Lucy Letby Case: Conduct of Cheshire Police
David Davis Excerpts(6 days, 4 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
In 1998, Cheshire police arrested Sally Clark and charged her with the murder of her two baby sons. In 1999, she was convicted of their murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. That conviction and sentence was overturned by the Court of Appeal in 2003 and recognised as a gross miscarriage of justice, and Sally Clark was set free, albeit after three years in prison. However, her life had been destroyed, and just four years later she died from alcohol poisoning—the grief had driven her to drink, and it killed her. The destruction of an innocent person’s life was caused by the police, the prosecution and the court swallowing bogus statistical assertions by an alleged expert in her trial. That expert eventually resigned in disgrace, although that did not save Sally Clark.
One would think that after that case, Cheshire police and the Crown Prosecution Service would have been very careful to avoid this happening again, and to abide by all the rules and guidelines designed precisely to prevent further terrible miscarriages of justice. Let us test exactly that premise. We are uniquely assisted in the process by the fact that the behaviour of the police and prosecution has been reviewed by two separate police officers, both extremely experienced in precisely this sort of case. The first is Dr Steve Watts, a former assistant chief constable who wrote the national police guidelines on the investigation of deaths in healthcare settings, and the second is former detective superintendent Stuart Clifton—the officer in charge of the investigation that led to the conviction of Beverley Allitt, one of the most prolific child murderers in healthcare history—who was actually commissioned by The Sun newspaper to confirm Letby’s guilt. Indeed, both policemen believed that Letby was guilty—that is, until they examined the hard facts, and both now believe that the Letby case is a serious miscarriage of justice.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I spoke to the right hon. Gentleman beforehand. He has a forensic, investigative mind for these subjects, on behalf of the House, and—with your agreement, Madam Deputy Speaker—we should put on record our thanks to him for that. We in the House and this nation owe him a debt when it comes to justice.
David Davis
You rescued me from embarrassment, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Let us forensically analyse the prosecution of this case, using as a reference proper police procedure, prosecutorial standards, medical murder investigation guidelines, CPS guidance, the evidence from the Thirlwall inquiry and the considered critiques from these two experienced police officers.
The neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital was failing. Its medical management was at best inadequate and at worst appalling. Indeed, a week after Letby was suspended, the unit was downgraded and prevented from taking any more very seriously ill babies. Before the police investigation, numerous reviews looked at the Countess of Chester and found no evidence of criminal activity. The most salient was by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, which found no criminal events, but did identify numerous shortcomings in medical care at the hospital. Cheshire police ignored that, and the jury was never informed of it. Dr Watts notes, as did the assistant chief constable, that the royal college report
“raised significant concerns about systemic failings…Its exclusion from court…meant alternative explanations were suppressed.”
Let us also remember that this was a neonatal unit with no neonatal specialist consultants, only general paediatricians. Furthermore, the trust had dismissed all the experienced advanced neonatal nurse practitioners to save money. There was a 20% staffing shortfall. Doctors did ward rounds twice a week, rather than twice a day. We can think of the fragility of these children, yet they only got seen twice a week. There were outbreaks of multiple antibiotic-resistant infections. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, MRSA and C. difficile bacteria were all detected in the hospital. Sewage was dripping from the ceilings. Doctors followed poor counter-infection processes. The mother of triplets who moved to Liverpool women’s hospital
“noticed a different level of cleanliness compared to the Countess of Chester…There were clear hygiene protocols…we were told to wash our hands before entering the Unit and then again before entering the room”,
which was not the case at the Countess of Chester. It is also notable that there were 12 stillbirths in hospital at the same time as the spike in neonatal deaths—stillbirths that Lucy Letby was nowhere near. That was also ignored by Cheshire police.
Why did Cheshire police decide Letby was responsible? Initially, there was no intention to launch any criminal investigation, but on 15 May 2017, that all changed. After a single meeting with two consultants—Dr Stephen Brearey and Dr Ravi Jayaram—from the Countess of Chester, Letby was explicitly identified as the focus of suspicion. Dr Watts states that
“in this meeting, the language of this very experienced, very senior detective”
from the Cheshire police force
“moved from a measured, rational professional tone to…inappropriately emotional.”
He cites the senior Cheshire police detective as saying:
“I can’t describe how powerful it was…I just felt for those professionals there….I think we all owe them.”
Dr Watts observes that “within 24 hours” of that meeting, Operation Hummingbird—the name of the Letby operation—was “up and running”. Within three days, news of the investigation into a potential murder at the Countess of Chester was in the national press. This investigation was initiated by a single meeting with consultants who had themselves been involved in seriously inadequate care of babies.
