk because of their vulnerable backgrounds, and as many as 1.6 million of those children have patchy or no statutory support whatsoever. After a decade in which the safety net that vulnerable children rely on—Sure Start, family support services, speech and language therapy, behavioural support, social services and probation—has been picked away, it is becoming far too easy for the most vulnerable to be preyed upon by serious organised criminals.
It is thoroughly unacceptable that the police are not recognising or evaluating risks to children well enough, as the report has found. Children living in care are not being properly protected. Schools are becoming too eager to expel and off roll. Pupil referral units are becoming recruiting grounds for vicious criminals. The total lack of both mental health and residential care beds has led to too many children being inappropriately detained or being ferried around the country in the backs of police cars. This is a whole-system failure, and the consequences for children and families are stark.
Over £880 million has already been lost from children’s and youth services since 2010. The flagship early intervention fund announced by the former Home Secretary last spring was supposed to make funding available for critical support to steer young people away from serious violence, but answers to parliamentary questions have revealed that more than 60% of bids from police and crime commissioners for these projects, including 24 in London alone and one to tackle the vicious exploitation known as county lines, have been rejected. The former Home Secretary had previously promised to do everything in his power to tackle county lines exploitation and the vulnerable children swept up in it, but he then quietly rejected a £1.3 million bid from West Mercia, Staffordshire and Warwickshire to fund a project designed to tackle exactly that. In total, the Government are funding only 29 diversion projects nationwide.
If this report is not the catalyst for the Government to get serious, nothing will be. We know from the Prime Minister’s short time in office that he goes missing when things get tough and there are difficult questions to be answered. When it comes to protecting the most vulnerable children, we simply cannot afford for him to do so again.
Turning specifically to the report’s findings, the Minister knows as well as I do that data sharing comes up repeatedly in serious case reviews and in response to child protection. Despite specific amendments to the Data Protection Act 2018 that allow the sharing of data for safeguarding purposes, it remains an issue. What more can we do to break down the organisational and cultural silos that are preventing data sharing and stopping organisations working together to protect children?
With police forces and services facing unsustainable demand, what resources will the Government put in place to tackle that need and properly fund local authority children’s services after £880 million was taken from their budgets? Given that the report praises the approach in Wales to adverse childhood experiences and the collaboration of the four forces there with local services to provide targeted early support, what plans do the Government have to replicate such an approach in England? We have consistently said that implementing a public health approach to meeting that crisis will require leadership from the Prime Minister down. That can be done, but it requires political will to bring together and co-ordinate the agencies, Departments and police forces that can make a difference in identifying and protecting children earlier. Clearly that is happening in some local authority and force areas, but it is far too inconsistent, so will the Prime Minister now convene a taskforce, led from central Government and chaired by him, to bring together the services and identify the support that will have a tangible effect and ensure that the national strategy on child abuse is led from the heart of No. 10?
Victoria Atkins
I thank the hon. Lady for her response and questions. She knows, I hope, about the early intervention work that we have been investing in. There is enormous agreement across the House and in all the agencies we work with—those that work on the frontline with young people who are at risk of serious violence or sexual exploitation or both, or other forms of risk—that early intervention is absolutely key to this, because we want to prevent harm in the first place.
Over the past few years, we have invested £22 million in the early intervention youth fund, which is supporting 40 projects endorsed by police and crime commissioners across England and Wales. The projects include work with children and young people at risk of criminal involvement, and organisations safeguarding those at risk of gang exploitation and county lines, or those who have already offended to help divert them into positive life chances. At least 60,000 children and young people will be reached through the fund by the end of March.
The £200 million youth endowment fund is targeted at funding and developing early intervention projects over 10 years, and it undertook its first grant round last year. Twenty-three successful applicants were identified, and the interventions range from intensive family therapy to street-based and school mentoring programmes. The 23 projects are located across England and Wales and will share £17.1 million over two years, and of course the fund has a further eight years to go.
I am pleased that the hon. Lady mentioned the adverse childhood experiences work in Wales. The Home Office helped to fund that work, because we want to test and pilot to see what works, so that other agencies and local authorities can learn from best practice.
The hon. Lady rightly raised data sharing. All of us involved in the arena of preventing and trying to prevent child exploitation will agree with me when I say that if I had a pound for every time people talked to me about collaboration and data sharing, believe you me we would be able to spend even more money than we already are on intervention projects. She rightly and kindly referenced the fact that we included a specific section in the 2018 Act to give professionals the certainty that if they are sharing information for the purpose of safeguarding vulnerable people, they are perfectly entitled to do so and, indeed, should do so. We are beginning to see culture changes in some of the agencies we are working with, but she is right that far more needs to be done. Reports such as this one will hopefully drive that change.
The hon. Lady knows that we are helping to invest in violence reduction units in police forces across the country. That will also encourage the use of data sharing, and the forthcoming serious violence Bill will put in statute the duty of various agencies to work collaboratively to prevent serious violence. I have always been clear that that will have a trickle-down effect on other types of criminality, violence and sexual violence.
In conclusion, the report sets out some real challenges for policing, as we have said, but it also shows that there have been improvements. I am keen to emphasise that, so that we have a fair debate about the issues that have been raised.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I welcome these inspections, but the results are alarming. According to the NSPCC, a child is abused in this country every seven minutes. The report includes comments such as
“The police do not recognise or evaluate risk to children well enough… the police often carry out more complex investigations badly… Too often, the focus is on the incident, missing the bigger picture.”
This is not about better police investigation; this is about a change of mindset. The situation is particularly disappointing given the first comprehensive child sexual exploitation action plan was launched back in 2011. What the Minister is proposing is not the first plan, and we also had the recent Operation Augusta review into the failings of Greater Manchester Police.
When the report refers to the
“opportunity to use new statutory local safeguarding arrangements”
as a successor to local safeguarding children’s boards, what opportunities does she think the police will take?
