Unaccompanied Asylum-seeking Children

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary if she will make a statement on what steps she is taking to find missing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and to keep them safe.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

The rise in small boat crossings has placed a severe strain on the asylum accommodation system. We have had no alternative but to temporarily use specialist hotels to give some unaccompanied minors a roof over their heads while local authority accommodation is found. We take our safeguarding responsibilities extremely seriously and we have procedures in place to ensure all children are accommodated as safely as possible while in those hotels. This work is led on site by personnel providing 24/7 supervision, with support from teams of social workers and nurses. Staff, including contractors, receive briefings and guidance on how to safeguard minors, while all children receive a welfare interview, which includes questions designed to identify potential indicators of trafficking or safeguarding risks. The movements of under-18s in and out of hotels are monitored and recorded, and they are accompanied by social workers when attending organised activities.

We have no power to detain unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in these settings and we know some do go missing. Over 4,600 unaccompanied children have been accommodated in hotels since July 2021. There have been 440 missing occurrences and 200 children remain missing, 13 of whom are under 16 years of age and only one of whom is female.

When any child goes missing, a multi-agency missing persons protocol is mobilised alongside the police and the relevant local authority to establish their whereabouts and to ensure they are safe. Many of those who have gone missing are subsequently traced and located. Of the unaccompanied asylum-seeking children still missing, 88% are Albanian nationals, with the remaining 12% from Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Vietnam, Pakistan and Turkey.

As I have made clear repeatedly, we must end the use of hotels as soon as possible. We are providing local authorities with children’s services with £15,000 for eligible young people they take into their care from a dedicated UASC—unaccompanied asylum-seeking children—hotel, or the reception and safe care service in Kent.

I fully understand the interest of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), and indeed the whole House, in this issue and I am grateful for the opportunity to address it. I assure the House that safeguarding concerns are, and will remain, a priority for me and for my Department as we deliver the broader reforms that are so desperately needed to ensure we have a fair and effective asylum system that works in the interests of the British people.

[Caroline Lucas]

This is horrific. Vulnerable children are being dumped by the Home Office, scores of them are going missing, and I can tell the Minister that there is nothing “specialist” about these hotels. We are not asking him to detain children; we are asking the Home Office to apply some basic safeguarding so that we can keep them safe. Does he know how many have been kidnapped, trafficked, put into forced labour—where are they living, are they allowed to leave, are they in school? He should know because the Home Office is running these hotels. It has told me it is commissioning everything from social work to security, but it is still unclear whether it is prepared to take legal as well as practical responsibility.

Meanwhile, these children are in legal limbo. I was told before Christmas that Government lawyers were deliberating over their ultimate legal responsibility. We need to know the outcome today: what is it? We need to know why successive Home Secretaries have played into the hands of criminal gangs.

The Minister will talk of new money being given to local authorities, but where will they get the foster care capacity, which he knows is in seriously short supply? Brighton and Hove City Council has been raising concerns about the dangerous practice of using these hotels for 18 months, and as the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) has made clear on many occasions—I pay credit to him for his tireless work on this—it was entirely foreseeable that children were at risk of being snatched, abducted and coerced by criminals.

Has the Minister taken up offers of help from charities working with children? What is the response to the migration watchdog’s finding that some staff in these hotels were not DBS—disclosure and barring service—checked? What role is the Children’s Commissioner playing? Why is not Ofsted inspecting these hotels regularly? Will he commit to publishing regular data on missing children—how long they have been missing, whether they are still missing, when they went missing? Where is the special operation to find the missing children? This feels like the plight of the girls in Rotherham who were treated like they did not matter and, frankly, it is sickening. Lastly, the use of these hotels must stop—when will that actually happen?

The staggering complacency and incompetence from the Home Office are shameful. We need immediate answers and an urgent investigation, and we need to ask how many more children are going to go missing before we see some action.

[Robert Jenrick]

If the hon. Lady has not visited the hotel in her constituency, or indeed in her neighbouring constituency, I would be happy to organise that. I spoke with the chief executive and director of children’s services of Brighton and Hove City Council yesterday to ask for their reflections on the relationship with the Home Office and the management of the hotel. We have a good relationship with that council and I want to ensure that that continues.

As regards the level of support provided in that hotel, and indeed others elsewhere in the country, it is significant. On any given day, there will be a significant security presence at the hotel. Those security guards are there to protect the staff and the minors and to raise any suspicious activity immediately with the local police. I have been assured that that does happen in Sussex. A number of social workers are on site 24/7. There are also nurses on site and team leaders to manage the site appropriately. So there is a significant specialist team provided in each of these hotels to ensure that the young people present are properly looked after.

