Policing: Staffordshire

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered policing in Staffordshire.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. Given the nature of the debate we are about to have, I want to make it clear to everybody listening, especially my constituents, that I believe Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove is a wonderful place to live. In spite of all the crime that I am about to touch on, nobody should be scared or worried about where we live. We are safe and secure; my issue is quite how safe and secure we are.

Before I move on to the debate, I will take a moment to touch on the life of PC Andrew Harper, and pay the respects of everybody in the House to someone who was so brave and who gave his life in defending his community. We all have police officers in our constituencies who, every day, stand up for us and protect our community. He was a brave man, and my thoughts and prayers go to his young wife, as I am sure do everyone else’s.

I am blessed—I think we are all blessed—by some of our local police officers. I have been lucky to work with three chief inspectors since I got elected—Ade Roberts, John Owen and Mark Barlow—all of whom have served my community well. I could not have asked more of their professionalism and support, especially when I was a brand new Member. They exposed me to different parts of my constituency and made sure that when I was dealing with terror arrests or more complicated, not straightforward crime, they were there to support me as a local politician, to ensure that I did not make things worse but helped to make things better. Their professionalism is reflected every day by their staff, and last month I had the privilege of spending a day with my local officers on shift.

This is where we start talking about some of the challenges in our community. I was briefed on how we are working on local gang crime, meaning gang crime involving young people as well as organised crime. I spent time with the police when they were helping run a food kitchen as part of an initiative to help the homeless and get them off the streets, because one of our local churches does not work in August and there had been a spike in the number of homeless people on our streets. I was then taken around the local hotspots, working with the police and seeing how they engage with some of the most challenged members of my community.

What made it so difficult for me, and for them, is that one of the roles that police officers have to play all too regularly is that of social work. Their job is becoming more and more about tackling mental health issues and working with those who are struggling most. To be candid, they are not resourced to do so. They do it with such passion and provide so much support because they care about the local community, but my concern is that they just do not have enough resources.

Although crime across my constituency is down by 6% over the past 12 months, serious and violent crime is increasing, and people are scared. Some of that is because of a lack of tolerance of crime; some parts of my constituency have never experienced knife crime before, and it causes concern when they do. Other parts have experienced some very difficult crime. None of this is the fault of the police, but last year we were the centre of the country for Monkey Dust, which led to huge spates of crime. People who were high on drugs were trying to get into older people’s houses or turning up at community events, with the police having to act as security guards rather than as police officers, which they are not resourced to do. This summer, there was a spike in antisocial behaviour in Clough Hall Park. It became clear that there is only one warranted police officer and one police community support officer per shift for one third of my constituency. Across the borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme, we have 10 police officers and 10 PCSOs per shift. It is not enough for the population.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend has touched on an interesting point. Does she agree that one of the most disappointing things, not just in Staffordshire but across the country, is that although the Government claim to have protected neighbourhood policing, they have actually made neighbourhood policing areas much larger? Although some places have the same number of PCSOs and police constables, they now cover such a great terrain that the impact felt in certain parts of the community is virtually nil.

[Ruth Smeeth]

I absolutely agree, and will touch on that later in my speech.

In my constituency, especially in Kidsgrove, we have never seen this level of crime before. One of my concerns is that a lot of the burden is falling on the police, when in fact it is cuts to local government budgets that have led to Clough Hall Park becoming a hotspot. Maintenance has not been done, so as soon as the first example of graffiti happened—as soon as investment in the park was lacking—that park became a crime hotspot, because young people did not think anyone cared about it. We have seen that time after time because of cuts to our local government.

There has also been a spike in knife crime in our wonderful, great city. One of our concerns about that—I think I speak on behalf of the three Members from the great city of Stoke-on-Trent—is that we had been blessed by not having previously experienced very much knife crime. We were lucky that it was not normal on our streets, yet it is now becoming a factor. I thank the Minister’s colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), for working with our police and crime commissioner and, more importantly, some of our local teachers, as well as for providing additional support to the three Members of Parliament from Stoke-on-Trent on how to tackle knife crime.

The reality, however, is that our police force is struggling. The demands on it are higher, and the briefings we have received from the Staffordshire Police Federation and Unison have made it clear quite how difficult things are within our force. We are told that morale is at rock bottom, especially among the support staff; our dialogue in this place is always about police officers, not police staff, but the ongoing rationalisation programme means that people are working more hours at a less senior level, doing the same job and getting paid less for it. The 101 waiting times in our city have regularly gone up to more than 20 minutes, and according to a freedom of information request from the Daily Mirror, a 999 call took eight minutes to be answered by Staffordshire police force. That is not the fault of the police; it is the fault of a lack of resourcing.

At its peak, Staffordshire had nearly 2,400 police officers. Now, we are told that the figure is somewhere in the region of 1,600. Since 2010, we are down 468 warranted police officers plus dozens of PCSOs. Kidsgrove police station has been closed, as has Tunstall police station. Burslem police station is no longer open to the public. In fact, if any of my constituents actively want to speak to a police officer, they have to get on two buses for an hour in order to walk into a police station, because we no longer have access. That police station is in the constituency of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), and as delightful as I am sure it is, it is not convenient for any of my constituents. We are the 13th biggest city in England, but we have no 24/7 police station access. I say this as someone who wishes I were still a young woman: if I were out and about at the weekend, there is no safe sanctuary in my city. If I felt vulnerable, the only safe place would be the hospital, which would require a taxi. That is a cut too far.

I have already touched on the issue of council cuts, but I think this gives the Minister an opportunity. There have been cuts not only to maintenance—which is wooden dollars, in my opinion, because cutting local government grants does not help the police budget when it then costs the police more money to make interventions—but to youth provision. There has also been no clear guidance on ensuring that local authorities work together to provide CCTV infrastructure, which would save them money and help Staffordshire police force.