Finally, the primary recommendation of the report is that the Home Office should consider
“the development of a new national early help and prevention strategy”
but that was key a recommendation of the Munro review, which I commissioned in 2011. Why is that still just a recommendation?
Victoria Atkins
I thank my hon. Friend for his questions, and I know he has great expertise and interest in this area. With this early intervention we are not just setting strategies but implementing work across the country through the targeted funds we have set up, including the youth endowment fund, which is deliberately designed to take place over a 10-year period so that the investment rolls through various spending reviews. It has been protected so that we can invest to learn and discover which projects work and which do not. It is fair to say that there have previously been misunderstandings about what works, and we want to learn more so that local authorities and other commissioners invest wisely.
I take my hon. Friend’s point and thank him for his information about an earlier iteration of the child sexual abuse strategy. We are looking across all the typologies of child sexual abuse. There are many typologies, particularly nowadays, sadly, with the prevalence of online abuse and exploitation, which I am afraid can take place with just an ordinary mobile phone and can have devastating consequences for the child who is targeted, not just in the immediate circumstances of the photo or video being taken but, of course, for many years thereafter, as we are discovering through our work with WePROTECT.
I am very conscious of my hon. Friend’s observations, and I am happy to meet him to discuss them further, because we want to get this right.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The Minister has referred to the stronger multi-agency child safeguarding arrangements that were introduced in September 2019. She says it is recognised that they are a key opportunity to deliver the kind of systemic change we need to see.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) has said that police forces are not active enough. As a constituency Member of Parliament, I am concerned about children’s services in Hull. Humberside police is responsible for ensuring the safeguarding of children in Hull, so what should I ask its chief officers to deliver to make sure children are kept safe?
Victoria Atkins
The police and crime commissioner obviously sets the priorities for the force, so I would go to them before going to the chief constable. Police and crime commissioners play a vital role in commissioning local services, and we have seen some excellent commissioning decisions in relation to exploitation more widely than simply sexual exploitation and, of course, in their work to hold the police to account on this issue.
The hon. Lady should ask the chief constable whether he or she has confidence that the force is working in accordance with the vulnerability knowledge and practice programme that we have funded to enable policing best practice to develop in response to vulnerability. Vulnerability is key to many of the crime types we see nowadays, and it should be at the front of every chief constable’s mind.
Several hon. Members rose—
Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that tackling child exploitation, whether it happened yesterday or 20 years ago and wherever the crime took place, is a vital aspect of our civil and decent society?
Victoria Atkins
Of course I agree, and my hon. Friend will know about the work of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse on historical allegations of institutional abuse and, indeed, about the work of police forces up and down the country to investigate not just current allegations but historical allegations, too.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
I thank the Minister for her statement. One of the most challenging aspects of child sexual exploitation is that vulnerable victims find it very difficult to work with the police. All too often, the police attitude towards these vulnerable children is that they brought it on themselves or even that they consented to the crimes against them. What is she doing to challenge those attitudes and to ensure that, no matter how vulnerable the child or what their background, they are taken seriously and that these crimes are prosecuted?
Victoria Atkins
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, who does so much to represent the interests of her constituents in this regard. Some of the reports we have seen from, say, Operation Augusta—there are other examples—have been absolutely shocking in the allegations of what police officers may or may not have said to young people reporting very serious crimes. Let me be clear at the Dispatch Box that no child should be subjected to sexual exploitation or abuse. No child should be dismissed in the way they sadly have been historically. We should all see what we can do, not just as constituency MPs but as friends, neighbours and family members, to ensure every child feels safe to report incidents of abuse and that those reports are taken seriously and are listened to.
Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)
Along with other colleagues, I was with the Children’s Commissioner yesterday at the early years advisory board. What repeatedly came up was the importance of cohesion in our response during those early stages. What is my hon. Friend doing to ensure the Home Office works with other Departments to have a joined-up response?
Victoria Atkins
The Home Office works with other Departments because these crimes draw on so many facets of public life. The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary are leading from the very top with their cross-Whitehall taskforce, and getting agencies across the country to work together will be critical to these considerations.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
Will the Minister commit to a discussion with local authorities about their reflections on the implementation of the Wood review? She mentioned in her statement that the review is strengthening local accountability arrangements. In particular, will she have discussions with colleagues in the Department for Education about how schools, which are often a crucial part of effective safeguarding but are currently completely absent from these arrangements, can be brought into an element of rigorous local accountability?
Victoria Atkins
My hon. Friend raises an interesting point about schools and accountability. As part of the taskforce led by the Prime Minister, we will be looking at greater departmental working across Whitehall. My expectation is that local government will play its role in all our work to tackle these abuses. With his expertise, I am, of course, very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss how we can take this further.
Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)
I welcome the £30 million funding boost that the Home Secretary has delivered to protect children from abuse online and to track down offenders. Will my hon. Friend outline how this money will help to better protect children from these terrible crimes?
Victoria Atkins
This is an emerging crime type. The evilness of the people who conduct abuse online is truly shocking to behold. I recently visited the CAID operation centre, and I pay tribute to the officers who work extremely hard in, frankly, pretty harrowing circumstances —I saw some of the images they have to sort and classify. We have invested this extra money to help officers digitally and technologically, because there is so much that the development of artificial intelligence and other things can do in this space to help ensure that we get the perpetrators of these terrible crimes and also protect and safeguard victims.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
The Minister’s answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) is helpful.
I was disturbed to learn from the Internet Watch Foundation a couple of weeks ago that online child sexual exploitation is increasing internationally, particularly in certain countries. Will my hon. Friend the Minister outline what the Government are doing with countries around the world to ensure we are tackling this globally?
Victoria Atkins
That is an area in which this country genuinely leads the world. Under Prime Minister David Cameron, we set up an organisation called the WePROTECT Global Alliance. It draws countries together so that we can act internationally, because perpetrators often film the images in one country and it is open to people throughout the world then to see whether they have access to that website, database or WhatsApp group. Through WePROTECT, we are working with countries, getting them to sign up to the principles—some of these countries perhaps do not have the same legislation that we have in place—and encouraging best practice, so that we can help protect children in not only this country, but across the world.
Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)
I welcome the investment in the county lines co-ordination centre, but I am concerned that looked-after children can be in facilities that are not registered and not regulated. I urge my hon. Friend to ensure that our looked-after children are really looked after.
Victoria Atkins
I very much agree on that. My hon. Friend has identified a salient point about how these manipulative perpetrators target children precisely because of their vulnerability in their family or other circumstances. That is one reason why we have launched the trusted relationships fund, which I believe is now in its second year. It has been set up to help children who have been let down by almost every adult in their life. It helps these children to build a trusted relationship with an adult, be they a social worker, a youth worker or somebody different. It helps those children have an adult they can trust and confide in.
Crime (West Sandwell)
Victoria Atkins Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey) on securing this important debate and speaking with such passion about the impact of crime in his constituency. He set out very clearly the promise he made to his constituents on his election. I, for one, think he is very much delivering on that promise.
My hon. Friend eloquently set out the corrosive and devastating impact of crime. People have the right to feel safe when they visit their local high street, walk home, or go to sleep at night.
The Prime Minister has made it clear that keeping our streets safe is an absolute priority for this Government. We have taken swift action to tackle crime on multiple fronts, with clear priorities of addressing serious violence, homicide and neighbourhood crime. We are also investing heavily in policing, enabling the biggest increase in police funding in a decade and the largest recruitment drive in many more. The Prime Minister promised that, and like my hon. Friend, he is delivering on his promise.
While there is no shortcut to solving crime, this people’s Government have the commitment and resolve to see this through. We will maintain a relentless focus on cutting crime and addressing its root causes. We will see extra police officers on the streets and support law enforcement to deliver innovative approaches that keep them a step ahead of these fast-evolving criminal groups. We must protect the most vulnerable, invest in safeguarding and support those at greatest risk of becoming victims or offenders.
John Spellar
Can the Minister tell us when those police will be on the streets of the west midlands and how many there will be?
Victoria Atkins
The right hon. Gentleman is surpassing himself today—I am just about to move on to that, because it was the first question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West. We have pledged to recruit an additional 20,000 officers, which we believe sends a clear message that we are committed to giving police the resources they need to tackle the scourge of crime. West Midlands police will receive up to £620.8 million in funding in 2020-21—an increase of up to £49.6 million on the previous year. To put that in context, it is an increase of 8.7%, which is the third highest in the country. This year alone, West Midlands police will benefit from 366 more police officers, but we make it clear that this is the first tranche in a three-year programme.
Forces have been given a generous funding settlement in order to provide for the associated costs alongside new officers, such as additional cars, estate equipment and uniforms, and give them what they need to tackle crime. How and where in each force those officers are deployed is a decision to be made by the local chief constable, but I note my hon. Friend’s encouragement for central Government to get involved. I suspect that he will be a very good advocate for his constituency, to ensure that it sees the benefit of those new officers and the extra funding. Fundamentally, this is about tackling crime. The uplift programme provides the opportunity to ensure that we have the officers that policing needs to respond to the increase in demand and to take a proactive response to tackling and preventing crime.
My hon. Friend asked about community and neighbourhood policing. Local policing fulfils two essential functions: responding to calls for service and preventing crime and harm. It is also the key vehicle for building legitimacy through community engagement and public confidence. The College of Policing published guidelines on modernising neighbourhood policing in March 2018. The Home Office contributed to the guidelines, which cover a variety of topics, including engaging communities, solving problems, targeting activity and promoting the right culture.
That is all good work, but we want to build on it, because two of the crime types that are at the heart of neighbourhood policing are, sadly, acquisitive crime and vehicle crime. The Government recognise the distress and disruption that acquisitive crimes can cause. Indeed, my hon. Friend set out clearly the experiences of his constituent Ellie and her partner, and the longer-term consequences for the family’s livelihood and wellbeing. Residential burglary is a particularly invasive crime that can have a lasting impact on its victims, and vehicle theft can also have a real impact, particularly on those who rely on their vans, scooters and other vehicles to earn a living.
We are committed to driving down those crimes and making our communities safer. One way in which we will achieve that is through our £25 million safer streets fund, which will support the communities who are disproportionately affected by acquisitive crime to implement crime-prevention initiatives such as improved street lighting and home security. The principle behind the fund is that policing cannot deliver this on their own. We need to engage neighbourhoods in the package of measures to have success in local areas. We are encouraging bids to the fund not only to be developed in partnership with local communities but to include community-focused elements—for example, building support and engagement in the proposed interventions, or direct funding for community groups to undertake prevention activities themselves.
We have made it clear that, although police and crime commissioners are the lead bidders, they are encouraged to work in partnership with a wide range of local organisations to ensure that local priorities are addressed and local communities are engaged. The application process for the fund is currently open, and I would encourage my hon. Friend to work with the police and crime commissioner, his local police force and community groups to develop and submit a bid or bids to the fund before its closing date of 20 March.
My hon. Friend raised the issue of serious violence. Again, we understand and recognise the terrible impact that serious violence has on local neighbourhoods and communities. Preventing and tackling serious violence is a matter for law enforcement—of course it is—but we also need to find long-term solutions to the problem and to tackle the root causes. We recognise the importance of effective partnership working across the wide range of professions that must work together to bear down on this problem.
To support this, we are introducing the serious violence Bill, which will create a new duty on a range of specified agencies—the police, local government, youth offending, health and probation—to work collaboratively, share data and information, and put in place plans to prevent and reduce serious violence within their local communities.
We invested £100 million in 2019-20, through the serious violence fund, for the 18 police force areas most affected by serious violence. Of this, £7.62 million was allocated to the West Midlands to pay for a surge in police operational activity. Only yesterday, the Home Secretary announced a further just under £5 million for the West Midlands, as a provisional allocation in an overall announcement of £41.5 million for police surge funding in the year 2020-21. West Midlands will provisionally be allocated this as one of the 18 force areas worst affected by serious violence.