The report by the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration in October last year—I believe that Ofsted was involved in the inspection—did find unanimously that the young people reported that they felt safe, happy and treated with respect. Now, that does not mean that we have any cause to be complacent, because it is extremely concerning if young people are leaving these accommodation settings and not being found. I have been told that any young person leaving one of these hotels and not returning is treated in exactly the same way as any young person of any nationality or immigration status who goes missing anywhere else in the country and that the police follow up as robustly as they would in any other circumstances. That is quite right, because we have a responsibility to any minor, regardless of why they are here in the United Kingdom.

Working with police forces and local authorities, we have created a new protocol, known as “missing after reasonable steps”, in which further action is taken to find missing young people. That has had significant success: I am told that it has led to a 36% reduction in the number of missing people occurrences. We will take further steps, as required, to ensure that young people are safe in these hotels and not unduly preyed on by the evil people smuggling gangs that perpetuate the trade.

The key task ahead of us—other than deterring people from making dangerous crossings in the first place, of course—is to ensure that these young people are swiftly moved out of hotels, as the hon. Lady rightly said, and into more appropriate settings in local authorities. Since being in position I have reviewed the offer that we have for local authorities and significantly enhanced it. From next month—this has already been announced—any local authority will receive a one-off initial £15,000 payment for taking a young person from one of these hotels into their care in addition to the annual payment of about £50,000 per person. That is a significant increase in the amount of financial support available to local authorities.

The hon. Lady is right to say that money is not the only barrier to local authorities, because there are significant capacity issues including a lack of foster carers, a lack of trained social workers and a lack of local authority children’s home places. Those are issues that the Department for Education is seeking to address through its care review. The best thing that any of us can do as constituency Members of Parliament who care about this issue is speak to our local authorities and ask them whether they can find extra capacity to take more young people through the national transfer scheme so that we can close these hotels or, at least, reduce reliance on them as quickly as possible.

Migration and Economic Development

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

Processing asylum claims is one core element of meeting the challenge more broadly. That is why it is right that we are increasing the number of caseworkers, increasing their specialism and streamlining the process. Ultimately, we want to bear down on the number of people waiting for a decision from the Home Office.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The Home Secretary says that she is taking a deterrent approach, but it is plain that today’s judgment cannot and will not function as a so-called deterrent. The whole point of this vile policy of expelling asylum seekers to Rwanda is that expulsion was supposed to happen automatically and rapidly for anyone without a prior permission to come here via a refugee scheme. However, today’s High Court judgment found that each and every individual case must be assessed first, so there will be nothing automatic about it, and under this Government there will be nothing rapid about it either. Will the Home Secretary therefore put a permanent end to this useless cruelty, provide safe and legal routes, and ensure that such routes actually function? The one from Afghanistan currently does not.

Will the Home Secretary also stop saying that this policy has the support of the British people? According to a recent YouGov poll, just 10% of them support it. The British people are better than this vile British Government.

[Suella Braverman]

I think the reality is that we are supported in taking control of our borders. That was reflected in both the 2016 referendum and the 2019 general election. We have made it clear that we will do whatever it takes to ensure that we make progress on stopping illegal migration, bring an end to this lethal journey, and, ultimately, restore integrity to our immigration system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I do not recognise anything that the hon. Lady just said. The problem with the current system is that it is too complicated and too bureaucratic. We want to simplify that, speed up those decisions and make sure that the teams are more productive. To come back to her first point, the Scottish Government are refusing to take any of the asylum seekers who are arriving in the UK on small boats, which is not right. There is a widening gulf between the actions of the Scottish Government and their rhetoric, which I ask her to consider.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

5. What steps she is taking to improve the asylum system.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman)]

We are taking immediate action to accelerate decision making and improve our asylum system by streamlining and modernising it, including by shortening interviews, removing unnecessary interviews, making the guidance more accessible, and dealing with cases more swiftly when they can be certified as manifestly unfounded.

[Caroline Lucas]

The Home Office is placing vulnerable, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hotels in local authority areas. It is directly commissioning those hotels and other services, because it knows that local authorities do not have the funding or capacity required. Will the Home Secretary finally admit that these vulnerable children are legally the Home Office’s responsibility, so that they are not left in legal limbo? Will she ensure that her Department takes a strategic approach that addresses the placement shortage, rather than its current ad hoc approach, and will she ensure that the police do all that they can to keep searching for those children who have gone missing and have yet to be relocated?

[Suella Braverman]

We take very seriously the position of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children—and indeed of children, full stop. Safeguarding them is of the utmost importance to all authorities, and to the Home Office, when it comes to decision making. We will shortly look at the funding arrangement for local authorities’ support of these children, so that their needs are properly met.

Public Order Bill

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 18th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I advise the House that I will be calling Anne McLaughlin to start the wind-ups no later than 4.12 pm, but she can be called earlier. The debate on Report must finish at 4.37 pm.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Frankly, there is so much wrong with the Bill that it is difficult to know where to start. It basically needs a line striking through the vast majority of it, and I am therefore pleased to support the amendments tabled by the hon. Members for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) and for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) seeking to do exactly that.