I will now ask my questions to the Minister so that everybody else may participate in this debate; I am delighted to see colleagues present from across the House. How much of today’s announcement of £700 million is going to come to Staffordshire police force? Will there be any new police officers for Staffordshire police? When will we get them, given that we are so short now? What can the Minister do to encourage partnership working from other statutory agencies, not the third sector, to ensure that everybody is not leaning on the police budget? Our police serve us day in, day out. They put themselves at risk. They ensure that we, especially in this place, are safe and secure. At the moment, however, it does not feel like we have their backs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher, and to follow two excellent speeches from my neighbours, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton). I do not intend to repeat much of what has been said, because the stark numbers speak for themselves.

The number of officers that we have lost across Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire demonstrates that the police force is stretched. It has told us publicly that it feels that it is not giving our constituents the service that it would like to. It worries about being able to respond to crimes in a timely fashion or to do the important preventative work and high-visibility policing that reduces fear of crime and makes people feel safer, even though there may not have been anything to fear in the first place. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North referred to the number of police officers lost.

[Ruth Smeeth]

I misspoke. In fact, we have lost 568 or 571 police officers—it depends on reports—not 468. I was being far too generous to the Government.

[Gareth Snell]

As my hon. Friend points out, we have lost 571 police officers across the county. We have also lost a number of auxiliary support staff in forensics, criminal investigation and the detective arenas.

In fact, the figures provided by my friends in the Unison branch at Staffordshire police show that the number of forensic investigators is being cut from 24 to 12, which they have said will mean they will be unable to provide the level of support to the frontline police officers needed to gather the evidence to provide for CPS considerations on whether prosecutions are available. Those 12 places are being replaced with nine lower-skilled, lower-paid and lower-graded roles that do not have the necessary technical qualifications to provide support. The forensic investigators have made it quite clear that they want to be able to do their job, to help keep people safe. It is not just about frontline policing, but about the policy family and the public sector family around the police force that can allow for crime to be detected and criminals to be prosecuted.

My hon. Friend has also mentioned the current closure of police stations across Staffordshire. Chief inspectors and assistant chief constables have said to me that the demand for face-to-face interaction with the police is going down, and I fully accept that that is the case. Younger generations now wish to interact digitally through electronics, the telephone system and social media. That is a perfectly reasonable way to interact with the police force, but it should not be an either/or. It should not be that elderly people in my constituency living in Bentilee or Sneyd Green have to, as my hon. Friend pointed out, travel on two buses to the other end of the city to see a police officer.

Although I am grateful that we still have one open police station in Stoke-on-Trent, it is open only between 9 and 5—office hours. If people simply need to interact with the police for a non-crime or non-emergency-related issue, they cannot access the station at the weekend or in the evening. To me, that seems a perverse arrangement that does not make policing feel accessible, even though it might well be. Across the county of Staffordshire, with somewhere between 950,000 and 1 million people, only three police stations remain publicly open between the hours of 9 and 5. I do not care what people’s politics are—I cannot believe that anybody would justify to me that that is, for accessible policing, an appropriate access level for that many people dispersed across a county that is geographically quite different, depending on where one goes.

I represent arguably the most urban part of Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent. I have the city centre of Stoke-on-Trent and the council estate. If one travels down to the rural villages in the constituency of the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), which has no public transport infrastructure and where there is little ability to travel, suddenly there is no access to policing. Yes, there are PCSOs who do their best, but they are now stretched so thin. The PCSO who regularly visits my office to talk to me about the activity happening in the area will tell me that she will have to walk miles in the course of a day to respond to jobs. On several occasions, she has simply been told, “Don’t respond to that—it is not a priority,” because there are not enough people to respond to crimes.

Over the last couple of months, I have seen a change in the crime that we are dealing with in my constituency. As my hon. Friend pointed out, there has been an increase in knife crime in Stoke-on-Trent. Five years ago, knife crime there was so rare that I doubt whether we had even one or two instances. I have had three stabbings in my constituency in the last six weeks.

I know the Government take this issue seriously—as my hon. Friend pointed out, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), has met us and is acutely aware of our problems—but those leading on this in our constituencies are not the police, but the colleges, the schools and the third-sector groups that interact with young people. That is not because the police are not interested, but because the resource available to the police, and the capacity within the force, is simply not there to deal with something else on top of all the other parts that they are asked to do.

Although I am grateful that people such as Claire Gagan at Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College are taking such an active interest in the safety of our young people, that is not her job—her job is not to ensure that gang violence is dealt with on the streets of Stoke-on-Trent. She is not there to ensure that parents take responsibility for what their children bring into colleges on a day-to-day basis or to regulate gang activity across Stoke-on-Trent. She is doing it because she knows it has to be done, and the police are supporting that, but it is something that an old-fashioned police service should do.

The story of Stoke-on-Trent is that we are actually a safe place. I know that the testimony that has come out of this debate might suggest that we have problems, but, like all cities, we have our bad places and good places. I have been fortunate enough to work with some wonderful police officers, including Karen Stevenson, who looks after the southern part of my constituency, and Mark Barlow and John Owen, who look after the northern part with Superintendent Geoff Moore. They are wonderful people who are genuinely committed to neighbour policing in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, but they make it clear to us that there is so much more that they want to do. They can just about manage with what they are doing now, but they know there are things that they are simply not doing, and that—with the right resource, support and impetus from Government—they could do to make Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire a much safer place.

It is clear that part of this is about money. Some £38 million has been taken out of the Staffordshire police budget since 2010. The police and crime commissioner has tried to recoup some of that by raising the precept, but the precept goes only so far. When we have mainly band A council tax payers having to fund the 2% levy for adult social care and the 2.9% increase in council tax, and also having to try to pay for policing, the available pool of money to fund all this in Staffordshire simply does not exist, because of the demography and house type that we have in our city.

