Violence Reduction, Policing and Criminal Justice

Debate between Chris Philp and Ian Paisley

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

Let me join the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), in expressing the whole House’s condolences to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for the tragedy that her family have suffered today.

It is a huge pleasure to close the final debate on the first King’s Speech. I join others in congratulating the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Michael Shanks) on his excellent maiden speech. Anyone who takes a seat off the SNP has my fervent good wishes. [Hon. Members: “Oh!”] That is clearly not a universally popular view.

It is the first duty of the state to secure the safety and security of its citizens. That is why the Government have delivered record ever police numbers across England and Wales, as my hon. Friends the Members for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson), for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) and for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) referenced. We have 3,500 more police officers than we have ever had before at any time in history, and those record numbers are delivering results. According to the crime survey, overall crime, measured like for like, is 54% lower now than it was in 2010. That is to say that the Labour Government in which the shadow Foreign Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), sat presided over crime levels that were double those that prevail today. Violence is down by 52%, burglary is down by 57% and vehicle crime is down by 39%.

The subject of the debate includes fighting violence against women and girls: a topic that I am sure the whole House can get behind. I am proud that in the last 13 years the Government have: legislated to criminalise stalking in 2012; passed the Domestic Abuse Act 2021; criminalised coercive and controlling behaviour; created a non-fatal strangulation offence; and outlawed upskirting and revenge porn. The previous Labour Government failed to do all those things during their 13 years in office.

There is more to do. The conviction rates for rape and serious sexual offences need to be higher. I am glad that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke) acknowledged that Operation Soteria is making progress, with police referrals in the quarter to June up by 206% compared with 2019, Crown Prosecution Service charges up by 145% and Crown court receipts up by 171%. There is a lot more to do, but that is all heading rapidly in the right direction.

Some specific questions arose, which, for the sake of clarity, I would like to answer. The hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who is in her place, asked about measures to ban zombie knives and machetes. Those require secondary legislation, and I can confirm that the Government will bring forward the relevant statutory instruments in the very near future, in addition to the measures announced in the King’s Speech to double the sentence for supplying a knife to an under-18 and to double the sentence for possessing a knife with intent to cause harm.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) mentioned antisocial behaviour; come next April, every single police force in England and Wales will have funding for antisocial behaviour hotspot patrols. Where they have been trialled, they have almost immediately reduced antisocial behaviour by around 30%. The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) and the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) asked about the Government’s response to Hillsborough, which they and many Members of Parliament take very seriously. I can confirm that the Government are planning to offer their full reply to Bishop James Jones’s report on 6 December. The right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood and others will be briefed in advance if they wish to be. The duty of candour in policing will be introduced in clause 73 of the Criminal Justice Bill.

On Gaza, which many Members have spoken about, let us keep in mind that 1,400 innocent civilians were deliberately targeted and slaughtered by terrorists, and over 200 people remain held hostage. As the Prime Minister has set out repeatedly, this Government support humanitarian pauses to ensure that aid can get to civilians in Gaza, given the difficult circumstances. This Government have dramatically increased humanitarian aid, having provided £30 million-worth, and 51 tonnes have been sent in already. Of course, much more is required.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chris Philp]

I am afraid that I must finish up.

We are also working actively with international partners, including President Sisi of Egypt, to make sure the Rafah border crossing, which I have visited, is opened more to allow critical aid in. In order to ensure that civilians in Gaza are protected, our Government are actively engaging with the Government of Israel to ensure that they obey international law and redouble their efforts to protect civilians in Gaza. That is the humane and civilised thing to do, and this Government will continue to call for that.

However, a ceasefire with Hamas in place cannot be just. Hamas have said that they intend to destroy Israel, and that they would once again perpetrate atrocities like those committed on 7 October. They continue to hold hostages, including children and British citizens, and they continue to fire rockets into Israel. To ask Israel to cease firing unilaterally would not be fair or just. In order to have a just peace and a lasting, permanent ceasefire, we need a two-state solution with a sovereign and recognised Palestinian state on the west bank and in Gaza, guaranteeing their security and the security of Israel alike. All of us in this House and beyond should redouble our efforts to bring about that two- state solution, and to bring about the peace we saw in the aftermath of the Oslo accords, passed in 1993. That shows there is a path—it is difficult but it can be trodden. Only with a just and lasting peace can we see a just and lasting ceasefire.

I commend the King’s Speech and the Government’s legislative programme to the House. It will take this country forward and it deserves the support of the House.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Metropolitan Police: Operational Independence

Debate between Chris Philp and Ian Paisley

Thursday 9th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

Which of course I accept without hesitation or reservation, as I always do.