Peaceful protest is a fundamental right protected in international law, and this Bill is just the latest in a concerted attack on our rights by this dangerous and populist Government. It is a draconian rehash of measures resoundingly voted down just months ago. As I have said previously in this House, the Government are pursuing policies and legislation that are deeply dangerous in the threat they pose to our fundamental and universally acknowledged human rights. People who vote in favour of this Bill tonight need to be fully aware and honest about what they are endorsing and what is occurring on our watch.

Defending the right to peaceful protest matters, especially to me, because it is one of the time-honoured ways in which people from all walks of life have sought to protect our natural world, and it is particularly critical right now. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) spoke eloquently about the wider context of austerity and economic suffering that so many of our constituents are facing. I want to widen that context and talk about the attack, frankly, that Ministers are unleashing on policies to protect nature, from issuing new oil and gas licences and lifting the moratorium on fracking to scrapping 570 laws that make up the bedrock of environmental regulation in the UK, covering water quality, wildlife havens, clean air and much else.

Ministers may hide behind endless repetitions of their promise to halt the decline of nature by 2030, but their actions are taking us in precisely the opposite direction. Those who oppose this direction of travel must have the right to take action themselves, and they must have the right to protest. Rather than plunging more and more people into the criminal justice system, the Home Office could be doing all manner of much more useful things, including properly supporting and resourcing community policing.

We should not be giving the Government the ability to create new public order offences as and when they choose, yet that is precisely the combined effect of new clauses 7 and 8. As colleagues will know, injunctions may usually be applied for only by affected parties. New clause 7, however, allows the Secretary of State to apply for a so-called precautionary injunction against people who might go on a protest or who might carry out protest-related activities. This might occur if there is reasonable belief that particular activities are likely to cause serious disruption to key national infrastructure or access to essential goods and services.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

In all honesty, it is worth wondering whether Welsh language rights would exist at all today if measures proposed by the Government had existed in 1963 when Cymdeithas yr Iaith protesters closed Trefechan bridge—Pont Trefechan—in Aberystwyth. Their act of peaceful civil disobedience led to no arrests, but was broadcast across Wales. Indeed, the King’s Welsh language tutor, Tedi Millward, was among the protesters. Does the hon. Member agree that, almost 60 years later, the Secretary of State and the Welsh Government should be considering the specific impact on Wales of these justice changes and how that in turn could have had a very bad result in terms of the Welsh language had it been enacted 60 years ago?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the right hon. Member for her powerful contribution with which I entirely agree.

I was just explaining about the combined effect of new clauses 7 and 8. New clause 7, crucially, allows the Government to propose that the Secretary of State be allowed themselves to apply for an injunction despite not being affected or being a party in the normal sense. Added to that is the effect of new clause 8, which gives the Secretary of State another new power, namely to apply to the court to attach a power of arrest and of remand to injunctions granted under new clause 7.

Let us imagine what that could look like in practice. Let us suppose that the Government set their sights on a group of countryside ramblers planning a walk headed in the direction of a nature reserve that is home to a protected species and about to be dug up by investment zone bulldozers. The Secretary of State might decide that there is a risk that the ramblers will link hands to try to close down a major bridge that is required for vehicle access to the nature reserve. The Government might then apply for an injunction to stop the walk and for the power to arrest anyone who breaches that injunction and goes rambling in the countryside—regardless of their intentions. If successful, a new public order offence will have effectively been created on the basis of potential disruption of key national infrastructure, and the ramblers concerned will be at risk of being fined or even imprisoned. I do not think that it is an over-exaggeration to call such powers Orwellian. They are anti-freedom, anti-human rights and anti-democratic.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend is making an absolutely excellent speech. The right to roam would not have happened without the mass trespass at Kinder Scout in the 1930s. We owe our liberties to those who took risks by demonstrating in the first place. Every Member of this House has benefited from those liberties that came about as a result of the risks that others took.

[Caroline Lucas]

Do I agree? Yes, I do. The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. As someone who took part in some recreations of that trespass on Kinder Scout earlier this year, I could not agree with him more about the importance of people taking that action.

It is also important to note that while existing and expansive civil injunctions are being used with growing and alarming frequency to clamp down on direct action tactics, with a wider, chilling effect on the right to protest, the majority of civil injunctions do not give the police powers of arrest. I have repeatedly warned that the Government’s approach overall amounts to a dangerous politicising of policing, and these two new clauses are cut from exactly the same cloth. Moreover, a seemingly ideological determination to stop people standing up for what they believe in is woven through every clause of this Bill.