The Government will have to ask themselves: what more can they directly do? I know the Minister will respond by talking about the extra investment going into policing. More money for the police is welcome, but I ask the Minister to bear in mind that it is not just about more money for more police. One of the problems raised with me when I was out with the police on Operation Disrupt with the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South—we very much enjoyed the chainsaw—was the question of where we would put more police officers coming into Stoke-on-Trent.

The police stations are no longer functioning and the police have moved into fire stations, so the fire stations are now at capacity. The community spaces in private finance initiative fire stations have been taken over. The chief inspector mentioned that she does not have the money to buy lockers for police to put their equipment in. It is all well and good having police officers, but we are not dealing with the long-term problems around police numbers if we cannot give them the resources, locker space, equipment, uniform and the training that they need to develop in their own careers.

It is not just the police numbers. Perhaps the Minister could explain how much of this new money will go into extra forensic investigators, extra detective support activity, digital crime prevention and the people who go out and tidy up crime scenes in homes after police have had to do raids. I recently had an incident in which, after one of the stabbings, the police had to follow a suspect into a private residence by kicking the back door down. The police had to pick up the bill for fixing that door and find the resources to replace it. These sorts of things have an impact on policing budgets and activity but are not simply sorted by having more police officers.

Of course, there is also the age-old problem of the magistrates and court system, which I know is outside the Minister’s immediate responsibility—I am sure he will be given that responsibility one day, as he demonstrates his brilliance in his Department. More police arresting more criminals means we need bigger custody suites, more custody sergeants and more space at magistrates courts to process those individuals who have been caught in crime.

I was told by a custody visitor only last week that police now spend more time waiting at the custody suite in Etruria in my constituency, because there are not enough custody sergeants to process all the people whom the police are rightly picking up for the crimes they commit. It means that they are not out on the street picking up the next lag who has done something wrong or providing the security that my older and vulnerable residents, and my communities, feel that they need.

I wonder whether I can tempt the Minister to comment on the fact that, out of every police and crime commissioner in the country, Matthew Ellis has the largest percentage office cost of them all—bigger than the West Midlands, Northumbria or South Yorkshire? It is a huge police force, and bigger than the Met. He spends £1.4 million, which, as a percentage of the money available to him, is almost 10% of his total. I wish the Minister would take that up.

I know the commissioner has said he is retiring at the next election, and I wish him well. I assume he is trying to get into this place—again, I wish him well—but surely every penny should be spent on trying to get more police, more frontline support and more officers out on the street, and not on public relations people sitting in a commissioner’s office.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady raises a good point. In many ways, the police, like lots of other organisations, need to modernise the way we contact them. If there are issues with 101 and 999 in her area, I am more than happy to look at the performance data. Lots of PCCs assess their local force on those kinds of performance metrics, and it is fundamentally for the PCC to decide. I was technically the first PCC in the country when I was deputy mayor for policing in London, and we were very hot on those kinds of performance metrics. As well as presence, people want a sense of responsiveness from the police—they want to know that they are going to get some kind of efficient response that makes them feel they are in good hands—so I am more than happy to look at that.

[Gareth Snell]

I accept the Minister’s point that bricks and mortar do not make a police force, but how many publicly accessible police stations does he have in his constituency? I have zero in mine. Would he be happy to have zero in his?

[Kit Malthouse]

I have one police station in my constituency, but the difference is that my constituency is 230 square miles. I am happy to have one, in the town of Andover. Most of my constituents would have to travel quite some distance to get to it, although they could travel across the border into Basingstoke, where there are others. My custody suite is in Basingstoke—I do not have one in my constituency—but my area has relatively low crime. We have our issues, in particular with rural crime, but I have to say that I have no complaints from my constituents about access to the police, albeit people are naturally concerned about a sense of presence, and that is what I am trying to illustrate: we need to work on presence overall.

In the old days, presence was often reflected in the “Doctor Who” police box. A police box was in effect a mini police station. When we were going through the inevitable station closures in London during the eight years when the now Prime Minister was Mayor of London, one of the issues that we looked at was whether we could produce that sense of presence by having the modern equivalent of a police box. Is there some way to have access to the police on the street? I do not know whether people have seen the screens and little pods on Victoria Street for accessing all sorts of information, but is there some way for the police to use those as a way for people to contact them? Technology can assist in access in lots of modern ways used by many other organisations, and the police will want to think about them.

Moving on to Members’ specific questions, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North asked how much of today’s announcement was in Staffordshire, whether there would be new offices and when, and whether we could encourage partnership working. The allocation of the £750 million will be agreed over the next few weeks. Obviously, we have the police funding formula announcement to make—normally that is in early December—and there will a conversation with the policing family about what the allocation looks like over the period. One of today’s announcements is that we secured £45 million for in-year funding, to allow recruitment to begin immediately. Some of that will go into the bricks and mortar, if you like, of the campaign itself—advertising and building capacity—but it should result in about an extra 2,000 police officers being recruited across the country, on top of the 3,500 baked in as a result of the settlement last year. Over the next couple of weeks, we will agree with PCCs and forces what the allocation looks like, but it will allow us to get going straight away and means that there will be new officers for Staffordshire. Subject to the force’s capacity to recruit, I hope that that will be pretty immediate.

I am keen to encourage partnership working. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central—Stoke is a lovely place, I have been a couple of times—also mentioned that other organisations were happy to take responsibility for gang violence. In truth, the solution to the problem of youth violence in particular relies on everyone sitting around the table to solve it together, and that includes schools and colleges as well as the police. An element of information sharing and a shared sense of mission, especially with local authorities, are needed in particular areas to map the gang activities taking place and then to take steps—hard and soft—to solve the problem. I will look at how I can work with PCCs to stimulate them to be more assertive about bringing organisations together to do exactly that. That might be through local criminal justice boards, some of which perform extremely well—others do not—but we will look at exactly that.