A further £3.37 million has been invested in developing the West Midlands violence reduction unit. On 29 December 2019, the Home Secretary announced a further £35 million to continue funding these units. The West Midlands VRU has been allocated another £3.37 million for 2020-21 to continue to tackle the root causes of serious violence. Indeed, when I joined officers out and about in Birmingham a few months ago, I was very pleased to meet some of the people setting up that important unit in my hon. Friend’s local constabulary area.
My hon. Friend asked me the very difficult question—question 3—of whether I would meet him and his constituents in his constituency, and I would be delighted to do so. I would be delighted to visit him in his constituency so that I can see for myself the issues that he and his constituents are facing. I thank him very much for the opportunity to listen to and discuss the particular issues facing his constituency. I will of course continue to reflect on them in considering the Government’s approach in the future. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend will continue to raise these issues with continued passion and determination.
Finally, I wish my hon. Friend’s constituent Ellie and her partner all the very best with the happy arrival, I hope, of their cherished baby.
Question put and agreed to.
Policing (England and Wales)
Victoria Atkins Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
I thank all Members on both sides of the House for their heartfelt contributions to today’s debate. We have heard stories of the terrible impact of crime on constituencies across the country—stories that remind us that crime is a story not of statistics but of human suffering. There have also been unanimous expressions of support for our police forces from Members on both sides of the House, and colleagues will not be surprised to learn that I agree with each and every one of them.
Indeed, in my previous career prosecuting criminals, I saw for myself the dedication, professionalism and bravery of our officers. Home Office Ministers see that each day as well. Every day, officers face more danger than most of us will see in a lifetime. In every situation, they act selflessly to protect the public and tackle criminality in all its ugly forms, and that is one of the many reasons why, as has been mentioned by the hon. Members for Halifax (Holly Lynch) and for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), looking after our police forces is so important. The introduction of the wellbeing service and, in due course, the police covenant will hopefully meet with the approval of the House as a whole.
As has been acknowledged today, the nature of criminality is changing. Our forces face new challenges, with new technology ushering in a new generation of crime, but our police forces are rising to the challenge. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) how her local constabulary has a dedicated drone team and, indeed, the country’s first “digital search dogs” team. As the owner of a puppy who seems to be obsessed with my remote controls, I look forward to visiting that team to see its work.
At a time when criminal activity is increasingly complex and when the scourge of serious violence threatens more and more communities across the country, we have a duty to ensure that the police have the resources they need to keep our people and our country safe. However, police funding is about more than material resources. We want to send a clear message to our police that this Government support them. This historic increase in police funding sends that message. Our unprecedented recruitment drive, the largest in decades, sends that message. And our clear commitment to combating the rise in serious violence sends that message.
As a female Minister responding to my opposite number who also happens to be a woman—with a female shadow Home Secretary, I am afraid the Minister for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), is the odd one out—I am delighted that we have all had the chance to speak in this great Chamber on the centenary of the first speech by the first woman to take her seat in this place. We have had the benefit of two female Deputy Speakers during this debate, too.
I am also delighted that, in marking that important moment in this place’s history, we have heard three new female colleagues give their maiden speech. I look forward to them making their mark in this century. We heard delightful tributes to their immediate predecessors, Richard Benyon, Mark Prisk and the right hon. and learned Dominic Grieve, who are remembered fondly and with respect on both sides of the House.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), however, went one better and paid an even more personal tribute to a certain predecessor: her own father. It was very moving to listen to the example he set her, and I have no doubt that she will burnish her family’s proud record in this place and do him proud. She also raised the topic of flexible working, which the Metropolitan police are piloting to encourage a more diverse workforce and to recruit the best talent. This is an interesting challenge not just to those with childcare responsibilities but to the wider policing family, including those who have finished their 30 years’ service. I welcome the contribution she will inevitably make on this important topic.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Julie Marson) mentioned the famous toothbrush collection in her constituency and the enormous bed of Ware, which can apparently accommodate four couples at one time—there is a joke there somewhere, but I will not tread there.
My hon. Friend talked very movingly of her family’s journey from the workhouse to this House, and she put her parents and her husband on the record. It was an incredibly moving speech. She also told us of her experience as a magistrate and, in particular, of a poor young, emaciated, grey boy who had been injected with heroin by those who were supposed to love and care for him and whom she met as he appeared in the adult magistrates court for the first time. She made the point that such cases haunt those of us who have worked in the criminal justice system, so I very much look forward to working with her on this Government’s exciting journey of creating opportunity for all.
My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) said it has taken a mere 100 years for a “moderately acceptable” American accent to be heard in the Chamber—I think it is much more acceptable than that. Her message of unifying our country draws not just on the present day but on the great history of her constituency. It is a great history not simply because the good people of Beaconsfield have only ever voted for a Conservative Member of Parliament but because of her more distant predecessors, Edmund Burke and Benjamin Disraeli.
That ties in neatly with the fact that this one nation Government are working for the whole country, as demonstrated by this very good funding settlement. This is the second year that the Government have issued a record-breaking increase to police funding levels through a police settlement that shows our commitment to giving the police the resources they need to fight crime and keep the public safe.
The total funding being made available to the policing system next year will increase by more than £1.1 billion, with the help of police and crime commissioners using council tax. This increase will enable the police to bear down on criminals who are terrorising our towns and to reduce the number of victims of crime. It will provide £150 million in funding to fight organised crime and to continue cracking down on online child abuse. Tackling serious violence will be backed with £39 million, including £20 million for tackling county lines drug dealing. My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) spoke so eloquently about that and about the charity in her constituency, Prison! Me! No Way!, which does so much to tackle it.
Mr Kevan Jones
Why is the Minister not just honest with the public? There is this idea that the Government are giving the record sums that she is mentioning, but that is just not the case. They are doing exactly what they did last year. Yes, extra funding is coming nationally, but she is asking my constituents and everybody else to pay more through their local precept. As I explained in my contribution, that means that areas such as mine will be at a disadvantage in terms of the amount of money they can raise compared with others. I just ask her to be honest with the public.