In my remaining time, I want to speak specifically against serious disruption prevention orders and in favour of the amendments to remove them. On Second Reading, I set out my objection to these new civil orders and said that they might more accurately be called “sinister disproportionate political orders”. Nothing I have heard since then has persuaded me otherwise.

The Government want to be able to impose such orders on individuals who have participated in at least two protests within a five-year period, whether or not they have actually been convicted of any crime. That is a massive expansion of police powers. Furthermore, the range of activities that could result in someone being given an SDPO is extremely broad. It includes actions that would not themselves be criminal but for the creation of the new, widely-drawn offences in the Bill. The threshold is so low as to be laughable, were the consequences not so grave. The conditions for imposing an SDPO include activities related to a protest that might—might—cause serious disruption to two or more people. The Bill is a massive clampdown on our civil liberties and we have to oppose it.

Finally, I wish to put on record my support for the new clauses of the hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), and for new clause 11, which has been much discussed already this afternoon. I also want to say a few last words about new clauses 13 and 14, which I support because they are consistent with so much of the work that has been done over many years to make misogyny a hate crime and to end violence against women and girls. Sexual harassment is still at epidemic proportions. Women are disproportionately subjected to harassment, abuse and intimidation every day. Those offences are still not properly addressed by the police or the criminal justice system.

New clauses 13 and 14 would bring sentencing for harassment offences motivated by the sex of the victim in line with the approach already followed for offences motivated by race or religious identity. Crucially, they do not create any new public order offences or make anything illegal that is not already illegal; rather, they seek to ensure a serious response from the police and the courts. I hope that, in turn, harsher sentencing for those hate crimes would act as a deterrent and encourage women to report sex-based harassment, confident that they will be taken more seriously than at present.

Some 97% of women under the age of 25 have experienced sexual harassment in a public space—a huge number. There is no room for complacency. If we want to tackle hate crime against women, we must support the changes set out in new clauses 13 and 14.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

In introducing new clause 11, the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) is merely picking up the baton from amendments originally sponsored by the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq), who has tried to bring these plans forward three times already since 2020. It will come as no surprise that I rise to speak against the new clause or that our party will vote against it. It is not needed now for the same reasons it was not needed on those occasions.

We already have laws on the statute book to prevent harassment and maintain public order, including laws in place to ensure that women are not harassed or intimidated outside abortion clinics. Therefore, the new clause is simply unnecessary. The law gives the police the powers they need to maintain public order, to intervene if demonstrations cause serious disruption and to tackle threatening or abusive behaviour that may intimidate women.

In the vast majority of cases, there is no evidence that hospitals and abortion clinics are affected by protesters, so a blanket ban is an unnecessary and disproportionate response, especially when the police can protect women through other lawful means. The police already have the tools they need to protect women. There is no evidence of the scale of harassment that the hon. Member for Walthamstow and others in this House have referred to. Therefore, I repeat, the new clause is not necessary. It would risk unintended consequences for freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and it would be bad for women.

Many women have been helped by volunteers outside abortion clinics. The right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) referred to Alina Dulgheriu, who wrote last week about her experience and how a lady helped her outside an abortion clinic. I will not repeat the story, but she explained that her

“beautiful daughter would not be here today”

without support from a volunteer handing out a leaflet outside the clinic.

Another mother, who is happy for her testimony to be shared with parliamentarians but does not want her name shared because of fears of retaliation from pro-choice campaigners, explained that she was “under immense pressure” to go through with her abortion, but on her way into the abortion clinic a woman handed her a leaflet and simply said that she was there if she needed her. Her conversation with that woman gave her the support and confidence she needed to keep her baby.

That mother further recounted:

“The potential introduction of buffer zones is a really bad idea because women like me, what would they do then? You know, not every woman that walks into those clinics actually wants to go through with the termination. There’s immense pressure, maybe they don’t have financial means to support themselves or their baby, or they feel like there’s no alternatives. These people offer alternatives.”

She describes her daughter as

“an amazing, perfect little girl”

and the love of her life. She shared her testimony because she wants MPs advocating for buffer zones to realise that her daughter would not be alive today if they had had their way. Buffer zones would deprive many other women who do not want to abort their babies but perhaps feel they have no other choice of the same support that these two who have bravely shared their stories received.

Before I conclude, there are a number of other points I want to make. Under this new clause, as drafted, it would be a crime to offer help to those women who ideally would like to continue with the pregnancy but cannot, due to economic circumstances. That is just abhorrent. The new clause would criminalise anyone making such an offer regardless of how they went about it or their views on abortion. How is that pro-choice?

--- Later in debate ---

[Suella Braverman]

I will make progress, I am afraid.

No Government should fail in their duty to protect their citizens from such abuse, and this Government will always put the law-abiding majority first. In a democracy, we make policy through civilised debate and at the ballot box, not through mob rule and not by visiting chaos and misery on our fellow citizens.

[Caroline Lucas]

Will the Home Secretary give way?

