Police Funding Settlement

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

My hon. Friend is, along with other Lincolnshire MPs—I am sitting on the Front Bench next to one now, my ministerial colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins)—assiduous, as are Marc and Bill, in making this point on behalf of Lincolnshire. I hope that my hon. Friend will welcome and support a funding settlement that has the potential to see an additional £9 million of funding going into Lincolnshire Police in 2019-20 on top of the £3 million that the settlement for 2018-19 enabled, and on top of consideration of exceptional grant funding as well. But I absolutely accept my hon. Friend’s main point that there is a serious set of decisions to be taken about how funding is allocated across police forces; there is a very serious issue around the fairness of that allocation, and I have indicated very clearly that this settlement is the final stepping stone on the journey towards that work in the CSR, which is the appropriate strategic framework in which to settle police funding for the next five years. He and others have a powerful case to make on behalf of Lincolnshire, a force that does excellent work under extremely difficult circumstances and is extremely well led, not least by Marc Jones.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

The Minister and his London cronies really have got some brass neck, in one breath asking what the Mayor of London has done to tackle crime, and in the next breath trying to take credit for the 1,000 police officers being put on London’s streets thanks to action by London’s Mayor. Is it not the case that, even after this funding settlement announced today and the huge increases in charges for council tax payers that will follow, the funding announcement made by the Minister will barely dent the loss of 3,000 police officers, more than 3,000 PCSOs and 5,000 police staff across London, and that is the tragedy that is fuelling rising crime on the streets of my constituency?

[Mr Hurd]

Well, to be accused by the hon. Gentleman of brass neck is something. I hope that he welcomes the fact that the commissioner is now in a position to recruit an additional 1,000 officers as a result of the actions taken in the police settlement last year—

[Wes Streeting]

And by the Mayor.

[Mr Hurd]

And the actions by the Mayor of London. We now have an opportunity to increase funding to the Metropolitan police by up to £172 million, which will seem—and is—a large amount of money to the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, as it does to mine. I sincerely hope that, rather than grandstanding, he will support the Government on this.

Police Employer Pension Contributions

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

Let me begin by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) on securing this important Adjournment debate. Let me also express my view, which I think is widely held—certainly among Labour Members—on how outrageous it is that while the Cabinet is making a decision that has the potential to affect this country for generations to come, it is the reported intention of the Prime Minister to make a statement to the press immediately after—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. This is a debate about pension contributions. I have allowed the scope to be widened, but we cannot take it this far. Are we going to stick to the debate? Brilliant.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting]

Forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker; I just wanted to make the point at the outset that my constituents will be appalled that this House is adjourning about three hours early.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I am being very good, and I am going to keep this debate going, but these are the rules of the House. They are not my rules; they are rules that we have all agreed to, and the fact is that those are the rules. We have to work within the rules, and as much as everybody is disappointed, the rules are there; they are made by Members, so please do not complain about the rules that have been introduced.

[Wes Streeting]

I accept that, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I am certainly not criticising the Chair for enforcing the rules.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I want you to criticise yourself; that is the problem.

[Wes Streeting]

I would never knowingly criticise myself, Mr Deputy Speaker, and you will be pleased to know that my constituents care about and raise with me far more than Brexit the issue of policing and in particular the consequences of Government changes to employer national insurance contributions and what that will mean for the funding of policing in my constituency and every other community up and down the country, because, as was stated in the excellent opening speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East, the consequence of increasing employer contributions will be a cost on police forces of an entirely unexpected and unplanned £165 million for 2019-20, and, as has been stated, that employer pension contribution liability will rise over time, so by the time that we get to 2020-21 the liability will be more like £420 million.

Money, as we know, does not grow on trees, and those responsible for managing police budgets and resources and making sure the budget is properly deployed to keep our constituents and country safe will be faced with an invidious choice. Of course they will want to make the right contributions to people’s pensions, but, as the National Police Chiefs Council has warned, the reality is that this could amount to the loss of a further 10,000 police officers right across the country, with every police force in this land being affected.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I apologise for missing the opening of this debate as I had a clash of business. In Humberside, we have seen police numbers rising in the past couple of years, but these changes would reverse that, and our chief constable has issued a very stark warning. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is completely unacceptable for these changes to be loaded on to police authorities? I make it very clear in this Chamber to the Minister that if this continues, I will vote against the police grant when it comes before the House next year, as I did between 2010 and 2015.

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful for that intervention. I have known the hon. Gentleman for many years, including before I was elected to this place, in my previous role as president of the National Union of Students, and I know that when he says he is prepared to vote against his own Government he genuinely means it, not out of disloyalty to his party, but out of loyalty to the interests of his constituents and our country.

I could make the point that the Government Benches are almost entirely empty, but we know that that would be unfair because Adjournment debates are very rarely well attended and this one is better attended than most. But the truth is that Government Whips know that, even in parliamentary prime time, in debates about police budgets and employer pension contributions in particular, they have to struggle and strong-arm to get loyal Back Benchers in to defend the indefensible. Conservative Members know this is an indefensible position and that the consequence of these changes to employer pension contributions will be to cost police numbers in their constituencies, and which constituency MP in their right mind would, no matter what the size of their majority and however secure they might feel about their own electoral prospects, want to come here to defend police cuts that will affect public safety in their own constituencies? No one wants to do that; it is not why we come into politics.

We must see the budgetary pressures presented by changes to employer pension contributions in the context of what has happened to policing budgets more generally. The hon. Gentleman mentioned police numbers in Humberside, and we do not have a happy situation in my city either—our capital city. The Metropolitan police have had to grapple with budget cuts amounting to more than £1 billion. Ministers stand at the Dispatch Box and in Westminster Hall debates and try to justify their budget decisions. They try to pass the buck by blaming the Mayor of London for the police cuts, but the truth is that when central Government are cutting funding to local policing on the scale that they have done, there is only so much that Mayors and police and crime commissioners can do to offset the impact of those cuts.