The consultants who pointed the finger at Letby were Dr Stephen Brearey, Dr John Gibbs, Dr Ravi Jayaram and another doctor, who was anonymised for the court’s own reasons. They had all demonstrated poor care. One had wrongly punctured a baby’s liver. That baby later died. One was found by a coroner to be responsible for the death of a child after a breathing tube was inserted into the oesophagus, rather than the trachea—in other words, into the gullet, rather than the windpipe. One pushed an endotracheal tube into a baby’s lung, leaving the other collapsed. That baby later died. One clearly misled the jury by claiming that he had “virtually caught” Letby doing nothing as a baby collapsed in front of her—evidence that his own emails disproved. Those doctors could very well have contributed to the spikes in deaths attributed to Letby.
Dr Watts poses an important question:
“Where was the decision not to treat the doctors as suspects, or the other nurses, or the cleaners?”
Justice demands that the police look at everyone. It does not permit them to fixate on one individual and build a case solely around them. Dr Watts makes it plain that that is not just a moral requirement; it is the law. Section 23(1)(a) of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 requires
“that where a criminal investigation is conducted all reasonable steps are taken for the purposes of the investigation and, in particular, all reasonable lines of inquiry are pursued”.
Paragraph 3.5 of the code of practice under that Act states:
“In conducting an investigation, the investigator should pursue all reasonable lines of inquiry, whether these point towards or away from the suspect.”
The Cheshire police did not follow the letter of the law or best professional practice.
Dr Watts states that CPS guidelines and police guidance on the investigation of death in healthcare settings
“require that decisions in ‘Sensitive, Serious and Complex’ cases are referred to the CPS Serious Crime and Counter Terrorism Division.”
Remember that Dr Watts is the country’s expert in this area. He says:
“It appears self-evident that this case falls into all the relevant categories of Sensitivity, Seriousness and Complexity”,
but the regional CPS unit, Merseyside and Cheshire,
“made the charging decisions in this case.”
The requirement is made plain in the current version of the CPS referrals, approvals and notifications guidance, which states in terms that
“homicide allegations involving…four or more victims and…medical authorities”
should be passed on to the special crime and counter-terrorism division, which is a unit in London that specialises in complicated cases.
Plainly, the Cheshire police believed that there were a lot more than four victims, so this case should have automatically gone to the special crime and counter-terrorism division. The failure to refer the case meant that proper safeguards and specialist scrutiny by independent lawyers, who had not been closely associated with the investigating team, were never implemented. That is very important. It is notable that when officers in the special crime and counter-terrorism division were involved earlier this year after the Cheshire police had put 11 additional charges to them, they turned them down flat. The special crime and counter-terrorism division stated that
“the evidential test was not met in any of those cases.”
After failing to refer the case to the correct CPS unit, Cheshire police then failed to listen to explicit guidance from the National Crime Agency. Again, Dr Watts points out:
“On 26 May 2017, an email record indicates that the NCA…advised”
Cheshire police
“to appoint a panel of relevant experts; they clearly defined the disciplines and provided a comprehensive list. They were: Forensic & Neonatal Pathologists, Forensic Toxicologist and/or Clinical Pharmacologist, a Nurse with experience of special baby units, a medical expert with experience of the working practices on a special unit for neonates, an Obstetrician, and experts to review the medical statistics.”
The advice was national best practice, but Cheshire police ignored it. On 28 June 2017, the NCA advisers followed up with a list of potential experts who could fill those posts. Cheshire police blatantly ignored that, too. Instead of drawing up a multidisciplinary panel, Dr Watts states,
“Operation Hummingbird…built its entire medical case around one expert.”
That so-called expert was Dr Dewi Evans.
The warning signs were there before the trial started. Dr Watts believes that
“Cheshire police were clutching at straws to find an expert, then very quickly and uncritically took a lifeline offered by Evans”.
Evans ran a business providing “expert medical advice” in court cases for a high fee. We can identify at least £80,000 paid to him for the Letby case, but the rest is concealed, and the true total is likely many times higher. Evans stated:
“This was my extra money, which helped keep my daughter in horses and my son in cars.”
That was his motivation. He approached the NCA after reading about the case and called it “my kind of case”. Dr Watts points out that the
“‘back door’ approach by an alleged expert who is clearly looking for work…should have sounded warning bells for the”
senior investigating officer
“and the investigating team”.
Having practised as an expert witness for decades, Evans boasted he had “never lost” a case. That is not the mindset of a neutral expert; it is the language of someone who tailors his evidence to suit the prosecution’s case. This was clearly demonstrated when another very senior judge took the extraordinary step of writing to the presiding judge in the Letby case, alerting him to Evans’s failings in a previous case. I think the House should understand quite how unusual it is for a judge to take that step. Lord Justice Jackson described Evans’s evidence as “worthless”, stating that he
“makes no effort to provide a balanced opinion”,
and his
“approach amounts to a breach of proper professional conduct”.
I think that, later on, he also called it tendentious—terrifying when a single opinion will condemn a young woman to life in prison. When Cheshire police asked Evans if it should follow NCA guidance and seek other expert witnesses, he said:
“I do not think it’s necessary to consider additional expert opinion at this stage.”
He wouldn’t, of course.
Evans was appointed as both the police adviser and the expert witness in the trial. Stuart Clifton states:
“It was illogical to allow Evans to both advise and be the principal prosecution witness as there is a clear conflict of interest.”