I agree that hatred has no place on our streets and I have said that repeatedly, but this is an unfolding event. The hon. Gentleman talked about what happens after the event, but these protests have been going on for four weeks now. The Home Secretary was not commenting entirely before the events; she was also commenting after events that have been unfolding over the last four weeks, which have included 188 arrests and a number of communities, both Muslim and Jewish, but particularly the Jewish community, feeling very uneasy. It is reasonable for the Home Secretary to try to ensure that communities feel safe and protected, and that is what she was trying to do.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

When women were treated brutally and unjustly by the Metropolitan police in this city in the wake of the Sarah Everard murder, Members came, correctly, to criticise the police, inside this House and out, for their failure and for their brutality. I remember people on the Opposition Benches calling on the Government to be more brutal on the police at that point. The hand-wringing hypocrisy and the pant-wetting that we are seeing over someone correctly criticising the police is amazing. I have witnessed Irish nationalists and republicans, who the Home Secretary referred to in her article, running too quickly to the support of Hamas, to Colombian terrorists, to Hezbollah and a whole host of others. The Home Secretary is correct to call that out and to say it as she sees it, and this House is right to back her.

[Chris Philp]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his words. He is right to point out those examples where Members of this House, particularly on the Opposition Benches, have in the past criticised the police. No one on those occasions claimed that those criticisms impinged on the operational independence of the police; they were simply holding the police to account, as politicians on both sides are entitled to do. I am grateful to him for reminding the House of those previous occasions when Opposition Members have exercised their prerogative to hold the police to account.

Retail Crime

Debate between Chris Philp and Ian Paisley

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ian Paisley]

I welcome the Minister’s point, which needs to be driven home to local police services and, importantly, to shop owners. On the group that he set up and is taking advice from, it is brilliant that progress will be made, but I encourage him to invite the British Independent Retailers Association and the Association of Convenience Stores to that group, so that smaller businesses can have their voice heard.

[Chris Philp]

The Association of Convenience Stores was at the meeting on Monday and will come to the subsequent meeting that I referred to. I will be happy to invite the other group that the hon. Gentleman referred to. Officials are listening and will make sure that the invitation is extended.

To repeat the point on goods that are stolen with a value under £200, the previous Policing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), wrote to all chief constables and police and crime commissioners to make it clear that section 176 does not restrain the police’s ability to arrest and prosecute. Further to that, in 2020 the National Business Crime Centre surveyed police forces in England and Wales, asking if they had a policy of not responding to shoplifting where goods are worth less than £200. No police force said that it had any such policy, which is reassuring. However, I want to make sure that the practice on the ground is appropriate. I was concerned by the points raised by Dame Sharon White, the chair of John Lewis, in her article in The Times over the weekend, saying that she felt the police response was not adequate. That is why I will have further discussions with the relevant NPCC leads and others in the near future.

I would like to address the short but excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. I have touched on the incident he mentioned, but he also made a point about security guards, and he is right to say that even though they are not warranted police officers, security guards have the right, under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, to physically intervene when there is no police constable on the scene and a crime is being committed. They can make a citizen’s arrest, as any member of the public can.

Interestingly, I was refreshing my memory about section 176 of the 2014 Act, which I mentioned. When the crime of stealing goods worth less than £200 was made summary-only, it would have fallen outside the scope of offences where a member of the public, including a security guard, can make a citizen’s arrest, were it not for an express provision in section 176 that makes it clear that shoplifting goods under the value of £200 does still trigger the right to make a citizen’s arrest under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Back in 2014—I was not a Member of Parliament then, but my hon. Friend was—Parliament legislated expressly to allow that power of citizen’s arrest to apply specifically to shoplifting when the goods are worth less than £200.

Of course we need to be conscious of the safety of security guards, but I would urge them to intervene when they see someone shoplifting. If they do not, that simply allows shoplifting to go unchecked, and people will be almost encouraged to shoplift if they think it will go unpunished. I have seen plenty of video footage from the United States in which store security guards do not intervene—perhaps because people in the United States often have guns, which, thankfully, is not normally the case here—and the problem escalates out of control. I agree with my hon. Friend that security guards should intervene appropriately, unless they really believe that their safety will be at risk, because that acts as a deterrent. As I have said, they have the legal powers to do so.

There are also some very good technical solutions that retailers can adopt to be proactive. One company that works in a number of retail stores, including the Co-op in parts of the south of England—it is a private sector company, so I will not name it—uses a live facial recognition system that hooks into the CCTV cameras. It is connected to a database containing images of known prolific shoplifters. When one of them walks into the store, an alert is triggered so the staff know that a prolific shoplifter has just walked in. The company recommends that a staff member should approach the shoplifter and do nothing more than say, politely, “Excuse me, sir, can I help?” The mere act of doing that often acts as a deterrent, and the shoplifter simply leaves, knowing that he or she is being observed.

