Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Philp and Mick Whitley

Monday 27th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

T4.   The Home Secretary will be familiar with the invasive surveillance systems that authoritarian states such as Russia and China impose on their citizens. Is he comfortable with the Policing Minister’s push for similar live facial recognition systems to be used on innocent Brits, at a time when our colleagues in the European Parliament are legislating to abandon this technology?

[Chris Philp]

We should be clear that retrospective facial recognition puts hundreds, if not thousands, of criminals in prison. For example, it was used to catch a murderer who had killed somebody in a Coventry nightclub who was then identified using an image taken on a mobile phone. That is a murderer who would not be in prison but for the use of retrospective facial recognition.

Live facial recognition has been used extensively by two police forces and experimentally by two others, including by South Wales, which has an excellent Labour police and crime commissioner, Alun Michael, who has led the way in this area in a way that is safe and that respects privacy. Critically, if someone’s face is scanned and they are not on the wanted list, their details are deleted immediately, which I hope provides reassurance on the questions of privacy. Where it has been used, wanted people, including a wanted rapist and a wanted sex offender, have been apprehended who otherwise would have gone free. I would hope that the entire House can agree that catching wanted rapists is something that we can all get behind.

Coronation: Policing of Protests

Debate between Chris Philp and Mick Whitley

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I am not sure that that question merits an answer. The legislation is clearly politics agnostic, and it is for the police to apply it without fear or favour.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Does the Minister accept that the troubling scenes witnessed during the coronation vindicate Opposition Members who warned that the Government’s new anti-protest laws would be used to stifle dissent and limit freedom of expression? Does he accept that if we are to protect the most fundamental right of free speech, the Public Order Act must be scrapped in its entirety?

[Chris Philp]

No. As I have said repeatedly, the Public Order Act and associated legislation are designed to prevent disruption to our fellow citizens’ day-to-day lives while enabling peaceful protest.

Hillsborough Families Report: National Police Response

Debate between Chris Philp and Mick Whitley

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I have already explained several things that the Government have done in the past few years to address the issues that the bishop’s inquiry raised—[Hon. Members: “Answer the question!”] I am going to. They include the duty of candour on police in relation to inquiries. That was done in 2020. I have been asked about the independent public advocate several times and I have given the same answer. It is a Ministry of Justice, not a Home Office lead. I cannot speak for another Minister’s area of responsibility. It is with the Ministry of Justice, which is actively considering it and will respond shortly.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) for securing the urgent question.

More than 30 years after the Hillsborough disaster, and more than five years after the publication of Bishop Jones’s report, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing have finally apologised for what they described as decades of “deflection and denial”. However, for many of my constituents, who are still haunted by that terrible day, that is too little, too late.

Does the Minister agree that while plans to revise the police code of ethics are welcome, a new duty of candour on public authorities must have a statutory footing, so that no family ever again has to struggle for truth and justice, which the Hillsborough families sought for decades?

[Chris Philp]

A duty of co-operation on police in relation to inquiries was set out in the professional standards for policing in 2020. We will respond to the wider duty of candour, to which point of learning 14 in the bishop’s report referred, along with everything else, shortly.