Nottingham Incident

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 14th June 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Home Secretary for her statement and for advance sight of it. I join her and the whole House in expressing our deep sorrow and shock at this truly awful attack.

The families of those who have been killed have expressed their tributes to their lost loved ones, and I join them in paying tribute to Barnaby Webber and Grace Kumar, two young, talented students who had hugely promising futures ahead of them. We have seen the tributes from their heartbroken families and from the local and national sports clubs they played for. We also pay tribute to Ian Coates, a school caretaker. We have also seen the tributes from his family and from the school he worked for, which said he, “always went the extra mile.” Our condolences, thoughts and prayers go to their families, their loved ones, their friends and their colleagues.

Our thoughts and best wishes also go to the three other people who have been injured in the same terrible attack and to their families, who will be so deeply distressed at what has happened, worrying for their loved ones. We stand in solidarity with the people of Nottingham and the University of Nottingham, where the two young people were studying. They are all so shocked and devastated at what has happened, but also so determined to come together in the face of tragedy. People who gathered at the vigil last night heard the sober words and tributes from the council leader, local MPs and local faith and community leaders. Everyone will particularly join in thanks to the emergency services that have had to respond to this awful attack, saving lives and keeping people safe.

As the Home Secretary said, an individual has been arrested and this is still a major, ongoing investigation. It is not appropriate for us to speculate or say anything that would interfere in that investigation, but I welcome the involvement of counter-terror police at an early stage of this investigation. That does nothing to pre-empt any conclusion about the potential motive behind this attack, but I have previously raised the importance of having CT police expertise involved at an early stage while motives and circumstances are investigated, rather than being brought in at a much later stage, once relevant material has been gathered.

Can the Home Secretary confirm it is a sensible approach for the expertise and assistance of counter-terror police to be drawn on at an early stage, even before any conclusion has been reached? Can she tell us whether she has been given any timetable for updates on the issue? She will know there are wider concerns about the need for properly co-ordinated and appropriate sensitive support for the victims of major incidents, including terror attacks. Can she set out what support is available for the families and friends of those affected, and for the emergency services and people in Nottingham?

Doubtless there will be countless more questions from the community and Parliament once more is known about this dreadful attack but, for now, we send our support to Nottinghamshire police and their investigation. All our thoughts and solidarity go to those who have lost loved ones and to the people of Nottingham at this difficult time.

[Suella Braverman]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her comments and for the sentiment with which she makes them. Nottinghamshire police are leading the investigation, which is at a very early stage. They have carried out a number of searches and inquiries across the city, and they will continue to gather evidence over the coming days. Police and other agencies are working flat out to establish the full facts and to provide support to everyone affected. As I said, the police have asked for time, space and patience while those inquiries continue. I am being kept regularly updated by the police and agencies on the ground.

The families of all the victims have been informed and are being supported by specialist police officers. As there are casualties and three fatalities, there is a real need for emergency care for those families, as would be imagined, and specialist support is being put on for those directly affected. I echo the sentiment of the House, as expressed by the Prime Minister: we are all saddened and shocked, and our hearts are with those affected: the victims, their families, friends and communities, and the city of Nottingham.

Public Order

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

One of the first things I did when I became Home Secretary, along with the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire and the Prime Minister, was to meet policing leads, in the Metropolitan police and nationwide, to hear about the challenges they have been and are facing in policing protests. They have requested extra powers and extra clarity in the law.

I find it surprising and disappointing that Labour MPs are not supporting the measures before us today, given how important they are to the public and how damaging serious disruption can be to everyday life. I have been trying to think about why that would be. Has it got anything to do with the fact that the Labour party—the Leader of the Opposition and his deputy—has taken £1.5 million of donations from a businessman who bankrolls Just Stop Oil? Is it because Labour’s botched environmental policies now seem to be directed by the eco-zealots? The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) should be embarrassed that Labour is more interested in supporting Just Stop Oil than standing up for the law-abiding majority. This Government and the police have always maintained that the powers are necessary to respond effectively to guerrilla protests.

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

Clearly, it is important that the Home Secretary gives accurate information to Parliament, so will she clarify her answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), the Home Affairs Committee Chair, as to whether the police and the National Police Chiefs’ Council have requested the precise wording that she has put forward in these regulations? She said to the Chamber a week ago that the

“asylum initial…backlog is down by 17,000”.—[Official Report, 5 June 2023; Vol. 733, c. 557.]

She knows that that is not true and that the asylum initial backlog, which includes legacy and flow, has gone up. Will she now correct the record, as she is before the House and she knows the importance of the ministerial code and correcting any errors at the first opportunity?

[Suella Braverman]

Sadly, we see unsurprising tactics from the Labour party. Again, Labour Members seek to distract from their woeful failure to stand up for the law-abiding majority, who want us to take these measures on protesters, and to cover up the fact that they have absolutely no policy to stop the boats. It is disappointing but unsurprising.

These regulations will ensure clarity and consistency in public order legislation in the following ways. First, they clarify that the police may take into account the cumulative impact of simultaneous and repeated protests in a specific area when considering whether there is a risk. Secondly, they permit the police to consider the absolute disruption caused by a protest—in other words, their evaluation may be irrespective of the disruption that is typical in that area. Thirdly, the regulations define the term “community” to include “any group” impacted by a protest, extending beyond those in the immediate area. That definition better reflects the cross-section of the public affected by disruptive protests in cities today. Finally, the regulations align the threshold of “serious disruption” with that in the Public Order Act 2023. This definition, proposed by Lord Hope, the former deputy president of the Supreme Court, is rooted in protest case law. It was debated at length by Parliament and deemed appropriate for use in the Public Order Act 2023. It should now be incorporated into the Public Order Act 1986 to ensure consistency across the statute book.

--- Later in debate ---

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

This is, at least, the Government’s fifth set of proposals on public order in the space of two years. They make the same claims about the latest set of proposals that they did about all the previous ones, and they keep coming back again and again, making all the same promises about what this piece of legislation will achieve as they did about the last one and the one before that. This is groundhog day, and we have to wonder how chaotic and incompetent this Home Secretary is that she has to keep legislating for the same things again and again.

We can see why Conservative Ministers might be worried about an organised minority of people causing disruption—people who want to protest against decisions made by the Prime Minister, who ignore all normal rules and have no respect for everyone else, causing serious disruption to the nation and the Government, lighting skip fires from Uxbridge to Selby and causing chaos in our public services, our transport system, our economy and our financial markets. Yes, to quote the Home Secretary, those disruptors are selfish; yes, the public are sick of them and yes, we have had enough of them. That is why we want to get rid of them all, not just through by-elections but through a general election.

We can also see why the Conservatives are so sensitive about extinction and rebellion. As a party, they are now so addicted to rebellion that it is taking them to the point of extinction. They should stop inflicting this chaos on everyone else. They have brought forward two new Bills on public order in the last two years, two further sets of entirely new proposals that were brought forward in the House of Lords halfway through those Bills’ passage, and now this statutory instrument. If only they had found similar time in Parliament for legislation on violence against women and girls, we might not have such disgracefully low charge rates for rape and sexual assault or such appallingly high and persistent levels of domestic abuse.

Instead, we have the chaotic repetition of the same debates and the same promises about legislation. It is total chaos—a coalition of chaos, as the Home Secretary might say herself. Indeed, she did say it when we debated the Third Reading of the Public Order Bill, which she claimed would sort everything out—and that was just eight months ago. In that debate, she accused Labour of being a

“coalition of chaos, the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati”—[Official Report, 18 October 2022; Vol. 720, c. 628.]

That is from the party that has crashed the economy and given us record inflation, the highest tax burden for 70 years, the worst train cancellations, NHS cancellations and public sector strikes in decades, and total chaos in the criminal justice system.

That party has given us three Prime Ministers, four Home Secretaries and four Chancellors in the space of 12 months, and since then three more Cabinet Ministers have been sacked, including the Deputy Prime Minister. There have been public hissy-fits today between the Prime Minister and his predecessor on the honours system, and now there are three upcoming by-elections. The Conservatives are definitely not a coalition of chaos, not least because any internal party coalition they ever had has clearly collapsed—oh, and on that bit about the wokerati, I have since discovered the Home Secretary is a vegetarian. She eats more tofu than I do!

The police need to take action against serious disruption and damaging protest tactics that cause harm and problems for others. Here in Britain, we have historic freedoms to speak out against things we disagree with, but we also have rights to be protected against serious disruption and dangerous protests by others. We have historic freedoms to object and to peacefully protest—that is part of our democracy—but blocking our roads so ambulances cannot get through is not legitimate protest. It is dangerous, irresponsible and against the law. Climbing up motorway gantries is not legitimate protest either. It is wholly unlawful and it puts lives at risk. That is why Labour supported increasing the penalties for blocking roads, and it is why we put forward measures to make it easier to get injunctions to prevent damaging protests, and measures to prevent intimidation and protest outside contraception and abortion clinics and vaccine clinics. It is why we have criticised groups such as Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion for damaging protests that even put lives at risk.

The police have a serious and important job to do in a democracy—ensuring that people can go about their business, and protecting our historic freedoms—but they already have the powers to do exactly that. The Home Secretary claims that this latest measure is about slow walking, but that is already a breach of the law. Since 1986, the police have had the power to impose conditions on public processions—that is what slow walking is—and since 1980 it has been against the law to obstruct a public highway.

Indeed, the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), said himself last month that

“the police are…using section 12 of the Public Order Act 1986… Following recent disruptions in the past 10 to 14 days, the roads have typically been cleared within 10 minutes”.—[Official Report, 9 May 2023; Vol. 732, c. 210.]

The Met said just this week that

“putting in conditions from Section 12 of the Public Order Act has encouraged protesters to exit the highway within minutes; from the 156 slow marches that have taken place, 125 Section 12…conditions have been imposed”,

including 86 arrests where people were not complying. The chief constable of Greater Manchester police said:

“We have the powers to act and we should do so very quickly.”

However, instead of working with the police so that they have the training, resources and support to appropriately enforce the law, the Home Secretary just keeps coming back to Parliament waving another bit of legislation to chase a few more headlines and distract people from the fact that the Government are hellbent on causing chaos and disruption for the British people. The Government bring this statutory instrument before the House claiming that it is to clarify the law, but instead it makes it even more confusing. They failed to bring it in through the normal parliamentary legislative processes so that it could be scrutinised and amended. Heaven knows, we have had enough primary legislation when the Government have had the opportunity to introduce it.

The regulations refer, for example, to “normal traffic congestion” now being a significant factor. What does that mean? Does it mean that if roadworks are causing a local traffic jam and some protesters happen to cross the road, they can be arrested for the traffic jam? The regulations redefine “serious disruption” to mean everything that “may” be “more than minor”—may. Does the Home Secretary really think that the police should be able to ban anything that may—only may—create more than minor noise, for example?

Once again, the regulations are not about the seriously disruptive Just Stop Oil protests, which are rightly already against the law. Instead, they give the police the power to prevent any and every campaign group from protesting outside a local library or swimming pool that is about to be closed because it “may” be a little “more than minor”. That makes it harder for law-abiding, peaceful campaigners who want to work with the police to organise a limited protest—something that we should all want people to do—all for the sake of the Home Secretary getting a few more headlines. She says that she wants to defend free speech and our pluralist free society very robustly indeed—but only if it is speech that she agrees with, and only if it is not too noisy. Once again, instead of focusing on the damaging disruption, which we all believe should be stopped and on which we want the Government to work with the police to sort things out, the Government are simply making it possible to go after peaceful protesters and passers-by, even though that is not the British tradition.

The Home Secretary is now so obsessed with serious disruption because she and her party are busy creating it. That party has become addicted to causing serious disruption in politics, our economy, financial markets, workplaces, our transport system, our NHS, our public life and our communities, and has no idea what stability and security looks like because it is too busy seriously disrupting itself. So yes, the country is sick of the serious disruption that the Conservative party is causing. Yes, we do want to put an end to the serious disruption and chaos that is letting everyone down, by kicking the Conservatives out of office. This is not about Just Stop Oil; it is about a Conservative party that has just stopped governing. That is why we need a general election now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

May I congratulate the shadow Home Secretary on spending more time scrolling through her phone while sitting on the Front Bench than she did standing at the Dispatch Box making her speech? I regard that as a discourtesy to the House and to Members of the House.

I merely wish to remark on a paragraph in The Economist last week. It reads:

“Police in the Netherlands arrested 1,500 climate-change protesters and deployed water cannon when they refused to leave a motorway they had blocked in The Hague. Forty are to be prosecuted.”

I read today in the newspapers that there has been concern that these changes will mean that the police will decide what protests will be able to take place and that they will be able to choose. There is always choice on the issue of a protest. Protesters can choose to protest in such a way that the sick can still get to hospital, and people can still get to work and earn a living. Equally—[Interruption.] I am glad that I now have the attention of the shadow Home Secretary; it is quite an achievement that she can lift her head up from her phone. Equally, the Metropolitan police also have a choice as to how they police these protests and the decisions they can take.

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[Paul Maynard]

No, I am not giving way, because the shadow Home Secretary has not paid attention to anything anyone else has said in this Chamber. On that note, I am resuming my seat.

--- Later in debate ---

[Suella Braverman]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions in what has been a fruitful and lively debate. I will not spend too much time responding to Labour’s position. The response of the shadow Secretary of State was almost totally devoid of anything serious on the issue of public order. She would rather spend her time in the Chamber glued to her phone, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) remarked.

[Yvette Cooper]

Can the Home Secretary confirm that slow walking is already against the law and that that is how the Metropolitan police and other police forces have already managed to stop a whole series of slow-walking incidences that have caused significant disruption for communities?

[Suella Braverman]

The fact that the right hon. Lady has to ask that question reflects her total misunderstanding of what we are debating here today. Of course the police have powers enshrined in legislation already, but we are trying to clarify the thresholds and boundaries of where the legal limit lies, so that they can take more robust action and respond more effectively. Perhaps if she had not looked at her phone so much she would know what we were talking about. She would also rather spend her time at the Dispatch Box playing pantomime politics than engaging with the serious issue of public safety and the right to protest.

People cannot get to work. They cannot get to school. Ambulances cannot get to patients. People cannot get to funerals. Hard-working people are paying well-earned cash to attend live sporting events, public galleries and public shows not for them to be ruined by a selfish minority.

Illegal Migration

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your response. I thank the Home Secretary for her apology.

The Prime Minister flew to Dover today to congratulate himself and to tell us that his plan is working, even though the asylum backlog he promised to clear is at a record high, decisions are down, caseworker numbers have dropped, hotel use is up, returns are still down, only 1% of last year’s small boat cases have been processed, and seven and a half thousand people arrived on dangerous small boats in the last few months alone. The massive gap between the Tories’ rhetoric and reality shows that the Home Secretary still has no grip on the system. This Conservative chaos is letting everyone down.

The Prime Minister claimed today that he is stopping the boats, but the 7,600 people who have arrived in the last few months alone is three times more than two years ago and eight times more than before the pandemic. We all hope that the limited reduction in the winter months, compared with last year, will be sustained when the weather improves, but criminal gangs have already made an estimated £13 million in the last few months alone from putting lives at risk and undermining our border security as a result of the Conservative failure to go after the gangs and maintain that border security. The Home Secretary boasts about an increase in enforcement, but that is compared with the covid period. Compared with before the pandemic, enforcement visits are down 22% and arrests are down 17%. This is not an achievement.

The Home Secretary also says she has cut the backlog, but the backlog is at a record high of 170,000. It has gone up, not down, since December. There has been an 18% drop in asylum decisions in the last quarter, and it is no good claiming they are only clearing a so-called legacy backlog of cases from before June 2022. What about the growing backlog of 60,000 people and more who have arrived in the last 12 months? They are still in the asylum system, still in hotels and still in limbo. A backlog is a backlog, no matter how much the Government try to spin it away. The only legacy we are talking about is the legacy of Tory failure to tackle the problem. All the Home Secretary has managed to do is take a few decisions on cases that are more than a year old. That is not an achievement—that is her job.

The Prime Minister and Home Secretary promised to end hotel use, but it has gone up, to 47,000 people, which is higher than the 40,000 she told us about in December. The Prime Minister also said in December that he already got locations for accommodating 10,000 more people, but now the Home Secretary says it is only 3,000, from the end of this year. What she has not admitted is that this is not instead of hotels—it is additional, because of their failure and the consequence of their new immigration Bill, the bigger backlog Bill, which is just going to make the backlog worse. Today’s press release reveals the truth. It says that these accommodation changes

“could reduce the need to source an additional 90 hotels.”

Why are the Government in such a mess that they need to be thinking about sourcing an additional 90 hotels? Why have they so totally lost any grip that the backlog and costs are getting worse and worse?

Enforced returns are lower than they were pre-pandemic, and only 23 of the 24,000 people the Government have tried to return to safe countries they have travelled through have actually been returned. Even in the case of Albania, with which there is a return agreement in place, we find that 12,000 people arrived on small boats last year but fewer than 1% of those cases have been decided and barely a few hundred people have been returned. As for Rwanda, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) has said, the Government have sent more Home Secretaries there than asylum seekers, and no one expects the numbers to be high. The taxpayer is already footing the bill for Conservative failure, and now we hear reports that the new legislation will cost £6 billion. Is that true—yes or no?

The Home Office has already had to claim £2.4 billion extra from the Treasury reserve, so how much more will it claim this year? The Times reports that illegal immigration will have to fall below 10,000 a year for it even to be possible to implement the new legislation, because the Home Office says that Ministers’ plans are “based on demented assumptions”. So will the Home Secretary tell us whether the demented assumptions are hers or the Prime Minister’s?

Time and again, the Government have voted against Labour proposals to help stop dangerous crossings. They have voted against action to go after criminal gangs; against the cross-border police unit, against fast-track decisions for safe countries; and against new return agreements and legal routes with Europe. People want to see strong border security and a properly controlled and managed asylum system, so that our country does our bit, alongside others, to help those fleeing persecution and conflict. Under the Tories, we have neither of those, because the gangs have been allowed to let rip across the borders and the asylum system is in chaos. All we get is rhetoric, while the reality gets worse; we get demented assumptions, unworkable plans and empty spin. Instead of all the press conferences, we need a proper plan. The asylum system is broken, the Tories broke it and there is still no plan today to sort it out.

[Suella Braverman]

I thank the right hon. Lady again for her extensive words. The theatrics get even more colourful every time we meet. I say “words” because, as ever, that is all we get from the Opposition; we get no serious alternatives and no credible plan, just empty rhetoric and endless noise.

Last December, the Prime Minister and I set out a plan to stop the boats. Since then, we have been working flat out to deliver that programme. What has the right hon. Lady been up to? It is hard to say. The question is: will Labour ever bring forward a plan of its own, a plan with details, a plan that delivers? I am sorry to say that the answer is that Labour does not have a plan and does not care that it does not have one. It is this Conservative Government and this Conservative Prime Minister who are dealing with the priorities of the British people.

So what is Labour actually doing? Labour Members are good at carping from the sidelines, but when it comes down to it, how do they actually act? They have voted against every single measure that we have put forward to stop the boats. They would scrap our world-leading plan with Rwanda, and they continue to oppose our laws to detain and remove. Contrast their opposition to our common-sense proposals with their urgent activism when it suits them. Let me tell you, Mr Speaker, more than 100 Opposition Members—over half the parliamentary Labour party—signed a letter campaigning for dangerous foreign criminals to be spared deportation. Those criminals included murderers and rapists who went on to commit further terrible crimes here in Britain. Indeed, 14 of the current shadow Cabinet campaigned to stop those vile criminals from being deported, including the shadow Foreign Secretary, the shadow Attorney General, the shadow Health Secretary and even the Leader of the Opposition. I will spare the rest. I am still waiting for an apology, Mr Speaker, but I fear that it will never come.

I know that the right hon. Lady did not sign that letter. Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition should take that into account before he decides to remove her from the Front Bench. Labour Members continue to oppose our Illegal Migration Bill, saying that it will not work. Frankly, that is totally unsurprising, because, unlike the British people, Labour wants more migration, not less; it wants open borders, not control.

I am a democrat. The British people have spoken clearly and repeatedly. They welcome genuine refugees and do not want people to come here illegally. The Opposition parties and the right hon. Lady are supremely indifferent to this problem. They are happy with the status quo that lines the pockets of the gangsters, is lethally dangerous and grossly unfair on taxpayers, and puts intolerable pressure on our local communities. We on the Conservative Benches are committed to stopping the boats. We have a plan to do so and we are delivering that plan.

--- Later in debate ---

[Suella Braverman]

Asylum seekers, whether they are accommodated in the UK or relocated to a safe country such as Rwanda, will always receive the appropriate level of support to which they are entitled. Where we have legal duties, we abide by them; and where we have a duty of care to asylum seekers, we meet it.

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[Sir Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Ordinarily, points of order are taken only after all statements and urgent questions are finished. However, I will take a point of order from the shadow Home Secretary if it relates specifically to the statement that has just been delivered.

[Yvette Cooper]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is specific to a sentence in the Home Secretary’s statement and her answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle). It is a factual issue. She said that

“the asylum initial decision backlog is down by 17,000”

whereas Home Office official statistics say that the asylum initial backlog is now over 170,000, up from 160,000 in December. The facts are that the asylum initial decision backlog is up by over 10,000, not down by 17,000. I know that there was a lot of nonsense in what the Home Secretary said, and sometimes it is hard to know where to start, but this is about the facts given to Parliament. Will she now withdraw the incorrect statement that she has made, because her facts are wrong?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Let us remember that this is not a continuation of a debate; it is a point of order to the Chair, and it is not a matter for the Chair. The way in which facts are presented here in the Chamber is entirely—[Interruption.] Who is shouting at me? The way in which facts are presented in the Chamber is entirely a matter for the Minister, or any other Member who is presenting the facts. If the Home Secretary wishes to say anything further to the point of order—[Interruption.] She does not. [Interruption.] No, that is enough. This is not a matter for the Chair and we cannot continue the debate. It is a matter of debate and interpretation of statistics. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) for drawing her concerns to the attention of the House, the Chair and, indeed, the Home Secretary.

Net Migration Figures

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Commons Chamber

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

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on net migration figures.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

Net migration to the United Kingdom is far too high. That was already clear from the previous set of official data. The Office for National Statistics has today amended its previous published estimate of net migration for the year ending June 2022 to 606,000. The statistics published today indicate that net migration has flatlined since then. In the year ending December 2022, it estimates that net migration remained at 606,000. These particularly high figures are in large part due to temporary and exceptional factors, such as the UK’s Ukraine and Hong Kong British nationals overseas schemes. Last year, more than 200,000 Ukrainians and 150,000 Hong Kong British nationals overseas made use of the routes to life or time in the United Kingdom. Those schemes command broad support from the British public, and we were right to introduce them.

The Government remain committed to reducing overall net migration to sustainable levels. That is a solemn promise that we made to the British public in our manifesto, and we are unwavering in our determination to deliver it. This week, we announced steps to tackle the substantial rise in the number of student dependants coming to the UK. The package of measures will ensure that we can reduce migration while continuing to benefit from the skills and resources our economy needs, because universities should be in the education business, not the immigration business. We expect this package to have a tangible impact on net migration. Taken together with the easing of temporary factors, such as our exceptional humanitarian offers, we expect net migration to fall to pre-pandemic levels in the medium term.

The public rightly expect us to control our borders, whether that is stopping the boats and addressing illegal migration or ensuring that levels of legal migration do not place undue pressure on public services, housing supply or integration. The Government are taking decisive action on both counts. Under the points-based system that we introduced post Brexit, we can control immigration, we must control immigration, and we will.

[Yvette Cooper]

Today’s extraordinary figures, including the doubling of the number of work visas since the pandemic, show that the Conservatives have no plan and no grip on immigration. They show the chaos in this Government. Work visas are up 119% since before the pandemic. The Conservatives have totally failed to tackle endemic skills shortages and get people back to work. Net migration is more than twice the level that Ministers were aiming for and considerably more than the Home Secretary’s claimed aims. The asylum backlog is at a record high—the opposite of the Prime Minister’s promise to clear the backlog this year. Less than 1% of last year’s small boat arrivals have had a decision. Where is the Home Secretary, who is in charge of these policies? She has gone to ground. There are reports that she is not even going to do media. She has not come to this House. She is in internal meetings—presumably, more private courses arranged by civil servants. What is the point of her?

Net migration should come down and we would expect it to do so, but the continued gap between the Government’s rhetoric and the reality is very damaging. Rightly, the UK has given support to Ukraine and to Hongkongers. Rightly, we welcome international students who bring substantial benefits, but changes on family are sensible. International recruitment will always be important so that we get the skills and talent we need, but we have a major increase in employers turning to overseas recruitment, and the Government have no plan to increase training or to properly tackle those skills shortages here at home.

On health and social care, one of the biggest areas, why will the Minister not agree to Labour’s plan to increase the training for nurses and doctors in the UK, paid for by getting rid of the non-doms exemption? Will he ditch the unfair 20% wage discount that means that shortage occupations can undercut and pay below the going rate, making it even harder to get the training, skills and fair recruitment we need? Everyone should be paid the going rate.

There has been no action at all to address the huge backlog in the asylum system and to make sure that claims are properly processed. Immigration is important to this country, and we need a system that works, but it has to be properly controlled and managed, rather than the chaos that the Government have created.

[Robert Jenrick]

The Labour party feigns interest in cutting net migration, but I can assure the right hon. Lady that nobody is buying it. Last week, the chair of the Labour party, the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), said that under Labour net migration would go up in the short term. The leader of the Labour party stood on a campaign pledge to defend freedom of movement if the UK remained outside the EU. He has said that there is a

“racist undercurrent which permeates all immigration law”.

Does the shadow Home Secretary agree with that?

At every possible opportunity, Labour Members have voted against every measure this Government have brought forward to control migration. They voted against ending free movement and, at every turn, they voted against measures to tackle illegal migration. Just recently, they voted against the Illegal Migration Bill. The truth is that the Labour party has no interest in controlled and orderly migration. The Conservative party is taking tangible steps to bring down net migration. Yesterday, we took a decisive step to clamp down on student dependants, because universities should be selling education, not immigration. Belatedly, the shadow Home Secretary says she agrees with that. The Conservative party made a solemn promise to the British public to reduce net migration. Thanks to Brexit, we now have the tools at our disposal to do that. We can and we must deliver.

Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse: Report

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 22nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement, and join her in paying tribute to the victims and survivors of this hideous crime. Many of those victims and survivors have been crucial to establishing the inquiry in the first place and have been involved, working hard to make sure that voices are heard. Their strength should be recognised and their calls to action must be heeded.

There is no more hideous crime than child sexual exploitation and abuse, a crime that preys on vulnerability and leave scars that are felt for the rest of a young person’s life. The independent inquiry set up by the Home Secretary’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), identified failings across a wide range of institutional settings, including local councils, the Anglican and Catholic Churches, and organised groups and networks. In each area, action is needed to make sure that abuse is tackled wherever it is found.

I welcome the Government’s acceptance that there needs to be a redress scheme for victims and survivors of historical abuse. I ask the Home Secretary what the timetable and next steps will be on that, as that trauma can last a lifetime and is truly devastating for those who experience it.

May I also say to the Home Secretary that the rest of the statement is inadequate as a Government response to such a serious and weighty report? I am glad that she has accepted the need to act on 19 of the 20 recommendations, but that is not the same as accepting the recommendations or as setting out what action she is actually going to take. For example, the inquiry said that victims and survivors should receive

“a guarantee of specialist therapeutic support”,

but all her statement says is:

“We will elicit views on the future of therapeutic support”.

We know that that therapeutic support is inadequate and that there are lots of views already—the whole point of the inquiry was to gather those views and that evidence. On many of the recommendations, there is little detail. All that the Home Secretary has done is simply point to what the Government are doing already. I hope that there is more in the full report to which she refers, but there is far too little in the statement today to give us any confidence.

Labour called for mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse nearly a decade ago. The Government finally agreed to do it in April, but all the Home Secretary has done today is open a call for evidence. Well, there have already been many calls for evidence. In fact, the inquiry gathered lots of evidence. At best, she could have launched her own call for evidence some time ago. Why is mandatory reporting not in the Victims and Prisoners Bill? That is our opportunity to make progress rapidly.

The Home Secretary’s response to online sexual abuse is far too weak. She has referred to the Online Safety Bill—we know that that is long delayed and watered down—but this is not just about the legislation; it is also about the action that is taken. Since then, we have had an inspectorate report on online abuse that describes the police response to online child sexual abuse and exploitation as

“too often leaving vulnerable children at risk”,

with examples of police taking up to 18 months to make an arrest after becoming aware that children were at risk of abuse. There was nothing on that in her statement. What action will she take on policing?

New evidence from the Internet Watch Foundation found that the number of web pages containing category A material has more than doubled since 2020—just in the past few years alone. Again, the response is wholly inadequate.

Charging rates have got worse and worse. Every year, approximately 500,000 children will be sexually abused, only one in five of whom is likely to report their abuse. Only 11% of the reported cases result in a charge, down from more than 30% in 2015. It has got so much worse over the past few years. That means that the overwhelming majority of child sexual abusers face no consequences—criminals are getting away with these terrible, terrible crimes. It has got even worse than the last time we discussed this topic in the House in October.

On child protection and the Disclosure and Barring Service, again, we have warned about gaps in the disclosure and barring system, and there are still problems with it. Only last year, we had unaccompanied asylum-seeking children being placed in hotels without properly trained DBS staff. What has the Home Secretary done since then even to reform child protection in her own Department?

Children and teenagers have paid the price of the country’s failure to tackle child sexual abuse and exploitation. The Home Secretary’s predecessor rightly set up this inquiry, but there is a responsibility on every single one of us, and in particular on the Home Secretary and the Government, to make sure that action takes place. This is about the victims and the survivors, but it is also about future generations of children whose safety and lives will be at risk if we do not see action.

[Suella Braverman]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her questions and her response, and for the utmost seriousness with which she has approached this topic.

As I said in my statement, the report represents fundamental change to the way in which we deal with child abuse. I hope that the recommendations that we are taking forward today demonstrate the Government’s commitment to tackling this evil. The right hon. Lady asks about timetable and pace. On the speed of the report and our response, I hope she will appreciate that it is important not only that the independent assessor, Professor Jay, took the time to get the report right, but that we consider things thoroughly now so that we make the most of the recommendations and ensure that we deliver the level of reform that will make a meaningful difference on the ground to victims and survivors and that will make a difference in culture to prevent this from happening again.

This is reform on a level not seen before. It will mark a step change in our approach to child sexual abuse. We need to, and we will, get this right. If that takes time, that is time well spent. I do not want to give victims and survivors the false impression that implementing these big commitments will happen overnight. What I can promise them is that this response heralds a new start; it signifies a change in direction and it represents an acknowledgement of what they have been through, what they have testified to and the work of this inquiry.

The Government have accepted the need to act on 19 out of the 20 recommendations. We are accepting the vast majority of them. I hope that that reflects our genuine and real commitment to getting this right. I have also committed today to closely monitor police force data on child sexual abuse, not only to ensure that the police are appropriately prioritising that terrible crime, but to identify where they need partners such as tech companies to improve their response. Let me be clear: we will do whatever it takes and whatever is necessary to protect children from abuse—no ifs and no buts.

Let me issue a few thanks. I put on the record my thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) , one of my predecessors, for launching this inquiry, recognising the problem and starting this important work. I put on record my thanks to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education, to my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor and to other Cabinet Ministers who have come together to support this Government response. This issue will require a whole-of-Government, multi-agency response if we are to genuinely protect the interests of children.

Above all, I thank the victims and their families for sharing their stories and for helping us to take this big step forward. I have had the honour of meeting members of the victims and survivors consultative panel; today I met professionals who are working on the frontline, members of the police force and members and employees at the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, hosted at Barnardo’s and funded by the Home Office. I have visited The Lighthouse in Camden, which provides therapeutic support to children who have encountered this kind of horrific abuse, and I have worked with and met the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. I thank all the professionals on the frontline.

Child sexual abuse is a complex issue and its enormity cannot be underestimated. I am enormously grateful to the victims and survivors for their courage. The abuse should never have happened, but I hope that with these changes we will make a difference and prevent future abuse from taking place. We owe that to past victims and their families.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 22nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Home Secretary.

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

On a difficult anniversary, I pay tribute to the brave soldier Lee Rigby and to the innocent children, women and men who lost their lives, and the many more who were injured, at the Manchester Arena, as well as to their families, who remind us of the commitment to never let hatred win.

At the heart of the Home Secretary’s responsibility is to ensure that laws are fairly enforced for all. But when she got a speeding penalty, it seems that she sought special treatment—a private course—and asked civil servants to help. She has refused to say what she asked civil servants to do, so I ask her that again. Will she also tell us whether she authorised her special adviser to tell journalists that there was not a speeding penalty when there was?

[Suella Braverman]

As I said earlier, in the summer of last year I was speeding. I regret that. I paid the fine and I accepted the points. At no time did I seek to avoid the sanction. What is serious here is the priorities of the British people. I am getting on with the job of delivering for the British people, with a record number of police officers and a plan to stop the boats, and by standing up to crime and for policing. I only wish the Labour party would focus on the priorities too.

[Yvette Cooper]

The trouble is that the Home Secretary is failing to deliver for the British people too, and everyone can see that she is not answering the basic factual questions on what she said to the civil service and to her special adviser. It matters because it is her job to show that she is abiding by the ministerial code, which she has broken before, on private and public interests, and to enforce rules fairly for everyone else. Time and again, she seems to think that she is above the normal rules: breaching security even though she is responsible for it; trying to avoid penalties even though she sets them; reappointed even after breaking the ministerial code; and criticising Home Office policies even though she is in charge of them and is failing on knife crime, on channel crossings, on immigration and more. The Prime Minister is clearly too weak to sort this out. If the Home Secretary cannot get a grip of her own rule-breaking behaviour, how can she get a grip on anything else?

[Suella Braverman]

I have some gentle advice for the right hon. Lady. The person who needs to get a grip here is the shadow Home Secretary and the Labour party, as they have wholly failed to represent the priorities of the British people. When, Mr Speaker, will the Labour party apologise for campaigning to block the deportation of foreign national offenders? When, Mr Speaker, will the Labour party apologise for leaving this country with a lower number of police officers—

Points of Order

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

It is exactly as I said to the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler). I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving notice of her point of order, but I am not the one who makes such a determination. I say again that if an error has been made, I expect it to be corrected. The point is certainly now on the record.

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

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. During Prime Minister’s questions, the Prime Minister used a figure for crime that did not include fraud, even though that is the fastest-increasing crime and has been one of the most prevalent and damaging crimes. He has been repeatedly challenged on this but again used the figure without fraud, and he did so on the day on which he is supposedly launching a fraud strategy. Does that not show that the Government’s fraud strategy is actually a total fraud and a con? Do you think that the Prime Minister will be ready to correct the record?

[Mr Speaker]

I think that I have already answered that, but actually we have got a Minister who is itching to respond.

Illegal Migration Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

Let me make some progress.

I am also acutely concerned that we balance that with the very real safeguarding risks posed by young adults pretending to be children. This is not a theoretical issue; it is one that we see every day unfortunately. Today, a very large number of young adults do pose as children. In fact, even with our current method of age assessment, around 50% of those people who are assessed are ultimately determined to be adults. We have seen some very serious and concerning incidents in recent months. There are few more so than that raised in this House by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) when one of his constituents, Thomas Roberts, was murdered by an individual who had entered the UK posing as a minor and, during his time in the UK, had been in education, in the loving care of foster parents and in other settings in which he was in close proximity to genuine children.

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

The Minister has raised the awful case of Thomas Roberts. I have asked him repeatedly why it was not known that the murderer was wanted for murder in Serbia and why it was also not known that he had already been turned down for asylum in another European country. Why did the authorities and Border Force not know that information?

[Robert Jenrick]

As I said in answer to an Adjournment debate on this issue, I have commissioned a review of all of the circumstances surrounding that most serious case so that we can understand the multiple failures that may have happened while that individual has been in the United Kingdom and what lessons we need to learn. Separate to that, I have taken further steps to enhance the security checks that are conducted when individuals arrive at the Western Jet Foil and at Manston, aided by the change in the law that I made earlier in the year so that we have, in extremis, up to 96 hours in which to hold individuals in that setting while we conduct those security checks. I am working closely with the security services, police and the National Crime Agency in that regard. If there are other things that we need to do, we will do them, and if there are other databases that we should be arguing for access to we will certainly do so, because it is critical that we secure our borders in this regard.

Police Uplift Programme

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

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

The Home Secretary has been out on the airwaves this morning but she is scared to defend her record in this House, and little wonder because that statement was a joke. Where are the Tories pretending to have been for the last 13 years? They cut 20,000 police officers. Belatedly, they set a target to patch up their own cuts and now they want us all to be grateful. They want the country to applaud them for their attempts to patch up some of the criminal damage this party of Tory vandals has done to policing and the criminal justice system over the last 13 years.

They were warned about the damage their cuts would do: arrests have halved; prosecutions near-halved; community penalties halved; crimes solved halved; more crimes reported and recorded, but hundreds of thousands fewer crimes are being solved—hundreds of thousands fewer victims getting justice every year. The Home Secretary claimed on the television this morning, “Oh, it’s irrelevant what happened over the last 10 years”: not to the millions fewer victims who have had justice in the last decade as a result of what this Tory Government have done.

As for the policing Minister’s claim that “Criminals must be cursing their luck” because we are “coming after them”, who is he kidding? The charge rate hit a record low last year: 95% of criminals not charged—for rape it is over 98%. The charge rate has dropped by two thirds since 2015 alone. That is record levels of criminals getting off under the Tories; they are not cursing their luck, they are thanking their lucky stars. Under the Tories the criminals have never had it so good; they are pathetically weak on crime and weak on the causes of crime.

As for meeting records, well, yes, they are meeting some records: a record number of crimes not being solved; a record number of people saying they never see police on the street; record numbers of police officers leaving policing last year; record low charge rates last year for rape and sexual offences. And then we have got serious violence rising: knife crime up; gun crime up. And of course the fraud and online crime that they never want to talk about is also at a record high. What has the Home Secretary got to say about that this morning—just some more waffle about woke. She has got nothing new to say to tackle the problems.

Then there is the chaotic recruitment process, with forces ending up cutting standards to meet deadlines. Most of last year, the average monthly increase from recruitment was 475 officers each month; in March, just before the deadline, it was suddenly 2,400 in a month. No one believes that this is a properly managed and sustainable recruitment plan. We have had reports of people who were initially turned down being asked to reapply at the last minute to meet targets; reports of people with addiction, and with criminal histories, being encouraged to apply and let in. A massive variation of standards applied across forces so that Matt Parr in His Majesty’s inspectorate said that hundreds of people have joined the police in the last three years who should not have, and then he said,

“certainly in the hundreds if not low thousands.”

Have the Tories learned nothing from Wayne Couzens and David Carrick? We have still not got proper national mandatory standards in place; have they learned nothing of the need to raise standards? So is the Minister confident that all these new recruits meet the standards we should expect from policing?

Look at the numbers that the Government have announced: this is not an uplift programme, it is a damage mitigation programme, and they have not even achieved that. In Hampshire the Home Secretary’s own force, in Cleveland, in Durham, Northumbria, and Merseyside, they all still have fewer police than they had in 2010. Compared to our growing population, there are 9,000 fewer officers compared to the rates in 2010. They have cut 8,000 police community support officers and 6,000 police staff, including intelligence and analysts, forensics, digital, vetting and standards checks. And worst of all, they are refusing to do Labour’s plan for 13,000 more neighbourhood police. Instead we have got 10,000 fewer police and PCSOs in neighbourhood teams since 2015. So when will the Government reverse those cuts to the police on the beat the public want to see? That is what people see and what people feel.

The reality is that half the country say they do not see the police on the beat at all any more—half the country, up from a quarter of the country in 2010. That is why people know all this boasting from the Minister is out of touch. That is the reality that no amount of boasting, crowing or fake headlines can cover up. Let me just say to all the Tory Back Benchers: the only thing that all this boasting and crowing does is tell the country you are even more out of touch than we thought.

[Chris Philp]

The shadow Home Secretary asked about police numbers in the years following 2010, during the coalition Government. She will recall that the outgoing Chief Secretary to the Treasury, her colleague, left a message saying the money had all gone and that led to difficult decisions that had to be made. But I am not sure if she was listening to what I said before because the number of officers that we now have—149,572—is higher, by 3,542, than the number of officers left behind by the Labour party. These are record ever numbers. Never in our country’s history have we had as many officers as we have today. It is important that the shadow Home Secretary keeps that in mind.

She asked about neighbourhood policing. The way the figures are reported, neighbourhood policing, emergency response policing and local policing are reported together. Since 2015, local policing, neighbourhood policing and emergency policing taken together is in fact higher.

She asked about crime. She asked about crime numbers. The only source of crime data endorsed by the Office for National Statistics is the crime survey for England and Wales. I have got the figures here. If she is unfamiliar with them, I can hand them to her afterwards, but they show domestic burglary down 56%, robbery down 57%, vehicle theft down 39%, violence down 38% and criminal damage down 65%. She may not like the figures from the Office for National Statistics, but those are the figures.

She asked about standards in police recruitment. For every police officer recruited in the last three years, there were about 10 applicants, so there was a good degree of selectivity. In relation to vetting, the College of Policing has just finished consulting on a new statutory code of practice for vetting, which will be adopted shortly, and police forces up and down the country are implementing the 43 recommendations made by the inspectorate on vetting standards. We are also conducting a review in the Home Office, which will conclude in the next few weeks, on police dismissals, so that where misconduct is uncovered officers can be removed quickly, which is absolutely right.

The message to the country is clear. We have record levels of police officers—higher than we have ever had before—and according to the crime survey, crime has gone down compared with the last Labour Government that she served in.

Chinese Police Stations in UK

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Commons Chamber

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

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary if she will make a statement on secret police stations operated in the UK by the Chinese Communist party.

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

Ordinarily, the Minister for Security, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) would have responded to this urgent question, because it sits within his portfolio. He is in Northern Ireland today, so I have been asked to respond in his place.

The latest reporting in The Times on the so-called overseas police stations are of course of great concern. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for Security said in his previous statement on the matter in November last year, investigations by the law enforcement community are ongoing, which limits what I can say in the House about a live investigation into a sensitive matter. As Members will appreciate, I do not want to say anything that would jeopardise any operational investigations or indeed any potential future prosecutions.

I will, however, take this opportunity to reassure the House of the Government’s resolve to protect every community in this country from transnational repression. Protecting the people of the United Kingdom is of the utmost importance. Any attempt to coerce, intimidate or illegally repatriate any individual will not be tolerated. That egregious activity is part of a wider train of authoritarian Governments—not just China, but others—perpetrating transnational repression in an effort to silence their critics overseas, undermine democracy and the rule of law, and further their own narrow geopolitical interests.

Through our police forces and the intelligence agencies that work with them, we take a proactive approach to protecting individuals and communities from threats. Where we identify individuals who may be at heightened risk we are front-footed in deploying security measures and guidance where necessary.

The upcoming National Security Bill will strengthen our powers to deal with transnational repression and with agents of foreign states more generally. Coercion, harassment or intimidation linked to a foreign power will be criminalised under the new foreign interference offence in that Bill. Existing criminal offences against a person, such as assault, will in future command higher sentences where they are undertaken at the behest of a foreign power through the state threats aggravating factor in that Bill.

The National Security Bill will also introduce a new foreign influence registration scheme, and we will not hesitate to use those new powers to bear down on the activities of foreign entities of concern. The Bill will return to this House in early May and I call on all hon. Members to support it when it does.

It is clear, however, that we can and must do more. That is why the Prime Minister asked my right hon. Friend the Minister for Security to lead a new defending democracy taskforce, a key priority of which is to enhance our response to transnational repression. That work is ongoing and he will provide an update to the House in due course. It builds on the work done by his ministerial predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), who I see is in his place. I am clear, as is the rest of Government, that the repression of communities in the UK will not be tolerated and must be stopped.

[Yvette Cooper]

It is reported in The Times this morning that a Chinese businessman linked to an alleged Chinese secret police station in London has attended Chinese Communist party political conferences, is linked to the united front work department and has organised Tory party fundraising dinners and attended events with Conservative Prime Ministers. Those very serious allegations raise vital national security questions, and I think the Home Secretary should be here to answer them.

The director general of MI5 has warned about the Chinese authorities both trying to influence our politics and running operations to monitor and intimidate the Chinese diaspora, including forcibly repatriating Chinese nationals. In November, we questioned the Minister for Security about possible secret police stations in Croydon, Hendon and Glasgow. He provided no information, but said he would come back with an update. He has not done so. Nor has he met with my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), despite promising to do so.

Other countries have taken visible action. This week, two men were arrested by the FBI in New York for suspected operations, and in the Netherlands similar operations have been shut down. In the UK, however, we have heard nothing—no reports of arrests and no reassurance that these operations have been closed down. Instead, we are told that one key individual has been vice-chairman of the Chinese group fundraising for the Conservative Association in the City of London, and has attended party-organised events with two out of the last three Conservative Prime Ministers.

Can the Minister tell us the full extent of that individual’s involvement with the Conservative party and contact with any Ministers? What actions have Ministers and the party taken? What have the Government done about the alleged secret police stations in Croydon and elsewhere? Have their operations been closed down?

The lack of answers will raise grave concerns that the Government are not addressing the scale of this threat and are not updating Parliament for fear of party political embarrassment because of the connections with the Conservative party. That is not good enough. Party political concerns must never—repeat: never—be put before our national security. The country deserves answers.

[Chris Philp]

The shadow Home Secretary asks a number of a questions relating to the specific individual named in The Times today in connection with his activities in Croydon, which is, as she will appreciate, the borough that I represent in Parliament—this is of great concern to me as well as to the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones). I can tell the House that I have been briefed today, as one would expect—at short notice, as this is not ordinarily part of my ministerial portfolio—and there is a live investigation of this matter by the law enforcement community. As I said in my opening remarks, I cannot comment on the details of such an investigation while it is live for reasons that will be obvious to all Members of this House. As soon as my right hon. Friend the Minister for Security is in a position to provide an update on the results of that investigation, he will do so. I will also ask him to brief privately the hon. Member for Croydon Central as soon as possible.

It is worth mentioning that the Chinese activity in this area is not confined to the United Kingdom. We are aware of approximately 100 alleged stations of the kind we are discussing around the world—they are not unique to the United Kingdom—and, as the shadow Home Secretary said, earlier this week arrests were made in New York in connection to an investigation conducted by the FBI similar to the investigations that we are conducting.

On party politics, all political parties need to be alert to the danger of representatives of hostile states seeking to infiltrate or influence their activities. It is fair to say that other Members of this House have been similarly targeted—those we know about—so I ask all Members of Parliament and all political parties to be alert to that risk. We all owe that to democracy.