Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill [Lords]

Lord Benyon Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend on that. Indeed, I am going to take this opportunity to quote from what was said in response to the conviction by the National Police Chiefs Council lead on FGM, Commander Ivan Balhatchet:

“Female genital mutilation is a barbaric and violent crime—a violation of human rights—often with lifelong consequences, committed by the people children should be able to trust the most.”

He continued:

“Today’s sentencing will act as a deterrent and a warning that our society will not accept this child abuse, but prosecutions alone will not solve this problem.”

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend’s work on the all-party group and with campaigners reveal a reluctance on this among groups of people to whom children are presented, for whatever reason? We are all familiar in our constituencies with what happens when a child is discovered to have bruising or possible signs of maltreatment. Following cases such as that of Victoria Climbié, there is almost a lurch in the other direction to immediately assume that there is a child abuse problem, but perhaps that has not happened enough in respect of FGM. Is he confident that legislation such as this is going to make it increasingly easy for those cases to be presented as child abuse?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I cannot give him a scientific answer, but I can tell him that the evidence the all-party group received from those people who have been through FGM absolutely concurs with what he has just said: there are parts of the establishment and social services, and people within the education system, who are very nervous indeed about pointing the finger on FGM. There is a concern about trampling on cultural sensitivities. The view of the people we talked to, like my view and, I suspect, that of many in the House today, is that those sensitivities should be pushed to one side. This is a very direct form of child abuse; child abuse is child abuse, and it is our responsibility as adults and the authorities to stamp it out at every opportunity. That message has been unambiguous, in all the evidence we have taken from those people who have been through FGM.

Legislation against Female Genital Mutilation

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I would be very happy to meet the hon. Lady. She has pointed out some of the terrible consequences of this horrific act, and I should like to take a little bit of time to refer to some of the others. In a leading judgment in the Supreme Court in a case concerning FGM, Lady Hale said that

“these procedures are irreversible and their effects last a life time. They are usually performed by traditional practitioners using crude instruments and without anaesthetic. Immediate complications include severe pain, shock, haemorrhage, tetanus or sepsis, urine retention, ulceration…Long term consequences include…urinary incontinence…and sexual dysfunction…It is likely that the risks of maternal death and stillbirth are greatly increased”.

This is a horrific activity, and we must do everything we can to prevent it.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) is delayed elsewhere, on the Committee corridor, but I know that if he were here, he would start by paying tribute to what the Government have done so far and by echoing the dismay being expressed by all Members today at the behaviour of one of our colleagues on Friday. He would also say that it is a pity that our hon. Friend is not here to give an account of himself, because there might be a perfectly good reason for this. Will my hon. Friend the Minister please convey to those who manage procedure and Government business that many of us are just fed up with this kind of behaviour? We want a different system in which this sort of thing does not happen.

[Lucy Frazer]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his comments and to my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) for his sponsoring of the Bill, which the Government supported and continue to support. I am sure that those in charge of parliamentary procedure are listening and have heard those comments.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

We have established specialist teams for prisons that have particular vulnerabilities to drone attacks. I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss some of the legislative issues. I also believe that there is much more we can do on basic issues such as netting and grills, as well as focusing on high technology.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

Drones are one of the ways in which mobile phones are got into prisons, where they can be used for criminality alongside drugs. What measures are being taken to use technology to limit the use of mobile phones in prison?

[Rory Stewart]

Two types of technology can be used on mobile telephones. One is jamming technology, and the second, which is more commonly used in prison, is a wand to detect mobile telephones. An astonishing number of phones—at over 20,000, there are far too many—are detected in prisons. We should be addressing this in two ways. The first is by making sure that they do not get in: these are closed environments and we should be able to massively reduce the amount coming in. The second is that, by putting phones in cells to allow people to talk to their families, we can monitor the calls and control the need for phones in the first place.

