Calais Children and Immigration Act

Henry Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right: many of these children have experienced traumatic situations, not only perhaps in their host country, but certainly as part of their journey and their life in the camp. On 1 November, my hon. Friend the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families and I issued a joint written ministerial statement on the safeguarding strategy for these children. The strategy includes a number of measures, including transfer procedures, safeguarding for family reunion, the information given to these children and revising the statutory guidance under the Dublin III arrangements. We will give regular updates to right hon. and hon. Members on how that is working out.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend think it extraordinary that, for months, the Labour party has not had a shadow Immigration Minister?

[Mr Goodwill]

I think that Labour has had a number of problems in that regard, but I will not revisit those issues.

Calais

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

As the hon. Gentleman may know, the Dubs amendment can be implemented only if local authorities come forward and volunteer to take the children. We are fortunate in that enough local authorities have offered places, but we shall need more over the next few weeks, so if any Members wish to urge their local authorities to volunteer, they are most welcome to do so. Authorities are aware of the costs and the rate that the Government pay, and I hope they will consider the compensation adequate and volunteer to take the children.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments about the robustness of the process of checking that children are eligible to be relocated to the United Kingdom, because there are legitimate concerns about that. One of the reception centres is in West Sussex. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that the county council—which is the social care authority—will be given support, given that there are already pressures on its budget, to ensure that the process will be beneficial to the children without being detrimental to others in West Sussex?

[Amber Rudd]

We are always grateful for the generous way in which local authorities come forward, and for their positive response to our call for their support. I particularly thank West Sussex County Council for the good work that it has been doing, notably in hosting one of the dispersal centres. We will of course work closely with the council to ensure that that good relationship continues.

Terrorist Attack: Nice

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments and for the Liberal Democrats’ support for the consensus in the House to stand with our allies—our friends—in France. He is right that we need a close relationship with our allies, both European and those from outside Europe, to ensure that we deepen knowledge and share information to combat terrorism. I will ensure that we continue to do that.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Tourist destinations and travel interchanges have tragically been the targets of evil terrorist acts. Will the Home Secretary provide a firm assurance that Gatwick airport will receive the necessary security resources to ensure that those travelling through will be safe this summer and beyond?

[Amber Rudd]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend raises that point, because I am keen to reassure everybody that that is exactly what will happen. We will continue to keep our airports under constant review—we must. We will do so by ensuring that everyone who works at Gatwick, lives around it and travels through is as safe as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I assure my hon. Friend that I do work closely with the Ministry of Justice. In fact, my right hon. Friend the Policing Minister, who is also a Justice Minister, is on the Front Bench, and I can assure my hon. Friend that we work very closely on this issue. He is right to say that not only do we want the perpetrators caught and stopped but we want appropriate sentences for this behaviour.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

13. What steps the Government have taken to improve checks at juxtaposed border controls in preparation for the summer.

[The Minister for Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

We have invested tens of millions of pounds to reinforce border security at the juxtaposed ports, including through the installation of security fencing, floodlighting, anti-intrusion detection technology, and additional freight-searching contractors, dogs and security personnel. This has been complemented by increased French police numbers.

[Henry Smith]

I welcome the UK border enhancements over the coming summer period. Will there be an exchange of information about those leaving the UK as well as those entering it?

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the sharing of information and intelligence between the UK and France, and it is an essential point to stress in the context of organised immigration crime that may be taking place across the channel. We have significantly stepped up our activities with the French authorities, and that will have a continuing impact in the fight against those who are simply seeking to traffic people into this country.

Removal of Foreign National Offenders and EU Prisoners

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The number of European economic area foreign national offenders who have been deported has tripled since 2010-11, from just over 1,000 to well over 3,000. We are making progress in that field.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

At the beginning of this year, a Dutch resident entered through Gatwick airport, very swiftly assaulted a member of staff there, went before the local magistrate, and was released, without having any address, on to the streets of Crawley. Several days later, they hammer-attacked two female police officers. Will my right hon. Friend reflect on the difference between the rhetoric about sharing criminal records and the reality as experienced by all too many of our constituents?

[Mrs May]

I am aware of this case, as my hon. Friend came to see me to raise it. Given the circumstances that he has set out, I can fully understand why he chose to do so, and why he has raised the case again today. He referred to criminal records exchange. The tools are there, but operational decisions will be made by those involved at any point in time. As I have indicated, the police have significantly increased the number of criminal record checks that they make, but whether and at what point they make those checks are decisions for them.

EU Migrants: National Insurance Numbers

Henry Smith Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

A clear amount of detailed work has been conducted by the ONS to produce today’s report, drawing together different information from the Department for Work and Pensions, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and its own assessment. I hope my hon. Friend will recognise that the report comes independently from the ONS, in order to give that assurance and clarity, which I think it does give.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Is the IPS not, by definition, random and self-selecting? Is not the best way to measure the number of people in this country to ensure that passports or identity cards are swiped on the way into it and on exiting it?

[James Brokenshire]

The ONS clearly says that the IPS is the best measure available to assess our long-term net migration numbers. We will continue to see how issues such as the availability of exit check data may help to enrich and support the ONS’s analysis, but its report’s conclusions today make it clear that the IPS remains the best measure.

Border Force Budget 2016-17

Henry Smith Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I reassure the hon. Gentleman that we are in regular discussions with the Irish Government about how to improve security at their external border because, obviously, there is the common travel area between Ireland and the United Kingdom. We have already done a lot of work with the Irish Government on data sharing and the sorts of systems that might support improved security, and we will continue that work.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

In contrast to some hon. Members who have spoken, I wish to pay tribute to the hard work and dedication of Border Force officers at Gatwick, especially with regard to their recent apprehension of terror suspects. May I have an assurance that they will continue to get the support that they need from the Home Office?

[Mrs May]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. As I have said, we now have a Border Force that is more flexible and that is able to use its resources appropriately. The director general is continually looking to ensure that resources are appropriate at ports and commensurate with the traffic that they are experiencing. He rightly praises the Border Force officers at Gatwick who, along with those elsewhere, do an excellent job.

Brussels Terrorist Attacks

Henry Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman may know that I have had my own interactions with the European convention on human rights, when the European Court of Human Rights has been used to try to prevent me from deporting people from the United Kingdom. In certain key cases, we were able to ensure the deportation or extradition of individuals who we believed were a danger here in the UK. The operation of the European Court of Human Rights and the European convention on human rights should indeed be looked at, which is why the Government are looking at introducing our own Human Rights Act and possibly a Bill of Rights, which will interact with the ECHR.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

An important section of the UK border exists in my constituency at Gatwick airport. I seek my right hon. Friend’s assurances that Border Force has been strengthened at that location, particularly given that it accepts so many flights from the vast Schengen area. We need to ensure that terrorists who might have made it into Europe cannot then make it into the British Isles.

[Mrs May]

Yes. Border Force has looked across airports and sea ports to see where it needs to enhance the checks that it provides. It is very conscious of the fact that the coming weekend is a particularly busy one for Gatwick at the start of a holiday period. It will take action accordingly.

Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill

Henry Smith Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hollobone]

I will be delighted to give way to all those whom I can see. First, I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith).

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is, as ever, making a very compelling case. Does he have any idea of the annual cost to British taxpayers of imprisoning foreign nationals? I know that many of my constituents are very concerned about this issue, and thank him for raising it.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for his pertinent intervention and question. He demonstrates not only his attention to detail and his determination to ensure that he represents his constituents here on a Friday, but that he can get straight to the nub of the issue. He is as concerned as I am about the cost to his constituents of any aspect of Government expenditure. The answer to his question is that if there are 10,500 foreign national offenders in our prisons, the estimated cost is something like £300 million a year. The Home Office figure for the cost of imprisoning a prisoner is something like £26,000.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

That is a very intelligent observation from my hon. Friend, and I congratulate him on being in the Chamber to listen to today’s proceedings. I know that he represents his constituents with great assiduity. Obviously the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I think we now have two prisons devoted wholly and specifically to housing foreign national offenders. Clearly, if we did not have any foreign national offenders in our prisons that would be two prisons we could either not have or free up to imprison our own offenders. That would be a cost saving—we are talking about a potential sum of £1 billion—but some of us in the Chamber today would see the saving of that cost as an opportunity to implement a proper penal policy for our domestic offenders. We believe that if an offender is caught, convicted and sentenced to a term of four or five years, or whatever it is, they should then serve that amount of time in prison. We are constantly told that we cannot afford to do that, but here we are presenting the Government with £1 billion of savings that would enable us to implement a far more realistic and effective criminal justice policy.

[Henry Smith]

My hon. Friend is always skilful in the Chamber, and as always he is being very courteous. I am grateful to him for allowing me a second intervention.

I want to come back, if I may, to the personal effects of foreign national offenders in this country. In the last Parliament, I had a constituent who was the victim of a rape by somebody from north Africa. After the offender had served his sentence, he was released back into my local community and not deported. Will my hon. Friend reflect on how such a situation could come about? I suggest that the problem lies in article 8 of the European convention on human rights, as set out in the Human Rights Act. Perhaps we should repeal that Act and replace it with a British Bill of rights and responsibilities that better protects our constituents.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend speaks not just for Crawley and its good citizens, but for the nation. He is spot-on. We need to get rid of the Human Rights Act and replace it with a Magna Carta-like domestic Bill of Rights that we can all understand and that implements justice in the way that the British people would like to see it implemented.

My hon. Friend probably has more foreign national offenders going in and out of his constituency than any of the rest of us, because of the location of Gatwick airport. I am shocked and appalled, as I know his constituents will be, that such a violent offender was released back into his local community. That cannot be right on any level. Such people need to be sentenced and convicted, serve their time in jail in full in their country of origin and not be let back into our country. Then the citizens of Crawley and the rest of the United Kingdom would be able to sleep safe in their beds at night.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful, Mr Speaker, for your ever wise guidance, but I am sure you will agree that the interventions have been most illuminating, helpful and constructive.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) for his intervention. I can see that we might disagree on aspects of justice policy, but I believe that Bill Committees should be inclusive. Members who hold a range of different opinions should be included, so my hon. Friend is back on the Committee. That is one of the mistakes that the Government are making, most recently with the Enterprise Bill, where all those who were against extending Sunday trading suddenly found they were not on the Bill Committee. The result was the events of this week, when the Government lost that part of their legislation. Given his views, which might be contrary to those of other Members, my hon. Friend would play a very constructive role in debating these issues on Committee, so I encourage him to pursue his views with great vigour.

It is shocking that 160 countries around the world are represented in our prisons.

[Henry Smith]

rose—

[Mr Hollobone]

I shall read the list of shame of the countries that top that chart, based on the latest figures from the Ministry of Justice, but first I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley, as I promised.

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his generosity. I noticed that one continent was missing from his list—Antarctica. I do not mean to make light of a serious issue, but it illustrates the seriousness of the matter if every part of the globe except the most inhospitable part is represented in our prison population. That is an untenable situation.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful for that intervention. My hon. Friend’s attention to detail, which he has just demonstrated, is legendary in this place. He gives me a good idea. I have been struggling to think of somewhere to send the 434 individuals who refuse to declare their nationality. I wonder whether the prospect of a prison place in Antarctica unless they state where they originally came from might encourage them to reveal their true identity.

At the top of the list of shame is Poland, because 951 Polish nationals are incarcerated in our prisons.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point.

Mr Speaker, you will be relieved to hear that I do not actually know any personal details of any of the Polish prisoners, so I will not trouble the House with that information, but I am grateful, as ever, for your wise counsel and guidance.

[Henry Smith]

Before my hon. Friend moves on to the next country, could he say—perhaps he will come to this point later in his remarks—whether the Bill envisages a minimum custodial sentence before somebody is exchanged, perhaps six months, or would it be on the provision of being sent to prison?

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point about a key issue, and I will answer it, but his intervention has reminded me that I did not answer fully the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch on the EU prisoner transfer agreement. Now that we have that agreement, apparently we can send back to EU countries those foreign EU nationals convicted and imprisoned in our country. But it is not working.

Specifically, Poland has a derogation until December 2016. Given that Poland is No. 1 on the list of shame, I would have thought that a key part of our renegotiation of the terms of our membership of the EU would have been for that derogation no longer to apply to Polish citizens living in the UK. As far as I am aware, however, Her Majesty’s Government made no attempt at all to tackle the issue during the renegotiation. Poland has the largest number of foreign nationals in our prisons, yet Her Majesty’s Government have done nothing, as far as I can see, to tackle the issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

It is okay: my hon. Friend is back on the Committee. He has made an extremely good point, which I hope he can repeat in Committee. My hon. Friend is quite right: we need to define what a qualifying offence is.

Clause 1(1) says that

“the Secretary of State must make provision in regulations for any foreign national convicted in any court of law of a qualifying offence to be excluded from the United Kingdom.”

Subsection (4) of the clause—there are, of course, only two clauses—then defines a qualifying offence as meaning

“any offence for which a term of imprisonment may be imposed by a court of law.”

That is important.

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way—he is the very model of generosity. I asked specifically whether the clause meant any custodial sentence, because we had an arrival over new year who was a resident of the Netherlands but an Afghan national. He assaulted a member of check-in staff at Gatwick airport. He was then released on to the streets of Crawley without any address. A few days later, he assaulted a female police officer with a hammer. He was then, finally, arrested again. I put it to the House that this foreign national should never have been allowed into this country. He also had a previous murder conviction in the Netherlands. I am therefore pleased to support the Bill, which would mean we were able to remove people from this country at the earliest opportunity.

[Mr Hollobone]

I knew the situation was bad, but the example brought to the House by my hon. Friend makes me think that it is a lot worse than I had feared. I invite him to intervene on me again to update the House on where this individual is now.

[Henry Smith]

I understand that this man is still being processed through the criminal justice system. I sincerely hope that, for two assaults within a week in my constituency, this Afghan national, who is a convicted murderer in the Netherlands, will receive a custodial sentence. I only wish that my hon. Friend’s Bill were on the statute book so that this man could be deported back to the Netherlands to serve his sentence. Alas, I do not think that your Bill will make it on to the statute book in time, but I hope this case illustrates that the Bill is very necessary.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Two things. First, “pithiness personified” is normally the title that I would accord the hon. Gentleman, and I hope that he will want to recover that status. Secondly, he referred to “your Bill”. Debate, of course, goes through the Chair—I have no Bill before the House, but the hon. Member for Kettering has.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

I have not received any such helpful indications from the Government, but I do not usually receive helpful indications about very much at all, so I am not necessarily taking the lack of an indication as a negative. I would hope that, given the presence of so many hon. Members here today, the Government might realise that the issue is important to our constituents and needs to be taken seriously.

I am still in a state of shock, having heard the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley. We are told that we are safer being a member of the European Union, but my hon. Friend has given the House a clear, explicit example of how we are not safer. Here we have an Afghan national—he is not even a national of the Netherlands, but a resident there—who is a convicted murderer, but who can none the less fly into this country. Border Force does not know anything about him. He then commits an offence and is out on the streets in Crawley before being apprehended again. How on earth can we be safer and more secure in our nation with rules such as that?

[Henry Smith]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Just before the hon. Member for Kettering takes an intervention from the hon. Gentleman, I just remind him that the Bill contains two clauses, the first of which is the only substantive clause, containing four subsections. The second clause is simply the short title and commencement date of the Bill, and the Bill itself takes up a little over one page. As the hon. Member for Kettering has now dilated very eloquently and with great courtesy for 53 minutes, he might perhaps consider focusing, with that laser-like precision for which he is renowned in all parts of the House, upon the first clause of his two-clause Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Henry Smith]

rose—

[Mr Hollobone]

I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley.

[Henry Smith]

Before you leave the Chair, Mr Speaker—two esteemed Deputy Speakers are standing nearby—I just want to say that I am very disappointed in myself for not being pithy earlier and not observing the parliamentary protocol, so I offer my sincere apologies. I say to my hon. Friend that I think that one of the reasons why the majority of people in Crawley will vote to leave the European Union on 23 June is that they are so disappointed with this function of that organisation.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful for that intervention. My hon. Friend speaks not only for his constituency, but for the nation in saying that we will have a better, safer, more secure and prosperous future outside the European Union.

I had mentioned No. 1 on my list of shame. I know hon. Members have been anticipating who No. 2 might be, and it is our good friends the Irish Republic. There are 783 Irish nationals in our jails. It seems to me that we have had a number of opportunities to negotiate their repatriation, not least when this country lent, I believe, £7 billion to help bail out—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

It is not quite all we want to do. We actually want to stop convicted criminals coming into this country in the first place. I readily admit that that is not clear in the Bill as drafted, but that is something that we could strengthen in Committee. I am sure that that would enjoy my hon. Friend’s support. The main aim of the Bill, however, is to send back foreign nationals convicted of offences to wherever they come from.

[Henry Smith]

I encourage my hon. Friend to consider, in Committee, greater controls and information flows from other countries, so that we can stop people who are already convicted criminals in other countries entering the United Kingdom in the first place. Our constituents would assume that that already happens, and if they found out that it does not, they would want—

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is incumbent on us to point out when such things happen so that people can draw their own conclusions as to what the problem is. It seems that the law, which is clear and was created with all the right intentions—I do not criticise the previous Labour Government for that—has been thwarted by judges who have clearly decided that they do not agree with it. I have no problem with a judge who does not agree with a particular law, but if that is their position and if they want to affect the law, they should quit being a judge and try to get themselves elected to Parliament. They should not use their position to thwart the will of Parliament. That is not what they are for, but that is clearly what they are doing.

The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) about the qualifying offence is an issue that has arisen in previous debates in the House on these matters. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) raised the issue the last time that such a Bill was debated and also thought that the qualifying offence was perhaps a little too wide, which is something that we should consider today. The Bill states that the qualifying offence

“shall mean any offence for which a term of imprisonment may be imposed by a court of law.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole quite rightly said and as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire said in a previous debate, that does not necessarily mean that the offender has to have been sent to prison, just that they have to have committed an offence that may be punishable with imprisonment.

