Criminal Justice Review: Response to Rape

Ruth Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I am very distressed to hear the experience of my hon. Friend’s constituent; it sounds like a dreadful case. On the therapy issue, the guidelines in place say that pre-trial therapy is absolutely allowed and appropriate, and nobody should be steered away from it. I would be more than happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that particular case, because it sounds like one from which we can learn some lessons.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

Dame Vera Baird, the Victims’ Commissioner, has stated that the Government’s rape review team

“took the surprising decision not to seek the views of those who really matter—rape survivors.”

Will the Minister confirm today that the upcoming end-to-end review did consult survivors of rape and sexual violence? If it did not, how can he assure the House that the review is in fact end-to-end without its speaking to those directly impacted?

Safe Streets for All

Ruth Jones Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing to me to speak in this important debate.

This Tory Government talk about bobbies on the beat, but they fail to take the tough decisions needed to address their dismal management of the criminal justice system. Under the Conservatives, criminals have never had it so good. Over the past 11 years, we have witnessed this Conservative Government slashing police officer numbers and preventive services, and withdrawing neighbourhood policing. They are soft on crime and soft on the causes of crime. Their policies will have no impact on crime, and nor will they keep the good people of Newport West safe if cases take years to be heard and victims do not get the support they deserve.

This Queen’s Speech does nothing to address the years of cuts that central Government have made to police forces throughout England and Wales. Attacks on emergency service workers have increased by 50% over the past five years, with violent crime rising by 116% and the number of violent crime suspects down by 26%.

We all know that the last year has had a devastating impact on our public services, and the courts system is no different. Indeed, I have raised this issue directly with the Lord Chancellor, who, like all good Welshmen, was very courteous in his response. I want to say a special thank you to all the public sector workers who work in the justice system—from court clerks to county court judges, they have all worked tirelessly to make sure that justice is done. I fear, however, that Ministers think that we are as blind as Lady Justice. They must think that we did not see the long backlog of criminal cases that was present even before the pandemic. They must think that we have not noticed that, rather than taking steps to ensure that the justice system flows smoothly and operates fairly, they have simply put up barriers for the people I represent in Newport West and across the country.

Black and minority ethnic people make up a far larger percentage of those arrested for and charged with crimes than they represent in society. Sadly, that number keeps increasing. What steps is the Lord Chancellor taking to address this discrimination?

I want to take this opportunity to express my sympathy for and solidarity with the families of Moyied Bashir and Mohamud Hassan, two young men from south Wales who tragically lost their lives well before their time. Mohamud lost his life shortly after spending time in police custody, and Moyied died shortly after his family called the police for assistance. I am aware that an investigation is ongoing, so I will not say any more, but I am keen to work with Ministers and the relevant authorities, as well as the families, to ensure that nothing like this can happen again.

Sadly, Mohamud is not the only person to die in the care of the state. Recent research by the Howard League shows that deaths in prisons are up 42% in England and Wales from the previous year. Four hundred and eight people died in prison custody in the year to the end of March 2021—a significant rise compared with the 287 who died during the previous 12 months—including 79 people who lost their lives through suicide.

There is a high number of deaths in south Wales’s overcrowded prisons. I understand that it is never popular to invest in prisons, but people do not deserve to die well before their time, especially those to whom the state owes a duty of care. In Wales, it is our privatised prison, HMP Parc, run by G4S, that has the highest proportion of deaths. Will the Lord Chancellor tell the House about this Government’s plans for prison privatisation? Will more prisons be handed over to the private sector? If so, what steps will he take to ensure that the high number of deaths among prisoners is not repeated in any other prisons? If that is not the case, when can we expect Parc to be taken back into public hands? We need to know what steps Ministers will take to ensure that this unacceptable death toll is tackled, and tackled now. Will the Lord Chancellor tell me what mental health support is available to prisoners and at what stage support becomes available? Surely a prison sentence should not become a death sentence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Jones Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady has rightly highlighted how incredible, fantastic and outstanding our universities are in this country. We are in a global competition when it comes to international talent, and the Government fully recognise that. That is why we now have the two-year post-study visa route. Of course, all our policies remain under review. There are routes that went live in October under the new points-based system, and we will continue to look at them and how they develop. Let me be clear that we want the brightest and best coming to this country, and our immigration system is enabling that.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