If this was not warning enough to Cheshire police, it should have set alarm bells ringing when Evans declared, after just 10 minutes of reviewing the case notes, that he suspected there was “foul play”. Dr Watts states:
“Evans was not independently selected but came forward himself”
and
“validators used to assess his opinions were themselves selected without adequate independence…by Evans himself”.
What is more, Stuart Clifton said that it was
“completely illogical to allow other experts…to view the findings of Evans, since experts are expected to give evidence of their”
findings
“and not be corrupted by others”.
Another prosecution expert, Professor Hindmarsh, was dismissed from his post as an honorary consultant at Great Ormond Street hospital before—just before—he gave evidence at the trial. During the trial, while he was giving evidence, he faced a General Medical Council investigation for failures of expertise and posing a risk to his patients: an expert witness chastised for a failure of expertise. The jury knew nothing of that.
Another prosecution expert, Dr Bohin, reviewed Evans’s work. She faced numerous complaints from her patients’ families and was later criticised for ignoring a key symptom in one of her patients. These are the supposed experts that Cheshire police and the CPS chose, rather than a panel of independent experts from all relevant disciplines, as the NCA had advised. Three times Cheshire police’s due diligence failed—if, indeed, they attempted it at all.
Crucial to the case against Letby was the infamous shift table presented as evidence that she was on duty for all the incidents when babies collapsed or died. Over a period of 13 months, there were 17 deaths—far more than the “normal” expected three or four deaths. Stuart Clifton states:
“Missing from the chart used at trial are deaths which occurred whilst Letby was not on duty or those where adverse events took place whilst off duty”.
Cheshire police, which compiled the table, chose to highlight only the shifts during which Letby was present, disregarding similar events when she was not. The seven deaths charged as murders were, in effect, selected because she happened to be on duty. As Stuart Clifton bluntly puts it:
“Evans cherry picked the cases to match Letby’s shifts and Police used this in their chart to reflect her presence at those events highlighted by Evans. One has to wonder just how he settled on those children where Letby was present.”
Any qualified statistician could have pointed that out to Cheshire police. In fact, one did. In April 2018, a police officer approached one of the country’s leading statisticians, Professor Jane Hutton, asking her to put a figure on the likelihood of a nurse being on duty during “all the deaths/collapses” in the unit. It is almost a rerun of the Sally Clark argument. Cheshire police had signed a consultancy agreement with Professor Hutton. Professor Hutton warned them that its whole approach was wrong. The police then told her:
“The prosecutor...has instructed us not to pursue this avenue any further.”
She challenges them and the prosecutor tells them to sack it. That falls in direct contravention of part 3.3 of the “Code for Crown Prosecutors”, which states:
“Prosecutors cannot direct the police or other investigators.”
Dr Watts added:
“This occurrence is particularly egregious...it is...not appropriate for the CPS to deter the police from acquiring evidence that may be relevant and available.”
Dr Watts goes on to say that the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996
“is binding upon the CPS to the same extent as the police, for the CPS to Instruct the police to ignore potentially relevant evidence would clearly be a breach of the CPIA”.
But neither the defence nor the jury were told of Professor Hutton’s explicit warnings to the police. That is unsurprising really, because it obliterated the prosecution’s statistical argument—the foundation of their entire case. Professor Hutton believes the statistical errors are
“similar to those in the Sally Clark case but worse.”
I wrote to the chief constable about how those bogus statistics had been compiled. He refused to answer any of the questions I had raised and said he would
“not be providing any further detail or engaging in ongoing correspondence”.
So much for transparency and welcoming challenge. That refusal to answer questions from a Member of Parliament sits uneasily alongside his department’s extraordinary public relations campaign, which at the very least invaded the privacy rights of Letby’s parents.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
Notwithstanding the points that my right hon. Friend is making, would he accept that the investigation included a range of independent, nationally recognised medical experts, including consultants and senior academics across a whole host of disciplines; and, knowing as I do that he is an enthusiastic advocate of our judicial system, that the Lucy Letby case was the longest-running murder trial in British criminal history, with a jury that considered the evidence for more than 100 hours? Lucy Letby appealed to the Court of Appeal but was refused. There was a retrial and a further appeal to the Court of Appeal, which was refused. Would he not accept the robustness of that process?
David Davis
I thank my right hon. Friend for her point. However, in many ways the reason the Lucy Letby case is so important—over and above the fact that it is a miscarriage of justice—is that it highlights weaknesses in the appeal procedure and the procedure for selecting and managing experts. I am afraid that it also demonstrates that the regulations put in place by the CPIA and other Acts of Parliament were not followed in this case, and that is one of the fundamental problems today. I will come back to some of the solutions in a moment, but that is the central difficulty.
Finally, there is the question of how a police force should properly handle such complex cases, which comes back to the issue of checking that my right hon. Friend quite rightly raises. Dr Watts is clear:
“Significant investigations such as Op Hummingbird should be subject to rigorous review by independent detectives, typically from an independent police force, and best practice indicates that the officers conducting the review should be unknown to members of the investigation team.”
If such a review had been in place, it is unlikely that any of the breaches I have talked about so far would actually have happened.
I do not have time in this debate—I have had 20 minutes already—to list every egregious failure by Cheshire police, but given the Netflix documentary broadcast a little while ago, I want to pick up on the way the police treated Letby herself. They arrested Lucy Letby three times, claiming it was necessary for questioning, despite her freely volunteering to come in for questioning. Dr Watts—an assistant chief constable, let us remember—said: “That is completely wrong”. It is extraordinary that this unthreatening young girl was marched in in handcuffs, mirroring the way American authorities try to influence public opinion against suspects when they are perp walked to court. As Dr Watts said:
“The intelligence they had about Lucy was that she was nonviolent. There was absolutely no justification…for her to be handcuffed”
on those occasions.
Letby was also accused in court of lying about being arrested in her pyjamas, but the recent Netflix documentary proves that she was telling the truth. It is astonishing that the police officers in the court, who knew how she was dressed when she was arrested, did not intervene with the prosecutors to tell them that they had got it wrong, and instead left the jury to believe that Lucy was lying about something when she was plainly telling the truth. Frankly, it is astounding the lengths that Cheshire police was willing to go to in order to manage its own public relations—sometimes, I think, at the cost of achieving justice.
So there we have it. Despite the warning signs of the Sally Clark case, we see that Cheshire police has either ignored or broken the rules, disregarding relevant safeguards time and again. It failed to pursue alternative lines of inquiry; failed to refer the case to the appropriate specialist authorities; failed to conduct proper due diligence on the appointment of key expert witnesses; failed to engage with real experts about complex statistical evidence, and failed to correctly inform the jury of that fact; and failed on several occasions to disclose critical material to the defence.
On the evidence before us, there have been clear and serious departures from statutory guidance and multiple deviations from best professional practice. Because of the way the case was handled, I recommend that the police should provide Letby’s defence team with a whole series of documentation. Because of time, I will publish the full list online, but it should include: the senior investigating officer’s policy books and decision books; the records of identified lines of inquiry; logs kept by functional managers; and minutes of all meetings held, from the team meetings right up to the gold co-ordination meetings. That would at least start to demonstrate what went wrong here.
I should tell the Minister that irrespective of how Cheshire police responds, I shall be writing to the Director of Public Prosecutions about these issues and asking him to review the behaviour of both the CPS and the police.
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) on securing this debate and on being a formidable campaigner for the causes that he cherishes in this place. Given the time available, I do not have long to cover the range of issues.
These are serious criminal cases. The Criminal Cases Review Commission, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, is currently undertaking a review. In that context, it would not be appropriate for me to speculate on the outcome of those processes; we must let them take their course.
A meticulous and lengthy investigation led to Lucy Letby being identified as a suspect and arrested in July 2018 in respect of the significant rise of neonatal deaths and acute, life-threatening collapses of newborn infants. I am sure we all think of the parents of those children. As I have had children in neonatal units and born into special care baby units, I can only imagine their suffering in what they have been through.
In November 2020, the Crown Prosecution Service authorised multiple charges of murder and attempted murder against Letby. The CPS deemed that there was a realistic prospect of conviction and that it was in the public interest for the cases to proceed to trial. Lucy Letby stood trial from October 2022 to August 2023. She faced 22 charges related to 17 babies, and she was convicted of seven counts of murder and seven of attempted murder. Letby was also found not guilty of two counts of attempted murder, and the jury was unable to reach verdicts on two other counts of attempted murder.
In September 2023, Letby submitted an application to the Court of Appeal against her convictions. The application was heard by three senior justices in April 2024. The justices refused the appeal. From June to July 2024, Letby was retried in respect of one of the previous attempted murder charges. Letby was found guilty, for which she received an additional whole-life order. Following that conviction, Letby submitted an application to appeal to the Court of Appeal. During October 2024, a new bench of three senior justices heard the appeal, which was again refused.
I set that out to make clear that there has been a proper process, involving independent assessment by the Crown Prosecution Service, trial by a jury and two appeal processes, which has resulted in the conviction and imprisonment of Lucy Letby.
David Davis
I am conscious that I have denied the Minister much time to respond—that was because I do not think she has much scope for a response—but I want to place one thought with her. One reason why we are having the debate is because Members of Parliament cannot make applications to the IOPC; only victims can do so. I think that is a flaw in the law. My argument today is that we have not followed the guidelines, and the best way to deal with that is through an expert mechanism such as the IOPC. When she goes away today, will she take with her the thought that we might fine-tune the law on that point?
Sarah Jones
I will of course take that away. We are always looking at ways to improve the IOPC system. I was with the IOPC earlier today talking about its transformation programme and the work we are trying to do.