Victoria Atkins
I am happy to explain again the way in which the funding formula has been worked out. The Government grant to police and crime commissioners will be more than £701 million and the money raised by precept, should PCCs take full advantage, will be £248 million. I know that this is one of the great debates between our two parties, but I make the point gently: there is no such thing as a magic money tree. This is taxpayers’ money; there is no Government money.
Several hon. Members rose—
Victoria Atkins
I am going to move on.
This funding settlement is a good deal for the police and our law-abiding citizens, and a bad deal for criminals. It means the police will have increased resources to employ more officers to tackle serious and organised crime, and protect the public from terrorism. One way in which this battle is to be fought is with the recruitment of 20,000 additional officers over the next three years. The additional £750 million for the recruitment of officers means that £700 million will be made available to PCCs for the recruitment of an additional 6,000 officers by the end of March next year. I wish to clarify one point. The shadow Home Secretary made a point about the Prime Minister’s record in London. Police numbers in London were almost 1,000 higher when he left office as Mayor than when he began and, importantly, crime fell, particularly murder and youth murder. Surely that is the most important statistic of all.
Victoria Atkins
I will move on to the funding formula, if I may, as many colleagues have raised this issue. It is still the most reliable mechanism we have to distribute core grant funding to forces, but we are aware of the concerns about the current formula that have been voiced by the policing sector and in this place, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), and we have stated that the current arrangements are out of date. My hon. Friends the Members for South Dorset (Richard Drax) and for North Devon articulated the particular pressures that tourism brings to their constituencies, and the PCC for Devon and Cornwall has made this point strongly to the Policing Minister. He is, of course, considering that and other points about the future form of the funding formula.
The right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) rightly raised concerns about the criminal justice system as a whole. We have to ensure that the system as a whole works for victims, witnesses and those who are most vulnerable. It is intricately connected as a system, and we were pleased to announce in our manifesto not only the royal commission looking at the criminal justice system as a whole, but more funding for the Crown Prosecution Service and up to £2.5 billion on further prison places to ensure that those criminals who are prosecuted and convicted serve time, thus keeping our constituencies safe.
Victoria Atkins
If I may, I will move on to the point about Cardiff, because the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) raised the point about Cardiff capital city grant funding. South Wales police will receive £312.4 million next year, if they utilise their full precept flexibility, which is an increase of £21.1 million. We recognise the impact that serious violence has had in south Wales, which is why we have given the force £1.2 million of additional funding this year from the serious violence fund. The Policing Minister is happy to meet him and other colleagues to discuss this generous settlement for South Wales if that meets with his approval.
The subject of serious violence has rightly been raised by hon. Members from across the House. We are determined to crack down on this crime, which is why we are changing the law so that the police, councils and health authorities are legally required to work together to prevent and tackle serious violence, to ensure a whole-system response to this pernicious problem. To support that effort, the Home Secretary announced in December that 18 police and crime commissioners will receive an additional £35 million to continue to fund violence reduction units, which are specialist teams that tackle violent crime in their local areas. We are also improving stop-and-search powers, giving more than 8,000 police officers enhanced powers to crack down on violent crime. We all want it to stop and through the various measures I have mentioned we will enable that to happen.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) raised the issue of fraud, which we are absolutely committed to doing more to combat. We have pledged to strengthen the National Crime Agency so that it can tackle the threats that we face from fraud, county lines gangs, child sexual abuse, illicit finance, modern slavery and people trafficking. We are moving at pace to recruit the 20,000 extra officers to fight all forms of crime, and an ongoing review of serious and organised crime is under way to consider the powers, capabilities, governance and funding required to bolster our response to today’s threats, including fraud.
In conclusion, I thank Members again for their contributions to the debate. This settlement shows our comprehensive commitment to all areas of policing. Every police force in England and Wales will see a significant increase in funding. We are tackling serious violence, fighting serious and organised crime and delivering the largest expansion in police numbers in a generation. There can be no doubt that this settlement represents the start of a golden era for policing and a dark day for crime.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales) for 2020–21 (HC 51), which was laid before this House on 22 January, be approved.
Oral Answers to Questions
Victoria Atkins Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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John Howell (Henley) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
The Government are committed to delivering on the people’s priorities by tackling violent crime. We have already invested £220 million in early intervention. Through our serious violence fund, we have committed to funding violence reduction units until 2021. We are also introducing the serious violence Bill, which will put a duty on police, councils and other agencies to prevent and reduce serious violence.
Darren Henry
Ahead of the police and crime commissioner elections in May, will my hon. Friend encourage our fantastic Conservative candidates to make youth diversion schemes a key part of their manifestos?
Victoria Atkins
I thank my hon. Friend for reminding the entire House that we have these vitally crucial elections coming towards us, at which the public will have the right to hold their police and crime commissioners to account. I look forward to working with many Conservative PCCs in future, I hope. I fully support the idea of diverting children who are on the cusp of entering the justice system and putting in place, where appropriate, support that can reduce risk and prevent an escalation in offending. He may wish to know that in his own local area, we are funding Redthread at Queen’s Medical Centre—I was delighted to attend its launch last year—and, through the youth endowment fund, two different projects are helping children and young people, and their families and schools, by keeping them safe and diverting them from risk.
Edward Timpson
Children excluded from school are twice as likely to carry a knife. A quarter of young offenders who are serving a custodial sentence of less than 12 months have a history of permanent exclusion. To help turn around the life chances of these children, will my hon. Friend take up the recommendations in my report on school exclusion, published last year, which are aimed at taking a public health approach to crime and tackling the root causes, not just the symptoms, of school disengagement?
