Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The noble Baroness points out the reason why we need the new system. Airwave is expensive and out of date, and will start to become obsolete towards the end of this decade. It uses old technology and has only voice and slow text-based data services so, yes, that is entirely the aim of the new system.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, this network programme is much needed and has to be the right solution. As I understand it, one of the benefits of the new programme will be that the emergency services can send out text messages. Those were very useful during Covid and would perhaps have been useful yesterday, during the heatwave. Can my noble friend outline which services will have access to the text-messaging programme and what kind of use cases are envisaged?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I totally agree with my noble friend. It would have been very useful yesterday and it should be available across all emergency services networks: fire and ambulance, and in the Underground as well.

Policing: European Championship Final

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Thursday 15th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I will not at this point state which team I support, because that might get us into another row. However, I agree that lessons have to be learned. I understand that there was very regular communication on what was going on, and I think the police on the whole did a very good job. As the noble Lord says, it is a very good thing that nobody was more injured than they were, particularly the police officers. Nineteen officers were injured but, thankfully, none died.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I attend a lot of football matches in London and went to two of the European Championship games. The police do an exemplary job in policing football matches, and let us not forget that arrests have fallen by 50% in a decade. I was astonished to learn that the police can reclaim policing costs from football clubs only if they are in the ground, and that of the £48 million a year it costs to police football matches, they get only £5 million back. Will the Minister look at this legislation so that the police can start to reclaim the costs from the football clubs and not have this artificial situation where the football clubs keep them out of the grounds in order to save money?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con) [V]]

I totally agree with my noble friend in praising the police for the exemplary job they do, and I will take his point back.

E-scooters

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Monday 12th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, that is one of the things being suggested. As a cyclist myself, as I said when I answered the last Oral Question on this subject, it is quite terrifying for these things to come up behind you. You cannot hear them, you cannot see them until they are upon you, and they go really quite fast. So, at the end of the trial, I am sure that all those things will be taken into consideration.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am a big fan of e-scooters and am delighted that the Government are carrying out these trials. Does the Minister know how many miles have so far been travelled on legal e-scooters hired under the Government’s pilot schemes, and is there any estimation of what contribution they have made to reducing both congestion and pollution in our cities?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, somewhere I have the figures for how many miles have been driven on them, but what is certain is that they have reduced congestion. But the trials will be the perfect way to see that they can be used in a safe way.

United Kingdom Resettlement Scheme

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Wednesday 3rd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Naturally the pandemic has hindered our efforts. Everything has been delayed, including resettlement schemes. We have restarted the resettlement schemes because we have reached over 20,000 under our previous commitment. I am not sure “apology” is the right word as we are doing everything we can, and we have restarted our resettlement schemes.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I mention in passing how much work is being done by Arts Council-funded organisations to support and help refugees. I have a specific question for the Minister: how many family reunion visas have been granted in the last five years?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I join my noble friend in paying tribute to those Arts Council organisations. Their efforts are very much appreciated. We have issued almost 30,000 family reunion visas in the last five years. This House often goes on about Dublin transfers, quite rightly, but those figures pale into insignificance compared with the number of family reunion visas we have issued.

Police National Computer

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I am very happy to give the noble Lord an update: last week the Home Office became aware that, as a result of human error, the software which triggers these automatic deletions contained defective coding and had inadvertently deleted records that it should not have and had not deleted some records which should have been deleted. An estimated 213,000 offence records, 175,000 arrest records and 15,000 person records are now being investigated as potentially having been deleted. It is worth explaining to the House, which I did not do before, that multiple records can obviously be held against the same individual, as the noble Lord will know.

On how we dealt with it, on the same day as the Home Office became aware of it, engineers put a stop to the automated process to ensure that no further deletions took place. All similar automatic processes have also been suspended. Earlier last week, Home Office civil servants and engineers worked very quickly to alert the police and other operational colleagues, and established a bronze, silver and gold command to manage the incident and co-ordinate a rapid response. The noble Lord will have heard me say to two previous speakers just what the process will be over the next few days.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I, of course, accept my noble friend’s assurances that this was human error. Indeed, human error has brought down the biggest and most sophisticated IT companies, such as Facebook, Google and Twitter. Nevertheless, this shines a light on the still creaking government IT procurement systems. I echo the comments of my noble friend Lord Dobbs. Is it not time to get departments out of their fiefdoms and working more effectively with the Government Digital Service to provide an IT strategy that is fit for purpose as we end the first quarter of the 21st century? We still have these fiefdoms procuring huge IT projects at vast cost and overrun which are not fit for purpose. It is time to centralise this procurement process.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I do not know whether I am speaking as a Minister or not, but on a personal level I totally agree with my noble friend. A whole-of-government approach would be so much better in so many areas, but each department is very protective of the money it seeks from the Treasury. Perhaps in future we will begin to have much more of a common approach on technology and procurement.

Scheduled Mass Deportation: Jamaica

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister could confirm a number of things regarding this case: first, that these deportations are taking place under legislation passed by the last Labour Government; secondly, that the deportation of foreign criminals to Jamaica makes up a very small percentage of the deportations undertaken every year; and, thirdly, that it is wholly wrong to conflate the scandal of Windrush with this case. The Government are dealing with the fallout from the Windrush scandal but this case has nothing to do with it.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Perhaps I can turn to my noble friend’s last question first, because he is absolutely right; my noble friend Lord Lancaster also alluded to this point. To conflate this flight, which contains some pretty serious criminals, with the people of the Windrush generation who came to this country to rebuild it after the war is an absolute insult to the Windrush generation, so I absolutely agree with my noble friend.

On the second point about the percentage of deportations, he is absolutely right. It is tiny: in terms of deportations to Jamaica, it is some 1%. Thirdly, he is absolutely right about the legislation: the UK Borders Act was passed in 2007 under a Labour Government.

Hate Crime: Misogyny

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Baroness Williams of Trafford

Monday 23rd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The noble Baroness will know that there are already numerous strands of hate crime legislation. After the Law Commission has reported, I fully expect that Parliament will be updated on its findings.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I will make one brief point. My noble friend will have noticed the concession made by the Scottish Government on their hate crime Bill that one has to show intent to incite hatred. Will my noble friend keep this in mind when the Law Commission reports next year?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that point. We will certainly keep all aspects of findings and law in mind when thinking about future plans.