The right hon. Gentleman made a number of remarks about Cheshire constabulary—he can have his view. His Majesty’s inspector, through his Peel inspections, has in fact given it some of the highest ratings in the country, with two “outstanding” ratings and four “good” ratings, as well as two graded “adequate”. I put that on the record in the context of this conversation. In that context, it is important that we as Members of Parliament should not undermine public confidence in the police and the criminal justice system. We need to be careful to avoid implying impropriety where none has been established.
The right hon. Gentleman said that he will write to the DPP. He will take that through its course. I end by reminding the House that this country uses due process, and due process has been followed in the convictions of Lucy Letby, with a trial by jury, upheld on appeal. I remain confident of that and of the effectiveness of Cheshire constabulary. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. I also wish you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and everyone else here a happy Easter.
Electronic Travel Authorisation: Dual Nationals
David Davis Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mike Tapp
I thank my hon. Friend for her question; it is important, and well done to her for standing up so well for her constituents. Again, I ask that she drops into my session on Monday—civil servants will be there as well—and we can ensure that the right advice is issued, but at this point that there is information on the Government website, and a phone number to call for these sorts of incidents.
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
I am going to take the unusual step of thanking two journalists—Lisa O’Carroll of The Guardian, and whoever writes for the BBC website—because they wrote about all this last week. That is relevant, because I have three constituents who would not have known about this, had it not been for the media coverage, and this is a really serious matter for some of them. One is in their 90s, and has had a number of strokes. Their daughter’s passport ran out last month and she, as a dual national, felt that she could not return to see her own parent. That is a family disaster for them. I take the view that one of the absolute constitutional rights of British citizenship is the right to return to your own country and not to be intimidated out of doing so. I do not particularly demand a reply from the Minister today—I have written to the Home Secretary—but will he consider allowing a simple grace period of six months. So that people can get across this, and do not have their family life disrupted?
Mike Tapp
I thank the right hon. Member for his question about his three constituents. I will let him in on a little secret: perhaps that media coverage is a result of the Home Office’s efforts to get this information out there as widely as we possibly can. There is no intimidation here. This is about a secure border and modernising. Equivalent nations around the world are doing exactly the same. On the individual circumstances he mentions, I cannot answer today, but let us get together on Monday and go through them.
Police Reform White Paper
David Davis Excerpts(2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Shabana Mahmood
I reassure my hon. Friend that at the moment we have strong measures in place for how data is used in our police service. In future, all of that capability will sit with the National Police Service, which will set the standards. They will be very high standards with a high degree of transparency, so that we are always stress-testing our use of AI and technology to ensure that it is used effectively for policing, but not in a way that contravenes our collective values.
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
To follow on from the previous question, the Home Secretary has strongly supported digital facial ID and artificial intelligence. As her colleague, the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel), has said, both of those technologies show significant error rates, particularly when it comes to racial minorities. Innocent people fear this, particularly after the Post Office scandal, which showed that courts believe computers rather than people, resulting in miscarriages of justice.
I have three questions for the Home Secretary. First, what does she regard an acceptable error rate for these technologies? Secondly, does she support the provision of compensation for people who are misidentified by such technology? Thirdly, she has talked about regulations; will she put all of these reforms on a statutory basis, based on primary legislation that passes through this House?
Several hon. Members rose—
Oral Answers to Questions
David Davis Excerpts(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sarah Jones
We are supporting and working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council on its new rural crime strategy, and we are working very closely with local police forces such as Thames Valley police, which has a rural crime team tackling these issues. Our neighbourhood policing guarantee applies everywhere, and all areas—rural or urban—must have the right number of people in their local community tackling crime.
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
It is widely reported that the Home Secretary is a strong supporter of robust reform of the European Court of Human Rights. A large number of countries on the European continent share our concerns over that. Has she discussed them with any of her opposite numbers? In particular, where does she see the common interest in reforming the Court?
Shabana Mahmood
These are live discussions taking place not just between myself and my counterparts, but with other members of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman will have noted the political declaration achieved at the last meeting at the Council of Europe. That work was led by the Justice Secretary but was a cross-Government effort. We will continue in that vein, because reform of the European convention on human rights, and article 3 in particular, is a key part of our agenda. We will have legislation on domestic reform of article 8 in due course.
Omar al-Bayoumi: Arrest and Extradition
David Davis Excerpts(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the 2001 arrest of Saudi national Omar al-Bayoumi and the failure to extradite Mr al-Bayoumi for his alleged involvement in the 11 September terror attacks.
The Minister for Security (Dan Jarvis)
The attacks on 9/11 were an appalling assault on freedom. We remember the courage displayed by the American people in the aftermath and in the years since; ahead of the anniversary this week, our thoughts remain with the victims and survivors, as well as all who loved them. Almost 25 years on, there is a risk that we might forget the destructive and barbaric scale of the attacks on 9/11. I would like to remind this House that the attacks killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, injured thousands more and gave rise to substantial long-term health consequences for the victims. The 11 September attacks are the deadliest act of terrorism in human history. I would like to take this opportunity to remember every single one of the victims and their families. In addition to the huge loss of life, the attacks also caused at least $10 billion-worth of infrastructure and property damage.