Victoria Atkins
I thank my hon. Friend for his meticulous work in his report. He will know that the Prime Minister is taking charge of our response to serious violence, and is indeed holding a Cabinet Sub-Committee on this imminently. I agree that we must tackle the root causes of serious violence. That is precisely why we are bringing forward the serious violence Bill to place a duty on the agencies that can help to address it.
Lucy Powell
I fully support the exclusions review that was just referred to, but, in tackling youth violence, does the Home Office think it is either acceptable or right that the vast majority of young people on the gangs matrix are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds? Being flagged on the gangs matrix brings with it huge consequences for those young people, often separation from families and other issues. Does she think that this approach is appropriate, or that it works?
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Lady is referring to an operational tool used by the police, but it is one of many tools that we are looking at in terms of law enforcement response and these crucial issues about diverting children and young people away from crime in the first place. The causes are manifold, and we must work with communities to address them together.
Sir David Evennett
Can my hon. Friend assure me that the police have all the powers they need to crack down on the scourge of knife crime, which is ruining so many lives across the country, but particularly in London? Could she update the House on what plans she has to target repeat knife carriers?
Victoria Atkins
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who of course brings to the House his experience of representing his constituency on this important issue. We are determined to ensure that the police have the powers they need to tackle this terrible scourge. That is why, in the new serious violence Bill, a new court order will be brought forward that will make it easier for the police to stop and search known and convicted knife carriers.
John Howell
What is the Minister doing to protect young and vulnerable people from drugs gangs, particularly in rural areas such as mine, where they are extremely prevalent?
Victoria Atkins
Drug gangs, or county lines, often involve a horrific form of child criminal exploitation, and we are determined to put an end to it. One of the many ways we are seeking to do that is through further investment in the National County Lines Co-ordination Centre, which has co-ordinated enforcement action across the country, resulting in more than 2,500 arrests and the safeguarding of more than 3,000 vulnerable people.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
Last year, Labour attempted to amend the Offensive Weapons Bill to ban the open sale of knives and require shops to lock them behind cabinets, as we currently require them to do for cigarettes. The Government refused those amendments. Last week, Sudesh Amman walked into a shop on Streatham high street, picked up a knife from the display and stabbed two people. This weekend, that shop was still openly displaying knives and machetes by the front door. Will the Government now think again?
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Lady may recall that we said we would keep that under review, because we felt that the measures put forward last year were of a nature that did not target areas that have a particular problem with knife crime. We will keep it under review, but I make the point again that it is the responsibility of shop owners to make sure that if they are selling items such as that, they display them appropriately and, if necessary, keep them under lock and key.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
Good youth services are the frontline against youth violence, but this week we see yet another local government settlement that means there is a decade’s worth of erosion of funding for youth services. What will the Home Office do differently to encourage the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to properly fund youth services or to put its own money into a good universal offer across all our communities?
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Gentleman will know of the most recent local authority grants, which the House will debate later this week. He will also know that the Chancellor restated a commitment to young people, confirming £500 million of investment through the new youth investment fund over five years, in addition to the £220 million that will be spent over the next 10 years on early intervention projects that can, and I hope will, make a great difference to our young people’s lives.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)
The Scottish Government’s CashBack for Communities scheme is about to make a payment of £19 million of money recovered under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 to youth projects in Scotland, bringing total payments to more than £110 million since the programme began in 2008. Will the Minister join me in welcoming that as something that can deliver real opportunity for young people in Scotland?
Victoria Atkins
As always, I will work with and commend anyone who is joining the Government’s determination to cut down on violent crime and protect our young people.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
The landmark Domestic Abuse Bill was announced alongside the Queen’s Speech on 19 December last year. The Bill and an accompanying non-legislative package will protect and support victims of domestic abuse across England and Wales and bring perpetrators to justice.
Stuart Anderson
In the west midlands, over 60,000 domestic abuse-related incidents and crimes were recorded by the police in the year ending March 2019. Will the Minister ensure that in the forthcoming domestic abuse Bill these victims and their children, who as a result of their ordeal have been made homeless, are prioritised during the allocation of safe and permanent housing for victims of domestic abuse in Wolverhampton and across the country?
Victoria Atkins
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Government are committed to supporting domestic abuse victims and their children. Statutory guidance already makes it clear that in allocating social housing councils should consider giving additional preference to those who are homeless and require urgent rehousing as a result of domestic abuse. We strongly encourage all councils to give appropriate priority to victims and their families who have escaped abuse and are being accommodated in a refuge or other temporary accommodation.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
Policing and Crime
Victoria Atkins Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
May I welcome you to your position, Mr Deputy Speaker, and thank colleagues across the House for their contributions during this important debate on crime and policing? Members on both sides have spoken powerfully about their constituents’ concerns and, indeed, about the sad stories of those who have fallen victim to crime. One line from my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) struck home: his home town has seen four murders in 10 weeks. Those families and other families across the country are having to live with their terrible losses, and we all know that an act of violence may last no more than a few seconds, but it leaves a destructive legacy of human tragedy. We in this place will never forget that, which is why the Prime Minister made it clear that cutting crime and keeping our streets safe is an absolute priority for this Government—a point backed up forcefully by my new colleagues, my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook) and for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison). The Government’s commitment to cut crime and keep our streets safe is absolute.
However, there remains no short cut to solving violent crime. We need a clear, well-funded plan to stop violence where it appears, to identify the repeat offenders and knife carriers more likely to be involved, and to address the root causes of violence, giving young people a future that does not end on the point of a blade.
Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
Will the Minister come to update the House on the work of the National Crime Agency and what it is doing about the so-called county lines? County lines have almost become an immovable part of our landscape, and it should not be like that. We need to do something to protect our children from exploitation in the pursuit of profit.
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Lady is a real advocate for her constituency, which is sadly so often blighted by serious violence. The National Crime Agency, of course, conducts a national threat assessment, and I am happy to update the House on its report either orally or through other means.