[Suella Braverman]

I am afraid I do not have much time.

When I was the Attorney General, I went to court to establish that it is not a human right to commit criminal damage. The Court of Appeal agreed with me in the Colston statue case that serious and violent disorder crosses a line when it comes to freedom of expression. That is common sense to the law-abiding majority.

Since 1 October alone, the Metropolitan police have made over 450 arrests linked to Just Stop Oil, and I welcome this, but more must be done. That is why I welcome the fact that, today, Transport for London has succeeded in securing an injunction to protect key parts of the London roads network. That is an important step forward in the fight against extremists. However, these resources are vital and precious, and this has drained approximately 2,000 officer days at the Met already. Those are resources that are not dealing with knife crime and are not dealing with violence against women and girls.

I am afraid to say—and I will come to a close soon—that that is why it was a central purpose of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, now an Act, to properly empower the police in face of the protests, yet Opposition Members voted against it. Had Opposition Members in the other place not blocked these measures when they were in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the police would have already had many of the powers in this Bill and the British people would not have been put through this grief. Yes, I am afraid that it is the Labour party, the Lib Dems, the coalition of chaos, the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati and, dare I say, the anti-growth coalition that we have to thank for the disruption we are seeing on our roads today. I urge Opposition MPs and Members of the other place to take this second chance, do the right thing, respect the rights of the law-abiding majority and support this Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

It is welcome that the incoming commissioner has a 100-day plan. As my hon. Friend set out, the fact is that the Mayor has 3,000 new officers in London over and above what he had previously as a result of the uplift, and his resources are up by £164 million compared with 2021-22. The bottom line is that he has the resources to get on and do it and it is time for the Mayor to show up and deliver.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Priti Patel)]

Since I became Home Secretary in 2019 I have pursued the people’s priorities: backed the police with a record £17 billion; expanded stop-and-search powers; better equipped the police; and introduced a police uplift programme that is well on the way to putting in place 20,000 additional police officers. Harper’s law is in place, as is the police covenant and the support the police need to make our streets, transport network and our public safe both publicly and online. We have taken back control with a new plan for immigration that rewards talent, welcomes refugees, allows EU citizens to settle here, makes it easier to remove foreign national offenders, attracts businesses and deals with the issue of people smugglers.

I have also overhauled the Windrush compensation scheme and fixed the outdated nationality laws, supported law enforcement and the security services in fighting terrorism, including through the superb National Security Bill, and worked with our Five Eyes partners, the G7 and our international allies. In addition, we have collectively been combating the evils of violence against women and girls and changing the laws on trespass. But keeping our citizens safe is the Government’s first duty and it has been my privilege to do so, serving in this Government but also in my service to our country.

[Caroline Lucas]

This Government are planning to remove refugees to Rwanda who sought sanctuary in the UK from torture and trafficking. This is a new and despicable low even from this Home Office. Can the Home Secretary confirm whether she has read the medical analysis from the charity Medical Justice, and will she find some moral backbone, immediately release from indefinite immigration detention all those targeted with removal to Rwanda and finally abandon this shameful policy?

[Priti Patel]

Absolutely not, because the immoral aspect is the role of people smugglers and the criminal trade that facilitates people smuggling. Not only is the migration and economic development partnership the first of its kind, but it is being looked at by other countries around the world. Our processes are not only legitimate but show that a deterrent factor can be achieved through this policy. It is absolutely right that we ensure that people are detained on the basis that they will be removed to Rwanda at the soonest possible opportunity.

Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My right hon. Friend is trying to tempt me. He will know my own full-hearted views on taking back control, but also on the need for controlled migration, which is at the heart of the work the Government are bringing forward. With that, of course, we must build on our Brexit opportunities, which quite frankly, as we keep learning day in, day out, the Labour party wants to completely destroy: it wants to take us back into the EU.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The Home Secretary has the gall to talk about a moral response to this situation. The moral response would be to provide safe and legal routes for those people who are exercising their legal right—their legal right—to seek asylum. The Government do not even have a basic monitoring and safety process in place for this ugly policy. The monitoring committee promised in their memorandum of under-standing with Rwanda is still not going to be set up for several months. She is not even exercising the most basic care. Is that because she knows full well that, if she did, no decent committee or procedure would ever agree to trade refugees in this despicable way?

[Priti Patel]

I want to come back to the grotesque mis-characterisation of the country in question, Rwanda. It is a shame and a stain, actually.

[Caroline Lucas]

I haven’t said anything about Rwanda.

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady may like to read the country report, and the work that has been done in country and in terms of the monitoring committee. That work is actually taking place and we have had officials in country for weeks and weeks in the two months, not several months, since we made this announcement.

Public Order Bill

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

This is a deeply dangerous Bill, and I am pleased to support the reasoned amendments. The measures in the Bill represent a fresh outright attack on our fundamental rights. Indeed, as others have said, the human rights organisation Liberty has called it a

“staggering escalation of the Government’s clampdown on dissent.”

We are in the grip of multiple crises: a cost of living scandal that is pushing millions of households into fuel and food poverty; a war in Ukraine with disastrous consequences; and the accelerating climate and nature emergencies. What we need at this critical juncture is more democracy, not less—not a ban on our constituents participating in certain protests, not subjecting them to 24-hour GPS monitoring for the crime of disagreeing with the Government, and not barring them from participation in public life.

Today I want to focus on serious disruption prevention orders. I will also touch on stop and search, and the creation of new offences. Serious disruption prevention orders are a form of banning order that might more accurately be called “sinister disproportionate political orders”. They are sinister because the idea that someone can be banned from attending a protest for up to two years simply because they have participated in at least two previous protests within a five-year period is nothing short of Orwellian.

People do not need to have been convicted of a crime to be subject to an order. They just need to have dared to exercise the right to take part in a peaceful protest: dared to have attended rallies against Brexit; dared to have marched against going to war; dared to have held our children’s hands as they went on climate strike. How will the police know whether someone falls into that category? How will they know that someone is engaged in other activities that the Bill deems unlawful, such as buying a bike lock or painting a banner? Thanks to drastically expanded surveillance powers, of course, about which I will say more shortly.

The world was rightly outraged by footage of peaceful protestors in Russia being bundled into police vans and silenced for opposing Putin’s war in Ukraine. Make no mistake, this clampdown on British citizens is cut from the same cloth. I will spell it out: an SDPO would completely remove someone’s right to attend a protest, and therefore must be resisted by any right-thinking person who values our democracy.

Proposals to impose sinister banning orders are nothing new, and have time and again been labelled disproportionate. In response to a previous iteration of such orders, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services, and even the Home Office, issued the same warning about their impact on people’s ability to take part in protest. Her Majesty’s inspectorate stated:

“It is difficult to envisage a case where less intrusive measures could not be taken to address the risk that an individual poses, and where a court would therefore accept that it was proportionate to impose a banning order.”

In other words, the provisions in the Bill to restrict citizens are disproportionate to the supposed threats they seek to address.

Moreover, the Bill takes state surveillance to chilling new levels—for example, allowing electronic monitoring of someone subjected to an SDPO, with only the vaguest safeguards applying to any data collected, and the potential for associated negative impacts on individuals’ privacy and the wider community. It bears repeating that this could happen to someone who has committed no crime. As someone who has used parliamentary privilege in this place to open the lid on the immoral and arguably unlawful actions and sanctioning of police spies, this causes me considerable concern. The Home Office argues that such levels of interference are justified by the emergence of groups such as Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, but existing legislation—for example, the Public Order Act 1986 and the Protection from Harassment Act 1997—already grants the powers that reasonable policing of such protests demands.

The Bill is also disproportionate because the new offences could criminalise people for linking arms and having in their possession everyday items such as the bike locks that are simply “capable of causing” so-called “serious disruption”. There is no requirement for any disruption to be actually happening. The provisions just about fall short of policing people’s thoughts and intentions, but the direction of travel is clear and it should terrify us all.

The orders are sinister, disproportionate, and political—political, because the provisions allow far too much scope for police interpretation. On the new broad power for protest-specific stop and search, for example, a suspicion that someone might have knitting needles, a hoodie or even just a marker pen in their bag could be grounds for the police to act, but it does not stop there.

[Mr Holden]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech from her perspective. Could she ever consider a circumstance in which the section 60 stop and search power, which covers an area for a long period, is ever justifiable—or should it also be removed from the police?

[Caroline Lucas]

As others have said, evidence-based stop and search—where there is evidence and a good reason—is not in question. What is in question here is stop and search on the basis of a whim. As others have eloquently said, there is a very real danger of antagonising some groups who are already most disadvantaged, and therefore making the situation far worse.

The Government want to give the police powers to stop and search a person or a vehicle in a protest context, even when there are no grounds for suspicion. That will be permissible simply if a police officer believes that an offence—such as wilfully obstructing a highway or intentionally causing a public nuisance—might happen in the area or thinks that some people in the area might be carrying prohibited items; and there we are, back to the marker pens and knitting needles.

Protest is, by its very nature, liable to cause a public nuisance, disruption and noise, and to have specific targets, but real democratic leadership does not seek to ban opposition voices from protesting. Only a cowardly Government, who do not trust or respect their people, would take such a step.

[Kit Malthouse]

I wanted to ask whether the hon. Lady, notwithstanding her objection to the banning of protest, subscribes to the enthusiasm across the House for the ban of protests near abortion centres or clinics, and supports the creation of buffer zones that ban protests in those circumstances. If that is the case, is she possibly guilty of wanting to ban only protests with which she does not agree?

[Caroline Lucas]

I disagree with the premise of the Minister’s intervention. I have been proudly at the forefront of moves to say that women seeking their right to healthcare should not be subject to the personal, direct and threatening individual harassment that happens all too frequently outside abortion centres. I would wager that I have been on more demonstrations than anyone on the Government Benches—I have been arrested for them and I have been alongside them, and I have to say in parentheses that the characterisation of protesters by Government Members is wildly short of the mark—but I have seen nothing that is tantamount to the kind of harassment and direct intimidation that I have seen outside abortion centres, which is why the Minister’s comparison is not a reasonable one.

While I am on the subject of who protesters are, let me say that I am fascinated by the division between the protesters we support and those we do not. It seems to me that we support the ones who are silent and probably protesting in their own front rooms, because we do not like protest to be disruptive.

[Tom Hunt]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Caroline Lucas]

No, I will not.

Protest is, by definition, disruptive. I can promise Government Members that the protesters I have been alongside include grandmothers who have never been on a protest before, nurses, doctors, teachers, care workers and people who collect the refuse. They are our community. I do not buy into the division that the Government are trying to make between a community on the one side and protesters on the other. The protesters are from those communities; they come up from them and are part of them. I say no to the kind of divisiveness that I have been hearing and we have been subjected to over and over again for the past five hours that we have been sat here.

Even if Ministers persist with this draconian and dangerous Bill, I sincerely hope that they will at least recognise the dangerous impact of already existing suspicionless stop and search powers, including their ineffectiveness, and their contribution to racial disproportionality and erosion of trust in the criminal justice system. I hope that the Government will not seek to extend them and therefore perpetuate such outcomes. More than that, though, my hope is that the Bill, which is riven with political ideology—and, frankly, puts the police in an untenable position—can be stopped in its tracks. I cannot find one shred of sense, proportionately or necessity in the Bill, and I hope that colleagues will join me in opposing it at every opportunity.

Ukraine: Urgent Refugee Applications

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

The Home Secretary had a positive visit and our relationship with the ambassadors and the community has been strong, given the broad range of support we are providing to Ukraine. We are providing support not just in the form of lethal aid into Ukraine itself but to countries, including those with borders with Ukraine, that are now dealing with large numbers of people because, as I keep saying, the vast majority of people want to remain close to their homes because they want to go home once the invader has been defeated and driven from their country.

We are looking further at how we can use some of the work we have done in respect of things such as the Hong Kong BNO route and the reuse of biometrics and, as I have touched on a couple of times, at whether under-18s need to submit biometrics at all.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

This Government have some pretty strange priorities: apparently, they think nothing of overturning national security advice when it comes to granting a life peerage to the son of an ex-KGB agent, but they are apparently putting obstacle after obstacle in front of refugees who are fleeing unspeakable violence in Ukraine. Will the Minister listen to the voices from all parties urging him to allow refugees to come here first and then do the biometrics and other security checks here? Does he understand that simply to say they are already in safe countries is deeply insulting? They are traumatised, their families are split up and they might not have finance; we need to be doing much more, now.

[Kevin Foster]

I certainly would not dismiss the support that is being provided by the Polish, Hungarian, Romanian and Moldovan authorities. They are doing an amazing job of welcoming those who are coming straight over the border. We have on a number of occasions touched on why we believe it is right that we do basic security checks before people travel to the United Kingdom, but many of our other normal requirements are being waived. I do not think that some of the solutions potentially put forward around doing security checks here in the UK would necessarily reflect a warm-hearted approach.

Afghanistan Policy

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I have already met the UNHCR to discuss with it that element of the scheme and how it can help with other parts of the scheme. Conversations with other NGOs are, of course, ongoing, and I will keep the House updated as progress is made.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

One of the urgent cases I am dealing with is that of a former Chevening scholar trapped in Kabul, who is very worried that he is not on the appropriate Government list because, strangely, he did not receive a call forward to the airport in the early days of the evacuation. Can the Minister assure me that she is talking to the FCDO about Chevening scholars and that, from the Home Office perspective, all former and current Chevening scholars will be supported by the Government? In particular, will the right paperwork be issued to him, so that if he does make the decision to go with his family to the border, he will know that he will be safe once he gets there?

[Victoria Atkins]

Yes, the Home Secretary has already, I think, addressed the House about Chevening scholarships. They will be honoured, and we are trying to make that happen, albeit with the practicalities the hon. Member has outlined if people are in Afghanistan.