Court Closures

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House acknowledges the need for some underused courts and tribunals to close; notes the detrimental effect that too many court closures will have on access to justice for vulnerable families and individuals particularly in rural areas where public transport is less reliable; further notes with concern the effect these closures will have on the experienced and dedicated staff working in the 86 courts and tribunals; and calls on the Government to acknowledge the concerns of staff, magistrates and third sector organisations who highlighted numerous flaws in the consultation document, to think again on some of these closures and acknowledge the importance of access to local justice.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate. I requested such a debate, with the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) and other Members from across the House, for a number of reasons: first, because of the scale of the court closure programme, with 86 courts and tribunals closing, compounded by the closures during the last Parliament, when 146 courts closed; secondly, because of the level of concern expressed by colleagues across the House about the implications of the closure programme for access to justice, and a number of flaws within the consultation process that provided the basis for the closure programme; and thirdly, because the closures were announced in a written ministerial statement on the last sitting day before the February recess. I feel strongly that both the scale of the closure programme and its implications mean that the announcement should have been made in the House, and that colleagues should have had the opportunity to raise issues on behalf of their constituents, and ask questions about the planned closures and their impact at the time that the announcement was made. I am pleased that we will have the opportunity to do so today.

Courts have a very wide range of different users. If we consider the hierarchy of Crown courts, county courts, magistrates courts, youth courts, family courts and tribunals, we can see that the people who need to access the courts include jurors, magistrates, victims and witnesses, families in the process of breaking up, a range of public sector staff—those working directly at the courts, but also those bringing cases and acting as witnesses—members of the judiciary, and individuals facing trial. It is easy to think of those accessing our courts primarily as suspected criminals, but our courts are in reality a vital public service, reaching a very wide range of people in their scope, and it is important that we remember that as we debate the closure programme.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

If civic areas are to lose their courts as a result of this decision, does the hon. Lady agree that proper provision needs to be made, not least for video conferencing for people giving evidence? For example, local newspapers should be able to send a journalist on a particular day so that its readers cannot only be told where crimes take place, but hear about convictions, because justice must be seen to be done as much as actually done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point about the long tradition in this country involving the justice system and the locality it serves.

I will turn to some of the specific concerns that have been raised about the consequences of the closures. The first is the straightforward issue of physical access to a court building for those who need to attend court either for a court hearing or to instigate an administrative procedure, such as applying in person for a stay of eviction. The Government response to the consultation says:

“It will still be the case that…97% of citizens will be able to reach their required court within an hour by car.”

This statement is simply not true. The data on which the Government response is based relate to the travel time between court buildings, not the travel time from residents’ homes to what will now be their closest court. On the basis of these data, residents who currently live within an hour of an existing court may now have to travel a further hour beyond that court to access their nearest court. It is time for the Government to undertake and publish an analysis of the physical accessibility of courts in terms of the journey times faced by residents on a postcode basis, not from court to court, so that the impact of the closures plan can be properly understood and scrutinised.

The second problem with the travel time data is that they rely too much on the private car as a mode of transport. Only half of households on low incomes own a car. Many of my constituents who have to attend court in relation to issues such as housing evictions are on low incomes, and the same is true across the country. The response to the consultation does not consider in any detail the accessibility of courts and tribunals by public transport, or accessibility by bus, which is often the only mode of transport that residents on lower incomes can afford, even where faster routes are available. I have looked at the travel times that residents from parts of my constituency—for example, a victim of domestic violence—will experience after Lambeth county court closes and they have to travel to Wandsworth, where some of the services will be provided. Many of those residents will face a journey of at least an hour each way by bus, and in the worst-case scenario, a four-hour round trip. That is in London, which has the best public transport network of any city in the UK. Colleagues who represent rural constituencies tell me that in some cases the journey times that their constituents will face are such that it will not be possible to travel to court and back in a single day, further adding to the costs of accessing justice.

[Richard Benyon]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful point that will resonate with people in a lot of villages in my constituency. The Library document states that just 15% of people in my constituency will be able to reach court by public transport in one hour, and that is of great concern for those who have the trauma of having to give evidence after a crime has been committed against them.

[Helen Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman’s powerful point illustrates my argument.