The company has shown me data revealing that the number of assaults against retail stores deploying the system has dropped by about 20%, while in the stores that have not deployed it the number rose. In the stores where it has not been deployed, there has been a significant rise in the incidence of theft—part of the wider increase that we have discussed—whereas in those that have deployed it, there has been a very slight decline. The system was recently scrutinised by the Information Commissioner’s Office for the usual data protection and privacy reasons, and, following lengthy consideration, the company is being allowed to proceed. I think that systems of that kind can be extremely helpful.

I do not want to try the House’s patience by going on for too much longer. Let me conclude by reiterating my agreement with the view of the hon. Member for North Antrim that this is a serious form of crime that causes enormous financial loss, leads to many assaults on hard-working staff members and, if it goes unchecked, escalates to a point at which widespread disorder permeates society. For all those reasons, I think that we need to do more, and I commit myself to doing that through the meetings to which I have referred. I thank the hon. Member again for drawing the matter to the House’s attention.

[Ian Paisley]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I think a point of order is the only way in which I can say this. I want to thank the Minister, because his was one of the most helpful responses I have ever received during an Adjournment debate. I just wanted to put that on the record.

Public Order Bill

Debate between Chris Philp and Ian Paisley

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ian Paisley]

I will make this point, and then I will give way.

We are all aware of the Bible story about Daniel daring to pray and being put in jail—

[Chris Philp]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Paisley]

Of course I will give way to the Minister.

[Chris Philp]

The Government are not saying anything about this matter. It is a free vote, and there is no Government position on the “buffer zone” amendment.

[Ian Paisley]

I look forward to the Minister joining me in the Lobby this evening.

Whenever we walk into the Palace of Westminster, we walk beneath a massive portrait of Moses by Benjamin West. We walk through St Stephen’s Hall, and what is St Stephen’s Hall? It is a church. We walk over the catacombs under which is another church. We come to this place—to the “mother of Parliaments”—and debate a piece of legislation that essentially says, “If you dare to pray in a certain part of this Christian nation, in silence, you will be arrested.”

Probationary Police Officers: Cost of Living

Debate between Chris Philp and Ian Paisley

Monday 6th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

Let me start by thanking the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) for securing this evening’s debate and for setting out the issues with such care, thoughtfulness and compassion, clearly based on personal experience of talking to police officers in his constituency and in Northern Ireland more generally.

As a Home Office Minister I have responsibility, primarily, for policing in England and Wales. I will make some remarks about policing more generally and about police officers’ salaries, which broadly speaking are the same in Northern Ireland as in England and Wales. I will then touch on some issues more specific to Northern Ireland although, being a devolved matter, they fall more properly within the responsibilities of my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office, one of whom, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), is with us in the Chamber.

Starting with policing more widely, in England and Wales we are well on track to recruit an extra 20,000 police officers by the end of March 2023. Once we have done that, we will have a record number of police officers. Never in the history of England and Wales will we have had more police officers than we will have by the end of March. That goes to show that the package offered has some attractions and merits.

In the most recent pay awards, police in England and Wales received a flat, consolidated increase for this financial year effective from 1 September of £1,900, as the hon. Member for North Antrim said. I believe that in the last day or two it has been confirmed that that will apply to police in Northern Ireland as well, and will be backdated, so officers such as the one he described should get all that money in their March pay packets. For officers with children to look after such as the one he mentioned, that will be a welcome payment.

That £1,900 equates to an average of 5%, but for officers on lower salaries it represents a lot more. For entry-level officers such as those the hon. Gentleman described, it equates to 8.8%, because it is a fixed proportion of a smaller number. The view was taken that it was important to try to direct the increase disproportionately towards officers on entry point wages, for all the reasons that he set out with great eloquence. That means that since 1 September last year, officers have had a basic starting salary of between roughly £23,500 and £26,500. That is typically an 8.8% increase.

A median police constable will receive £41,000. The hon. Gentleman mentioned comparisons with other occupations; the police salary review body stated that median full-time gross annual earnings—not officers starting out at the beginning of their career—are 33% higher than the whole economy, 26% higher than so-called associate professional and technical occupations, and about the same as professional occupations. I am speaking about median earnings across the whole police force, not entry-level salaries, which are lower.

In addition to the 8.8% annual pay increase for people on starting salaries, there is incremental annual pay progression as officers get more experience. Those increases are at least 2%, and can be between 4% and 6%, on top of the regular annual increase. As an officer—like the young officer he mentioned—stays in the force, they will get not just the regular increase but the progression as well, so they will not have to stick with it for too long before they start seeing some meaningful increases coming through. I hope that the hon. Gentleman can pass on that message to officers in their first couple of years.

[Ian Paisley]

I thank the Minister for setting that out. That is helpful, and the timing could not be better because of the award that was made at the weekend. I also thank the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) for being here. The fact that he is here says a lot, and officers will be grateful that he has turned up for this debate. He did not have to, and I know that he is very busy with other responsibilities.