Rights to Protest

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Gray. I join the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) in dissociating myself from what I think were, frankly, smears from the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers). There is no misunderstanding about what the Bill will do, and it is quite condescending to suggest otherwise. The vast majority of protesters are entirely peaceful. They represent a cross-section of our constituents, and they know that there is a proud history of peaceful protest in this country that needs to be defended.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate and to add to what I said on Second Reading of the Bill—namely that this legislation is dangerous, undemocratic and disproportionate. It is clear that huge numbers of our constituents feel the same: nearly 2,500 Brighton, Pavilion residents signed the petition opposing any restrictions on our right to peaceful protest. I know from my inbox that there is grave concern about giving the police new powers to undermine what are treasured and critical fundamental rights in any democracy. Handing more draconian powers to the police would be troubling at any time. It is especially dangerous when too much of the police response to the outpouring of anger and grief at the murder of Sarah Everard has been characterised by bad judgment, heavy-handedness and tone deafness. Footage of women apparently being wrestled to the ground by male police officers at vigils to protest male violence and to remember a woman killed by a police officer sent shockwaves around the country.

Moreover, this Bill has been tabled at a time when, as a recent police watchdog report makes clear, the police have responded to the demands of the pandemic and the frightening lack of clarity from Ministers about what was and was not a criminal offence by overreaching and with overzealousness. A review from the Crown Prosecution Service suggests that the Coronavirus Act 2020 has been misapplied by the police 232 times since last year; in fact, that is every single time it has been used to charge someone. Throughout the pandemic, heavy-handed police interpretation has not only been sanctioned but has been encouraged by Ministers.

Let us be clear: the Bill is a blatant and biased attack on the long-standing right to protest from a Government that have a track record of dismissing the rule of law, the truth, legal obligations and human rights as disposable inconveniences. As an aside, I remind colleagues that the Government are also seeking to change how judicial review works—further evidence of their ongoing opposition to future accountability and the rule of law. The Bill is about protecting those with power, and presumably with the Prime Minister’s mobile number on speed dial, from being challenged or held to account by the citizens of this country. It will do that through a range of restrictions on the right to freely assemble and to express dissent.

For example, the Bill seeks to extend the practice of handing out harsh sanctions as a disincentive to those considering organising protests to anyone simply taking part, which is insidious. At the same time, Ministers want to increase almost fourfold the length of time organisers could potentially be imprisoned. Those and countless other proposals are chilling. Put simply, everyone in this country risks being criminalised simply for exercising their democratic rights if the Bill becomes law. Friends of the Earth warn of the particular barriers that will be created for those from marginalised communities to having their voices heard, such as people of colour, who already have disproportionately negative experiences of policing and the criminal justice system. The hostile measures contained in part 4 of the Bill and which will clearly be used to target the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community appear nothing short of racist in their intention.

The Bill is about silencing our constituents and communities, metaphorically and indeed literally, with clauses that would allow a protest to be severely restricted by the police in anticipation that it might be too noisy and thereby disrupt those at whom it is aimed. But right now the voices of our constituents, and of campaigners clamouring for the Bill to be scrapped, are echoed far and wide. The opposition is cross-party and it is growing. Critics of aspects of part 3 of the Bill include two former Home Secretaries, Lord Blunkett and the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). A former Greater Manchester police chief constable, a former Durham constabulary chief constable and a former Metropolitan police commander have all warned of the dangers this legislation poses to British democracy and to safe policing by consent in our communities. So will the Government stop and listen?

When I spoke on the Bill on Second Reading, I noted that it would have made Greta Thunberg, sitting alone with a placard, a potential criminal, likewise all the brave and passionate youngsters who know that the future of humanity and our planet depends on peaceful protest, exposing just how inadequate Government action is compared with the scale of the climate and nature emergencies.

As one of the few MPs to be arrested during a peaceful protest and subsequently, after a week’s court case, acquitted of any wrongdoing, I have first-hand experience of the power of non-violent direct action. My protest was against fracking, as part of a movement that has secured an effective moratorium on that technology. Protest works; it changes things. Throughout the long history of this country, people have assembled to express their dissent and have changed the course of that history.

I remember when Members from all parties were falling over themselves to be associated with the Suffragettes on the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act 1918. Back then, protest was suddenly not a dirty word. Now, when the protests are a little closer to home, whether that is Black Lives Matter or Extinction Rebellion, it seems the right to protest is no longer quite so universally celebrated. Fundamental rights are not like multiple choice; we don’t get to pick the most convenient and carelessly ditch the rest. They are universal and they should be defended in their entirety.

I end by calling on the Minister to tell us the truth and answer this question honestly: are the Government committed to upholding the human rights and civil liberties set out in articles 10 and 11 of the European convention on human rights? He recently affirmed:

“The right to peaceful protest is a fundamental tool of civic expression and will never be curtailed by the Government.”—[Official Report, 7 September 2020; Vol. 679, c. 385.]

Yet the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill seeks to do exactly that. He and his Government either need to level with the British public about the facts or put this dangerous, undemocratic and disproportionate Bill where it belongs—on the scrap heap.