As the Home Secretary knows, Newport West is a diverse and multicultural part of south Wales. My constituent and I want to know what plans she and her colleagues across Government have to convene engagement events with at-risk communities? Those are the very people we need to be involved in putting together a fully costed plan to tackle hate crime online and in person once and for all.

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise the issue of online crime, online abuse and hate crime. Frankly, appalling and personal attacks are now prevalent across society. Associated with that, we have a wide range of engagement taking place, not just with our Department but with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. That is in line with our review of online harms, and there will be future announcements about that. As the hon. Lady is well aware, legislation is coming.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Jones Excerpts

Monday 9th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Gentleman will know that we published the hate crime action plan in 2016 and refreshed it in 2018, and we have seen significant improvements, as I have said, which goes back to the point about police recorded crime as well. We are also investing. Through schemes such as the places of worship scheme, we can have a real impact on the local communities most affected by hate crime. In terms of the Black Lives Matter far-right counter-protest, there was a rise in racially or religiously aggravated and non-aggravated public order offences in June and July this year, as compared with the previous year. To push back a little on what the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) said earlier, we must all fight back against extremist politics, whether it is the far right, as the hon. Gentleman has just talked about, or indeed the far left, because there is an awful lot of hatred coming from that direction at the moment. I welcome the calls—I am taking them to be universal—to lower the temperature, to be responsible with our use of language and to ensure that we have the sorts of discourse in politics that I am sure we all wish for.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

What steps the Government has taken to help ensure co-operation at a European level on unaccompanied child refugees after the transition period.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Chris Philp)]

The United Kingdom tabled a full draft agreement to the European Commission back in May, which included provisions for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children family reunion. That has sadly so far not been agreed, but the negotiations are still ongoing, and I ask the hon. Lady and others to put pressure on the European Commission to constructively respond to the draft text we tabled. When it comes to the United Kingdom’s record on looking after UASCs, we currently look after more UASCs than any other European country.

[Ruth Jones]

I understand that on 9 August this year, the Home Secretary announced that she had appointed a clandestine channel threat commander. Can the Minister confirm precisely what powers the commander has and why the elements of the role could not be addressed by Border Force?

[Chris Philp]

Given that the problems posed by cross-channel small boat crossings, as we discussed earlier, are unique, serious, dangerous—as we have tragically seen—and facilitated by ruthless criminals, the Home Secretary and I felt it was important to have a dedicated person with proper experience. He is a former Royal Marine and can work on completely stopping these crossings. That is the safe thing to do, the humanitarian thing to do, and the right thing to do legally.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Jones Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

If the hon. Lady has specifics that she would like to raise with me, I can come back to her on the details for children. We passed the Domestic Abuse Bill last week in this House and we have been very clear about the protections around children—that is absolutely right. There are many other measures that we have in place, and I would be very happy to write to her about that.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

Our commitment to providing sanctuary to those fleeing war, famine and disease is important to many across the UK, and especially in my constituency. At the end of the transition period, the UK will leave the Dublin system, risking the loss of an important safe route to reunification for families, so will the Home Secretary amend the refugee family reunion rules to allow more families to reunite safely here in Britain?

[Kevin Foster]

We set out clearly, during the passage of the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill recently, our plan to look at negotiating a proper agreement with the European Union for family reunification based on the fantastic record that we have, which my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary outlined earlier.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Ruth Jones Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 6th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I am afraid there is very little time left, so I have to tell everyone except the next speaker that they will not have the chance to speak this evening. I am sure you will all have worked that out.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

I am grateful to be able to take part in this debate and say a few words on behalf of the many people in Newport West who have written to me about the Bill in recent days.

It is important for us all to acknowledge that domestic abuse is a serious and widespread issue that primarily affects women and children. There are 2.4 million victims each year, and in England and Wales two women a week are killed by a partner or former partner. From representations made to me by constituents in Newport West, including Rob, I know that men are also victims of domestic abuse and need and deserve our support too.

The Government’s own figures state that domestic abuse costs taxpayers in Newport West and throughout the UK £66 billion a year. The wonderful charity Women’s Aid, to which I pay tribute for its work and campaigning, estimates that £393 million is needed for domestic abuse services annually. When winding up the debate, I hope the Minister will reassure my constituents that the domestic abuse sector will get the adequate long-term funding required by diverse specialist services. That funding must be allocated now.

Fire Safety Bill

Ruth Jones Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 29th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab) [V]]

We meet in extraordinary times, and it is incumbent on us, as the democratically elected representatives of the people, to chart our way through this crisis. As such, I would like to thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and your staff for ensuring that people’s business can continue in this hybrid Parliament at this time.

I wish to start by paying tribute to all those NHS workers who have lost their lives in recent weeks. They have lost their lives in the line of duty, on the frontline, and we will all be forever grateful to them and their families for the sacrifice that they have paid.

Of course our responsibilities to the people whom we represent go on and they continue to be varied and diverse. That is why I am pleased to be able to speak in this debate and to welcome this long overdue piece of legislation that makes much needed changes to fire safety laws in England and Wales.

Although this is a Bill that has support from across the House, it is a Bill that we should have seen so much sooner. I share the concerns of the Fire Brigades Union about the Bill’s modesty and the important point that it will require substantial investment in fire and rescue services to ensure that there are adequate staffing levels and the appropriate level of training. This needs costing by individual fire and rescue services and a guarantee from the Government to support and fund what is necessary to keep people safe in their homes. The FBU wants fire and rescue services to quantify the number of inspectors necessary to carry out the additional responsibilities and Ministers to agree to fund the service accordingly. That is a call that has my support, as does the work of the FBU in standing up for our much valued frontline public sector workers.

After almost three years since the heartbreaking events at Grenfell, this is the first and only piece of primary legislation that this Government have brought forward on fire safety-related powers. This is a time for the House to unite and, in doing so, I would like to thank my right hon. Friends the Members for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) and for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) for the work they have done to honour the memory of those who died at Grenfell.

The wider response to the Grenfell Tower fire has been far too slow and—let us be honest—too weak on every front. I do wish the Prime Minister well as he celebrates the birth of his son today, but he and his Government must acknowledge and urgently act on their wider failures since the Grenfell Tower fire. They have failed to remove flammable Grenfell-style cladding from tower blocks and failed to support residents with interim safety costs.

We also need to ensure that the wiring of new build properties is undertaken correctly and that properties with dangerous electrical systems are updated at the earliest opportunity. We all need electricity to function, and with millions working from home at present we know that that is the case more so than ever, so we must get this right.

The Government promised in October 2019 to implement the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower inquiry in full and without delay. Six months later, we now have a piece of legislation, but it fails to contain a single measure recommended by the Grenfell inquiry. I hope the Minister will address why this is the case when the debate is wound up later today. It is shameful that there are still tens of thousands of residents living in tower blocks with dangerous and flammable cladding. In Newport West, we have had our own problems with unsafe cladding, and I hope that this Bill will go some way to speed up safety measures that my constituents and people across the United Kingdom deserve. The current covid-19 pandemic is an unprecedented crisis. I join the National Fire Chiefs Council in welcoming the Bill, but I urge the Government to go further.

I pay tribute to our fire and rescue service personnel. They are, as always, going above and beyond to support the response to the crisis despite the many unnecessary Government cuts from the Tories and Lib Dems since 2010. The pandemic must not divert us from the urgent need to take strong and swift action on fire safety, such as the removal of flammable cladding. It is for this Government to show leadership and deliver. I look forward to playing my part in holding them to account and to delivering on the promises made to the families of those who died in Grenfell, as we look to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Jones Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

The new economic crime plan brings together all the different actors on the stage the Government have invested in and identifies all those areas that need to be solved. It is a better analysis of economic crime. We have set up the NECC to bring together all the assets of government—everything from UK Visas and Immigration and the Home Office to the intelligence services—to focus on some of the biggest money launderers and to implement the new powers in the Criminal Finances Act 2017, to deal with criminals and money launderers and to take the money back from them.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

17. Given that the Government are constantly telling us how much more money they are putting into funding the police forces across the UK, can the Minister tell us how many detectives were assigned to serious organised crime in 2010, and how many there were in the latest available data?

[Mr Speaker]

Including of an economic character.

Online Homophobia

Ruth Jones Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker, which does not happen very often. I look forward to the rest of this timely debate. I pay tribute to Bobby Norris, whose petition to make online homophobia a specific criminal offence we are debating today. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) for the thoughtful, sensitive and effective way in which he introduced our deliberations. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. We have high hopes that the Government will listen and take rapid action to deal with these issues.

Bobby Norris came to see me to talk about the level of hate that he perceived LGBT+ people were receiving on social media. He felt rightly that this was detrimental to their health and wellbeing and that not enough was being done to stem the tide of homophobic hatred being generated online. He asked me what might be done to bring the Government’s attention to this growing problem and to take effective action to stop it. I suggested that he launch this petition as a first step towards highlighting this serious issue.

The petition has attracted over 152,000 signatures, which is why we are having this timely debate. That demonstrates that our petition system is working well. It is a relatively new part of our old Parliament, but it connects us to the modern world and demonstrates that Parliament can be responsive to the issues that people worry about outside of our Westminster debates.

Bobby has now found himself the target of turbo-charged online hate—a sign of the angry and hate-filled times that we live in—for daring to put his head above the parapet and take a public stand against this damaging growth in online homophobic abuse. He is strong enough to deal with it, but the point is that he should not have to, and nor should anyone else. The unwritten threat that someone who sticks their head above the parapet or who has an opinion about something will be dealt with online in the way Bobby Norris is being now does not cast a good light on the health of our democracy.

Those who argue that one should be able, in the interest of freedom of speech, to say anything online somehow miss the bad effect that this abuse, which is lurking and ready to be uncurled and thrown at somebody, has on our democracy. The fact that this is happening shows that, although the development of social media has many benefits, which we can all name, it has also brought significant downsides. Social media has unleashed a level of hatred and harassment that shames our society and threatens to undermine and dampen our democracy.

Hatred and abuse generated on social media are doing real damage to the mental health and wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of people who are targeted by trolls. Undoubtedly, hatred and abuse spill out from the virtual world into the real world. If we are to call ourselves a civilised and good society, these things must not be allowed to flourish online or offline with impunity. We need to change our laws to protect against these new harms much more effectively. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I am looking for urgent action from the Government to try to get a grip on this worrying situation. I am sure she will have sympathy aplenty, but we really need determined and rapid action.

This debate is timely, being held 51 years after homosexuality was first partially decriminalised in the UK, 50 years after the Stonewall riots in New York, which signalled the beginning of the fight for LGBT liberation worldwide, and in the aftermath of the WorldPride march in New York this weekend, which drew 3 million people—it looked like quite a party, and I was sorry to have missed it. However, our debate also comes in the week of the huge Pride march that will bring London to a joyful halt on Saturday, and I certainly have no intention of missing that party.