[Kit Malthouse]

I was coming on to the hon. Lady’s questions, but no, the money is exclusive of precept—it is on top of the precept. However, I cannot yet confirm the method of allocation. That will be subject to discussion and to announcement in the normal course for next year. We will try to reach an early agreement on the allocation of the £45 million so that people can get going straight away, on top of the recruitment that they are already putting into place.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) interestingly mentioned police cadets. I am a great fan of the police cadets. I remember that when I was doing the job in London, the police cadets would actively go and try to recruit young people who had been through the justice system, who had been in trouble. They had a 100% success rate; not a single police cadet would reoffend. Something about the discipline and self-respect found through being part of an organisation like that helps. That is the kind of theme we need to look at in much of the long-term work that we need to do with young people.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central mentioned space for police officers. He is absolutely right. When I did the first media round after the initial 20,000 announcement, there was much hilarity at the mention on the radio that one constraint might be locker space. Police officers carry a lot of kit, and 20,000 lockers is quite a lot of space. Where are we going to put them all? Interestingly, immediately after that, I had calls from a couple of local authority leaders saying that they would like to help. Local authorities have an estate and spare space, and there are lots of ways that we can get the public sector to work together to try to find accommodation. One thing included in the £750 million for next year is that ancillary costs—for training, equipment, space and all that kind of stuff—are essentially factored in as well.

The hon. Gentleman is quite right that 20,000 more police officers might, one would hope, be more productive in arresting people, which means that there will be criminal justice on-costs. He will today have seen the announcement in the spending round of another £80 million for the Crown Prosecution Service and more money for the Ministry of Justice to look at prisons and their capacity. We are looking at the whole system.

The hon. Gentleman also raised the central costs of the PCC in Staffordshire. I gently point out to him that the PCC is also the fire commissioner, and one would therefore expect the central costs to be a little higher, because he is handling two organisations rather than just one.

[Gareth Snell]

For clarity, the figure I quoted was from before Commissioner Ellis took on fire responsibility. I understand that, since he has taken on that responsibility, that figure has grown, but I do not have the up-to-date figure.

[Kit Malthouse]

Obviously, a police and crime commissioner has to face the electorate every four years, just as we do every now and again, and will have to justify that central cost. As I understand it, the Staffordshire PCC has done a pretty good job and has been pretty well praised, certainly by colleagues on this side of the House, for the work he has done over his two terms. It sounds to me like he no doubt has a pretty productive relationship with the hon. Gentleman as well, which is good to see. Finally, I think I have answered most questions from the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) on allocation exclusive of precept; finally, yes, those 20,000 officers will all be fully warranted.

Before I conclude, I will address the constant challenge about the number of police officers being related to the amount of crime. The hon. Lady may remember that, back in 2008, when I started my job as deputy mayor for policing in London, we faced exactly the same kind of spike in violent youth crime that we face now. That was at a time when police officer numbers were at an all-time high and money was being spent liberally on policing, so it is not necessarily the case that the link is direct. The causes of crime are significant and complex, and they change. It is key that the Government, and the police, which the Government fund, assist and support, remain agile in the face of changing crime. We heard about exactly that today, with the advent of “monkey dust”, which seems to have bubbled up and become a problem in just a matter of weeks. Giving the police the ability to be agile, through both technology and capacity, is a key part of our plans in the weeks to come.

Immigration Detention: Trafficking and Modern Slavery

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips]

I completely agree. Paradoxically, the support services that the Home Office funds specifically for human trafficking are good and relatively well funded for those who have already gone through the national referral mechanism. The problem is the idea that a trafficked woman, a trafficked child or a trafficked anyone understands what the national referral mechanism is. There is a high bar to accessing services, and the community-based support for people to enter the system has been completely and utterly degraded by years and years of austerity.

Birmingham, where I live, is certainly heavily reliant on religious organisations for the low-level support of trafficking victims who have not yet got to the national referral mechanism stage. That support is incredibly patchy and there is no outreach element to it; it is only provided if people manage to find those services. So, good advice and guidance on the streets, and a change in the culture of how we help these people, are vital.

I will go back to the specific cases of the Chinese women covered in this report. The distress caused to these women by their treatment at the hands of the Home Office is immense. One woman who was forced into prostitution in the UK described her arrest and detention in the following way:

“One day men in uniforms came to the house. They dragged me out and took me to the police station. Later, I was put in a van. It drove for a long time through the night and ended up at Yarl’s Wood. I was taken from one hell to another.”

Shalini Patel, a solicitor at Duncan Lewis Solicitors who has taken on many of these cases, has said:

“There is sheer disregard for the safety of these women who have already been subjected to such horrendous sexual abuse and exploitation. These women are by no means fit for detention, but despite this they are detained for months at a time with no adequate support. It is only when legal representatives step in that they are eventually released from detention. I hate to think what is happening to those women who are not able to access legal advice”,

which is an issue that has quite rightly been raised here today.

The Home Office will say that this report looks at only 14 cases, which is an understandable retort. However, although this report is the first piece of research to examine the treatment of Chinese women who have been trafficked into the UK, it is just the latest report to document how the Home Office is refusing to help and support survivors of trafficking. Research by Detention Action published in 2017 and a report published by the Jesuit Refugee Service in 2018 both showed how men and women who had been trafficked into the UK were routinely being locked up in detention.

Also, new Home Office data, which was obtained by the After Exploitation project and released today, shows that in 2018 alone 507 potential victims of trafficking were detained under immigration powers in the UK. In fact, this figure includes only those who have received positive reasonable grounds decisions and whom the Home Office recognises as possible survivors of trafficking, so it really is just the tip of the iceberg.

In all the cases that Women for Refugee Women looked at, the women were detained for over a month and four of them were detained for more than six months. These long periods of detention caused a drastic deterioration in their mental health; half the women in the sample had suicidal thoughts and six of them were self-harming in detention. And, incredibly, 92% of asylum-seeking women from China who are locked up in Yarl’s Wood are not subsequently removed from the UK but are released back into the community, which prompts the question: what was the point of putting them through that horror? As well as being extremely damaging, even traumatising, the detention of these women serves no purpose.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

As always, my hon. Friend is making an impassioned speech. Does she agree about one of the other disconnects that exists in the system? She has read out details of some traumatic cases of the long-term detention of individuals who need help, yet perversely some of us in this place have been arguing that the Government should extend the “move-on period” for those who have been given a determination past the 45-day mark, because 45 days is not long enough. The Government say it is sufficient time, even as they lock people up for months and months at a time in Yarl’s Wood. It just does not make sense to me.

[Jess Phillips]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that it is ridiculous that the “reflection period”, as I believe it is called, is 45 days and is considered to be the reasonable amount of time that somebody who has suffered terrible trauma and horrendous abuse requires. Given my experience of working in one of the services that helps these victims, I know that often it is possible to make claims for longer periods, based on certain circumstances. It is like any local resident who says, “Gosh! If I paid my council tax with the same irregularity as the bins are collected, I would be put in prison!” It is one of those things where it seems that there is one rule for the state and one rule for others.

It is also important to remember that, in developing policies on helping survivors of trafficking, the Home Office has repeatedly promised that it will reduce the use of detention for people who are vulnerable. Following Stephen Shaw’s review of detention in 2016, the Home Office introduced the adults at risk policy, which it said would result in fewer vulnerable people going into detention. The AAR policy explicitly says that survivors of trafficking and gender-based violence should not normally be detained, yet the research published by Women for Refugee Women today shows that the Home Office is deliberately going against this policy.

In fact, the report by Women for Refugee Women adds to the wealth of evidence showing that, despite the Home Office’s repeated promises to reform its use of immigration detention, very little has changed since 2016. The number of people in immigration detention has fallen, of course, but Stephen Shaw’s follow-up review of detention, which was published a year ago, found that

“it is not clear that AAR has yet made a significant difference to those numbers”—

That is, to the numbers of vulnerable people in detention. And just a few months ago, the Home Affairs Committee found that the AAR policy

“is clearly not protecting the vulnerable people that it was introduced to protect.”

What is the Home Office doing about this constant hamster-wheel of our coming here and asking that trafficking victims and victims of gender-based violence in detention be looked at and properly managed? It seems like many years now, but in 2015, when I became an MP, I went with Women for Refugee Women to Yarl’s Wood, to meet some of the women there. While I was there, because I was fresh out of working for an anti-human trafficking service, I was able to identify within seconds that the first person who I sat down to talk to—a woman—was a victim of human trafficking.

As I say, when I was sitting in that room in front of that woman, it took me seconds to identify what had gone wrong in her life, so I cannot understand why it has already taken four more years for the Home Office to consider putting in place proper safeguards. At the very least, there should be a proper specialist who risk-assesses everybody who comes through the doors at Yarl’s Wood on the day that they arrive; I will volunteer my time and I will gladly go and sit there for a few weeks.

I have three key demands of the Minister. First, the Home Office needs to stop detaining survivors of trafficking and gender-based violence immediately. It is very simple for the Home Office to do this; in fact, it is simply a matter of putting its own policy into practice.

Secondly, there needs to be a 28-day time limit on all immigration detention. The harm and distress caused by indefinite detention is immeasurable, and the research by Women for Refugee Women shows how the Home Office is detaining vulnerable people for very long periods of time. We already have much a shorter time limit of 72 hours for the detention of families with children or women who are pregnant, so I do not see any practical reason why a 28-day limit for everyone else cannot be introduced.

Finally, the Home Office needs to recognise that immigration detention is harmful, costly and completely purposeless; quite simply, nothing justifies its continuing use. Immigration cases can be resolved much more humanely and effectively in the community. If I was the Minister, I would shut down Yarl’s Wood and end immigration detention.

Again, there is this idea of one Government Department with two heads. I sit opposite Ministers from the Ministry of Justice who talk about women’s justice centres and how everybody knows that what is needed is proper community voluntary-sector provision, rather than sending women to prison, especially when so many women in prison have been victims of sexual and domestic violence, and often of human trafficking as well.

The Government line on this is completely different to reality, as they recognise that channelling the money away from prisons and into women’s centres in the community is the right thing to do, yet here we have this blot on the landscape, which is immigration detention, that does exactly the same thing as before and costs the state far more than specialist voluntary sector providers, who would do the same work better and more humanely.

I do not understand why we have to keep on having a debate on this issue. I hope that this is the last time that we all participate in a debate on this issue, but I imagine that, if she is still in her current post, I will see the Minister who is here today—the Minister for Immigration —the same time next year.

Retail Crime

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Thursday 11th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) on securing this debate. He has worked on this area of public policy for many years. As a member of the USDAW group and of the Co-op party, and as a proud shopper at the Co-op, I too feel that I have several reasons to participate in this debate.

We have had quite a congenial debate so far, and I put my thanks to the Minister on the record as well. As with her work on modern slavery and gangs, this is an area of her brief that she takes seriously. Although few Conservatives are present today, the quality of the Minister will in some ways make up for that, for which we should be grateful.

My constituency, much like that of the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), is small but perfectly formed—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) says it is not, but it is—she is more than welcome to visit any time she likes between now and 2 May, and I will show her.

Like many urban-based constituencies, however, my constituency can be broken down into a series of small communities linked together over history. Whether people are in the middle of my constituency, tootling up towards the moorlands and passing through Baddeley Green or Milton, or going towards Newcastle through Penkhull, they will pass a Co-operative store—I will constrain my remarks to those stores but, to cover all bases, other convenience stores are available.