The problem is that I am not entirely sure what that means. Other people may also not know what it means. Most importantly of all, judges may not know what it means. It could mean that if somebody is convicted of an offence that could lead to a prison sentence, they are automatically deported. That may well be the Bill’s intention; I get the impression from my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering that that is the intention, and I have no quibble with that. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I would prefer it to go a bit further and say that the imprisonment does not matter and that if anybody commits a criminal offence—full stop—they should be deported from the country. I would make it very simple so that there is no argument at all.

[Henry Smith]

That is precisely the point that I wanted to make when I intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) to refer to the case in Crawley over the new year, in which an Afghan national, a Dutch resident, committed a violent offence against check-in staff at Gatwick airport and yet was released on to the streets of my constituency. Such measures would have prevented that from happening.

[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The problem is that we see all the time how difficult it is to be sent to prison in the UK. Someone either has to commit serious offences or be a persistent offender. Even if someone is a persistent offender, the chances are that they may not get sent to prison.

In fact, a while back, I asked a parliamentary question about the proportion who are sent to prison of people who come before the courts with 100 previous convictions. Would you believe it, Madam Deputy Speaker: if someone goes to court with more than 100 previous convictions, they are statistically more likely not to be sent to prison? If the Bill referred only to people on whom a term of imprisonment is imposed, that would be hopeless, because people will be getting away with crime after crime, being given community sentence after community sentence, and still causing havoc in the community.

--- Later in debate ---

[Henry Smith]

My hon. Friend is rightly focusing on foreign nationals who are given a custodial sentence. However, over the past decade or so, UK Government statistics have shown that less than 10% of those who are convicted of a crime receive a custodial sentence. That suggests that the number of foreign nationals who have been convicted is in the region of 80,000 or more.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is right that much of the debate this morning has focused on the foreign national offenders who are in our jails, who, by definition, are those who have committed the most serious offences. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said, even those who have committed 100 offences are more likely than not, when appearing before the courts, not to be sent to prison. When somebody is convicted of a minor offence, it is pretty difficult to sentence them to a term of imprisonment.

The latest figures from the Ministry of Justice on the prison population, up to 31 December last year, show that 978 foreign national offenders have committed crimes so serious that they are subject to extended determinate sentences. The same figures reveal that 2,399 foreign national offenders have sentences of less than four years, so those people could well be—and most likely will be—back on our streets before the next election.

The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), confirmed in a written answer on 23 March last year, in response to a question from the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), that the foreign national prison population in the UK included 1,657 people who had committed violence against the person, 1,035 who had committed a sexual offence, 1,192 who were in prison for drug offences, 527 who were in for robbery and 400 burglars.

Let me bring those thousands of offences to life with just one example. Mircea Gheorghiu is a Romanian national who served a six-year sentence for rape in Romania, where he had also been jailed twice for cutting timber without a licence. He reportedly entered the UK in 2002 following his release, after serving only two years and eight months of his sentence. He remained in the country while his wife and children stayed in Romania. In January 2007, Romania joined the EU, so he was allowed to stay in the UK. He was arrested for drink-driving and convicted in November 2007, and banned from driving for 20 months. When his criminal past was uncovered, the Home Office rightly deported him under the new “deport first, appeal later” scheme. However, following an appeal at the immigration tribunal, the press reported on 28 February that because Mr Gheorghiu was an EU citizen, incredibly he was allowed to return to the UK. Why? Because the two judges in the tribunal ruled that his crimes—he had originally been convicted of rape in Romania—were not serious enough to warrant deportation, and that EU citizens should be removed before their appeal hearings only in exceptional circumstances because of their right to free movement and the human right to family life.

Oral Answers to Questions

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

As Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice in the Home Office, I work closely with the Secretary of State for Transport who is responsible for the British Transport police. I am sure he will have heard the hon. Lady’s comments, and I will talk to him about them, but this is not a matter for the Home Office.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Last week, an officer in Crawley suffered an appalling hammer attack. I am pleased to say that he has now recovered. Will my right hon. Friend pay tribute to the professionalism of Sussex police, which now has the prime suspect in custody?

[Mike Penning]

Let me say what a fantastic job that officer does, along with other officers. I hope that a full recovery happens soon. Body-worn cameras are going to transform policing, particularly assaults on officers, as can be seen from the roll-out of the pilots. Evidence like that is putting away the sort of criminal people who assault our officers.