The Law Society has raised serious concerns about the effects that longer, more expensive journey times will have on the justice system for jurors. They will be more likely to find justifiable reasons to postpone their jury service, and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service will have to pay additional costs to compensate them for additional travel costs. The changes will also affect witnesses, many of whom already require a good deal of persuasion and support to attend court, and vulnerable residents who are being taken to court in circumstances where life is already stressful. Such people might find it extremely difficult to make it to court and, as a consequence, to have a fair hearing, because they are not there in person to explain their circumstances.

Courts and Tribunal Services (England and Wales)

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

About 10 years ago, sitting on the Opposition Benches, I made my stammering first attempt to entertain the House with my thoughts in my maiden speech, in which I mentioned my belief in local facilities, particularly mentioning the magistrates court in Newbury, which was under threat. I spoke—I thought eloquently, although others probably did not—rather like the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) just did about the need to resist the sucking out of facilities from smaller communities to larger communities, which is a predominant theme. It is done in the name of efficiency, but it disadvantages people. In that context, with some dismay five years ago I had to fight a battle to defend Newbury court from closure. I am glad to say that that was successful, but, like groundhog day, it has come round again. The court is proposed for closure in this consultation and I and a great many organisations and individuals across west Berkshire have made submissions to it.

I believe that, like many others, the court has been deliberately run down to set it up for closure. The usage figure makes it look like a no-brainer, but a few years ago the court service advertised for a new prisoner escort contract and excluded Newbury court from the contract. Now, no case that has even a scintilla of a chance of the accused being given a custodial sentence can be heard in Newbury court. That is another reason for its reduced use, and we lost the Crown court some years ago. That is just one example of a rather badly run service. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money was spent on building a new custody suite at Newbury, which lies dormant because of those decisions.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister, who is a courteous and decent man and has spent an enormous amount of time talking to me and no doubt others about this decision because he knows that it hurts our local communities. I urge him to consider the points made in response to the consultation. I represent an area with some very rural communities and I think of the victim of crime who has to make the difficult trip to court to give evidence as a witness. I entirely understand my hon. Friend’s assurances about trying to consider new technologies, and in some cases that might be better for individuals, but in others a traumatic experience will be made considerably worse by a long trip to somewhere such as Reading.

[Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)]

One of the problems in Corby and east Northamptonshire is that travelling by public transport from many of the villages is simply impossible. Are there similar concerns in my hon. Friend’s constituency? It costs £80,000 a year to run the court in Corby, but we may well end up spending more on transport for magistrates, witnesses, victims and everybody else.

[Richard Benyon]

I entirely understand my hon. Friend’s point, because communities in west Berkshire will have precisely the same problem.

The courts service is run according to very strict boundaries. One does not have to go more than a mile south of Newbury before one is in Hampshire, and any cases that are relevant to that part of the community, or indeed to east Wiltshire or south Oxfordshire, cannot be heard in Newbury. It seems crazy that we do not have a more flexible, cross-border system—we are talking about the border between Berkshire and Hampshire, not between Serbia and Hungary. We really ought to be smarter and more efficient by looking at cross-border solutions. If the mistake of closing Newbury court is made, I hope that it can at least be mothballed for a time while we look at the reorganisation of our courts service, and the same might go for other Members’ constituencies.

A journalist working on my local newspaper, the Newbury Weekly News, made the following point: “Surely as important as justice being done is justice being seen to be done.” One local journalist has made a speciality of reporting on court affairs in Newbury, and there is simply no way in which that can continue if cases relating to west Berkshire are to be heard in far-off Reading or Maidenhead. Local people will not see cases for crimes committed in their area being heard in their area.

[William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

On the point about local justice being seen to be done, a magistrate put it very succinctly to me—not wanting to sound like a character from “The League of Gentlemen”—when they said, “It is important in order to preserve the long-standing principles of local justice being administered by local people within that local area.” Does that neatly summarise what my hon. Friend is trying to express?

[Richard Benyon]

It really makes sense. There is a bypass around Newbury, which, as some hon. Members might remember, was quite controversial, and we also have Greenham Common and the Atomic Weapons Establishment. Magistrates, including the Prime Minister’s mother, developed a great expertise in dealing with those situations. I hope that we never have those problems again, but we do have issues relating to rural crime, and accidents and crimes on the M4, so local expertise and an understanding of the dynamic of the local area really help.