Many community convenience stores are open from very early in the morning until very late at night. Normally, the ones in my constituency are the only shops open in a community at 10 o’clock at night, the only store open on a whole high street—everywhere else closes at teatime—and the only convenience store in the village that can still sell a pint of milk at 20 to 10 in the evening. Often, they are the place where people gravitate, because the light is on. In the winter, they are the only place that may be warm and, after a couple of drinks in the local pub, people may call in for a snack on the way home. At those times, the shop workers are most vulnerable.

Those times are not peak hours, so the workforce are not numerous and lots of people are not milling around in the streets outside, giving a sense of solidarity and community—the shop workers are on their own. If they are on the periphery of the city of Stoke-on-Trent, they will be far away from anyone else at work or from any on-duty police officer who will automatically be concentrating on the more densely populated urban areas in the city centre. That does not mean that crimes perpetrated against them should have any less value than those perpetrated against someone in the city centre.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) said, we are asking for more and more of the laws that we pass in this place to be enforced by civilians, at the till and at the point of sale. We are asking them to check ID, whether for the purchase of cigarettes, alcohol, or a knife. I am glad that the Co-operative Group has said that it will stop selling knives in its stores to prevent them from being available and used for crime in communities. However, we are asking civilians—individuals who have gone into a relatively low-paid retail job—to enforce the laws that we create. At the same time, we are saying that if those civilians receive abuse or are the victim of aggressive behaviour as a result of enforcing those laws, they may not get the follow-through and the justice that they desire. That clearly needs to be rectified, which is why I was proud to support the amendments that my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn tabled to the Offensive Weapons Bill, and why I am glad that constructive conversations are continuing between him and the Government.

There is another aspect of this issue that I am concerned about. I have been sent stories similar to those sent to my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), and the individuals against whom those crimes are being perpetrated tend disproportionately to be women. They are disproportionately older women who are working a low-paid job, and who disproportionately live in parts of the world where the sense of security has disappeared. I fear that there is a cultural issue in play as well: if people do not feel safe going to work in those shops, people will not feel safe shopping in them, and we cannot afford to lose those convenience stores from high streets. We cannot afford to lose those small shops from villages, because in most of those places they are the last shops standing, whether they are independent or part of a larger chain.

We need to start making examples of some of the perpetrators of these crimes, and demonstrate that their crimes will be taken seriously. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn said, there need to be little signs that we can point to and say, “If you carry on with this, you are undertaking an aggravated offence. You will be prosecuted, and there will be a punishment for your actions.” There are obviously penalties for aggravated robbery and other crimes, but I feel that the sense among some consumers that they are entitled to take out their anger, wrath or frustration on somebody who is at work, serving them and their community, is not taken as seriously as crimes such as robbery.

I also want to touch on a statistic that has already been mentioned: according to USDAW’s research, 280 retail staff are violently assaulted every day. Given that these isolated small shops will usually open from 6 am until 10 pm, a little bit of jiggery-pokery with the maths suggests that in the three hours this debate could go on for, up to 50 people will have been violently assaulted while we sit here discussing this issue. I do not think we should tolerate any violence, let alone up to 50 assaults; I stress that point not because I want to belabour it, but because I think it is important. These are relatively low-paid women workers who are serving their community through their roles, and it is simply unacceptable for them to be left in a situation in which they potentially face violence on a daily basis.

Like all Labour Members, I particularly enjoy setting six tests when it comes to any aspect of public policy, and I endorse the six tests that my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn has laid out. I particularly want to talk about community penalties, because that is one area in which I have seen success in my own constituency and community. The perpetrators of aggressive behaviour in shops on little high streets are made to go back and tidy up those high streets; they are used as the labour to fix some of the problems that they have helped create. That restorative process demonstrates to the community that that sort of aggressive action is not tolerated. As has already been pointed out, most of the staff who work in those shops tend to live in those communities and know the people responsible, so community penalties restore a sense of faith that justice is being done.

[Phil Wilson in the Chair]

Community penalties also allow networks to grow. I want to place on the record my thanks to the Stoke-on-Trent City Centre Partnership for the work it does through its Shopwatch scheme. It has successfully created a network of shops, mainly independent but also with the intu Potteries shopping centre, where anyone working alone in a shop knows that there is someone in a next-door shop who can come and help if there is a problem; they work through a network of radios and share intelligence about frequent perpetrators.

Intelligence networks are important not only for preventing crime, but so that people working alone in shop, perhaps around closing time, know that if there is a problem, there is somebody they can call—somebody who is looking out for them to whom they have recourse. That sort of community-based solution is important, but it should be done with Government, not in spite of Government. It should be the normal practice, not an ad hoc arrangement that arises from good practice in communities.

I want to leave as much time as possible for the Front Benchers, so I will end by asking the Minister to touch on or consider what role there might be for the future high streets fund and some of the town funds in funding some of these community-based improvements. We in Stoke-on-Trent do not want to see high fences or fortresses created around shopping areas, but a CCTV camera here and there can go a long way to making people feel safe, as can eliminating grotspots or dark spots where people can hide after committing a crime, and making sure there is help and support for individuals who may be going through tough times, leading them to commit these actions. I wonder whether treating retail crime not merely as a criminal justice issue but as a community and economic development issue could be a way to lever in money from other Government Departments. Small shops are valuable to our high streets. Although we should prosecute the perpetrators, we should also value these shops as integral elements of the communities we all serve.

Modern Slavery and Victim Support

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith)—I nearly said “north London”, to be quite honest—on securing this debate. I also thank the Minister, as I know she takes this issue very seriously.

I will echo some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) about the non-party political nature of this debate. I have been to a number of debates on this issue in this House where, regardless of political party, of where a Member comes from in the country and of our personal politics, there is a clear understanding that this is a problem that we can tackle. Collectively, we have the ability to tackle it and Lord McColl’s Bill gives us the vehicle to tackle it. If we can make progress with that, we will take a huge step forward in securing equality and justice for those people who have suffered at the hands of some of the most unscrupulous people in our country.

