Public Order Bill (First sitting)

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 9th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Andrew Bridgen and then Anne McLaughlin, but we will need quick questions and quick answers if everybody who wants to participate can get a chance.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Q Thank you, Chair. I have two quick questions. Chief Constable, you have talked about the ability of protesters to find legal loopholes. Are there any measures you would like to see in the Bill that are not in the Bill? Have you spotted any loopholes at this stage?

Chris Noble: No, not as yet, but we are very aware that as legislation is cast, people will look to see where it begins and ends, so I think it will be a constant piece of scrutiny from us.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Q You talked about public frustration at the current tactics of protestors and about the risk—we have seen it—of the public taking matters into their own hands, perhaps with some mitigation if someone was being taken to hospital or an emergency vehicle was being disrupted from going about its essential work. Would you agree that, when enacted, the Bill will protect not only the public interest and the public, but legitimate protestors?

Chris Noble: I think it has that potential. Clearly, as to how it actually works on the ground, each circumstance will need its own assessment and its own operation. That will play through, but there is no doubt that a number of the elements in the Bill are clearly responding to current challenges for policing. But ultimately, this will still be down to individual choices, decisions made on the day and the attempt to try to balance the rights that are at play. This is not a science for police officers in day-to-day public order policing: it is an art, it is discretion and it is matters of judgment. As elected Members, I know that you appreciate that. As we said earlier, this is a key element around trying to have current and up-to-date legislation, but there are elements of the Bill where defining a bit more what they mean and do not mean would be very helpful for day-to-day policing, however we achieve that precision of language and detail.

[The Chair]

Anne McLaughlin and, if there is time, Rupa Huq, but we have to finish at 12.15 pm.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wendy Chamberlain]

Q Mr Groves, you said that these groups are very good at looking forward and looking at where you are. Once this legislation is in place, where do you think these people will go next?

John Groves: I do not know. In terms of the numbers of people we see protesting against HS2, we think there is roughly about 150 that are the core. Within that, there is a focused 20 people. It is not a big number, but we also see that they move between different causes and different protests. I suspect that we will see some of the people Nicola has been talking and vice versa. They will move. If there were a new Heathrow runway being built or a new nuclear build, they would probably move in those directions as well.

It is a relatively, I think, small community, albeit they draw in quite a large number every now and then. They will move on to other things, which is probably why the order would be helpful in that respect. At the moment, we are focused on HS2 actions in terms of our security and injunction work, but if the order has a broader effect across protester activity in general, that would be positive.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Q My questions are for Mr Groves. I will declare that I am no fan of HS2. Indeed, I voted against it at every opportunity I had in the House. However, as we all know, the majority of the House approved the project. Many of my concerns are about the spiralling cost of HS2. Could you tell the Committee again the costs of security measures for HS2 and removing protesters? Do you have any estimate of what the savings would be to the taxpayer if the Bill is enacted?

John Groves: It is not just standard security for a site, which you would expect to see anywhere. The direct costs of protester activity to the taxpayer up to the end of March were £126 million. We estimate that by the end of next year, that could in a worst-case scenario reach £200 million.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q My question is for Mr Groves. If tunnelling is the biggest issue for HS2, are you surprised that it has just been added on as an amendment, given that it is so important? What that does is cut out the consultation—there has been no consultation on it —so are you surprised that it has just been added on?

John Groves: Certainly, looking at the Bill when it was published, the things we have seen and discussed today are important. The introduction of the tunnelling amendment is very positive from our perspective. I have not got any comment on the timing of it.

Public Order Bill (Second sitting)

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 9th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Elphicke]

Q Finally, I am mindful of the Court of Appeal’s decision and its clear direction that there was no specific offence that could reflect the magnitude of the event. The Court reportedly said:

“We recognise that the various summary-only offences with which the appellants were originally charged…might…not reflect the gravity of their actions.”

I think that underlines the importance of the matters before us. At the Court of Appeal, Lord Burnett referred specifically to disruption “likely to endanger” the safe operation of the airport or the safety of people there. We have heard from your evidence that the actions that were taken were grave and had real impacts on the airport’s operations and security.