We owe it to our young people to offer them a better future and to end the pervasive sense of hopelessness that drives so many into the arms of criminality. This principle was eloquently articulated in the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger). Representing Devizes, he is perhaps the only Member of this House who can call the great historic monument of Stonehenge a “vulgar upstart.” One sentence of his speech struck home with me:
“Our love of our country begins with love of our neighbourhoods.”
He brings to the House his experience of working with young people in prisons and of the vital role of independent civil society organisations in helping to cut crime and in helping those young people, which I will address later in my speech.
We have heard a lot today about the Government’s plan to bring 20,000 extra officers—new officers—into police forces across the country. One of the first acts of this Government was to make that pledge, and the work has already started. I am delighted that all forces have joined us in meeting this commitment to the public and have prioritised recruitment. Some £700 million from the police settlement will be made available to police and crime commissioners to help forces recruit the first tranche of 6,000 officers by the end of March 2021.
Jo Stevens
Will the Minister talk to her colleagues in the Ministry of Justice about the prison officers who had to be recruited after thousands were removed from the Prison Service? There are real problems with recruitment and retention, and these are very inexperienced officers. The danger is that the same could happen with this recruitment of new police officers.
Victoria Atkins
This is a whole-system response, and the Prime Minister has made clear his commitment to ensuring investment in the Prison Service, the prison estate and increased police numbers, exactly as the hon. Lady says, to ensure that the criminal justice system as a whole addresses the public’s needs.
The hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Allan Dorans) made an interesting maiden speech, and I thank him for his long service as a senior police officer in London, the great capital city of our great United Kingdom. He made some interesting points about the importance of mental health treatment and the impact it can have on police forces.
Opposition Members have raised the issue of cuts, and some raised it with anger and power. I hesitate to repeat the sound points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell), but we have had to make these very difficult decisions because of the previous Labour Administration’s mismanagement. By way of illustration, £1 in every £4 of Government spending in 2010 was borrowed; it is now around £1 in every £30.
That is a significant difference, and it means that we are now able to announce the biggest increase in police funding for a decade. For the second year in a row, we have issued a record-breaking rise in our police settlement. With the help of police and crime commissioners, the total funding available to the policing system next year will increase by over £1 billion. For those worried about what that means in their local area, it will work out at less than 20p a week for the average band D household.
The increased funding will help to tackle the crimes about which the public are most worried. We are targeting high-harm crimes, with £150 million to fight organised crime and, in particular, to crack down on online child abuse. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) can always be relied on to continue her campaign to ensure that child sexual abuse in her constituency is tackled properly. I do not see her in her place, but I am happy to meet her, because the issues she raises are so complex. The shadow Home Secretary and the shadow Policing Minister raised the issue of sexual violence. We are conducting an end-to-end rape review to see what is happening in the criminal justice system and in the police investigation of sexual violence, because we all want the rates of prosecution and investigation to improve.
We are also getting tough on serious violence, with an extra £39 million, including £20 million to tackle the county lines gangs terrorising our towns and communities. Several colleagues mentioned the impact that the illegal drugs market has, particularly with county lines gangs and violence, and I hope they will be reassured to know that the national county lines co-ordination centre has already arrested more than 2,500 people and helped to safeguard more than 3,000 vulnerable people, underlining how ruthless these gangs are that operate these county lines.
This is not just about money; it is about how we spend it, too. The Queen’s Speech announced that we will be introducing a new serious violence Bill, which will place new duties on agencies to work collaboratively and put in place plans to prevent and reduce serious violence, and will strengthen stop-and-search powers. The hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) raised the issue of violence reduction units. We are investing £35 million in VRUs to ensure that local solutions are found to local crime problems, and of course the serious violence Bill will help to support that effort.
My hon. Friends the Members for Fareham (Suella Braverman) and for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) made the point that their constituents are worried about not just serious violence, but other crimes such as antisocial behaviour, burglaries and car theft. We have launched a £25 million safer streets fund to support areas that are disproportionately affected by acquisitive crime, and the fund will provide investment in well-evidenced interventions to prevent crime from happening in the first place.
My hon. Friends the Members for Mansfield (Ben Bradley), for Bolsover and for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) rightly raised the issue of public confidence in the criminal justice system. To ensure we have that, we must look at every aspect to ensure that the criminal justice system works for victims, witnesses and the most vulnerable. Alongside the royal commission set out in the Conservative manifesto, we are working across government to ensure that all parts deliver. Only yesterday, the House of Commons considered a statutory instrument on extending automatic release for the most violent offenders from halfway through their sentence to two thirds of the way through it.
We can all agree that prevention and early intervention are key to stopping violent crime and other types of crime. Last year, we passed the Offensive Weapons Act 2019, which introduced new laws giving police extra powers to seize dangerous weapons. It also included knife crime preventions orders, which will provide an additional tool for police to steer adults and young people away from serious violence before conviction. The early intervention youth fund of £22 million is supporting 40 projects endorsed by police and crime commissioners across England and Wales until March this year. We also have the youth endowment fund of £200 million locked in for 10 years, which will offer targeted intervention and support to those young people most at risk of serious violence.
We also need to look to the future of our young people. Last year, I met young former gang members, articulate young men who were clear that they had made bad choices. Listening to them, I could see the difference that work and training opportunities could make to their lives, so I am working closely with businesses, both national and local, to see what more we can do to give employment and development opportunities to young people at risk of being involved in violent crime, giving them a chance and a choice to walk away from crime. Because when a young person goes into a hospital, I do not want them to be there as a victim of knife crime, I want them to be there as an aspiring neurosurgeon or cardiologist. We need to show young people that there is an alternative—to offer them real opportunities to divert them away from crime and improve their life chances—because crime is not an ungovernable law of nature. This is not an insurmountable challenge. Now that we have a Government with the ambition, resources and will to succeed, I truly believe that we can stem the violence and offer vulnerable young people a path to a better life.
Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.
Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority: Annual Reports and Accounts
Victoria Atkins Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
The 2018-19 annual report and accounts for the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority is being laid before the House today and published on www.gov.uk. Copies will be available in the Vote Office.
