Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of introducing multi-year funding for the Community Security Trust.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
In March 2023, the Home Secretary announced the continuation of the Jewish Community Protective Security (JCPS) Grant, which provides security to Jewish schools, synagogues and other community sites. The JCPS Grant is managed on behalf of the Home Office by the Community Security Trust.
In response to the Israel/Hamas conflict and reports of increased incidents of antisemitism in the UK, the Prime Minister announced additional funding of £3 million, bringing total funding for CST in 2023/24 to £18 million. The Chancellor’s Autumn Statement confirmed that protective security funding for the Jewish community will be maintained at £18 million in 2024/25.
We continue to keep protective security funding mechanisms for faith communities under review, and any arrangements for future years will be announced in due course.
The Government is also investing up to a further £7 million over the next three years for organisations like the Holocaust Educational Trust to help tackle antisemitism. This funding will ensure support is in place for schools and universities to understand, recognise, and deal with antisemitism effectively.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment he has made of the potential feasibility of setting up a dedicated unit to focus on disrupting (a) Bitmasks and (b) other online platforms that have the potential to spread (i) antisemitism and (ii) radicalisation.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
The Online Safety Act recently received Royal Assent. Under the Online Safety Act tech companies will be accountable to an independent regulator, Ofcom, to keep their users safe. Platforms will be required to take action to prevent the proliferation of illegal content online, including terrorist content, and ensure their services are not used for offending. This means that companies will need to mitigate the risk that their services are used for illegal activity or to share illegal content. Ofcom will have a tough suite of enforcement powers to use against companies who fail to fulfil their duties.
The Home Office builds relationships with a range of online platforms to tackle online harms including to reduce the availability and accessibility of radicalising content online. It would not be appropriate to comment on the specific status of our relationships with individual companies at this time.
The Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) identifies, assesses and refers online content that is in breach of UK terrorism legislation to tech companies for removal, in accordance with platforms’ terms and conditions.
The Government stays abreast of developments in technology and the way in which technology is exploited for harm, in order to adapt Government’s approach to tackling online harms, where appropriate.
This Government is clear that all forms of hate crime, including antisemitism, are completely unacceptable and we are committed to tackling these abhorrent offences. The Government is clear that online offending is as serious as offline offending, which is why we fund the National Online Hate Crime Hub, a central capability designed to support individual local police forces in dealing with online hate crime.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he plans to publish a Hate Crime Action Plan.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
We will not be publishing a new Hate Crime Strategy because the Government is focussed on improving the police response to all crime. This approach represents the best use of public money, and the Government remains committed to continuing to protect all communities from crime. We expect the police to investigate these abhorrent offences and make sure the cowards who commit them feel the full force of the law.
Our absolute priority is to get more police onto our streets, cut crime, protect the public and bring more criminals to justice. We are supporting police by providing them with the resources they need. This has included the recruitment of 20,000 additional police officers by March 2023.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment he has made of the implications for his Department's policies of recent statistics from Community Security Trust on the levels of antisemitism incidents since 7 October 2023; and what steps he is taking to help protect the safety of the Jewish community.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
The Government utterly condemns the abhorrent spike in anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crime that has been seen as a result of the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
This Government is committed to protecting the right of individuals to freely practise their religion at their chosen place of worship, and to making our streets and communities safer. The Government and police regularly review potential threats to ensure that everything is done to protect communities from hate crime.
Earlier this year, the Home Secretary established the Jewish Community Crime, Policing and Security Taskforce. This group brings together Government, law enforcement and the UK Jewish community (represented by the Community Security Trust (CST)) to discuss issues of safety and security concern to the community, and what can be done to ensure instances of antisemitism are comprehensively investigated and prosecuted.
We are continuing to support the police to ensure they have the resources and tools required to tackle any incidents relating to the ongoing conflict. Where people incite racial or religious hatred or where people’s conduct is threatening, abusive or disorderly and causes harassment, alarm or distress to others, we expect the police to take action to ensure perpetrators can be brought to justice.
In March 2023, the Home Secretary announced the continuation of the Jewish Community Protective Security Grant (JCPSG) and increased funding for 2023/24 by £1 million, to a total of £15 million. The JCPSG provides protective security measures (such as guarding, CCTV and alarm systems) at Jewish schools and other Jewish community sites. The Grant is managed on behalf of the Home Office by CST.
In response to the conflict and reports of increased incidents of antisemitism in the UK, the Prime Minister has announced additional funding of £3 million for CST to provide additional security at Jewish schools, synagogues and other Jewish Community sites. This brings the total funding for CST in FY2023/24 to £18 million. We continue to work closely with CST on how best to respond to live incidents that affect the Jewish communities in the UK.
More broadly, the Government continues to fund True Vision, an online hate crime reporting portal, designed so that victims of hate crime do not have to visit a police station to report. We also continue to fund the National Online Hate Crime Hub, a central capability designed to support individual local police forces in dealing with online hate crime. The Hub provides expert advice to police forces to support them in investigating these offences.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department has taken to provide additional resources to police forces to support target hardening measures at (a) community spaces and (b) places of worship.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
This Government is committed to making our streets and communities safer.