The Home Secretary has finally acknowledged that cuts have consequences, and we are seeing those consequences in the rising violent crime in my constituency, across our city and across the country. The Government consistently attack the Mayor of London and try to make this a party political issue, but the facts speak for themselves. It is not just in Labour-led cities that violent crime is rising; it is rising in the leafy Tory-led shires. Violent crime has doubled in counties such as Hampshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk in the past three years. People do not have to be experts to understand the obvious: if there are fewer police on the streets to catch criminals and deter criminal activity, crime will rise. This applies not only to violent crime but to motor vehicle crime, for example, and it is leading to people feeling less safe and secure in their communities. It is changing people’s way of life. They do not want to go out of their homes or run errands of an evening because they are afraid of being mugged or attacked. That is the reality.

Every time I speak on policing in this House and publish the video on my Facebook page or on Twitter, it goes viral because people are really concerned about this. They cannot understand it. As one now former Conservative councillor in my borough told me, they cannot understand why any Government would cut policing to this extent. Before the local elections this year, even a Conservative councillor told me that Conservative voters were saying, “We know there are difficult choices to be made; we expect the Government to be tightening their belt, but we do not expect a Conservative Government to cut policing in the way they have.”

[Gareth Thomas]

My hon. Friend is making a very good speech, and he has talked about the attitude of his constituents in north-east London. Those concerns are shared in north-west London. I have lived in my constituency all my life, and I cannot remember a time before now when there was gun crime on the streets of Harrow. In the past 12 months, we have found ourselves in the unprecedented situation of having two significant incidents of gun crime. That is unparalleled.

[Wes Streeting]

I am really grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I say without any prejudice towards inner London that, in reality, inner London has always had to grapple with violent crime. For MPs in boroughs such as Lambeth and Lewisham, gun crime, knife crime and gang crime have always been part and parcel of their work as constituency MPs. We know that there are problems concentrated in inner cities. That is an unfortunate fact of life, and it is one that we are working really hard to try to tackle. Frankly, no one should have to tolerate violent crime, wherever they live. My hon. Friend has just mentioned suburban London. My constituency borders the county of Essex, and I did not expect to see these levels of knife crime and violent crime there when I was elected to this place three years ago.

At Prime Minister’s questions today, I referred to an awful incident, which I would actually not associate with the police cuts, but I would draw to the Minister’s attention the stabbings and the gang crime in my constituency, as well as the county lines activity. Young people are being actively groomed at school gates. They are being identified because of their vulnerability and because they are the kids that are falling behind at school, and they are being groomed to run drugs across the country. We need police on our streets to deal with this. It is not just about grabbing people and nicking them; it is about the intelligence that community policing provides. It is about intelligence gathering and relationship building. It is about building trust so that people will come forward and speak to the police. All that is put at risk by the impact of the cuts to police budgets and police numbers. Given that that is the overall context, it is totally unacceptable to throw on top of that these changes to employer pension contributions, which are adding to the budgetary pressures.

To his credit, the Mayor of London has tried, with the resources he has available, to stem the tide of police cuts. Sadiq Khan has put in £140 million to fund 1,000 police officers, who would otherwise not be there. That has come at the cost of diverting into the policing budget money that the Greater London Authority gathers through business rates. It has also come at a cost to my constituents and to residents right across our capital city, who are paying more through their precept for policing.

It is so difficult to have a conversation about this with voters on the doorstep—this applies to council tax generally, by the way. I knock on people’s doors, and they say really clearly, “Hang on a minute. How is it that my local services are getting worse and there are fewer police officers on the street? My precept is going up—I am paying more. Why aren’t we getting more police?” That is a perfectly reasonable question. I have to explain to my constituents something I think is unjustifiable, which is that the Mayor of London is having to put up their precept because he is doing his best to stem the tide of cuts from central Government. This is a repeat pattern of behaviour: central Government make decisions here and pass the buck to local decision makers, who are responsible for implementing the cuts.

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an extremely powerful speech. Does he agree that it is not just in London that there is this deeply familiar pattern of deep cuts to police budgets, consequent cuts in police numbers and consequent rises in crime? Crime is getting ever more complex. The police are having to deal, as he said, with county lines issues and drugs issues more broadly—the use of new psychoactive substances, which are spreading throughout many of our communities—and precepts are having to be put up to try to stem some of these cuts. Is my hon. Friend surprised, as I am, that 1,600 officers and staff have lost their jobs in Wales over the past 10 years of Conservative and Conservative-led coalition Governments? That is deeply damaging to the ability of the police to deliver effective policing. I am sure that he agrees that it is completely unacceptable for this additional burden now to be placed on policing.

[Wes Streeting]

That is a powerful, well-made point, and it really does emphasise that this is a UK-wide problem and a common experience in a diverse range of communities up and down the country. It is so difficult to tell constituents that their taxes are rising, while their services are getting worse. It will be even more difficult to say that there will be fewer police officers on the streets of my constituency because the Government have changed some pension rules. My constituents will wonder what on earth the Government are playing at.

The Chancellor managed to find 500 million quid here, 500 million quid there and 500 million quid virtually everywhere to get a few good, cheap headlines the day after the Budget to create the illusion that the Government are putting money back into public services, even though we know that these sums were largely one-off grants for, as he so badly put it, the nice little extras. What I found most astonishing was that, even as the Chancellor, like Father Christmas a few months early, was sprinkling money across Departments, he did not find a single penny for policing. I genuinely found that astonishing; it suggests that the Treasury is out of touch—in fact, what it is doing with these rules, given the impact on police budgets, tells me that it is out of touch.

I am sure that I am not alone in having policing and crime as the No. 1 concern in my constituency. As I said at the outset, this place is understandably focused on Brexit and its generational consequences for years to come, but the discussion around dinner tables in my constituency tonight is more likely to be about crime and community safety, particularly given recent events. My constituents will be horrified at the way the Treasury is conducting itself in relation to these pension changes and the resources it puts into policing.

[Owen Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; he is being extremely generous with his time. I put it to him that it is not true that the Treasury is out of touch on this; I think it knows exactly what it is doing. It is not just in respect of police pensions that it is changing the rules, pushing extra cuts on to policing. The same is true in respect of further education colleges and university pensions. There is a consistent pattern; it is repeat offending by the Treasury in this regard. It is not just policing that we should be addressing this evening; it is all the other public services that are equally subject to these sorts of changes, which will entail cuts.

[Wes Streeting]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. I could give chapter and verse on the impact of pension contribution changes across a range of public services.

[Owen Smith]

It is not just policing.

[Wes Streeting]

As my hon. Friend says, it is not just policing. Before I was elected to this place, I was deputy leader of the London Borough of Redbridge. I had the enormous privilege of representing my home community on Redbridge Borough Council for eight years, and what I consistently saw across local government services was exactly the same pattern of behaviour: decisions taken in the Treasury brutalised the budgets of Government Departments, and then the Government Departments devolved the cuts, and the responsibility for those cuts, to local authorities. That is absolutely outrageous.

When the austerity agenda first began, I think everyone would acknowledge that some cuts were made to services that, frankly, some people did not really notice. What has changed over the past eight years is that the Government started by clamping down on some of the inevitable inefficiencies and waste that exist in any organisation with big infrastructure, then they began to impact on services—particularly specialist services that do not necessarily benefit the largest number of people but that have a substantial impact on particular service users—and now we are in a position where these cuts and the austerity agenda are not just widely felt, but deeply felt. That is why the Government have felt compelled to change their narrative on austerity.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is doing very well, and I know he wants to keep it going, but he has to try to stick to the subject. By talking about austerity, he will widen the debate completely out of where we are meant to be. This is about police pension cuts. I do not mind a debate around policing, but we cannot go over everything. There are a lot of other speakers, so he does not need to filibuster.

[Wes Streeting]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will take your advice.

In London we have already lost 3,000 police officers, which is having a serious impact on community policing. In fact, my constituents are now under no illusion. Community policing only really exists in speeches by Ministers at the Dispatch Box; it certainly does not exist in reality on the ground. The few stretched resources that we have left on the ground are really struggling.

The changes to police employer pension contributions are one of the most egregious changes that the Government have made to policing, and no doubt we will hear the same rhetoric as they try to make the contribution changes sound as technocratic and as irrelevant to people’s everyday experiences as possible. The reality is that people have really noticed the police cuts. This invidious language, saying, “Don’t worry, because we have cut out all the back office,” is not only disrespectful to public servants who did an excellent job, and who have now lost their job. I can tell the Minister that what police officers in my constituency tell me is that they are now spending more time processing criminals than catching them. That is not an acceptable state of play, and I fear that things will become far worse as a result of these changes to police employer pension contributions.

I give fair notice via the Treasury Bench that, when the Chancellor next comes before the Treasury Committee, he can be assured of a rough ride on the decisions he is taking and their impact on Home Office budgets, and therefore on police budgets. What he and his predecessor have done is absolutely outrageous, and I note the irony of editorials in the Evening Standard railing against police cuts and rising crime in London, and trying to pin responsibility on the Mayor of London. The editor of my local newspaper might like to look in the mirror before dishing out blame to others.

How the Government are proceeding is a terrible mistake, and we must not countenance it. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East for securing this Adjournment debate, and I am grateful to the Government, because their shambolic handling of the business of the House means that we now have so many hours to debate this subject before the House adjourns.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Only if you let somebody else get in.

[Wes Streeting]

We have so long, but I will draw my remarks to a conclusion. [Hon. Members: “More!”] This is a novelty I am not used to. We know why we are here—obviously, we are trying to draw out the business—but this is a serious issue. We would not have stuck around for any old Adjournment debate on an obscure issue; this is so important to us in our constituencies. Whatever is going on in the wider world around Brexit, I cannot emphasise strongly enough that no issue is more important to my constituents than policing, police numbers, police budgets, crime and community safety, and therefore no issue is more important to me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hurd]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for taking me on to my next point, which is a very uncharacteristically tribal one. I say with great respect to Labour Members who have stood up and talked with great pride about the amount that the last Labour Government invested in public services and policing that the honest, hard truth is that, as ever, they ran out of money. The Labour party likes to talk about cuts having consequences, but the frank truth is that cuts are themselves the consequences of the legacy of a Government in which, I may say, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East served with great distinction as a Minister. The biggest legacy of that Government is the biggest peacetime budget deficit in the history of this country. Yet again, my party had to intervene to sort out a mess, which required radical action and tough decisions.

Let me make another point to the hon. Lady. There are two reasons—about which, again, we need to be frank—for the fact that, back in 2010, it was possible to reduce police budgets. First, demand on the police was stable at that time, and secondly, there was cross-party consensus in the House that the police system was inefficient. Even Andy Burnham, sitting opposite where I stand now, was quite prepared to admit that there was inefficiency in the police system that needed to be addressed, and it has been addressed.

[Wes Streeting]

rose—

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

This man has been here throughout the debate!

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way so that the voice of Ilford can be heard.

[Mike Gapes]

I agree with every word.

[Wes Streeting]

I am almost certain that this is what my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) would have said, given the opportunity. Let us not lose sight of the fact that the challenge facing the Government after 2008 was the result of a global banking crisis. If it is true, as the Minister is suggesting, that the last Labour Government were profligate, perhaps he would like to explain why the shadow Chancellor and the Leader of the Opposition at the time, up to the crash, were backing Labour spending pound for pound.

[Mr Hurd]

The voice of Ilford should never be silenced, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is entitled to his own version of events, but the fundamental fact is that the coalition Government inherited the biggest peacetime budget deficit in the history of this country, and had to take some radical action.

I want to deal with the pension issue, which is the substance of the debate, but before I do so, let me make the point that when the situation has changed—and the situation in 2018 is different from that in 2010, because the picture of demand on the police has changed and the financial efficiency of the police has changed—so have the Government. We are not talking about cuts. We are talking about additional public investment in our police system: over £1 billion more this year than three years ago.

Let me now address the pension issue. There is a problem, and I want to be frank about it. As I stand here at the Dispatch Box, it remains unresolved, but, as I have said at the Dispatch Box during an urgent question and subsequently, our intention is to resolve it in the police funding settlement scheduled for early December.

Oral Answers to Questions

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

12. What steps his Department is taking to tackle violent crime.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sajid Javid)]

We will be launching a £200 million youth endowment fund to intervene with children at risk of serious violence; we will be consulting on a new duty to support the multi-agency approach to tackling violence; and we will be undertaking a review of drug misuse.

[Wes Streeting]

The recent murder of a 23-year-old man in my constituency has once again brought violent crime to the forefront of concerns in my community. My constituents understand that whether in Labour-led cities such as London or in Tory shires, cuts to police numbers are having a serious impact, which is leading to increases in violent crime across the country. When will the Home Secretary accept that and put the money back into the police that our communities need?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise this. He will know that the Government have a cross-government serious violence strategy, but we do need to do more. That was why I recently announced these further steps, especially the new £200 million fund, which will help prevent violence.

Windrush

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

I point out to the hon. Gentleman that we have been generous in granting citizenship rights and have been determined, as I said a few moments ago, to find reasons to grant, not reasons to refuse. As I have said, the public consultation on the compensation scheme closes on 11 October, but I urge him to encourage all his constituents who may have been affected to take part in that consultation so that their voices can be heard.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

The Minister and the Government claim that the hostile environment is over, but in Westminster Hall shortly we will be describing the situation of international students who are currently victims of the hostile environment. Is it not the case that the Home Office is in this mess because it continues to come forward with cases on the basis of flimsy evidence; it is losing appeals left, right and centre, trying to deny people access to justice; and, perhaps worst of all, at the same time as victimising people in a David versus Goliath contest in the courts, it is wasting taxpayers’ money hand over fist that should be spent on our schools, our police and our hospitals? Why will she not reinstate the appeals, as the cross-party Home Affairs Committee suggests, and why will she not genuinely end the hostile environment?

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Gentleman is indeed leading a debate later this afternoon about English language testing. We are very conscious that there was significant fraud. Many thousands of cases were found to have been fraudulent and many colleges not only closed as a result but were bogus colleges that we had already identified problems with. Where there is systemic fraud and abuse in the immigration system, as we saw with some language testing, it is important that the Government take action, and he will be aware that successive court cases have upheld our position.

TOEIC Visa Cancellations

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered TOEIC visa cancellations.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I place on record my enormous thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who has put in a huge amount of hard work, not least in helping us to secure the debate. If he were not attending the Offensive Weapons Bill Committee, which unfortunately clashes, he would have been with us for the duration.

We are here to discuss Britain’s forgotten immigration scandal, which has seen thousands of international students wrongly deported and tens of thousands more left in limbo. Their lives have been plunged into chaos by a Government who have effectively branded them all cheats, defied the principles of natural justice and created a hostile environment for international students. In 2014, BBC’s “Panorama” uncovered evidence of widespread cheating at testing centres delivering the test of English for international communication—the TOEIC—on behalf of the Home Office for non-European economic area students as part of the tier 4 visa. It discovered that, in some colleges, exam invigilators read the correct answers to students or supplied proxies to sit sections of the test. The provider administering the tests, Educational Testing Service, claimed that 33,725 people who took the test used a proxy, and it suspected a further 22,694 instances of fraud.

That abuse on such a scale was allowed to take place at a Home Office-approved provider was clearly a source of political embarrassment for the Government and the Home Secretary of the day, who is now our Prime Minister. When immigration system abuse goes unchecked and unchallenged, it undermines public confidence in the system and the Government responsible for it. When individuals are found to be cheating the system, it is right that their visas are cancelled and they are asked to leave the country. When providers are found to be failing in their responsibility to ensure that tests are fairly and properly delivered, it is right that they are removed from the list of approved providers.

Cheating cannot be condoned or excused—there is no disagreement about that. The Minister comes to this issue with a fresh pair of eyes, and therein lies an opportunity to reflect on what has gone wrong and put right a terrible injustice. What we have seen in the TOEIC scandal is a Home Office response so appalling that it was described by one immigration tribunal judge as

“so unfair and unreasonable as to amount to an abuse of power.”

The 22,694 students whose test results had been deemed questionable because ETS had “limited confidence” in the tests’ validity due to of administrative irregularity were permitted to sit a new secure English language test. When the Minister responds, I hope she will tell us how many of those students were required to pay for those new tests and, crucially, what the outcomes of those tests were.

For those whose test results were deemed invalid by ETS, the Home Office relied on the assurances of an untrustworthy provider to presume the guilt of tens of thousands of international students without properly considering the merits of individual cases or giving those students an opportunity to defend their innocence. According to figures obtained by the House of Commons Library, by the end of September 2016—the last time the Home Office published any figures related to such cases—more than 35,870 visa holders had had their visas refused or curtailed on the basis of the TOEIC test. More than 3,600 of those had received an enforcement visit and more than 4,600 had been subjected to removal from the country.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Wes Streeting]

I give way to my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes).

[Mike Gapes]

Like me, my hon. Friend has been contacted by constituents who have been subjected to this outrageous behaviour, so he will know that many people are distraught and have had their whole futures destroyed by these administrative measures. Is it not a fact that this a bigger scandal than Windrush in terms of the number of individuals removed from the country and whose livelihoods are being destroyed by anguish and despair? In many cases, they are labelled as cheats when they are not.

[Wes Streeting]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend could be here before returning to the main Chamber to consider the important matter of Brexit. I strongly agree and he is absolutely correct. The injustice is grave and the numbers affected are huge. This scandal should have been plastered on the front page of every national newspaper. It is bad enough that those students have been denied access to justice through appeal. They should have been given at least some sense of justice through the disinfectant of sunlight.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing the debate and for his work on this subject. I suspect that a number of Members in the Chamber have, like me, had a series of affected constituents approach them. Given the seriousness of what has happened in the Home Office in the past—never mind that the Minister is new to the subject—does he think that this new scandal merits a proper, thorough independent inquiry?

[Wes Streeting]

I strongly agree. In fact, when I come to describe the Home Office’s handling of this, we will see that an independent inquiry is necessary.

[Seema Malhotra]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on his excellent speech. Does he agree that, as well as the incredible social injustice that has happened under this Government’s watch, the reputational impact that families have suffered, which has led to depression and affected whole families, including children, demands an extensive apology and potential compensation? Does he also agree that the huge cost to the taxpayer of enforcement action and otherwise should be investigated?

[Wes Streeting]

I strongly agree and will talk in some detail about those issues. The UK is highly regarded around the world as a country that has respect for the rule of law and an independent judiciary. It also has a Government who are supposed to respect that rule of law, but in too many cases I am afraid we have seen blanket decisions and people deported without an opportunity to defend their innocence. I believe the Government have acted unlawfully and I am afraid that this country’s reputation for respect, access to justice and upholding the rule of law is not warranted in this case.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. He said that this issue has not commanded the media attention of Windrush, yet the numbers of those directly affected in recent years are well in excess of that scandal, and it has been going on for at least four years now. Given that there has been a “Panorama” programme, a Sunday Times exposé and a Guardian report, does he have an opinion on why it has not commanded media attention like the Windrush scandal?

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful for that intervention. There is some complexity—as I acknowledged, there is no doubt whatsoever that some cheating took place, which is clearly serious—but we must distinguish, and allow students to distinguish, between those who committed genuine wrongdoing and who deserve to be punished, and those who have been caught up in a scandal not of their making. That is the distinction I wish to draw in the debate, which the Home Office has failed to do. In the vast majority of cases, students were told that they had no right to appeal in the UK and that they should leave the country.

The experiences of students whose test results were deemed invalid by ETS varied considerably depending on when the Home Office took action and where those students were at the time. The hideous complexity I have alluded to is thrown into sharp relief by an excellent briefing by the National Union of Students, with the support of Bindmans. In some cases, it appears that the Home Office directed further and higher education institutions to withdraw students from their course of study and told students that they had 60 days to find a new sponsoring institution or to leave the country. Of course, having effectively been blacklisted by ETS and the Government, they invariably failed to do so. By handling cases in this way, the Home Office placed students outside the usual immigration processes without the right to appeal either in country or out of country.

That approach was found to be unlawful by the upper tribunal in the case of Mohibullah. The Minister should tell the House how many students fell into that category and what steps the Home Office has taken in light of the judgment in that case to contact other students who were similarly mistreated and, most importantly, to reassure the House that such an attempt to circumvent properly agreed immigration processes will never happen again.

Students who were outside the UK at the time of Home Office action, who received notices informing them of the allegations against them upon their return to the UK prior to 6 April 2015, were served with notices at airports and prevented from resuming their studies pending their appeal from within the UK. In some cases, students were subjected to interview and detention. For many students, that led to the end of their studies. However, the NUS,

“understands that in each and every case won by a student the Home Office appealed the outcome”.

The NUS also asserts that, where the appeals process led to a successful outcome for students,

“the Home Office has been slow to provide a remedy”

to the student concerned, effectively leaving them in “limbo”.

Is that right? Did the Home Office really drag every single case in this category through the upper tribunal and onward to the court of appeal? Perhaps the Minister can tell us how many cases we are talking about, how many appeals were successful and how much this lengthy process has cost the taxpayer. It is only reasonable to ask how long it takes, following the successful conclusion of an appeal, for the Home Office to ensure that successful appellants are given the right to remain in the UK.

For students who were in the UK at the time of Home Office action, their right to appeal varied according to when the action took place. From 6 April 2015, students were subjected to rules under the Immigration Act 2014, which removed the right to appeal, with only limited exceptions for human rights arguments deemed worthy by the Home Office. Prior to 6 April 2015, students were served with section 10 notices under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Effectively branded cheats by Her Majesty’s Government, they were told to leave the UK immediately, and that they could only appeal from their country of origin. The students took their fight for an in-country appeal to the courts. In the case of Ahsan v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of students’ right to appeal in the UK, finding that an out-of-country appeal was an inadequate legal remedy.

How much did that cost the taxpayer? How much of the UK taxpayer’s money has the Home Office wasted in trying to stop students gaining proper access to the appeal to which they are entitled? Schools in my constituency are sending begging letters to parents to meet the cost of basic materials. I have countless examples of people having to fight tooth and nail to get social care for their elderly parents. I have community policing that only exists on paper and in the speeches of politicians because the Home Office has cut police budgets; but apparently the Home Office has a bottomless pit when it comes to dragging international students through lengthy, costly and pointless legal action.

In response to a written parliamentary question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Minister’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), claimed that he was unable to tell the House how much public money has been spent on court fees involving TOEIC cases,

“because Home Office data systems are unable to disaggregate costs”.

That tells us quite a lot about cost control and value for money deliberations in the Home Office. Ministers should know how much this has cost, and they should be accountable to taxpayers for it.

