Illegal Immigrants: Offshore Detention and Deportation

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2026 Westminster Hall

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this issue is ultimately about fairness for our constituents, who are paying their taxes and are seeing someone who has come here illegally benefiting from services more than they may be able to, as residents who pay tax? Does he agree that we must absolutely consider offshore detention and consider offshore processing? We must say, “If you come here illegally, you will be deported.”

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind hon. Members that interventions must be short.

[John Lamont]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is about a sense of fairness. The system is not working in the best interests of our constituents, and I am sure that his 1,138 constituents who signed the petition feel that unfairness.

With the incentive of guaranteed mainland accommodation removed, the numbers requiring processing at any one time would fall to the low thousands, rather than the tens of thousands currently housed. The petitioner has based his argument on evidence such as that gathered by the Public Accounts Committee, which reported last month that the asylum system in the UK is

“under severe pressure, with high costs and persistent backlogs.”

The same inquiry found that repeated attempts at reform had failed to fix long-standing problems, and that short-term fixes had tended to push pressure from one part of the system to another rather than resolve it. More strikingly, the Committee recorded that the Home Office could only say that it knew where “the vast majority” of failed asylum seekers were. The Committee called that “shocking and unacceptable”. The vast majority of British people agree. The Committee’s conclusion was that the current accommodation model is “poor value for money”.

The Government response to the petition says that offshore detention would be “costly and impractical”. On that point, the Government seem to be grasping at straws and to be woefully underprepared. Two words that undoubtedly apply to the current system are “costly” and “impractical”. Offshore detention may well be costly and impractical, but the Government have not proven that point. What is worse, they have not come close to proving that it would be more costly or impractical than the current system, which was found by a cross-party Committee of this place not to provide value for money.

The signatories to the petition would be well within their rights to ask the Government to publish all the relevant figures for the current system, break that system down on a cost basis and let people see how broken it is at every stage. Have the Government assessed the cost to every individual community of providing services to those claiming asylum? The answer is no. They certainly have not come close to doing so—nor do they want to, because the cost to local services is not a simple number. It includes the ongoing cost for already strained local services and the breakdown in community cohesion. Some of it cannot be captured on a simple ledger, but is nevertheless very expensive for our country.

Many in the SNP, Labour and the Greens wish to portray an effective immigration system and a strong deterrent as somehow morally wrong. They regard any policy designed to protect our borders as outrageous. Yet internationally, offshore detention and similar measures have been effective and are increasingly being considered by Governments of all political persuasions. Australia’s move to offshore processing coincided with a sharp fall in boat arrivals from 2001, and the Australian Government maintain that offshore processing is very effective. Other countries, including Italy and Denmark, have brought in similar measures to those that the petitioner seeks. Many others, including Germany, Austria, Denmark and Greece, have considered return hub facilities outside the European Union.

No matter what some politicians think, those policies are not far right. It is right that they be properly considered. This Government have not done so appropriately. They have not seriously considered an approach that other countries have implemented successfully and that others are now looking at. They dismiss the views of the signatories to the petition and the huge number of people across the country who support it. Their analysis is short on detail and long on assumptions about costs that do not seem credible.

The truth of the matter is that our immigration system is broken beyond belief, and the British people know all about it. I represent a rural constituency in Scotland, but this issue fills my postbag and comes up time and again on doorsteps and in my advice surgeries. It comes up because my constituents, far from the English channel, can see that they are paying and that our country is suffering for this broken system. They see that we struggle to deport even serial criminals. That is why more than 700,000 people have signed the petition. They deserve to be heard, and they deserve to hear from this Government that all the substantive and reasonable options must be put on the table to fix this broken immigration system.

This is not the time to dismiss, for political or ideological reasons, proposals that are grounded in evidence and that seek to provide a real solution to one of our country’s biggest ongoing issues. The Government should take the petition seriously. They should consider a new approach to immigration. They must consider establishing offshore detention facilities for people who enter the United Kingdom illegally.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Tapp]

The Home Secretary made it clear at Home Office oral questions that the announcement on the five to 10 years absolutely stands. We opened a large consultation and had 200,000 responses that are still being worked through. Announcements on transition arrangements and so on will be made in due course—around the autumn, we expect.

Let me move on to small boat arrivals more broadly. They are unacceptable, and we have made a commitment to restore order and control by making it less attractive to come here and easier to remove people. We have also been working with international partners, and we have seen small boat crossings go down 41% in the last year.

In March, we extended the duty to deport foreign national offenders who have been given suspended sentences of 12 months or more. FNOs who have a prison sentence, a suspended sentence or a community order are referred for deportation. Foreign national offender removals are now up by 36%, and we will continue to remove those who should not be here. Progress is being made to end the use of hotels, which is something that we will achieve by the end of this Parliament. Hotel use is down from 213 in July 2024 to fewer than 170 today. Asylum support costs are down 15%. I have already covered illegal working a number of times in response to interventions.

Small boat crossings are down, decisions are up, hotel use is down, deportations and removals are up, and net migration is down by 82%. This is not an overnight fix and there is no silver bullet, but two years in, this Government are heading in the right direction with a solutions-based approach, which includes safe and legal routes and increased deportations and removals. This does not have to sit anywhere on the political spectrum; it is about finding solutions, and that is what we are doing.

I will conclude there, with thanks again to all who participated in today’s debate. I know that the strength of feeling around these issues is significant on all sides. This debate and the original petition are further evidence of that. Although we may disagree on how best to respond to the very significant challenges that this country faces from illegal migration, I think we are mostly united in believing that those challenges must be addressed if we are to be the strong, secure nation that the people we serve rightly demand. As I have set out, this Government are taking more and stronger action than any in recent memory to restore order and control to our borders. That is the task, and in that task we will be unrelenting.

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

I call John Lamont to wind up.

Domestic Abuse Survivors: Government Support

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge and the Minister. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for domestic abuse survivors.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this important debate, Mr Twigg. I thank all Members for attending the debate and standing up for survivors of domestic abuse in their constituencies. I also thank the excellent women’s rights campaigners, some of whom have joined us today. Without their relentless research, activism and day-to-day support for victims, we would be unable to fully represent domestic abuse survivors.

I must open today’s debate with a sad reality: according to Refuge, an estimated 2.2 million women and 1.5 million men have experienced domestic abuse in this country in the last year alone, and according to a 2025 report by the Office for National Statistics, this issue is far from niche. Refuge also found that, on average, one woman is killed by an abusive partner or ex-partner every five days in England and Wales. The fact that we use words like “on average”, “approximately”, and “estimated” on such a serious topic beckons us to acknowledge that those numbers still suffer from severe under-reporting, highlighting just how much more work we have to do.

In the light of International Women’s Day having just passed, and with the Government’s long-awaited violence against women and girls strategy still fresh in our minds, I want to take this opportunity to assess how Government support for domestic abuse survivors holds up in practice.

Asylum Policy

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I think there were two questions. The first was on the backlog of appeals, which I recognise is far too high. That is why we will create a new independent appeals system so that we can run through these cases more quickly, while fulfilling our obligations to have an independent process and provide early legal advice. On the specific point on Wethersfield and pressures on councils, we work closely with local councils and provide funding to assist with community cohesion and other issues. I will look carefully at the example the hon. Lady has raised if she writes to me.

[Derek Twigg (Widnes and Halewood) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary’s statement is most welcome. The proposals that she set out today are a significant step in the right direction. The comments that she made about the damage to the social fabric of this country are important. I have a specific question about asylum seekers who have committed crimes and are deported, but are then allowed to make a second application to come back to this country. Will she look at the law to see how that can be addressed?

[Shabana Mahmood]

On those who are convicted of crimes, the combination of the Sentencing Bill changes and what I have said today should lead to the earlier deportation of foreign national offenders from this country. It is important that those individuals face the full force of the law, but we have made a policy decision as a Government that for the vast majority of foreign national offenders, the appropriate thing to do is to move to immediate deportation wherever possible.

Hillsborough Families Report: National Police Response

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and agree with his point about the policing failures at the time. It is right that the police comprehensively apologised yesterday for the police’s behaviour, both at the time and in the years subsequently. As I say, the consultation on the independent public advocate did happen, and it is under active consideration at the moment. I do not want to pre-empt the Ministry of Justice’s work on that, because it is for the Ministry of Justice to publicly respond, but I can tell my hon. Friend and others that they are actively working on it at the moment.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

It is an absolute disgrace that the Home Secretary was sat on the Government Benches just before this debate started, but has left—a debate about a disaster that has no parallel, in terms of what happened and the injustice that took place. I am quite sure that the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) would never have left the Front Bench in these circumstances.

Mr Deputy Speaker, as you may be aware, I have a number of constituents who lost loved ones at Hillsborough, and I myself was present that day at the disaster. As I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) will agree, my hon. Friend and I are so proud to have been privy to the work of the Hillsborough families over the years in fighting for justice. Part of the injustice that has existed over the years—apart from the general injustice—was the continued delays, the time it took to try to get to justice and get to the bottom of what went wrong, even though we all knew, and to get the report out. It took a long, long time, and this is adding to the torture of the families and those people who were affected by Hillsborough, so the Minister saying that he hopes to have a response by the spring is just not good enough. I ask him to come back to the House before the recess in February with an actual date for when that response will be given to the House.

[Chris Philp]

I thank the hon. Member for his question, particularly given that he has such direct personal experience of the tragedy that unfolded—that he was there himself, all those years ago. I agree that speed of resolution is now important after all this time: too much time has passed, and I can give the hon. Member my assurance that I want this done as soon as possible. It is something I have personally pressed for since arriving, and I will be doing everything I can to expedite this process and get the comprehensive response published as quickly as possible.

National Security

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is quite right to talk about international co-operation, because this is not something that we can do alone. Our partners around the world are absolutely integral to our defence. Through agencies such as GCHQ and wider work through the National Cyber Security Centre, the United Kingdom has regularly been leading different forms of engagement and different ways of co-operation. My hon. Friend has my absolute commitment that that will continue and grow, because the way we extend the UK’s influence and defend ourselves is by making sure that our friends and allies are safe, too.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister to his post and welcome the taskforce. While I have no reason to doubt his integrity or commitment to security, I am a little disappointed that although the shadow Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) both raised the issue of the Government’s integrity with respect to security, he has not addressed it. I thought he might have taken that opportunity, given the situation with Ministers’ email use and the security issues surrounding it. We know that mobile phones and other phones are being used, we have seen the former Prime Minister going off to meet an ex-KGB agent, and there is an issue about Russian money in the Conservative party. I thought that the Minister would address the question of how we can have confidence that he and the Government will put things right to ensure that they take security within the Government seriously.

The question that I want to ask the Minister is very simple. Given that the focus has rightly been on Russia and China, on what is happening in Ukraine—obviously—and on energy security, may I suggest that it is important for us not to lose sight of the fact that we need to keep on top of the issue of how we combat terrorism? It seems to have been left on the back burner recently, but we need to know and feel more comfortable about what the Government intend to do to protect the country from terrorism.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for what he has said. He is absolutely right. There is, sadly, no let-up in the concern about terrorism, and we know that the fact that we do not hear of incidents does not mean they were not prevented by our fantastic agencies in various different ways. The experience that I think must be the most sobering I have had for a long time was walking into my present role and hearing an update on the threats that we face every day, and the different ways in which our fantastic agencies and the officers who serve them have been conducting themselves in order to protect us. They are absolutely the best of us, and we are blessed and honoured to have them working for us and serving our state.

As for the hon. Gentleman’s other points, he will forgive me if I do not go into details. He knows why that is. As the shadow Home Secretary correctly said, it would be inappropriate to discuss operational matters for party advantage.

Salisbury Incident 2018: Update

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments. Today’s judgment and ruling from the ECHR is important and significant, particularly in the context of what we are speaking about. He is also right to touch on some of the other issues he has mentioned, which obviously link to our work in the Home Office in dealing with illegal migration. There is always more we can do and we would welcome greater support, through some of the courts, to help us in how we tackle some of these very challenging issues.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for her statement. We now know that not one, not two, but three Russian agents were able to get into this country by basically just walking into the airport. In the statement, the Home Secretary talked about

“new powers to enable the police to stop, question, search, and detain individuals…to determine whether they are spies or otherwise”.

Does she believe that those new powers would have prevented the three individuals from getting into this country?

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point with his question. The fact of the matter is that those powers were introduced as a direct response to the Salisbury attack, as part of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, to enable the police to effectively stop, question, search and detain individuals. Those powers came in after the attack and there is no doubt that they would have made a difference at that particular time. The fact of the matter is that those powers are now being used in the way we have spoken about and to which I referred in my statement. On a day-to-day basis people are being stopped, detained and asked significant questions. As I said in my statement, we will look at everything—all measures—in terms of how we not only protect our border but prevent individuals with malign intent from coming to our country.

Serious Violence Strategy

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms Abbott]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and shall return to those issues later in my speech.

We welcome the broad themes in the serious violence strategy—tackling county lines; early intervention and prevention; supporting communities and local partnership; and law enforcement and the criminal justice response—but I hope the Minister will agree that it is reasonable to talk about resources when we discuss those themes. For some time, Ministers claimed that they were protecting the police budget and that crime was going down. I am glad to hear them now admit that there is a major problem with serious violence, the crime about which people are most frightened and concerned.

In the latest 12 months, police recorded gun crime is up 11% and knife crime is up 22%. There are widespread reports of serious violent crime, including knife crime, throughout the country. Reported deaths have risen sharply from the beginning of this year. Ministers have said that the Home Office serious violence strategy is designed to address all that. In her foreword to the report, the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), said that £40 million of public funds have been committed to the strategy and that it is a

“significant programme of work involving a range of Government Departments and partners, in the public, voluntary and private sectors.”

Are Ministers really telling us that the resources that they are promising are adequate? To be clear, in the past 12 months the police recorded almost 40,000 knife crime offences and well over 6,000 firearms offences; the funding allocated to discourage, prevent, divert and detect serious weapons-related violent crimes is therefore just a few hundred pounds for each offence.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an important point about resources, and it is clear that there are not enough. As she rightly says, it is about not just big cities but towns, too, and it is also about having the resources to detect and prevent crime and to get the intelligence. That is one of the biggest problems. It is about not only having police officers on the streets but being able to prevent crime in the first place.

[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend is right. We talk about the lack of resources because the role of the police is not just to detect crime and prosecute; the role of the police is to be in communities and to know what is going on, and to be trusted stakeholders with whom community groups, parents, schools and others can work. If we do not have the police officers on the ground, that affects our ability to respond to serious violence, in more than one way. It is unclear from the Government’s published strategy whether there is any new money at all or if it has just been stripped from the existing police budget, which has already been cut in real terms since 2010.

When we look at stakeholders’ response to the strategy, we see their scepticism about the level of resources. The chair of the Local Government Association’s Safer and Stronger Communities Board said:

“Only with the right funding and powers can councils continue to make a difference to people’s lives by supporting families and young people and help tackle serious violent crime”.

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services said:

“The strategy emphasises the importance of local communities and partnerships yet provides little for local authorities to develop local responses”.

If Ministers are to be taken seriously on this issue, they have to listen to what stakeholders say about resources.

Health, Social Care and Security

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I congratulate you on your election today, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The Queen’s Speech set out no strategy and no answers to solve the crisis of both staffing and funding in the health service. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, when the Conservatives were in power for so long, we saw a massive crisis, and that has been repeated under the Conservative Governments of the last seven years. There is not enough funding and not enough staff. The Government have done nothing to solve the crisis, but it needs funding.

Take trolley waits, for example. A recent Library paper says that in 2012-13 there were 152,754 trolley waits, and in 2016-17 there were 563,901. That is a disgrace, and it shows that the NHS needs to be funded properly. We have talked about the GP crisis, and the Library paper says that the estimate for this year is that the number of GPs will fall—although the number is now calculated differently. In my constituency and others, people cannot get to see a GP when they want to, and there is a real crisis in GP practices.

NHS deficits are still a problem and are estimated to be at least £7 billion. Some commentators claim that not even that figure is high enough to be correct. More than 100 NHS trusts have a deficit—when I last spoke to the chief executive of Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the deficit was about £5 million. We know the stress and worry the staff face because they do not have the resources they need.

Clinical commissioning groups have not been mentioned much, but the Government fragmented the health service through the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and it is not clear where to go for a decision or to get something done. I have regular meetings with my clinical commissioning group, and it has a serious funding problem, as do many CCGs. What will the Government do about that? I also ask the Secretary of State, who is in his place, why Halton CCG is mainly working in collaboration with Warrington CCG and not with the other CCGs in the local health economy, as it should. I have already raised that problem with the CCG, but it has not done anything about it. I hope that the Secretary of State will look into that.

The Care Quality Commission said clearly last year that social care was at a tipping point. The delays have been discussed many times in the House, and the Secretary of State knows that I have raised them. The Library paper states that delayed transfers were 24.5% higher in 2016-17 than in 2015-16, and 64% higher than in 2011-12. This is a real problem. The Government, despite talking about a Green Paper, have still not come forward with a strategy. There needs to be proper funding for local councils—my council has had £57 million cut from its budget—and proper funding for the NHS and the health economies of each area.

Education is the other big issue that is raised with me. Again, the Government have not set out a strategy, and the Queen’s Speech does not address it in the way it should be addressed. There are cuts taking place. I have been talking to headteachers in my constituency and they are making cuts as we speak, particularly in teaching assistants, but some are talking about cutting teachers as well. This mess is best summed up by reading an extract of a letter from a headteacher in my constituency:

“At my school, we manage the budget prudently and we have rising numbers so have received similar funding for 17/18 as for 16/17. In fact there has been a small increase of just over £1,000. Despite this, without any planned increase in spending on teachers or resources, I am unable to balance the budget. The increased costs for areas such as Employers NI, pension contributions, apprenticeship levy, salaries and utilities has meant that I don’t have the capacity”—

I stress this—

“to set a balanced budget without making reductions and using our carry forward. For 2018/19 the school will almost certainly need to undertake a re-structuring programme to reduce staffing costs. This will inevitably impact on the teaching and learning, at a time when we have increasing pupil numbers.”

I talk to teachers and headteachers on a regular basis and I know the stress they are under. It is not just an issue of better pay—although, of course, they would like more pay—but one of workload, which is a key factor in the problems and stress they face. I want to put on the record my praise for teachers and their work. The Government’s proposed new funding formula will see huge cuts in all but one secondary school in my constituency. That will not address the problem; it will make it worse. The new funding formula is not up to scratch.

Finally on education, further education colleges have been cut and cut over the years. We talk about apprenticeships and the need to ensure that we have the skills to improve productivity. We need to ensure that our further education colleges, which can deliver them, have the funding they need to do so. We cannot achieve an improvement in productivity and skills without that.

In the few seconds I have remaining, I want to talk about defence and security. We have heard about police numbers. My constituents tell me that they want more police in their community and on the streets. We have specialist security, police and intelligence teams, but my constituents want more police officers on the street.

The Government have cut and cut the armed forces. We now have our smallest Army since the Napoleonic wars. At a time when there is so much stress in the world and so many challenges, that is appalling. The Government should increase the amount of money available for our security and armed forces.

Orlando Attack: UK Security Measures

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman is right, and I think we should take that message of love and tolerance, and we should be very clear that we condemn these sorts of prejudices that, as he says, can be taught and encouraged and sadly in some places are being taught and encouraged. They are not part of the society that we wish to live in, the values we share and the tolerance and respect for others that we want to see across the whole of the United Kingdom.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I want to place on record my condemnation of the terrible attacks in Orlando. It seems that ISIS is being pushed back in certain parts of the middle east and we are seeing fighters fleeing from its strongholds, a number of whom are coming across to Europe, and some may come back to the UK, Given that, is the Secretary of State satisfied that extra measures are in place to deal with this possible influx of additional ISIS fighters coming back to Europe and that co-operation is of a sufficient level with other European countries?

[Mrs May]

Yes, of course we look at people who are returning on a case-by-case basis to see what action is necessary. We increased the powers of the police in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, not least with the temporary exclusion orders that enable the police to work with other countries, in Europe particularly, and with places in the UK where someone might be returning to from Syria. They help to manage the return of any such individuals, and we do co-operate very closely with EU colleagues on these matters.

Hillsborough

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Of course, as a Member of this House he has taken forward causes that others have stood against and tried to resist, and he has been successful in that work. He is absolutely right. What came out of the independent panel report was astonishing. People were truly shocked by the fact that they had heard that statements had been altered in order to show a different picture from what had actually happened. That is appalling and it should never happen again.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

May I put on the record my thanks to the Home Secretary for her statement, and praise the magnificent courage and steadfastness of the families of the 96 in their campaign?

After the publication of the 2012 independent panel report, I reread my match-day programme from 15 April 1989 and was struck by this comment by the chairman of Sheffield Wednesday football club:

“As you look around Hillsborough you will appreciate why it has been regarded for so long as the perfect venue for all kinds of important matches.”

Such statements underline the complacency and total disregard for the safety of football supporters.

I have two brief questions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) mentioned the current chief constable of South Yorkshire police. Is the Home Secretary aware that the statement he made in 2012 apologising to fans is still on the website? He said:

“I am profoundly sorry for the way the force failed…and I am doubly sorry for the injustice that followed”,

and yet the fools representing the police at the inquest went over the same argument again, putting the families through torture.

Finally, of course we should focus on South Yorkshire police, but what about West Midlands police? It was responsible for the investigation and, as we have seen from yesterday’s result, it was a sham, complacent and a complete waste of time. What is the Home Secretary doing to make sure that it is held accountable for what it did?

[Mrs May]

As the hon. Gentleman says, the comment from the match-day programme shows the extraordinary complacency. As I indicated in my statement, there were several questions that related not just to Sheffield Wednesday football club, but to the engineers who designed the stadium. The jury was very clear that there were problems with the design of the stadium and with the certification process. There are some very real questions for those in authority of various sorts who allowed a game to take place in a ground with those particular problems.

Obviously, the IPCC is looking at the aftermath of the event. Operation Resolve is looking at the lead-up to the deaths of the 96 men, women and children. In doing so, it will, of course, look across the board at the work of police officers. I assure the hon. Gentleman that my understanding is that the evidence taken will cover things done by West Midlands police as well as South Yorkshire police.