It would be inappropriate to comment on an individual case, such as the one that the right hon. Gentleman raises. As he will know, it is also a long-standing Government policy—followed by successive Governments —to neither confirm nor deny an arrest for the purpose of an extradition request. The purpose of this policy is to protect the confidentiality of ongoing investigations, reciprocate international best practice, maintain trust and confidence between states, and minimise the risk of fugitives escaping justice. It is always a matter for the competent authorities in requesting territories if they wish to make a request for extradition to the UK. There is an ongoing civil legal action in the United States, and due to those ongoing legal proceedings, the Government are not able to comment further today.
The extradition process is a formal international procedure where one country requests another to return a person accused or convicted of a serious offence to stand trial or serve a sentence. The process typically begins with a formal request from one country to another. Extradition from the UK is governed by the Extradition Act 2003. For all countries outside the EU, a state-to-state system operates, whereby requests are sent between Governments, with decision-making split between Ministers and the UK courts. Whether or not formal extradition arrangements are in place with the requesting state will determine how incoming requests progress through the UK system. There are many countries where bilateral or multilateral treaties are in place. However, the UK can co-operate with any country on an ad hoc basis through the special extradition arrangements provisions in the 2003 Act.
The Home Office has an operational case working unit—the UK central authority—which exercises the Home Secretary’s responsibilities for non-EU extradition to and from the UK. For all incoming extradition requests sent to the UK from any country in the world, the 2003 Act requires a UK judge to decide whether the requested person’s extradition would be compatible with their human rights. The UK unequivocally supports the rule of law; all individuals requested for extradition are considered individually by our independent courts, complying with the provisions of the 2003 Act.
David Davis
Yesterday’s edition of The Sunday Times revealed that in the aftermath of 9/11 the Metropolitan police were forced to release Omar al-Bayoumi, who was believed to be a Saudi intelligence agent accused of supporting the hijackers, because the FBI withheld evidence. Arrested in Birmingham 10 days after 9/11, al-Bayoumi was taken to London to be interrogated by Met counter-terror officers. The FBI declined to provide those officers with vital evidence of al-Bayoumi’s involvement in 9/11. The evidence included a hand-drawn aircraft diagram, trajectory calculations matching the Pentagon attack, and an address book with the attackers’ code name—a code name that bin Laden himself did not disclose until a year later.
The FBI’s refusal to disclose this evidence prevented al-Bayoumi’s extradition to the United States. FBI records show that in 1999, al-Bayoumi met two officials from the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs. Those officials were assessed to be part of a network of individuals connected with the facilitation of two 9/11 attackers. A separate 2017 assessment by the FBI’s Arabic specialists concluded that Mr al-Bayoumi was a co-optee of the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency, which is its secret service.
A full investigation by the Intelligence and Security Committee is needed. It must investigate why the FBI clearly avoided extraditing Mr al-Bayoumi and exactly what was the involvement of the Saudi Government, in particular their Ministry of Islamic Affairs and secret service. As the Minister said, it is nearly 25 years since 9/11. In that time we have extradited many innocent people to America, but we failed to extradite someone who deserved to be sent over there. We need to get to the bottom of this, in part so that we do not see this terrible atrocity happen again.
Dan Jarvis
I know that the right hon. Gentleman applies a huge weight of judgment and consideration to these matters, so I completely understand why he sought to bring this matter to the House’s attention. I hope, though, that he understands that I am very limited in what I can say by way of response.
The right hon. Gentleman will remember—I do not think he will mind my saying that he has been around for quite a long time—that in 2001 we were operating under the Extradition Act 1989. As he has mentioned, The Sunday Times has reported that key documents were not considered in 2001 when Mr Omar al-Bayoumi was subject to investigation in respect of the 9/11 bombings in the United States of America. The Sunday Times article suggests that the US did not pursue extradition in 2001. The right hon. Gentleman will understand that there are legal proceedings ongoing in the United States, and that means that I am not able to say any more at this point. I hope that he and the House will understand the reasons for that.
Oral Answers to Questions
David Davis Excerpts(8 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
I associate myself with the Home Secretary’s comments about 7/7. I remember that day too well, and we supported the Government then, too. In more recent times, there have been a number of major cyber-attacks, ransomware attacks and associated blackmail of major companies. It has come to my attention that one such company paid a very large sum to its blackmailer recently. I will share the name with the Home Secretary afterwards; it would not be appropriate to share it in the Chamber. Will she update the House on the progress of the Government’s actions to ensure that blackmailers of this sort do not succeed in future?
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising this matter, and will happily meet him to discuss it. The Home Office recently closed a consultation on a world-leading package of legislative proposals to counter ransomware. A public response will be published shortly.