On the point that the Minister has made, keeping pay parity with the rest of the UK should be a principle, and making the award to PSNI officers on 1 September each year is also critical. We are now at the beginning of February and the award has just been made in Northern Ireland. That has not really helped, and I hope that that lesson can be learned by the civil servants who help the Minister with this.

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. Salaries are not exactly the same but they are pretty much the same in Northern Ireland as they are in England and Wales, and the settlement that has just been announced is exactly the same. That is an important principle in relation to Northern Ireland in particular.

I emphasise again that this is a matter for my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office. As the hon. Gentleman has said, policing is a devolved matter in Northern Ireland, and it is not in my area of ministerial responsibility as the Policing Minister for England and Wales. A functioning Executive would give more flexibility and freedom to Northern Ireland to determine its own path and how it chooses to allocate money between different budgets. I understand that the Secretary of State, in setting the budget for Northern Ireland’s Department of Justice this year, has given a 3.1% increase—a total allocation of about £1.2 billion—but as the hon. Member knows, the freedoms available to Northern Irish civil servants are limited in the absence of an Executive, so the sooner we can get an Executive up and running, the more flexibility and autonomy the people in Northern Ireland and the elected representatives of the people in Northern Ireland will have.

The hon. Member made some comments regarding security, and he is quite right to draw attention to that. The UK Government provide the PSNI with additional security funding to tackle the obvious threat from terrorism in Northern Ireland, and the amount of money being paid over for that purpose in the current financial year, 2022-23, is £32 million, which is the same as it was in the previous year. In addition to that, there is a security funding payment of £8 million a year towards the tackling paramilitaries programme, which is designed to match the funding that comes from the Northern Ireland Executive. That money designed specifically to tackle terrorism, which has a unique Northern Ireland element, is continuing.

Assisted Dying Law

Debate between Chris Philp and Ian Paisley

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Philp)]

It is, as always, a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) on securing the debate on such an important and profound topic so early in the new Parliament, and on the sincerity and compassion of her speech, which I know everybody here will have listened to very carefully indeed.

Whatever one’s personal view on this issue, there is no question but that Members on both sides of the argument hold strong and powerful views, which we heard expressed today with great sincerity and compassion. I thank everybody who took part in the debate. I particularly thank the new Members, who spoke with such thoughtfulness and conviction, as well as the more experienced Members, who offered their views as well, which are equally important. The debate has been an example of Parliament at its best, as we weighed up these deep and profound questions—weighing up, on one side of the argument, the sanctity of life, against, on the other side, the principle of personal choice. Few topics are deeper or more profound than those.

It may be worth my laying out the legal background to the question before us, which has not really been touched on; it is probably worth reminding ourselves of the current legal landscape. The current law on assisted suicide in England and Wales is governed by section 2 of the Suicide Act 1961, which gives a blanket criminalisation of the offence, including by “encouraging or assisting” suicide. There are no exemptions from that in statute. In Northern Ireland, there are similar statutory provisions. In Scotland, there is no statutory criminalisation of assisted suicide, but it is prosecuted as a culpable homicide, so the effect in Scottish law is, broadly speaking, the same. The law as it currently stands across all parts of the United Kingdom is that assisting or even encouraging somebody to commit suicide is a criminal offence.

The application of the law, and prosecutions for anyone suspected of assisting or encouraging suicide, is subject to prosecution policy—whether the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales, or the Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland, decide to prosecute. In making a prosecution decision, with this offence as with any other, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Director of Public Prosecutions apply two tests. One is an evidential test: is there evidence that the offence has been committed? Secondly, there is a public interest test: does it serve the public interest to pursue a prosecution?

[Ian Paisley]

Is it not the case that there are about 150 of those type of cases, but that only three are actually being prosecuted for the sinister motive that could lie behind some of them?

[Chris Philp]

I was about to come on to precisely the figures that the hon. Gentleman refers to. Before I do, it is worth reminding the House of the current prosecution policy. It was set out substantively in February 2010 and revised somewhat in 2014. Clause 43 of those Crown Prosecution Service guidelines sets out a number of conditions that will make it more likely that a prosecution serves the public interest.

However, clause 45 lays out six conditions that will make a prosecution less likely, including: first, that the person who has died reached a voluntary, clear and settled decision; secondly, that the accused was motivated by compassion; thirdly, that the nature of the assistance or encouragement was minor; fourthly, that the accused had tried to dissuade the person dying from pursuing that course of action; and fifthly, that the matter had been properly reported to the police. If those conditions are met, the Director of Public Prosecutions would be less likely to bring a prosecution—not completely unlikely, but less likely. The judgment as to whether a prosecution serves the public interest is an independent question for the Crown Prosecution Service, or the Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland.