Windrush Compensation Scheme

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I am very sorry to hear about my hon. Friend’s constituent’s situation. The claims can begin from today, and the information has just gone up online. We have also set up a freephone helpline, and a number of people in the Home Office will be dedicated to the scheme. We want to process the claims and make payments as soon as possible.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Home Office took six months to agree to the urgent hardship scheme, nine months to set out the policy for it and, within 12 months of the Windrush scandal, it had helped only two of the 48 people who had applied. I understand that the number is now up to nine even though there were serious, urgent cases in which help was needed. What will the Home Secretary do to ensure that we do not see the same delays with this compensation scheme, which will provide the welcome support that people need?

[Sajid Javid]

It was important to get the scheme right, so we wanted to ensure that we consulted as many people as possible, which is why we had the call for evidence first. Indeed, Martin Forde, the independent assessor of the scheme, asked for extra time to meet more community leaders and more people who were affected. I believe that we have got it right now, and I am committed to ensuring that those who are eligible receive their compensation as quickly as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 1st April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is right to raise this, because the work of Real Knives, Real Lives and of other groups doing similar work is really helping young people to move away from involvement in what could become a life of crime. We have provided significant funding to similar organisations through the early intervention youth fund, and now the new youth endowment fund will also support similar community organisations.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the public health approach and the knife crime summit, but the evidence presented to the Home Affairs Committee inquiry into serious violence suggests that the Home Secretary’s claim to be putting record amounts of funding into prevention is simply not credible. We were told by West Midlands police that they now have no police officers based in schools working on crime prevention because of the scale of the cuts. There has also been a one third reduction in youth service funding over the past few years and, crucially, there are now 50,000 fewer people working on community safety and crime prevention. Children’s lives are being lost and it is crucial that investment in prevention should take place.

[Sajid Javid]

First, the right hon. Lady will be aware that we have had the biggest cash increase in police resources—almost £1 billion—since 2010. That is going to lead to the recruitment of more than 3,000 officers. I absolutely agree with her that early intervention should be a priority, and just last week we confirmed that a record £200 million is going into the youth endowment fund. That will help many community organisations to help young people to turn away from crime.

Shamima Begum and Other Cases

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I always listen carefully to what my right hon. Friend says, and he was right in his opening comment. Much has been said about this case—many accusations and insinuations and much so-called detail—that people could not possibly know because, for security reasons, No. 1, but also for other reasons, it is not possible for the Government to share the details of any such case. It would not be appropriate. It has never been so in the past and would not be appropriate now, and as I have said, the decisions would always be taken on expert legal advice.

On the second part of my right hon. Friend’s question about the security risks posed, whether it is our security or that of others, we need to look carefully at the security threats, but first and foremost I must be concerned about the safety and security of all those who live in the United Kingdom, and, where threats remain after we take action, we will work with our international partners to minimise them.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I asked the Home Secretary about the vulnerability of this little baby, who has now tragically died, at the Select Committee session. Can he confirm that Shamima Begum’s son was a British citizen? I see no reason not to confirm that, rather than make generic statements. He also told me that he had considered the interests of the child. That is a bit hard to understand, given what has happened to this little baby. Was he advised by his officials that there would be a greater risk to this child’s life if he made this citizenship decision about the mother?

[Sajid Javid]

I can confirm that if a child is born to a British citizen anywhere in the world, as long as that British citizen is not a naturalised British citizen, that child is British, even if the parent’s British citizenship is subsequently removed. I have mentioned before in the House, and I am happy to repeat it, that these decisions are never taken lightly—I believe that to be true of all my predecessors—but they are based on expert advice by officials. Where a child is involved, the interests of that child are taken into account.

Knife Crime

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his kind words, and I am reminded of the many comments made about him in celebration of his recent knighthood. He makes an important point about sentencing. Of course, it is the judiciary who decide the sentences they impose on defendants as they appear before them in court, but we really must emphasise the importance of the public message on this for local communities living in the sorts of circumstances outlined by the shadow Home Secretary, where people fear for their sons and daughters. That is why we have introduced mandatory minimum sentences for those caught in possession of a knife on more than one occasion. We have asked judges to apply a minimum of six months’ imprisonment to such people to send out that very clear message that holding a knife is not acceptable, is not normal, and if you hold a knife in a public place not only do you put other people at risk, you put yourself at risk as well.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I do not doubt the Minister’s good intentions on this, and I think the whole House would agree on many of the things that can make a difference. The problem is that she could have been saying most of these things about a year ago. There is no real sense that the Government are doing anything on the scale that is needed or with the urgency that is needed, whether that is on extra policing, early intervention, youth intervention or tackling exclusions from schools. One summit is just not enough. We want to know what the Home Secretary is doing. Is he holding weekly meetings, either in Cobra or in the Home Office, to pull everyone together and get some action by the end of next week or by the end of the month? Let us see something that actually makes a difference and saves lives.

[Victoria Atkins]

I take the right hon. Lady’s point about meetings and summits and so on. As she knows, the way in which we get things moving in Whitehall and then across local government and local areas is through drawing everybody together into rooms. We have been working on this day in, day out since the serious violence strategy was launched. We are already funding 29 projects through the early intervention youth fund and working with police and crime commissioners to reach those young people who need help. We have already funded many programmes through the anti-knife crime community fund, which involves smaller projects, and I hope that many Members of Parliament will have received letters from me about the projects in their constituencies that have benefited from it. We have a media campaign called #knifefree, which we in this place are probably not aware of because frankly we are not the people that the campaign is targeting. It is targeting young people in a very direct way on social media, through catch-up television and elsewhere, and it is supporting the message that it is not normal for people to carry knives.

I want to put out this plea: there is more that we as a society can do to press this message home. I am due to meet representatives of the Premier League to ask whether they can encourage their football legends to do even more as role models to get the message out there that carrying a knife is not normal, that people do not have to do it, and that if they do, they are putting themselves at enormous risk. There is a great deal more that we as a society can do to get that message out there to young people about carrying knives, but there is also a huge amount of work going on involving police officers. We have weeks of intensive activity in which police forces across the country make tackling knife crime the priority for that week. I went to an operational briefing on Friday where the plans for the following week were being laid out. Those weeks have extraordinary rates of success: in the last one, 9,000 knives were taken off the streets of our country. The more of these surge operations we can have, the greater benefit there will be in the immediate term on this very complex issue.

Knife Crime

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point about the need to ensure that everything is being done throughout the United Kingdom, including our capital city, to deploy as many resources as possible to law enforcement and efforts to prevent young people from turning to serious violence in the first place. The work being done by Shaun Bailey and others is important in that regard, and I hope that the recent increase in central funding will help as well.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Fatal stabbings are now at their highest level since the second world war, and the number of youth stabbings has doubled in five years. Teenagers are dying on our streets, and families are being devastated as a result. I agree with what the Home Secretary said about a public health approach, but that is why it was so concerning to hear the Health Secretary dismiss such an approach—the Home Secretary did not respond when his comments were raised earlier. That creates a feeling that there simply is not the right sense of urgency and grip across the Government on this crucial issue: this morning a former Metropolitan Police Commissioner warned of a lack of national leadership.

Does the Home Secretary believe that all the measures that he talked about earlier will lead to a fall in knife crime and in the number of serious stabbings in the next 12 months? If he does not, this is not a good enough plan.

[Sajid Javid]

I welcome the right hon. Lady’s comments. I do believe that the action that we are taking is the right action, but I am also very open-minded about considering what further action can be taken. I think it important to listen to police chiefs, police and crime commissioners and others, and to consider whether other measures can be introduced. The idea of knife crime prevention orders came directly from the police, the Mayor of London and others, and we acted very quickly to pursue that.

As for the public health approach that the right hon. Lady and others have mentioned, it is important for all public Departments to buy into it. I want it to be statutory because I want Departments including the Department for Health and Social Care, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Education to make it a priority: I think that they all have an important role to play.

Macpherson Report: 20th Anniversary

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris]

I absolutely agree. I dare say I may have taken part in this at some point, but as a body politic we have a dishonest conversation about stop-and-search. When we are in a community hall faced by parents or individuals who are angry about disproportionality we wring our hands and say it must change, but the moment something happens—somebody is stabbed, for example— we run to this place or the nearest camera and say, “Oh goodness, this can’t happen this way; we have to do more stopping and searching.” We must have an honest conversation in this country. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) has been steadfast in this regard for many decades; we could all learn something from that. We ought to have a much more mature conversation with people in our community.

I can offer some hope from my own police force of Nottinghamshire. Our stop-and-search rates are among the lowest in the country, but due to intelligence-led use of stop-and-search powers our current 41% arrest and positive outcome rate is one of the highest in the country. We should reflect on that: one of the lowest stop-and-search rates produces one of the highest success rates. It is probably not a major surprise that our excellent police and crime commissioner, Paddy Tipping, who is behind this, was also involved in setting up the Macpherson inquiry. He gets it, and we now need more people to join him.

Finally, before I sit down and give others a chance to speak, I want to turn to governance and oversight. Earlier, I referred to Baroness Lawrence’s frustration at the difficulty in finding out what progress has been made against the Macpherson report’s recommendations. We as a Committee intend to address that by writing to the Home Office and other bodies to ask for updates against all 70 recommendations. Frankly, though, the Government should not be leaving this to us. They have been criticised for a lack of governance and oversight. The Stephen Lawrence steering group was disbanded many years ago, and in 2012, Bevan Powell called for the re-establishment of a pan- Whitehall group to restore trust between the police and communities.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and setting out very powerfully the key issues in the Macpherson report that are still being raised 20 years on. As he says, the Home Affairs Committee is looking again at all the issues around diversity and policing, and around institutional racism, that were raised at the time. When we heard evidence from Baroness Lawrence, we asked her what she wanted Stephen Lawrence’s legacy to be. She mentioned Stephen Lawrence Day, the first of which will be in April. We also asked her what she most wanted to change, and she answered that we should change how we treat our young people, because they are our future. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important for us to look forward at the positive legacy of Stephen’s life and, on Stephen Lawrence Day, for us to celebrate what more we can do in the future as well as bringing about the changes that we still need to make after 20 years?

[Alex Norris]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee for that intervention. She and I and many others were keen for this debate to take place now, around the anniversary of the inquiry, rather than around Stephen Lawrence Day, because the family are very clear about what they want the day to be, and about the positives to be gained from it. I am glad that we are able to honour it in that way, and I will certainly be participating fully and supporting the family in their really important goal.

I shall quote something that Bevan Powell said to us, and this is certainly something for the Chair of the Committee to consider. He stated:

“The only time the police seem to respond to the recommendations and the associated issues that came out of Macpherson is when there is a Home Affairs Committee or a public inquiry of some sort. That cannot be the case.”

Our Committee’s recent report, “Policing for the Future”, criticised the extent to which the Home Office had stepped away from policing policy, with the Department being widely criticised by policing stakeholders and the National Audit Office for its lack of leadership. I am glad to see the Policing Minister in his place. I know that he is a man motivated by a strong sense of duty and decency and a believer in the importance of public service. In that spirit, I say to him that we are crying out for someone on the Government Front Bench to grab hold of the lessons learned from the Macpherson inquiry and to finish the job, audit progress, reconvene a steering group and drive this forward. I really would not worry about the partisan risk in doing that. Frankly, there will be enough blame to go around: we will all have our share.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I am very happy to give my hon. Friend that assurance. It is vital that we give people full reassurance that their rights will be protected as we leave the EU, which is why we have made it crystal clear that, whether there is a deal or no deal, the rights of EU citizens resident here will be protected through the EU settlement scheme. We will continue to work with our friends in the EU, the EU27, asking them to provide the same absolute assurances to UK nationals living in their countries.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Home Affairs Committee heard in a recent evidence session that those who did not register under the EU settlement scheme in time would be unlawfully resident. Can he confirm whether that is the case? What rights will those people have if they have not registered with the EU settlement scheme?

[Sajid Javid]

As the right hon. Lady will know, we want to make sure that all EU citizens who are here know exactly how the process works for them to stay. We want them all to stay and we want to make the scheme that I have just set out as easy and accessible as possible. As with any scheme, there will need to be a cut-off period at some point, not least because this is about protecting the rights of EU citizens so that as we end freedom of movement there is no possibility that we can have another Windrush-type situation, which she knows was created by successive Governments not properly documenting a change in immigration status for people who were already here. It is important that we get this right. In terms of a cut-off, we will take a proportionate and sensible approach.

Deprivation of Citizenship Status

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

In cases where terrorists or suspected terrorists are returning to the UK, a number of powers are available, including, for example, temporary exclusion orders, which have been used and can place a number of restrictions on someone, including the port of entry and reporting requirements, as well as other restrictions. We would always look first at what existing powers we can use, and if we feel that they are not sufficient, we would always look at what more might need to be brought to the House.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary is right to want to prosecute anyone who has been involved in terrorist activity here or abroad and we should support him in doing so. However, on the citizenship issue, he said that he will never make anyone stateless, but it appears in this case that he is relying legally on this young woman’s potential right to citizenship in the Netherlands or Bangladesh and presumably on the expectation that one of those countries will accept her, even though she has not lived there and was radicalised here. Does that mean that he accepts that the same principle would apply to other people who might be citizens of Bangladesh or the Netherlands, who might either have potential citizenship in the UK or actual dual citizenship rights, and that if those countries removed their citizenship first—even though this was somebody who had committed crimes in that country who had never lived here—we would somehow be expected to accept those citizens?