Steve Griffiths: Yes, they did indeed.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Q Elizabeth, clearly there are two parts to the threat from protesters: first, if they gain access to your oil terminals—the one at Kingsbury, just down the road from my constituency, is the largest in the country—and secondly, if they cause damage to assets or disrupt access to your fuel depots. How are those situations currently treated differently in policing, how easy is it to get people off your premises once they are there on them, and how will the Bill help you to deal with those situations?

Elizabeth de Jong: We follow guidance produced by the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure. New guidance on the security of sites was issued in April by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with the support of national counter-terrorism police and the National Police Coordination Centre. Lots of site security plans are already put in place using guidance and experience, and there are updates; that is continually being reviewed using the best available guidance. It is a tiered system, as people gain access and then further access into the site, but one of the points I wanted to make is that the sites are very large indeed. CCTV and fencing are already there, but it is very hard to stop a large number of people—

[Andrew Bridgen]

Q You have a very large perimeter, haven’t you?

Elizabeth de Jong: Large perimeters, and a large number of people who are determined to get in and willing to put their own safety at risk. Should security guards or other people want to remove them, they have almost no powers to do so, apart from asking them and pointing out that it is not safe. We have been relying on the police, and in my opinion, we need to make sure that the police have the powers of arrest in order to remove those people, for their safety as much as anybody else’s.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Q If there were an ignition of fuel at somewhere like Kingsbury, whether accidental or deliberate, with the huge volume of fuel that is kept there, what sort of catastrophe would that be?

Elizabeth de Jong: It would be a proper emergency catastrophe—explosions, fire, life-ending.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Q About how many acres is Kingsbury depot?

Elizabeth de Jong: I do not have that figure off the top of my head, I am afraid, but all the sites that have been targeted, all the areas of the supply chain—the petrol stations as well—are places that have the potential for explosions. Safe working is needed in those areas, and that is what we are very concerned about. In fact, petrol stations are one of the areas that are specifically not included in the new Bill. One of our asks is for that to be considered, and for the scoping of the Bill to be as wide as possible in order to include all aspects of the supply chain, because petrol stations could endanger the public—in fact, arguably more so than oil terminals. That would put staff as well as protesters at risk.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Q Steve, given Government policy regarding removals to Rwanda, do you see an increased risk to airports?

Steve Griffiths: Obviously, the Home Office determines those deportation-type flights and works with all of the UK airports. There is no doubt that that will become more public and more prevalent, and it does heighten the potential risk to us as an airport as well.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Q I put it on the record that I am a former Essex county councillor, since Essex has been referred to a couple of times now. My first question is about the international picture. Do other countries have this issue, and how are they combating it? Do our police have the necessary tools in place when compared with international comparators?

Steve Griffiths: Certainly from my perspective, I do not feel qualified to answer that question, unfortunately.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q I am not sure that your organisation is known for campaigning alongside Black Lives Matter people, for example. However, are you suggesting that the only legitimate way for the people that I mentioned to protest is either through us as MPs or through yourselves as media outlets? Let us face it: that means that you have to agree with them or we have to agree with them. How do they make their own voices heard? How do we empower them without causing the disruption that you talked about so that they can make an impact?

David Dinsmore: On the Black Lives Matter issue, we have, as an organisation, carried a huge amount of coverage. We have done things explicitly and internally on diversity. It is something that we do take very seriously. The Sun has recently run a series on Black History Month, et cetera, et cetera. I will not go into the detail, but I can give you much more on what we do as an organisation on those kinds of issues.

There are many, many routes to protest in this country. I am just giving you the specifics around our particular route. There are petitions and social media. There are many ways in which you can get a story, a campaign or a point of view across without disruption and breaking the law.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Q To be provocative, this is a Bill to protect national infrastructure such as fuel terminals, roads, railways and airports, and I am giving you a platform to make a pitch. Why is your industry worthy of this protection and not people who deliver bread, milk or toilet rolls? Why your industry?

David Dinsmore: I think the best example we have got is the pandemic we have just lived through and the requirement for quality, trustworthy information. That showed how vital and valuable that is. We, as professional journalists, provide that information on what used to be a daily basis and is now a minute-by-minute basis, and the public need that more than ever.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Q But surely most of that is delivered online now.

David Dinsmore: But it could be just as easily threatened by this kind of protest.

[Mrs Elphicke]

Q I want to follow up on that very point. On a number of the other disruptions that we have seen, what is disrupted cannot be delivered in another way: the roads, ports, fuel and so on. But, as you say, minute-by-minute news is doing its stuff. If I understand the reason that you were targeted, it was that there was a view about what the political representation of the group was, rather than what was necessarily going on at the plant itself. I think you mentioned The Guardian, among other things. Do you think that the measures should be widened to give greater protection to organisations that are targeted, not because of what they are doing but because people just want to disrupt that business, organisation, or person’s life to make a political point in an unacceptable way?

David Dinsmore: I do think that the way the law is structured protects the rights of the few against the rights of the many. That feels to me to be anti-democratic. So, without going into the specifics of it, yes, I do think that. On that point of “you can get it online”, there is still a significant cohort in the community—principally older readers—who cannot or do not get it online, and do get their news in print.

Draft Passport (Fees) Regulations 2022

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2022 General Committees

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I thank the Minister for introducing the regulations. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) has already pointed out, at this point in time across the country there are thousands of people who believe that the passport system needs to change, but it is fair to say that the tweaks we are debating today would not be top of their list.

The shadow Home Office team has been inundated with examples of Government failure—primarily the failure to predict and adequately prepare for the surge in demand for passport renewal after the covid travel restrictions were lifted. That is despite being warned of the problems as far back as November in this House by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). We have heard of family holidays being cancelled because passports did not arrive on time, a seriously sick child unable to take a long-awaited trip of a lifetime, of work missed, honeymoons threatened, and the huge costs incurred from cancellations, rebooking, and paying for the fast-track service and multiple applications.

The worst is not over. Leaked Passport Office documents reported by The Times at the weekend revealed that the 500,000 application backlog is growing. How will the existing regulations be made fit for purpose when the existing system is said by staff not to be fit for purpose?

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

I agree that we are all hearing from constituents who are waiting for passports. People who did not renew their passports during covid now suddenly want to use them. Does the hon. Lady agree with me that, despite the current huge demand for passports, for security reasons all relevant checks must be made on everyone applying for a UK passport, and those should never, ever be passed by because of the huge demand that the services face at the moment?

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is right. All MPs have had cases of people desperately trying to get their passports on time, and of course he is right that security is important. We must make sure we do these things correctly. Our argument is that we should have seen the problem coming and done a lot more about it.

The article in The Times reported that the existing pressures are only going to get “heavier” and that people are being given “poor, misleading advice” by the advice line provider. Yet despite these well-documented problems, the Minister in the other place, Baroness Williams, told my colleague, Lord Coaker, that the Department

“did prepare extensively for elevated demand with no restrictions upon international travel, and those preparations have ensured that passport applications can be processed in higher numbers than ever before.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 May 2022; Vol. 822, c. GC52.]

That is the argument the Minister made, but it is not good enough. I have to say to him that that will be news to many of those who have been waiting. Given the scale of the problem, we are unconvinced that an SI that will slow down the fast track process by one day is a proportionate response to those realities.

Baroness Williams told the other place that the Department estimates that it will receive a total of 9.5 million applications in 2022. She insisted that the Department was

“on target to deliver those”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 May 2022; Vol. 822, c. GC52.]

So did this Minister. Can he explain to the House how he can be so confident, given the backlog? What urgent work are the Government and the Home Office doing ahead of the summer to prevent millions of families from being put through chaos before their summer holidays?

Despite our sense that this SI tinkers around the edges of what is a much more serious systemic problem, we largely do not object to the measures in it. As I said, the SI will slow down the fast-track process by one day. How many applications are currently missing the seven-day deadline? Slowing down the fast track is an admission of failure. Why do Ministers not believe that the system can get back on track, and meet existing targets, in the long term? We have no concerns about the purely technical changes that set out passport fees more simply and we believe that it is fair to look at keeping the booking fee where a person books a priority appointment but fails to turn up.

The new schedule shows that a higher fee is added for children aged under 16 to use priority services—£73 for the fast track and £102 for the premium service—than for adults, who pay £66.50 for the fast track and £101.50 for the premium service. Why is there that difference between children and adults?