On 31 January, the Government confirmed a total police funding settlement of up to £17.2 billion in 2023/24, an increase of up to £313.8 million when compared to 2022/23. As part of this, funding for Counter Terrorism Policing was set at over £1 billion and covers a range of activity, including in relation to protective security.
In addition, the Police and Crime Commissioners have been allocated £42 million through the latest fifth round of the Safer Streets Fund to support interventions that will make our streets safer. This includes funding for target hardening measures in public spaces – such as CCTV, street lighting and alley-gating – as well as improved home security measures for properties at risk of (repeat) burglary.
There are also freely available resources to local forces, along with local authorities and businesses, through the ProtectUK platform and from the National Protective Security Authority (NPSA).
On top of this police funding, the Home Office is providing up to £46 million to protect faith communities in 2023/24. This includes £18 million through the Jewish Community Protective Security Grant, £24.5 million through the new Protective Security for Mosques scheme and a scheme for Muslim faith schools, and £3.5 million for the places of worship of other (non-Muslim and non-Jewish) faiths.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers are housed at Catterick Garrison.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
Work is ongoing to bring forward accommodation at Catterick Garrison as part of wider efforts to relieve pressure on the asylum system. The use of hotels is inappropriate for the accommodation of asylum seekers. That’s why the Government is standing up large scale sites to bring alive more suitable forms of accommodation and relieve the cost pressures to the taxpayer of using hotels.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she made of the effectiveness of the arrangements to perform real-time security checks with EU countries.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
The UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement provides a comprehensive package of capabilities that ensures we can work with counterparts across Europe to tackle crime and terrorism, protecting the public and bringing criminals to justice.
The UK and EU Member States routinely exchange information on persons of interest, including missing and wanted individuals, and on lost and stolen documents using the INTERPOL system. There is an automated upload of incoming INTERPOL circulations to UK domestic systems. Information is available via policing systems within minutes of receipt and is available at the border within 24 hours. If the National Crime Agency is notified a case is urgent, then specific alerts can be uploaded to domestic systems more rapidly.
Delivery of technical capabilities through the International Law Enforcement Alerts Platform (I-LEAP) is further enhancing the UK’s connectivity to INTERPOL by providing UK law enforcement with real-time access to INTERPOL nominal data (people) and objects of interest (stolen motor vehicles; stolen, lost and fraudulent travel documents).
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when her Department plans to respond to the Home Affairs Select Committee's report entitled Draft Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill, HC 1359, published 27 July 2023.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
We published the draft Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill on 2 May 2023. As you will be aware, the draft Bill has undertaken pre-legislative scrutiny through the Home Affairs Select Committee who published their report on 27 July.
We thank the committee for their diligent review of the draft measures and for the evidence sessions they hosted. The Government is carefully considering its response, which will be provided in due course.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to deploy staff with training on supporting people affected by terrorism within the Criminal Injuries and Compensation Authority.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
While no amount of compensation can make up for the ordeal suffered by victims of terrorism, it is right survivors get the support they need including through the publicly funded Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme that has paid out more than £173 million to victims of violent crime in the last year alone.
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA), who also administer the Victims of Overseas Terrorism Compensation Scheme (VOCTS), have a designated team to handle applications made due to terrorist incidents, and the team works with relevant authorities to gather the information required to establish eligibility and assess the claims made, as quickly as possible after they are received.
All staff have the right level of scheme training to manage applications from victims and their loved ones. It has invested in trauma-informed training and practice and continues to work with specialist organisations who work closely with victims to ensure victims get the support needed.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he is taking steps to prohibit the promotion of AI chatbots that have been (a) programmed and (b) taught through self-learning to encourage users to commit terrorist acts.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
We set out our regulatory approach in the AI Regulation White Paper, published in March 2023. The framework set out in the AI regulation White Paper aims to promote innovation while ensuring the government can adapt and respond proactively and coherently to the risks and opportunities that emerge as AI technology develops at pace. The upcoming PM-led AI Safety Summit, taking place on 1st & 2nd November 2023, will bring together major tech companies with leaders from around the world, to ensure the safe and reliable development and use of AI globally.
Rapid work is underway across government to deepen our understanding of the risks and to promote effective safety features through the lifecycle of AI products. We are carefully considering the impact that AI may have on different crime types including terrorism. The government is firmly committed to improving our understanding and tackling Generative AI technologies’ impact on radicalisation. This includes engaging with the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation.
The Home Office engages regularly with many companies developing Generative AI technologies on a range of critical public safety issues, including terrorism and radicalisation, to promote online safety-by-design. We will continue to develop safeguards and mitigations, working closely with international partners, civil society and academia, and we look forward to the outcomes of the AI Safety Summit in accelerating this important work.