Iranian State Threats
David Davis Excerpts(1 year ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman; there was quite a lot in his question. With regard to proscription, I hope I have given him a sense of the importance we attach to the work that the Home Secretary has commissioned. It is entirely reasonable for the Government to say that we have looked at the existing legislative framework and decided that we need an independent reviewer and some independent advice to guide us about whether proscription is most appropriate for the state threats that we undoubtedly face. I think that is the right way to proceed. I hope he understands that no Government would ever get into a running commentary about proscription, because that is not helpful and undermines the deterrent effect of that tool.
The hon. Gentleman made an important point about ensuring that, as a Government, we do everything we possibly can to protect Iranians who are currently residing in the UK. I can give him those assurances. Hopefully he heard my words earlier about the work the defending democracy taskforce is progressing and about the transnational repression review, which is an important piece of work. The process has taken some time, but it should provide the mechanisms by which Government can most effectively ensure that people in this country are protected from the kind of threats that we have been discussing today.
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
I know I bore the Minister incessantly with my repetitive calls for the proscription of the IRGC, so I welcome what he has to say today, particularly about the independent adviser’s review, which I hope will be rapidly available for him to take action. May I pick up the issue raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) about the need for a whole of Government response? That does not mean just the Foreign Office as well as the Home Office; it is wider than that. I could give the Minister a single example or a number of examples. Successive British Governments have stood aside while British universities have done military research in conjunction with Iranian researchers on battlefield armour, range-finding lasers, drones and fighter jets. Will he ensure that the whole of Whitehall brings the focus to this that is required?
Dan Jarvis
The right hon. Gentleman has never bored me—[Interruption.] I sense, Madam Deputy Speaker, that not everybody in the Chamber would be able to say precisely those same words, but I can say them and look the right hon. Gentleman in the eye. He is right to mention Jonathan Hall’s work. He will know that Jonathan Hall is not an individual who sits on his hands; he will work at pace. We need to get a move on with this, and I can give the right hon. Gentleman an assurance that we will and that work will progress at rapid pace.
The right hon. Gentleman’s point about wider Government is exactly right. There is an important role for the Department for Education. The defending democracy taskforce that was set up by the previous Government, which I now chair, brings together virtually all the Departments, as well as a number of other operational partners, so that fulcrum point across Government that looks at these matters very much has that wider approach, which he is right to raise.
Southport Attack
David Davis Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The families and all the people across Southport and the country need the truth. They need answers about what happened and what went so badly wrong in this case. That is why the information is put before the trial and then released after the trial. That is how the British justice system works. Crucially, at the heart of this, people need to see justice. There has to be an account for such a terrible, terrible, barbaric crime. All of us have to make sure that justice is delivered, because when lives have been lost in such a terrible way, justice is the minimum that they deserve.
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
I hope the Home Secretary will not take it as a discourtesy if I say to her that it should be the Prime Minister making this statement here today. This morning, he said on television that singleton terrorist attacks are a very new occurrence; they are not. They have been going on for nearly a decade. There have been many in London, including one in the yard of this House of Commons, and one that killed Sir David Amess, our colleague. In that attack on Sir David Amess, the police declared it a terrorist incident the same day. Without three Prevent references, without ricin, and without an al-Qaeda manual, they declared it a terrorist event the same day. So we all wonder why this was not the case here when there was such evidence. This is a clear mistake, is it not?
Yvette Cooper
The decision about the application of the Terrorism Act 2000 is one for the police and, ultimately, the CPS when it lays charges based on the operational information that it has. The prosecution will lay out more information before sentencing that they would have put before the court today had the offender not pleaded guilty initially, and that is for them to decide. But the point the Prime Minister made this morning was that this was clearly a case where someone attempted to terrorise the community. That was clearly their intention—to kill those children and to terrorise more widely. That is why we have to ensure that, even in cases where the police and the prosecution say they have not been able to prove ideology, we still have the right powers, sentencing and ability to respond with swiftness and seriousness to the kinds of cases we are facing. That is why the Prime Minister has said this needs to be reviewed—I referred to the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation looking at those issues—and also why we have this statement to the House and are doing this inquiry.
Where I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman is when he said we have had such cases for a long time. We have seen in recent years a big increase in youth violence and extremism on a disturbing scale, and that needs to be part of the inquiry as well.
Facial Recognition: Police Use
David Davis Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Sir John Whittingdale
I certainly agree that more assurances need to be given. That is actually one of the purposes behind requesting this debate. The hon. Lady is right that concerns have been expressed—
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
I agree with the hon. Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson), but it goes deeper than that. There are at least three conditions that ought to apply, and I would be interested to hear from my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) whether Essex met them. First, these things always ought to be under judicial oversight; it should not simply be a police decision. Secondly, as he said, only the records of presumed guilty or actively sought people should be kept and, thirdly, that innocent people’s records should be destroyed straightaway. That should not be left to a guideline; it should be under legislative control and properly treated in that way.
Sir John Whittingdale
I agree with my right hon. Friend. The problem at the moment is that we do not even have national guidelines. There is a complete absence, which I will come to later. I will give way to the shadow Home Secretary.