[Sajid Javid]

I understand why the right hon. Lady referred to a particular case and I will not comment on that, but on her broader question, it is worth reminding the House that every time such a decision is made, it is done on a case-by-case basis. By definition, each case is going to have a different set of facts—sometimes completely different—and we will take all those into account. In every single situation, there is no question of making anyone stateless under any circumstances. Not only would making someone stateless be unlawful, it would be morally wrong, and that is not something that we would do. In any case, and certainly with any decision that I have made, I am perfectly comfortable that the analysis is done properly by expert legal advisers. I would not make such a decision unless I was absolutely confident on the statelessness issue.

The right hon. Lady also referred to citizenship of other countries and how that may or may not work. She will know, as the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, that the citizenship rules can be very complex. They are complex in our country and have similar complexity in many other countries. However, we make sure that we work with lawyers, sometimes including foreign lawyers, if necessary, to make sure that our interpretation of how citizenship laws work is correct.

Windrush Scheme

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I can confirm that we will be saying something about the compensation scheme very shortly.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary said that he would supply monthly updates to the Home Affairs Committee, but we have not received an update since December, and that referred to the circumstances up to 31 October. Since then a very damning report on the Windrush situation has been published by the National Audit Office, raising a series of concerns about ongoing immigration casework and policies and the impact that they might have. The Home Office has not issued a proper response to that report either. When will we receive a substantial response to its recommendations that recognises the serious anxiety about the possibility that many of the failings relating to the Windrush situation are continuing today?

[Sajid Javid]

Let me first thank the right hon. Lady and her Committee for their scrutiny of this important issue. She knows that we are absolutely committed to providing her and the Committee with regular updates, and we will continue to do so. We always endeavour to include as much information as we can, and I hope she agrees that we have tried to make those updates as detailed as possible. She mentioned the NAO report, and I welcome that scrutiny as well. We looking into the report carefully in order to establish whether more needs to be done.

Knife Crime Prevention Orders

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

That is exactly the point of the Bill. We are very conscious that, while most retailers do what they should by obeying the law that has been in place for more than 30 years to stop the sale of sharp knives to under-18s, online retailers are not doing so well in that regard, so the Bill is intended to ensure that online as well as shop retailers meet their obligations. That is just one of the ways in which we are trying to prevent young people from getting their hands on these very dangerous weapons in the first place.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Does the Minister not realise that the Home Office appears just to be tinkering while children and young people are dying on our streets, families are being devastated, and parents are worrying about whether their teenagers are safe on their way home? She has talked about an endowment fund, but it is spread over 10 years. She has also talked about an early intervention fund, but it amounts to only £22 million, and there are reports that it is being cut.

This proposal stands against cuts of hundreds of millions of pounds in our youth services. Does the Minister not recognise that any chance of preventing young people from being caught up in dangerous gangs, drug networks, exploitation or county lines requires investment in people who can work with those young people? Will she now commit herself to meeting the scale of the huge and serious problem that we are facing, and to presenting a much bigger, much more ambitious plan that can actually save lives?

[Victoria Atkins]

Let me, if I may, correct the right hon. Lady on a couple of points. The endowment fund is spread over 10 years deliberately to ensure long-term investment in prevention and intervention, and it will be leveraged as well. It is in the process of being launched. As I said earlier, reports of cuts in the early intervention youth fund are mistaken: it remains at £22 million. As for scaling up our response, the serious violence strategy encompasses all of Whitehall, it encompasses local government, and it encompasses the various agencies and arms of the state that it would be expected to encompass.

Our plan to consult on a legal duty to take a “public health” approach to this issue goes further, dare I say, than what is being done in Scotland. If the consultation reveals that there is an appetite for it, all the arms of the state will have a legal duty to prevent this violence. So I do believe that we are scaling up our approach. I do not for a moment underestimate the scale of the task that we face, but we must ensure that all the various levers are pulled in a way that is consistent and will deliver results.