I understand that the low-hanging fruit in the Ministry of Justice has already been grabbed and that the Minister now has the difficult job of reaching higher. I believe in what the Government are doing and understand the difficulties when Members like me support what they are trying to do economically in general but whinge about the particulars. But in this case I really believe that it is wrong and unjustified, and I can make a very good case—I have done in my response to the consultation, so I will not detain the House with it now.

I have one final point to make. Two weeks ago a case was deferred in Newbury because there were not adequate procedures in place to hear it. It cannot be heard until January. Not only must justice be seen to be done, but justice delayed is justice denied. That is a principle we were all brought up with. I do not believe that this decision is right for Newbury. I believe that it really needs to be looked at again. I hope that the Minister will have the opportunity to make the same judgment when he looks at the consultation responses.

Rural Crime

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I start by referring hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and by saying how glad I am to see the Minister in his place; I look forward to his addressing some of the points we are raising in this important debate. I pay great tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) on securing this debate on an issue that is of great importance to so many of our constituents.

It is for the Minister to answer on behalf of the Government, but the Government have made changes that devolve responsibility for much of these matters away from this place, away from the hands of Ministers and away from Government to police and crime commissioners. I confess to having been relatively agnostic about the creation of those posts when they were first mooted, but the more I look into it, the more I see what they are achieving, particularly in my area. I see the value of electoral accountability on such issues. If police and crime commissioners want to be re-elected by the large number of people who live in rural areas, they will have to address precisely the issues that my hon. Friend raised, if they are not doing so already.

I am pleased to say that Anthony Stansfeld, the police and crime commissioner in the Thames Valley, has made rural crime one of his top three priorities. I am also pleased that police and crime commissioners all across the country, working together on a number of issues, are developing a rural crime initiative. That surely is very welcome and a credit to them working across parties—of course, many of them are of no party at all—and making sure that they are joining up and sharing best practice and tackling rural crime.

My hon. Friend made a good speech, setting out precisely what rural crime is. He made the very good point that it does not accord with the quaint and slightly bucolic view that some might have—through some of our writers, painters and through other forms of culture—about historical areas of rural crime, such as how poaching may have happened for the pot in past years. This is a very serious area of criminality: it is often about the widespread stealing of plant and machinery; it can be about people trafficking; firearms can be involved; and there are many cases in which intimidation is used, not only of the victims or potential victims of crime, but to make people commit crimes. There is increasing evidence in the Traveller community that some people who are not willing participants in criminal activity are more or less forced, by a very few people in that community and elsewhere, into committing acts that they would not otherwise carry out.

It is also important that we understand that crimes that take place in towns are very often carried out by people who do not live in those towns and who travel a long way away from them, or that crimes committed in the countryside are carried out by people who live in towns. We should not assume that this is an isolated issue, or a niche area of criminality that we can deal with on its own. It has to be seen in the context of crime across the piece.

I mentioned Anthony Stansfeld, the police and crime commissioner for the Thames Valley. I have been looking closely at how he, by making rural crime one of his top three priorities in the highly complex area of the Thames Valley, where there are many other pressures on his resources, has approached tackling it.

Little things can make a big difference. The first thing is ensuring that a police officer turns up and responds to every single incident. It sounds strange to say that police officers did not do that in the past, but there was a way of reporting rural crime that often made it seem much more trivial than it actually was. The term “theft from unoccupied premises” immediately makes one think of an allotment shed perhaps when in fact it could be, as my hon. Friend mentioned, a farmer’s store, with large amounts of ammonium nitrate, large pieces of machinery or livestock. Ensuring that we define rural crime is therefore very important.

There is very good news about rural crime. In my area, it has dropped by 20% in one year. That is through a clear reporting system, lots of very good work by police forces and the priority being given to rural crime by the leadership, both at chief constable level and at police and crime commissioner level. If everything else I say is forgotten, this is the really important point, and I am sure that it is one with which the Minister would agree. This is not just about the police tackling the problem; it is about all of us who live in rural areas playing our part. I think that educating landowners, farmers and rural managers about crime and what they can do is very important.