What we have seen through those cases has made it clear before the courts and tribunals that innocent students have been wrongly caught up in a scandal that was not of their making. I am enormously grateful to Garden Court Chambers for the thorough briefing it provided to hon. Members in advance of this debate, to give us some examples. When the scandal was exposed by “Panorama”, the Home Office’s response was to delegate the identification of those who used a proxy to ETS. The very organisation that had failed to properly oversee the test centres—the organisation the Government had deemed unworthy of Government accreditation—was none the less entirely trusted, it seems, to oversee this process.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

You can see the logic.

[Wes Streeting]

Absolutely; it beggars belief. But do not worry, folks, because the Home Office ensured that two senior officials had oversight of the process. That was hugely reassuring—until, of course, those same Home Office officials responsible for supervising the process gave evidence before the president of the immigration tribunal, a senior High Court judge. His criticism was remarkable, and I am sure the House will indulge me while I read what he said in the course of judging that case. I will not name the officials, because they do not have the right to reply. The shambolic mess of the Home Office tells us that it is probably not their individual responsibility, and the judge said in the case of both those senior officials that they gave truthful evidence.

However, the judge also said that,

“this neither counterbalances nor diminishes the shortcomings in their testimony.”

He said:

“Neither witness has any qualifications or expertise, vocational or otherwise, in the scientific subject matter of these appeals, namely voice recognition technology and techniques…In making its decisions in individual cases, the Home Office was entirely dependent on the information provided by ETS. At a later stage viz from around June 2014 this dependency extended to what was reported by its delegation which went to the United States…ETS was the sole arbiter of the information disclosed and assertions made to the delegation. For its part, the delegation—unsurprisingly, given its lack of expertise—”

this is what the judge said—

“and indeed, the entirety of the Secretary of State’s officials and decision makers accepted uncritically everything reported by ETS.”

This is absolute amateur hour at the Home Office. How on earth, in a case of this nature, involving fraud and electronic tests, would someone at the Home Office—probably paid a significant amount of money at our expense—ensure that there was adequate expertise to properly judge, in life-changing decisions about individuals, whether the evidence presented was enough to deny them their right to study in the UK? It is outrageous; coupled with the fact that these people have in many cases been deported on the basis of this flimsy evidence, it is disgraceful. The whole process was also subjected to stinging criticisms by three independent experts, who gave evidence to the tribunal—again, before a senior High Court judge.

In evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, one of those experts, summarising the report of the three, said:

“We agreed that in any one testing session there could be a mix of genuine applicants and those who were paying for fraudulent results.”

He also said:

“It seems reasonable to conclude that the ‘ETS lists’ are not a reliable indicator of whether or not a student…cheated.”

Patrick Lewis, an immigration barrister with Garden Court Chambers, told the Financial Times:

“The highly questionable quality of the evidence upon which these accusations have been based and the lack of any effective judicial oversight have given rise to some of the greatest injustices”,

that he had,

“encountered in over 20 years of practice”.

In the case of one of my own constituents I have seen this gross injustice for myself. He is one of the students whose test results were deemed invalid by ETS. He had to fight tooth and nail to get basic details of the allegations against him. When he requested the audio clip that had been used to brand him a cheat, it was discovered that there were two tests associated with him—two tests, involving my constituent, that are meant to have taken place at precisely the same time. This student came to the UK having already completed the highly respected International English Language Testing System test with the British Council, yet we are supposed to believe that he felt it necessary to cheat his way through the TOEIC test.

The decision has thrown his life into chaos, which is how I arrived on this issue. He is unable to complete his studies and get on with his life. His mental health has suffered. He is worried about his reputation back home, fearful that he will be considered a cheat because that is what the British Government has determined on the basis of this shambolic process. The irony is that the reputations of innocent international students are in tatters because around the world the United Kingdom is respected as a beacon of democracy and the rule of law, but what we see here is an affront to the principles of natural justice, with innocent students removed from our country without first giving them an opportunity to respond to the allegations against them. It is a disgrace. It should never have happened. There should be not only a fulsome apology, but immediate action to put this right. The family, friends and community back home of my constituent should be in no doubt about his innocence. I have no doubt about his innocence, and if our Government think otherwise they should meet the burden of proof and demonstrate his guilt.

My constituent is not alone. A Migrant Voice report reveals just how devastating this scandal has been to the lives of the international students caught up in all this, and we have heard them speak here in this very Parliament. They came to the UK, at considerable cost to themselves and their families, with the hope of experiencing a good education in a country renowned for its world-class universities. They have been robbed of that opportunity. They have been denied access to work, spent all their savings, relied on handouts from their family and friends and racked up debts in the battle to clear their name in a David v. Goliath contest, with poor old David cobbling together what he can to fund his legal action and Goliath funded by the taxpayer to unnecessarily drag these students through the courts. They have lost their right to rent. Their relationships have been placed under considerable strain. They have suffered mental ill health, heart troubles, hyperthyroidism and other stress-related conditions. All they want is the chance to clear their name, complete their studies and get on with their life and career.

Universities UK today published an excellent report about the importance of the contribution that international students make to the UK, not just to the economy but to our culture, enriching the educational experience of everyone at our world-class universities. I wholly endorse what Universities UK says about making it easier for students who come to this country to gain work experience after they graduate. However, how can we possibly expect the Government to take up such sensible recommendations when they treat students who are already here in such a disgraceful way? Universities across the world—in North America and Australia—are going hell for leather to grab the UK’s coveted place in the international student market and the Home Office is allowing them to run riot, diminishing our standing in the world and our ability to attract the very best students.

The Home Office and ETS—the grubby contractor at the centre of this scandal—have serious questions to answer about their conduct in all this. It is clear that the Home Office is persisting with creating a hostile environment for international students, hoping that, by dragging it out for as long as possible, it will cause students to simply give up and go home. The judicial criticism of senior civil servants’ and the Home Office’s approach should be a source of professional embarrassment for everyone involved; it is a global embarrassment to our country.

Prior to the summer, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham asked the Minister, and then the Home Secretary, to ensure that students whose visas were cancelled for allegedly cheating in the TOEIC test be allowed to sit a new test to resume their studies. On both occasions he was informed that that was being carefully considered, and that advice was being sought.

In closing, I offer some advice. We are now four years on from the “Panorama” investigation, and the Government have had long enough. Let these students sit their tests. Let them clear their names. Let them get on with their lives.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting]

I thank everyone who has taken part in this afternoon’s debate. It is striking that no Government Members have chosen to come along to defend their conduct; it has been left solely to the Minister.

To put it mildly, I am deeply disappointed with the Minister’s response. There are a few key issues that she has not addressed. I do not think she adequately explained how it was that international students were told to leave the country without a right to appeal here, in contravention of the Court of Appeal ruling. She did not address at all the fiasco where further and higher education institutions were told to cancel student places and force them out of the conventional immigration appeals route. That issue has not been adequately addressed.

Perhaps worst of all, the Minister has not given any sense of reassurance to students who are here today about when this will be resolved. My constituent’s case has been in limbo now for years, and he is not alone. The Home Office has a responsibility to these people to make sure that their cases are reviewed fairly, and that they are given the chance to clear their name and get on with their lives. We have had no reassurances whatsoever. We have not been told anything by way of detail about numbers of people. We have overall numbers affected—we have quoted those and they are really clear in the briefings—but nothing in terms of appeals, what stage they are at, success rates, how long it is taking to resolve the issues and, crucially, how much it is costing the taxpayer.

With some of the ongoing cases, not least that of my constituent, a really simple, cost-effective and fair way to resolve the case would be to allow them to resit the test. That is true for so many students. It would prove beyond any reasonable doubt whether or not they were fit to sit that test and whether the pass rate was valid or invalid. If it is invalid, they have to take it on the chin and get on with their lives in that knowledge, but in the vast majority of cases that we have seen as constituency MPs, and in the vast majority of cases that have been seen by the organisations we have heard from in this debate, there is no doubt about the proficiency of the students’ English. There is no doubt in our minds about the integrity of the students and their desire to engage with their studies.

I hope the Minister will agree, if I write to her, to look at my constituent’s case and will write back to me about when we can expect action on it. I hope she might agree to a detailed meeting with some of us, to look at how we can resolve this in a timely fashion, but I also hope that she will go away and challenge her Department and her officials about the way in which they are pursuing these cases and the time and public money that is being invested, in order to make sure that we can move on in an adequate and appropriate way.

This is really doing enormous damage to the reputation of our universities. It is doing enormous damage to our students. We heard most powerfully from our Scottish National party Opposition colleague, the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day), about his own family circumstances. That is one story that captures the absurdity and the human impact of the situation. It is so close to this place! Of course, not everyone has a member of the family who is a Member of Parliament. We are speaking on behalf of so many of our constituents who have suffered real injustice. They have been given a voice today, but they have not been given sufficient answers. We have been going on with this for far too long.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered TOEIC visa cancellations.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

I had not intended to speak in this debate, but I have lived in London all my life. I am 42 years old and of a west African background. My mother, who still practises as a barrister at the age of 74, had one or two relatives in Trellick Tower, which is near Grenfell Tower, so I spent time there as a boy.

One of the things that is missed about this whole debate is that that location, Notting Hill, with the race riots and the carnival, is very important to the Afro-Caribbean community. It is an area that I have known on and off all my life, although I do not know it intimately, and many here know it much better. I assure the House and those who hear the debate that I have not really engaged as much with this issue as I might have, given my responsibility in the Treasury as a Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chancellor—I was appointed just when this tragedy happened—but what I have to say, as a Londoner, is that I found it extraordinary that 72 people died in the tragedy.

I have lived in and around London all my life, but I have never heard of anything similar before. The Grenfell fire was a huge tragedy and a national scandal. People on both sides of the House, but on the governing side in particular, have to be generous and open enough to recognise it for what it was. Frankly, it is a disgrace that that sort of thing can happen—that a tragedy and loss of life on that scale can happen in London. As a governing party, we cannot walk away from it. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea cannot walk away from it either—although I am not saying that it has done. We have to understand the history of London—of that part of London—to understand the resonance for many people in such an appalling tragedy.

What happened over the decades in Notting Hill? Initially, it was the hub of the Afro-Caribbean community, and many people came to Britain from the Caribbean and Africa to make a home there, but over the past 10, 20 or 30 years what people call gentrification has happened. The area originally had a vast connection with people of diverse communities and faiths, but over 20 or 30 years property prices increased and there was a new influx of much wealthier inhabitants. The area changed and— I am not saying that this happened, but there is a suspicion that it did—the priorities, values and interests of the people running the borough changed. As more people with more money came in, there is a suspicion that the people who were left behind commanded less of the attention of the local councillors or even perhaps of the Government.

We have to talk about that context—about North Kensington and Notting Hill, and remembering the Notting Hill race riots—when we look at how scarring the tragedy was. Nothing like that has happened in London before, certainly in my recollection.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I am a London MP, and some of the shocking statistics that we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) about the housing situation of the Grenfell families sound eerily and uncomfortably familiar to my casework, given our housing load and the struggle that my local authority has to rehouse people. All of our constituents are entitled to a decent place to live, but the situation of the Grenfell families is particularly egregious, and this goes directly to the point about trust made by my right hon. Friend: if, now, the state locally and nationally cannot mobilise effectively to ensure that every Grenfell family has a decent home to call their own, what does that say to the entire country about the ability of government locally and nationally to deliver the priorities of the people? Housing is such a basic need—I urge the hon. Gentleman as a Treasury PPS to take this message back to the Chancellor—and we need action on housing across London, but for goodness’ sake we should have moved heaven and earth to ensure that those people had a decent home.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I cannot talk about the circumstances in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, but clearly housing is a need. Specifically, however, I want to talk about this tragedy and its location, and about how resonant it was. I do not have much time, so my final remarks are addressed to colleagues on the Government Benches. This is an incredibly emotive and resonant issue. In many of the speeches—not perhaps today—and the things that I have read, there is massive compassion but not enough empathy about how important the issue is, and how seriously people of different faiths and communities treat it. There is a danger that people reciting statistics or even facts simply lose sight of the human element.