I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) about the work being done by the right hon. Members for Birkenhead (Frank Field) and for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller). The Modern Slavery Act 2015 was a starting point; it was never an end point. It was never meant to be the be-all and end-all of the process. It was introduced to say, “We have a problem. Here is how we can start to fix it, but this has to evolve over time to reflect the nature of the problem that we have in this country.”

I fear that modern slavery on a small scale—the individual cases—does not necessarily get the traction that it deserves. I will just tell a little story, if I may, about a constituent of mine, who contacted me regarding concerns that he had about social care. He is an elderly gentleman who lives in a very nice part of my constituency. He did not want to sell his house to go into residential care, so he told me that he had read about a scheme, one that he thought was very sensible and very logical, whereby he could have somebody come from abroad who could live in his house, who he would feed and give a bit of pocket money to, and in return they would help him with his domestic care arrangements. In his mind, that was a perfectly acceptable, almost magnanimous, thing that he could do to help somebody from overseas who he knew was less fortunate than him. I talked him through it, explaining that that was actually modern slavery—that was somebody who would be in tied employment to him. He did not see it like that. He does now, I hasten to add, but at the time he saw it as a way both to help somebody and to get some of the help that he needs.

As we talk about the process going forward, we need to be very clear that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North said, the big companies will be covered by the 2015 Act and by the declarations, but these smaller situations, where individuals do not realise that they are perpetrating a crime and the victims do not realise that they are being subjected to a crime, need to be teased out.

The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) talked about asylum seekers versus those who are victims of modern slavery. I think the reason for that is that somebody can self-refer to the asylum programme but they cannot self-refer to the modern slavery referral mechanism. Could the Minister say whether that is something that the Government will look at?

I will not take up any more time, Mr Betts, but all I will say finally is that we know, because we have debated this in this Chamber and in the main Chamber on numerous occasions, that there is a growing problem, a growing need for change and a growing opportunity for change. Organisations such as the Co-operative party, whose charter has been signed by many cross-party councils, show that there are practical solutions to offer help. The Co-operative Group, through its Bright Future programme, offers jobs to people who have been found to be victims of modern slavery. However, these are all ad hoc things that are being done in spite of Government rather than with Government.

All I hope is that, at the end of this debate, the Minister can take back to the Government and the Leader of the House the message that some time to debate Lord McColl’s Bill is all we are asking for, so that we can make progress and help those people who need our help most.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I thank all Members for their co-operation; that is very good indeed. We move on now to the Front Benchers, who will have 10 minutes each, so that there are a few minutes for the Member who secured the debate to wind up at the end.

Emergency Summit on Knife Crime

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Friday 22nd March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am very sorry to hear of the events that the hon. Gentleman has witnessed in his constituency in recent weeks. On resources, we are putting up to £970 million extra into policing next year, and the £100 million is in addition to that, to help those areas that are seeing the highest surges in violent crime. The youth endowment fund is important because it will run over 10 years. We want to lock that money in for the next decade, so that it is a funding source for organisations that can make a real difference in young people’s lives.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I politely say to the Minister that she has referred to “county lines” an awful lot during this exchange, but that makes this epidemic sound a bit like some sort of cartographic exercise, and it really is not. We should be calling it “child criminal exploitation”, because that is what it is, in the same way that we stopped talking about “child prostitution” and started talking about “child sexual exploitation”. These young people are the victims, and calling it out is the first step.

In response to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth), the Minister talked about coastal and rural communities. We are neither of those. We are a small city that has never had to deal with this, and there are small towns up and down the length of Staffordshire that have never had to grapple with this issue. Our police force is doing the best it can with reduced resources, but our police and crime commissioner is closing police stations, which does not help. When the Minister writes to my hon. Friend, can she talk about what specific help will go to those small communities that are not the Manchesters or Birminghams, as well as how the families in those communities will be involved? Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles are the ones who see these young people day in, day out and will spot changes in their personalities. If we can identify these young people early on, we can prevent this from becoming the problem that it is in other places.

[Victoria Atkins]

I accept the point about the phrase “county lines”, which has been used over a couple of years. It does not do justice to the horrors of the exploitation of the children involved in it, but it is the terminology used, and it seems to have gained credence among the police, law enforcement and the charitable sector. For the time being, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will use it as a short-hand, but I always acknowledge that this is child exploitation.

The role of parents is something I am very concerned about, having met far too many mums, dads and grandparents who have lost loved ones. There is much more that I want to do to help parents and family members spot the signs of a child who may be beginning to take the wrong path, and I am trying to bring to fruition various ideas at the moment. I hope I will be in a position to say a bit more, perhaps in a few weeks’ time. I am very conscious of that point, and I will update him when I am able to.

Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the seasonal agricultural workers scheme.

I represent a particularly urban part of one of the UK’s biggest cities, so why do I want to talk about agriculture? That is because the issue, as much as it is about food and food security, especially after Brexit, is about slavery.

Since my election in 2017, I have been proud to play my part in highlighting, combating and working to eradicate the appalling scourge of modern slavery. I work alongside Members from all parties on the Select Committee on Home Affairs, hon. Friends from the Co-operative party, colleagues from the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, and friends at FLEX—Focus on Labour Exploitation—the Human Trafficking Foundation and the rights lab at my alma mater, the University of Nottingham. I have been proud to use my place in the House of Commons to do so.

I am joined in the Chamber by my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), the chair of our all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking and modern slavery. We will continue to raise the issue, because slavery is a disease, pure and simple. It is much more widespread than people would ever countenance, it is appalling and it impacts on and blights lives throughout our communities, but all too often it is hidden from view by a deadly combination of fear, shame and circumstance.