I have a question on the detail. The Minister touched on this, but perhaps he can clarify it. My understanding is that if an appointment is missed—sometimes people make an innocent mistake—this measure provides not only for the booking fee and priority fee to be non-refundable, but for the standard application fee to be kept. Does that mean that if a person misses their appointment, they will not only lose the fees for that appointment but lose the application altogether? Will they then have to find the money for the standard fee to start the whole process again? If the failure is the system’s rather than the applicant’s, what happens to the person’s priority fees if the system fails to deliver their passport within the appropriate deadline? And what about where a person misses an appointment with good reason, which may happen? The Minister talked about a refund on compassionate grounds, such as medical or family emergencies. Can we have more information on that policy? Will it be a discretionary decision that individuals in the Passport Office make, or will there be a complete list of criteria? If so, could we have more detail? There is no information about that in the explanatory memorandum.

Baroness Williams said in the other place that the Department has

“employed 500 staff since last April, and there will be a further 700 this summer.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 May 2022; Vol. 822, c. GC52.]

May I ask when those new staff will be in place? The word “summer” is quite vague, and often the Government count autumn as summer. We hope that that is not the case here; and obviously many families will need passports before the summer holidays begin.

Finally, Baroness Williams insisted that the Department was on course to deliver the 9.5 million passports, but she was unable to say what the current backlog is. Could this Minister fill in that detail for the House now? I look forward to his response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my two shadows, the hon. Members for Croydon Central and for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, for the overall constructive nature of their remarks. Perhaps I can start on the question whether we are slowing the fast track through these regulations. What we are actually doing is providing clarification. This partly reflects a longer-term policy for customers of the service whose appointment is after the local cut-off time. The fast track performance is measured as the passport being printed within 144 hours —to be exact—of the application being received, which also allows the 24-hour delivery service level. There was a query about what this says about the target and whether we are meeting it. Between January and April, 94% of fast track application passports were printed within these times. Again, it is perhaps more of a clarification than an actual change in the time within which people will receive their passports.

In a fair challenge directly related to the draft regulations, I was asked why keep the whole application fee, rather than just the priority fee. Fundamentally, if someone does not turn up, it is not just the appointment slot that is wasted; it is a slot in which we would have considered a passport. Literally, a decision maker might have to sit there when they could have been processing and dealing with a passport for someone. That is why we believe the measure to be proportionate if someone simply does not turn up and does not tell us in advance that they will not be there, even within 48 hours. So, before 48 hours, free cancellation and, within 48 hours, 30 quid booking fee. If someone just does not show up, it is not unreasonable—as with many other services many of us use—for them still to pay the fee for the service, because in effect that service has been wasted.

Will we draw up a full list of all the circumstances? No. As with our exchanges about the EU settlement scheme and late applications, in particular with the SNP spokesperson, we could probably all sit here and draw up a reasonable list of good reasons why someone did not attend a passport appointment—an unwell child, an emergency care reason or an urgent work thing that day—only for someone to walk in the door and give another example that could also be a fair reason. The classic example is someone, or their close relative, being taken into hospital, which is a compelling circumstance. But if we draw up an exhaustive list, we might end up being harsher than if we have a clear set of principles for when we will refund the fee.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Will the Minister explain to the Committee what happens when someone does not show up without notice for their appointment? How is their application dealt with following that? Are there instances of people making another appointment and again not showing up? How is that dealt with?

[Kevin Foster]

People have not made the application, if they do not show up—we have no application to consider, but they have just wasted a slot. In particular for showing up in person to make an application, it is not as if we can sit there and progress something that has already been received; in most cases, we will have literally nothing to process. Have there been examples in the past? Going back some years to before we changed our booking system, there were examples of people repeatedly not attending appointments. Fundamentally, time gets wasted, so the measure is proportionate, subject to being clear that if someone has good reason why they could not attend their appointment, it is fair to give them a refund. It is not unreasonable to ask people to do the simple job, one or two days before, of ringing us up to say, “Actually, I can’t make that day. May I make another appointment?”

Global Migration Challenge

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I refer to the comments I made earlier on the legal and legislative basis, which was all put in place under the previous Labour Government. Indeed, this scheme and proposal were also looked at under the previous Labour Government, and had it been operational back then we might not be having this debate today as more people would be claiming asylum in safe countries in the EU and the people-smuggling gangs would have been broken up.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and believe that the policy will work. Will my right hon. Friend explain what the successful implementation of her policy will look like on the ground, and in particular what impact she believes it will have on the number of vulnerable people willing to put their lives in the hands of ruthless people traffickers to gain illegal entry to our country?