[HCWS63]
Civil Partnership
Victoria Atkins Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
I beg to move,
That the draft Civil Partnership (Opposite-sex Couples) Regulations 2019, which were laid before this House on 21 October, be approved.
In what has been an emotionally charged and very moving day in the Chamber, this statutory instrument is, I hope, a cause for celebration, as it allows opposite-sex couples in England and Wales to form civil partnerships. This Government want to see more people formalise their relationships in the way they want with the person they love. We know that there are over 3 million opposite-sex couples who cohabit but choose not to marry. Those couples support 1 million children, but do not have the security or legal protection that married couples or civil partners enjoy.
That is why we announced last year that we would extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples and why we supported the Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Act 2019, which was taken so ably through Parliament by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). The regulations are before the House. In short, section 2 of the Act enables the Secretary of State by regulation to amend the eligibility criteria for civil partnerships to make other appropriate and consequential provision. The Act requires the regulations extending eligibility to come into force no later than 31 December 2019.
These regulations, as Madam Deputy Speaker said, have been expedited in their consideration by both Houses. I am extremely grateful to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, which considered them yesterday. In particular, the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) was helpful in understanding the urgency of this statutory instrument.
I will outline briefly the concerns of the Committee and the response of the Government to those concerns. Our approach on conversion—that is, conversion from marriage to civil partnership and vice versa—maintains a difference between opposite-sex and same-sex couples in their ability to convert their civil partnerships into marriages. Importantly, those two groups are not in a directly comparable position. The right to convert a civil partnership to marriage was introduced to enable same-sex couples to marry without having to dissolve their civil partnership as marriage had historically been denied to them. That same consideration does not apply to opposite-sex civil partners, who will always have been able to marry.
Even if same-sex and opposite-sex couples can be compared, the Government consider that maintaining the status quo in the short term is justified. Extending conversion rights to allow opposite-sex couples to convert their civil partnership to marriage now, while we are considering responses to the consultation, would risk creating uncertainty and confusion about future rights. We do not wish to introduce a new, potentially short-term conversion right that might subsequently be withdrawn in 2020.
Once we have made civil partnerships available to opposite-sex couples, our priority will be to resolve our longer-term position on conversion rights for all civil partners and to bring forward further regulations as soon as possible next year. I hope this reassures hon. Members that we have considered these issues carefully and we consider the regulations to be compliant with the Human Rights Act 1998.
Let me again pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, and also to Baroness Hodgson of Abinger, for their skill and tenacity in driving the Act through Parliament. I know that my hon. Friend has been invited to a civil partnership ceremony which the happy couple hope will take place on 31 December. We intend to implement the regulations on 2 December, which would enable the first opposite-sex civil partnership ceremonies to take place on 31 December, given the usual 28-day notice period. I very much hope that my hon. Friend will be able to make those celebrations.
I know how long some opposite-sex couples have waited for the opportunity to formalise their relationships, and to enjoy the stability, rights and entitlements that other couples enjoy. This is the final legislative step in the process, and I look forward to the first opposite-sex civil partnerships being formed by the end of the year.
I hope, Mr Speaker, that you will allow me a moment away from the important issue of civil partnerships, so that I can play my part in the tributes to you on your last day in that very special seat in the House. It is indeed an honour to be at the Dispatch Box today, and, of course, to hear the wonderful tributes to your chaplain, Rose. May I thank you personally for your service as Speaker of the House over the last 10 years?
As I was preparing for this debate, I sat in our wonderful House of Commons Library. Around the ceiling of one of the rooms are 30 wooden panels containing the names of every single Speaker, dating from 1377 to 2009, when you were sworn in. Your impact on this place will be present not just on those wooden panels in the Library, but in the day-to-day business and interactions of the House. Having sat here in the Chamber hearing some of the tributes to you—which have ranged from the very personal and very serious to some more light-hearted and fond recollections—I will, if I may, add one of my own. I consider it to be one of the achievements of my parliamentary career; it may, in fact, be the only achievement of my parliamentary career. By describing the name of my cat, I caused you to stand up and say:
“I am as near to speechless as I have ever been.”—[Official Report, 20 December 2018; Vol. 651, c. 984.]
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for everything that you have done for the House, but also for me, at the Dispatch Box and also as a Back Bencher. I wish you, and your loved ones, the very best for your future.
Mr Speaker
Does the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) wish to speak in the debate?
Victoria Atkins
As always, my hon. Friend asks me many questions. I sometimes think he is doing it in the hope of catching me out, so I am going to do my best to prove him wrong. The date on which the regulations come into force is set out in regulation 1(2) and they will be very much in force on 2 December, so that the 28 days’ notice can be in force for civil partnerships on 31 December, with the exception, as he rightly points out, in respect of emergency applications.
On overseas civil partnerships, overseas relationships can be recognised as civil partnerships in England and Wales if they meet the conditions set out in the Act. Opposite-sex couples who formed a civil partnership on the Isle of Man will be recognised as civil partners in England and Wales on the day these regulations come into force—in other words, from 2 December. I should say that the regulations include a list of specified overseas relationships that will be treated as civil partnerships here, but other overseas relationships can also be recognised as civil partnerships if they meet general conditions.
Yes, the General Register Office will issue clear guidance to local registration services about the commencement of the new scheme. I do not have a date to hand, but when I discover one, I will write to my hon. Friend.
On the other matters in the Bill, I am delighted to confirm that the General Register Office is currently working on the secondary legislation, IT systems and administrative processes required to implement the marriage schedule system. Officials are working with the Church of England and the Church in Wales on the details of the proposals, and a timescale will be announced in due course. I am keen that we help to get mums’ names on to marriage certificates as soon as possible.
I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me in respect of the other matters he raised. We have concentrated on civil partnerships, so I will have to write to him on the other two matters—he caught me out on those two.
Question put and agreed to.
Royal Assent
Mr Speaker
I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that Her Majesty has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:
Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019
Northern Ireland Budget Act 2019.