Sir John Whittingdale
The hon. Lady is completely right. I think the police are generally being responsible in its use and setting the threshold as recommended, but that is another example where there is no requirement on them to do so, and they could lower it. Regarding deployment in Essex, the chief constable told me there was just one false positive.
I attended a meeting with Baroness Chakrabarti, along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington, where Shaun Thompson, an anti-knife community worker, spoke to us. He had been held by the police for 30 minutes and forced to provide all sorts of identity documents, as a result of a false positive. On the extent to which it is occurring and whether racial bias is involved, there is some evidence that that is the case. That makes it all the more important that we provide assurances.
We have heard from several campaign organisations that are concerned about the use. They vary in the extent to which they believe it is a legitimate technology. Big Brother Watch has described live facial recognition technology as
“constant generalised surveillance”
and has said that it is
“indiscriminately subjecting members of the public to mass identity checks”
which undermines the presumption of innocence.
Liberty has gone further, saying:
“Creating law to govern police and private company use…will not solve the human rights concerns or the tech’s inbuilt discrimination…The only solution is to ban it.”
I do not agree with that, because I think there is clear evidence that it has a real benefit in helping the police apprehend people who are wanted for serious offences, but one of my major concerns is the lack of any clarity in law about how it should be used.
I am grateful to the Library, which has provided advice on that point. It says:
“There is no dedicated legislation in the UK on the use of facial recognition technologies.”
Instead, its use is governed by common law and by an interpretation of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, although that Act does not mention live facial recognition technology, and some case law, such as the Bridges case. Even in the Bridges case, the Court of Appeal found that
“The current policies do not sufficiently set out the terms on which discretionary powers can be exercised by the police and for that reason do not have the necessary quality of law.”
David Davis
On precisely that point, some police forces in the UK take the view that GDPR has reach in this area. Does my right hon. Friend have a view on that?
Sir John Whittingdale
My right hon. Friend has anticipated my next point extremely effectively. I was Minister at the time of the passage of the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, which did not cover live facial recognition technology. At the same time, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), who is the shadow Home Secretary, was the Minister for Policing and he made a speech about how valuable live facial recognition technology was. I therefore sought advice about how that fitted in with GDPR.
The advice that came back following consultation with the Information Commissioner’s Office was that there is no blanket approval by the ICO for the use of LFR technology. Essentially, it should be judged on a case-by-case basis, but the ICO had expectations that data protection and privacy should be respected. It went on to say that the use of LFR can be highly intrusive and future uses of the technology may require updates, but that the ICO is monitoring it closely. That is only partially reassuring. Essentially, the ICO recognises that breaches of data protection could be possible, and is monitoring it, but there is no clear guideline to assist the police or anybody else with precisely how it should be used.
I am grateful to legal consultants Handley Gill, who wrote to me yesterday and who are involved in advising a number of people about the legality of the technology. They said that
“it is undesirable for individual Chief Officers and PCCs to have to engage in the wide ranging review and preparation of the necessary documentation, and that a move toward a common national approach (and choice of technology provider) would secure efficiencies and also enable closer monitoring…to ensure their efficacy and lawfulness.”
Although we are no longer bound by European Union law, the EU has brought in much more stringent controls than exist here.
Dawn Butler
The shadow Minister has hit on an important point regarding reasonable suspicion. What is reasonable suspicion? How have the police got to that point? If he is then going to make reference to watchlists, who is put on a watchlist? We know, for instance, that the Met police has hundreds of thousands of people on its system who should not be there. We know that the watchlist can consist of people it considers to be vulnerable, such as those with mental health issues. Anybody in this room could be put on a watchlist, so I am afraid the shadow Minister has not quite nailed the point he was trying to make.
David Davis
I am very much on the hon. Lady’s side of that argument, partly because we are a country where it is not normal to stop people and ask for their identity cards, which is why we have had a few battles over that in the past. Also, the technology is prone to slippage. Way back when—probably when the hon. Lady was still at school—we introduced automatic number plate recognition to monitor IRA terrorists coming from Liverpool to London. That was its exact purpose, but thereafter it got used for a dozen other things, without any legislative change or any approval by Parliament.
Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
Order. Could I ask Members to keep interventions as interventions?
Oral Answers to Questions
David Davis Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I thank her for standing up for her community. We want to strengthen the law to give the police more powers to tackle the nightmare of dangerous off-road bikes.
Sir David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
When last year the now Home Secretary called on the then Conservative Government to use counter-terror legislation to proscribe organisations such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, she will remember that I supported her publicly. Since then, Iran and the IRGC have got even more dangerous. Has she changed her mind, and if so, why?
The Minister for Security (Dan Jarvis)
I have huge respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but I gently point out that he is asking the Government to do something that the previous Government did not do in 14 years. I can say to him that we are leading work on countering Iranian state threats, making use of the full breadth and expertise of our intelligence services and law enforcement agencies. We keep the list of proscribed organisations under very close review. I can assure him that work continues apace to identify further ways to tackle the threat.