LGBT liberation and the fight for respect and equal treatment in law have undoubtedly come a very long way in the UK over the past 30 years, and we should not underestimate the progress we have made. As the first openly lesbian Government Minister, and only the second out lesbian ever elected to the House of Commons, I am proud to have played my part in the many gains made under the last Labour Government, including granting equal status in law to LGBT+ people and their relationships; repealing the odious section 28, which stigmatised LGBT+ people at school; and banning all discrimination in the provision of goods and services on grounds of sexual orientation.

Those progressive advances have undoubtedly made the lives of many LGBT+ people immeasurably better. However, although we have come a long way as a community in a relatively short time, these angry political times have created a backlash. There has been a spike in violence and hate crime against the LGBT+ community in recent years, and online abuse seems now to be spilling over into real-life violence. Homophobic and transphobic hate crimes have doubled in the past five years, yet according to the LGBT equal rights campaign group Stonewall, four in five hate crimes go unreported by the victims. Its comprehensive survey “LGBT in Britain” has revealed that one in 10 LGB people has had online abuse directed at them personally in the past month, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge pointed out, with that figure rising to one in four for trans people, who are especially at the frontline and vulnerable at the moment.

The figures are brought to life when we think of the actual victims of the increases in violence. In London a couple of weeks ago, two gay women were beaten and robbed on a bus by five teenagers for refusing to kiss each other on demand. In Southampton, two women kissing in the street were injured by an object thrown from a passing car. In Liverpool, two men were stabbed and seriously hurt in a homophobic knife attack; one of the people held for that attack is 12 years old. In Birmingham, there have been vocal anti-LGBT demonstrations outside two primary schools, mischaracterising and protesting the No Outsiders curriculum, which teaches respect for diverse families and seeks to end the stigmatising of LBGT people in school. Utterly false and outrageous claims have been made that its lessons are trying to turn children gay, and the Government have not reacted firmly enough to prevent such claims.

Our values of respect for diversity in society are now being tested, and we must not be found wanting in our defence of them. As my hon. Friend said, the current criminal law rightly offers legal protection to all who experience direct homophobic physical violence. In fact, both the Public Order Act 1986 and the Criminal Justice Act 2003 offer extra opportunities for the courts to increase sentences in such cases of assault if they believe that hatred of LGBT people was an aggravating feature of the crime. It is right that that is an aggravating offence in law, because it demonstrates our determination to prevent the kind of hate speech and activity that would cause our society to lose its civilisation.

The laws on online abuse are far less coherent and far less effective when it comes to being used successfully. My hon. Friend pointed out some of the practical difficulties and the fragmented nature of the law, which is inadequate and in urgent need of an update. Inadequate as it is, however, it would still benefit from being enforced more seriously by the police, who all too often tell victims to avoid going online. Such victim blaming is not an adequate response to the hate and trolling that many people experience online. Expecting people who are being bullied to exclude themselves from the digital world will simply isolate and punish them further.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend; although I am new to this place, I know that she has led the way for many years in fighting for the rights of LGBT people in our country. I stand with her every single step of the way.

Online homophobia is growing across the UK, even in my constituency. Given the ability of criminals to access and hack cyber-security measures, does my hon. Friend agree that resources such as specialist IT services must be increased and apportioned effectively to tackle this form of hate crime?

[Ms Eagle]

I thank my hon. Friend for her kind words. She is right that we need properly financed enforcement, as well as ensuring that we can make our laws more user-friendly and easier to understand and enforce for the authorities responsible for making decisions.

The two provisions most often used to protect against online abuse, hatred and threats are the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and section 127 of the Communications Act 2003; the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, which was originally introduced to deal with stalking offences, is also available for use in more extreme cases. All those statutes were passed by Parliament before the emergence of social media, which has fundamentally reshaped the way in which we engage and communicate as a society. The world wide web—as you may remember, Mr Walker—was invented only in 1989, the iPhone did not exist until 2007, and Facebook was created only in 2004, and we have not yet reconsidered our laws in that context.

So much has been changed by the arrival of the world wide web and dominant tech giants such as Apple, Google and Facebook that the Government must now urgently update our laws to make them fit for purpose. I know that the Government are aware of that need, because their second response to the petition points out that they have asked the Law Commission to consider specific reform in this area. They admit that the current level of online abuse against vulnerable groups, especially women, is completely unacceptable, yet there seems to be little urgency, if I may say so, about the action that they are prepared to take to counter that abuse. A Law Commission review is welcome, but it has never been and can never be an active or effective way to take rapid action against a growing threat.

As a recent Law Commission report points out, the law has not kept pace with the rapidly changing environment online. Some 96% of 16 to 24-year-olds are now using social media, but only 3% of malicious communications offences, online or offline, are ever prosecuted, even though there is demonstrable harm to the victims, the seriousness of which we are only just beginning to understand. The report outlines the harms that online abuse can cause, including

“psychological effects, such as depression and anxiety; emotional harms, such as…shame, loneliness and distress; physiological harms, including self-harm”

and, tragically, suicide;

“exclusion from public online space”

and all the potential that it provides; and “economic harms”. The report also concludes, as we all should, that hate crime harms society.

I am afraid that the Government’s response to the Law Commission’s report typifies their response to the entire issue: they have asked for a further review. We expect that to happen in 2020, but I would have thought that if the Government were really determined, they could come up much earlier than that with more concrete ways of dealing with this ever-present problem. I certainly hope that the Minister can give us a bit more confidence that the issue is getting a higher priority than it appears to have at the moment, and that her reply will make us happy.

In the White Paper on online harms that was published in April, the Government rightly characterised the new online environment as resembling the wild west. After all, it is the world of alternative facts and casual fascism, which has been allowed to fester, and it is high time that there were tough rules and regulations enforceable in law. Completely spurious anti-vaccination propaganda spreads, doing real damage to real lives offline, and mad conspiracy theories also spread, unchecked by truth and reality. For example, large numbers of people believe the world is run by lizards. It is hard to believe that we went through the Enlightenment if that kind of approach to truth and facts is going to be allowed to fester online. We ought to be worried about the effect that this is having on people’s ability to judge facts and truth, without which we will not have a democracy deserving of the name.

Terrorist propaganda and the online exploitation of children are also proliferating. After the Christchurch terrorist attack, 300,000 of the 1.5 million copies of the live streaming of murder that were uploaded to the internet went undetected by the automated systems that were attempting to take them down, making that horrendous event available to all who wanted to view it.

Can the Minister therefore assure us that we can expect more determined and urgent action to enforce decency and standards online? Is she prepared to increase the punishments for abuse, so that the harm caused is better represented in the sanctions available to the courts? What action can we expect, including on the financing of adequate enforcement, to ensure that enforcement is much more effective? Currently, it is laughably inadequate. When can we expect to move from endless press releases and the commissioning of more reviews to concrete action that minimises online harms rather than tolerating them and expecting victims to put up with them? Will the Minister support moves such as those we have seen in Austria to end online anonymity and remove the digital mask behind which so many perpetrators of abuse hide? It is time to get serious about the trail of damage that this behaviour causes, and it is also time to introduce updated, effective and streamlined laws to counter this menace.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Jones]

I understand that the Government employ experts, but may I specifically request that the Minister looks at the IT side of things? Cyber-security is really important to us in tackling such crimes. Will the Minister give a specific pledge about IT specialists as well?

[Victoria Atkins]

Yes, I am very happy to do so. We are funding the police online hate crime hub, which is an expert police team that helps forces across the country to respond to hate crime cases effectively. We are also working with the police to ensure that that support reaches the areas that need it, because I appreciate that some forces may need to improve their performance. Indeed, the police inspectorate recently inspected some police forces. Some already do bespoke training and upskill experts in their own forces. Gwent has been held up as a strong example of that.

We need to ensure in our awareness campaign that members of the public understand, first of all, what hate crime is, the forms it can take and, as has been mentioned, that the use of certain words and language may well be incredibly offensive and abusive to people. It is about having that understanding of one’s own conduct as well. We are pleased to support a number of community projects focused on tackling LGBT+ hate crimes, including working with Barnardo’s, Stop Hate UK and the football initiative Kick It Out. We continue to take that and other work forward, working closely with the Government Equalities Office and a range of stakeholders, including Galop and Stonewall.

I conclude by reiterating the Government’s unwavering support in the fight against homophobia in all its forms. No one should have to face abuse, discrimination or harassment based on who they love. The Government are committed to eradicating bigotry and abuse, and I think that the House agrees with the plea of the hon. Member for Cambridge for us to be civilised in our debates. The sketch writers may have a field day tomorrow with us all agreeing that we should be nicer to one another, but I think—[Interruption.] There seems to be disagreement across the Chamber.

Refugee Family Reunion

Ruth Jones Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

I commend the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) for bringing the important subject of refugee family reunion to the Chamber—I apologise for not being able to pronounce his constituency; I promise to rectify that.

I commend the Red Cross for the drop-in event it held earlier this week, with refugees from various areas. I was able to meet up with one of my constituents, a young man called Yusuf who is a refugee. He does not sit around waiting for his status—he is helping other refugees and ensuring that they are not isolated. He is a brilliant young man and a brilliant example of how refugees want to get stuck in and involved in this country.

It is important to remember that refugees do not willingly give up their home and community to move to another country. They have been forced to flee, whether by war, violence or persecution, and have had to leave all familiar people and places and deal with a completely new life, learn a new language and set up a new home. We need to understand how dislocated and alone they must be feeling, and we should do everything we can to welcome them and help them settle.

That should include refugees being able to work—a right that is currently denied them as they go through the complex and detailed process of seeking the right to reside here in the UK. I appreciate that we are dealing with family reunion matters, but I need to highlight the need for refugees to have the right to work while they wait the many months or even years that it takes to obtain legal status. Not being able to spend their time usefully employed can have a seriously detrimental effect on their mental health. Madam Deputy Speaker, if you were alone in a foreign country with no money and had to sit and stare at four walls all day, how would you feel? How would anyone here feel? Many refugees want to work. They have the skills that we desperately need here in the UK, so we should be helping them to use those skills to help themselves and the community they find themselves in.

To return to the motion under debate, I support the call for close relatives of all refugees in the UK to be able to reunite with their families. I note with concern that legal aid for family reunion applications was removed in 2013 because it was felt that those applications are straightforward and easy to prepare. In reality, they are far from straightforward—they are difficult for any refugee to deal with, especially in a language they are not familiar with. Legal aid for these applications is available in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and in the interests of fairness, I argue that it should be reinstated in England and Wales.

Currently children who have been granted refugee status in the UK are not allowed to bring their close family to join them in the same way that an adult can. That is an unfair and discriminatory practice on the grounds of age.

In Newport West, we have a diverse mix of people from all across the globe, and we have always welcomed the stranger. However, refugees who arrive in Newport are often disoriented and need help to navigate their way through bureaucratic processes and the practical business of settling down in a foreign land. We are fortunate to have an organisation called The Sanctuary, which provides a welcome and support for refugees in Newport. The project grew out of a desire to support a few Eritrean women who started attending Bethel Community Church in the centre of the city, but it now has its own property and staff, who provide a fantastic service to refugees and asylum seekers across Newport.

The Sanctuary provides practical help and support by providing English classes, advocacy support, mother and toddler groups and an after-school youth club, which provides a safe place for unaccompanied minors. I am so pleased that refugees in Newport West can access the services and support at The Sanctuary. The staff there play an important role in ensuring that refugees settle and integrate into our community and can play a full part in our city.

It is important that the Government act to ensure that close relatives of all refugees in the UK are able to reunite with their families in the UK, and I add my voice to the call for these reforms to be introduced swiftly and without delay.