I am particularly interested in the CESAR system—the construction and agricultural equipment security and registration system—which puts transponders and indelible marking on large pieces of machinery or high-value pieces of equipment and ensures, for all the equipment that a farmer buys, whether it is a new pick-up, a large piece of machinery or just a chainsaw, that the serial numbers are gathered and recorded at the start of his ownership of that equipment and stored so that they can be traced. That is important because, as my hon. Friend relayed, there can be cases in which large amounts of equipment are found and the issue is not just returning the equipment to the person to whom it belonged before it was stolen, but establishing a pattern of criminality that can lead to convictions. What we know about many aspects of rural crime is that a very few people are committing a lot of crimes, and if we can feel their collars, crime rates plummet. That has been proved to be effective in my area.

Another way in which we can all play our part is by joining schemes such as the countryside alert system, which 10,000 people are now part of in the Thames Valley. Under that system, we can use technology to help to beat the criminal by keeping people informed about suspicious activity and crimes that are being committed. It is about instantly being able to mobilise a large number of people to be aware of a problem that may be occurring in their area.

I want to touch on the issues of animal welfare that my hon. Friend also mentioned. We should be under no illusions about the fact that many of the activities relating to the theft or killing of wild animals in the context of rural crime are really unpleasant stuff. No one should be under any illusions that there is anything attractive about that activity at all. Gangs of people have caused havoc at times in parts of my constituency by coursing deer. It affects farmers and landowners such as Kirsten Loyd, who informed me of recurring problems on several nights running that involved 4x4s driving on to land, gates being smashed and deer being pulled down by running dogs and often just left. In some cases, they had to be humanely dispatched as a result. On my own property, I have found people coursing hares, from 4x4s, with long dogs, and when they kill the hare, they just drive round it in circles, wrecking the crops and leaving the carcase of the animal. These are not nice people, and if they are challenged, it is very often by one person, and that person is at severe risk of assault. Indeed, we have had circumstances in which firearms have been used in a threatening way.

There is also some good news, however. My hon. Friend talked about the difficulty of getting a fine imposed that means anything—that is a true reflection of the damage, fear and uncertainty that these crimes are causing among rural people, but also of the on-costs from the effects of these crimes. I sometimes have to rack my brains to think of really good things to say about the last Government, but here is one. They passed section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002, which has given the police an invaluable tool in dealing with crimes that would otherwise attract a relatively cursory sentence. It allows them to seize a vehicle that has been used in connection with a crime. The vehicle can then be crushed or sold, but will not be returned to the perpetrator of the crime. It has had an enormous effect in allowing police to tackle some of the criminality in rural areas. I commend that legislation and hope that it is being used properly by police forces up and down the country.

My then neighbouring MP, just across the Thames in Oxford, Boris Johnson, and I, just after I had got elected, both identified a problem of dog theft. Sometimes when we raised it, people would smile or slightly roll their eyes as if that was not a big thing. It is a horrible crime. It deprives people of what are sometimes very valuable—they are certainly valuable to them—companions and working dogs. It particularly involves working dogs—sheepdogs, gundogs and so on—and it continues to be a problem. Dealing with it requires intelligence gathering, an understanding of how important the issue is to our constituents and a coherent approach, right across police forces; it cannot be governed just by the boundaries of the particular area. I am so impressed by the work that has been carried out by many people and organisations that encourage people to have their pets microchipped. There are all sorts of other methods that we can also use to take the battle to the criminal and reduce the risk of these very unpleasant crimes.

In conclusion, we can all play our part. I agree with my hon. Friend: the most depressing thing that we hear as MPs is people saying, “Well, there’s no point in my reporting this.” If people do not report crimes, however trivial—even if it has not been established that a crime has been committed, but there is a suspicion of a crime—we cannot then complain if the police say, “Well, we have no reports of serious criminality in that area. Therefore, we are putting our resources where we know that crimes are being committed.” Everyone has to report crimes.

There are small things that can be done. One might consider putting CCTV in farm buildings where there has been a persistent problem. We need to ensure that we put in the right quality of CCTV, so that it can be used as evidence to secure a conviction. People can spend a lot of money on anti-crime measures that are no good when we look at the product at the end of the day.

Much rural crime, as I have said, is down to a few—sometimes a very few—people who stalk the countryside prepared to steal anything that is not nailed down. They take advantage of the fact that many fewer people are working in the countryside and of the isolation of business premises and some of the places where high-value goods are stored. We need to ensure that rural crime is a priority at policing level, that we continue to offer support through our position in Parliament and the Government, and that we recognise the importance of this issue to our constituents. There can be a sense of siege if this activity is happening night after night in their areas. Only through a combined, partnership effort and this issue being a priority of elected politicians can we ensure that the problem of rural crime ceases to prey on the minds of people who live in rural communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

The figures I was citing from the DEFRA digest were, of course, aggregate figures. Within those figures, individual crime types go up for a number of reasons—not just in rural areas, but generally. Sometimes, the crime rate goes up because it is being better reported, as people think that it is worth doing something about it.

Perhaps now is a convenient time to deal with metal theft, as that is one of the points that the hon. Gentleman asked about. We recognise that it has a huge impact on communities, which is why we have taken a number of actions. We have increased the financial penalties and banned cash payments. We have supported targeted enforcement through the Government-funded national metal theft task force, which has led to a fall in metal theft. The Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013 further tightened the net around rogue dealers who flout rules. The task force is funded until September 2014. We have spent £5 million supporting it to give sufficient time for the reforms to become well established.

The statistics show that there has been a decline in metal theft in each quarter of 2012-13. There was a 40% fall between April-June 2012 and January-March 2013. I hope that the hon. Gentleman and others can take that as some reassurance that effective action can lead to falls in crimes that are often concentrated in rural areas.

Another important point is greater information and transparency. We have the police and crime commissioners who hold the forces to account, but the public need to be able, in an informed way, to hold PCCs to account and decide whether to re-elect them. That is why we are providing more local information about crime and what the police have done in response to it. That information is regularly updated on police.uk, the national crime and policing web portal, which provides the public, including those who live in rural communities, with local information about crime and antisocial behaviour. On police.uk, the information is presented clearly and concisely, allowing the public to access it in a useful way.

Hon. Members on both sides have made the point that some PCCs have prioritised rural crime, which is, of course, evidence of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury—that having elected local officials means that they have to reflect what local people want. If they are representing an area with a significant rural population, it would be sensible for them to reflect that, and several of them have. For example, in north Wales the PCC has put in place a rural crime plan, which focuses on engaging with the rural community and addressing their concerns, including theft of equipment and livestock from rural areas. The force is providing a presence at farmers’ markets, and a rural crime team has been created.

As has already been mentioned, the PCC in Suffolk has introduced a dedicated team of special constables, which seems to be the sort of innovative response that we would all welcome. Similarly, we have already heard about the PCC in the Thames valley and the introduction of the Country Watch messaging system, which I am glad to hear from my hon. Friend is proving effective.

A lot is happening at the local level, but a lot is also happening at the national level. We have the UK national wildlife crime unit, a police unit that assists in the prevention and detection of wildlife crime by obtaining and disseminating intelligence from a wide range of organisations. It directly assists law enforcement agencies in investigating wildlife crime. Some of its priorities relate to international crime and the enforcement of the convention on international trade in endangered species, but other priorities are some of the things that we have been discussing today—including poaching, which is one of the specific priorities of the unit.

The unit is jointly funded; this goes back to the point that I made to the hon. Member for Ogmore at the start. The Home Office provides some funding for the NWCU and will continue to throughout the period of the spending settlement. DEFRA provides the same amount of funding for the unit over the next two years.

[Richard Benyon]

My message to the Minister is: long may both Departments continue to do so. Some of the crimes that a police constable comes across in the course of his work may be unusual. To have that centre of knowledge to whom he can go, who will say to him, “Yes, you can prosecute this person under this piece of legislation in this way” is absolutely invaluable. Also, it is what the unit does through the partnership against wildlife crime that is of such value to the whole wider aspect.