A national scandal happened in June last year. From my point of view, Grenfell is the biggest challenge that the Government face—forget Brexit and all the rest of it. Grenfell asks us questions about who we are as Conservatives, what our values are, and our ability to connect with people from the wider community and with new immigrants. I shall not mention Windrush—we have talked a lot about that—but I say to the Government and to other Conservative Members: we have to be very sensitive. We have to not just give the impression but feel that we are batting on the side of the people who have been affected. We can make lots of speeches—although I do not question our motives or emotional response—but I warn my fellow Conservative MPs that this is a big question about our own motivations and values. The eyes of the world and certainly of people in London are watching us carefully.

Windrush

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

First let me say how sorry I am about the situation the hon. Lady’s constituent has found himself in and thank her for the work she has done for him. I suggest she engages with him to show him that we have now set up the hotline so that he can get his citizenship regularised, if that is what he is still in need of. On the timing of compensation, as I have just said, I will be setting up a compensation scheme and making sure it has independent oversight. When we have that information, I look forward to letting her know.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

Our casework is a litmus test of the impact of Government policy, and my casework in the last week has shown family members denied access to weddings and funerals because of arbitrary decisions by the Secretary of State’s Department; international students who are victims of the TOEIC— test of English for international communication—scandal facing deportation on the flimsiest of grounds and at an extortionate cost to the taxpayer; and, finally, victims of domestic violence with British children facing deportation for no other reason than that the mothers cannot produce evidence from the fathers who beat them. This is totally unacceptable. Windrush is the tip of the iceberg of an immigration policy that is unfair, unjust and incompetently delivered. That is what the Home Secretary ought to be taking responsibility for, and the best thing she could do by way of an apology to the Windrush generation is to ensure that they and future generations of migrants to this country no longer face the injustices of the toxic immigration policy over which she presides.

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman has referred to some really tragic situations, and if he sends me the details, I will look carefully at them and make sure they are addressed. I hope that the measures I am putting in place will allow the sort of personal contact that will enable such individuals to get a more personal engagement and a faster and perhaps more satisfactory response when needed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I am sure my hon. Friend will be delighted to learn that no one is above the law when it comes to unexplained wealth orders—whether a Member of the European Parliament, a European politician or even, indeed, a Member of this House.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

Young people who have in effect been groomed into county lines are themselves victims of serious and organised crime, but so too are their families indirect victims. One thing that all the families affected by this issue in my constituency have in common is that they provide loving homes for their children, but they feel they have very little support from agencies in going through what must be a very traumatic process. What do Ministers plan to do not just to tackle the causes and symptoms of county lines and this kind of organised crime, but to provide adequate support to families who suffer enormous distress as a result?

[Mr Wallace]

I recommend that the hon. Gentleman looks at examples in other parts of the country of how county lines are dealt with using other agencies. I think his local authority is Ilford. Many local authorities and police forces work together on county lines in a pan-agency group, including social services and other local authorities. I saw one recently in Merseyside, which is doing exactly what he urges. If he thinks Ilford is not doing that, I would be very happy to meet him and the council to see what it can do to improve.

Money Laundering

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

We are often up against some of the best-resourced and sophisticated crooks in the world, so we want to get it right and make sure it works. This will be the first measure of its kind in the world if we do it. Let us make sure it is correct and accurate, so that we can then act on it, gather evidence, seize assets and make the difference. I am sure the hon. Gentleman would not want us to rush through a half-hearted register that does not work.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

An unacceptably large number of the Minister’s answers have involved being redirected to other agencies—people might wonder why the Government are so unaccountable on these issues—but perhaps he can answer a question about tier one investment visas. Many such visas were issued to Russians during a period when almost no background checks were carried out. What are the Government doing to look retrospectively at those cases to make sure that individuals with wealth obtained through dubious means cannot operate freely in our city and country?

[Mr Wallace]

The relevant part of the Home Office keeps a continual check on existing visas and new visa applications, and we will of course make sure that when something is wrong we take action either to remove a visa or prevent one from being issued.

Hate Crime

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. He has a long and established record of supporting our Jewish communities. Yes, the hate crime action plan covers all forms of hatred, as defined by the legislation, and of course, sadly, anti-Semitism forms part of that.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

These appalling letters have to be seen in the context of the flames of prejudice being fanned in mainstream newspapers and in the comments made by mainstream politicians against their Muslim opponents, as well as by bystanders, who are just as complicit when they see prejudice, either in person or online on Facebook or other social media platforms, and instead of tackling it, they choose to look the other way. Will the Minister make a commitment to the House that the Government will not only take action on online publishers of this kind of extremism, but, in the weeks leading up to the first week of April, ensure that every mosque and Muslim community centre in the country receives a visit from their police to give them adequate security advice, to ensure that the Muslim community know that the authorities are 100% with them and on their side?

[Victoria Atkins]

The anti-Muslim hatred working group brings together all parties from across Government and further afield to try to tackle this specific form of hate crime. One of its initial achievements was to work with the Society of Editors to tackle anti-Muslim hatred and, more recently, with the Independent Press Standards Organisation to develop training for editors and journalists to tackle the negative portrayal of Muslims in the media.

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about ensuring that mosques are visited in the run-up to the date mentioned in the letter, we will happily send letters to each chief constable to ensure they are aware of this. It is a matter for chief constables, but we expect that mosques will be protected.