Nevertheless, despite the scale of the challenge, I remain confident that we can achieve the goal of stamping modern slavery out in its totality by 2030. That will necessitate identifying, challenging and eradicating sources of slavery at home and abroad. It is also vital that, as we fight existing sources of slavery, we do not unwittingly create new opportunities through decisions that we make. That is why I am in the Chamber today.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the immense amount of work that he and our hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) do on modern slavery and preventing it in this country. Does he agree that the seasonal agricultural workers scheme proposed by the Government could, because of the way it is set out, create greater opportunities for modern slavery to exist, and that one way to tackle that properly would be to ensure that every worker brought into the UK under a seasonal scheme is given access to a trade union, and clear and comprehensive knowledge of what their rights are and how to enforce them?

[Alex Norris]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and for his commitment to this agenda. I share his view, and it will not surprise him to hear that I will address that shortly. As he said, it is vital that we do not inadvertently create new opportunities.

As formulated, the seasonal agricultural workers scheme, or SAWS, presents a significant risk of creating slavery. In theory, SAWS offers fruit and vegetable farmers a route to alleviate labour shortages during peak production periods by employing migrant workers for up to six months—but that is a tale as old as time, frankly. The pilot will start this spring and run until the end of 2020. For migrant workers, it represents a chance to improve their lives, but it carries the risk of workers being treated as a disposable asset, creating a recipe for exploitation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Snell]

Given what the Minister says about the Government’s commitment to modern slavery, may I ask, cheekily and slightly tangentially, whether he will have a word with the Leader of the House about finding Government time to debate Lord McColl’s excellent Modern Slavery (Victim Support) Bill, which would give additional support to the victims of modern slavery? That would be another example of cross-party support for tackling modern slavery.

[Mr Hurd]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his cheekiness. I certainly undertake to ensure that the Leader of the House is aware of his intervention.

I will seek to reassure the hon. Member for Nottingham North and others who share his concerns that, in proposing the pilot, we are determined not to risk going back in time or creating loopholes for exploitation. I am delighted to have this period of scrutiny, which is incredibly important to us. I hope I can persuade him that we have addressed most of his concerns.

The hon. Gentleman and others were rightly up front about the need to support some of our fastest growing industries. Of course it is right that we do so, but a balance needs to be struck. He mentioned that how we meet temporary labour needs in the agriculture sector is a long-standing issue. We totally appreciate that farming is a long-term endeavour and that UK growers, like most businesses, place great emphasis on certainty when it comes to workforce planning.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Gareth Snell Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 28th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[David Hanson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support. As he will know, the frontline staff are the people who are upholding the law not just on this issue but on all age-related sales. While today we can only discuss amendments on corrosive products and on knives, the Minister needs to look at this issue in relation to all age-related sales. Shop staff are upholding the law on our behalf, and they deserve protection. My new clause would strengthen that protection. It provides for a level 4 fine of up to £2,500 for abusive behaviour when staff are enforcing the legislation that the Minister proposes.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I, too, support my right hon. Friend’s new clause 1. Does he agree that there is a particular point about staff in small shops that are often open until 8, 9 or 10 o’clock at night? The shop will often be the only place open in that community and not in an area where people are walking past. The one or two staff in there could find themselves under immense pressure from people wanting to buy substances, and they have to reject them with nobody about to help.

[David Hanson]

My hon. Friend is right. If the Bill was passed with new clause 1 included, shop workers could at least point to a sign on the till saying, “You will face a fine if you do not desist from this behaviour.” There are fewer police on the streets to call, but this is an opportunity to at least strengthen the protection of individuals working in these shops.

The retailers we have all met in the past few weeks as part of the “Freedom from Fear” campaign are doing their bit. They are installing CCTV and putting security measures in place. I visited the Co-op in Leeswood in my constituency, where staff have handsets and headphones so that they can communicate, and individuals are being banned from stores. It knows that it has a duty of care for its staff. All I am asking is that the Government recognise they have a duty of care also.

Police Employer Pension Contributions

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rachael Maskell]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The motion refers to changes to police employer pension contributions. As I was just explaining to the House, in North Yorkshire, as of tomorrow, the fire and rescue authority and the police will be amalgamated, so the fire and rescue service is absolutely pertinent to the debate. I shall therefore continue as I was, Mr Deputy Speaker.

As I have already highlighted, the cost to North Yorkshire police will be £1.6 million in 2019-20 and £4 million in 2020-21. That is on top of the £10 million that is already having to be saved. The police authority was seeking to recruit another 70 police officers but is now having to put that opportunity on hold.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is advancing an important argument, which is that every penny that the police now have to put into increased employer contributions is one penny less that they have to spend on the mental health services and employer support that they have to provide, and on vital community services. Does she agree with my local chief constable in Staffordshire, who has said that cuts like this will not only impact on police numbers, but mean that in some parts of the county the services that he provides in addition to traditional policing will just have to stop?

[Rachael Maskell]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. Policing is not just about the police service; it is about the wider partnerships that are formed.

Let me return to the point I was making—

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I would like to talk about why the police matter; the impact thus far of cuts to the police service; and just how serious the impact will be if this situation continues, particularly when it comes to pension costs.

The first duty of any Government is the safety and security of their citizens. That is a duty that Labour took very seriously while in government. We invested in the police service, with 17,000 extra police officers, 16,000 police community support officers, and the establishment of neighbourhood policing, celebrated worldwide for its effectiveness and much loved by the public, bringing crime down by 43%. We have now seen the dramatic turning of the tide. Under this Government, 21,000 police officers have gone, with crime rapidly rising as a consequence. In the west midlands, 2,100 police officers have gone, and the impact on the public and the police has been catastrophic.

In the Perry Common area of my constituency, fear stalks a certain street. One woman said to me, “I have lived here for 44 years, Jack, but I now cannot go out at night because I fear the consequences.” There has been an outbreak of knife crime and gun crime. In another part of my constituency, Frances Road, there has been a rapid growth of houses in multiple occupation, with the associated crime and antisocial behaviour, transforming a settled community into a place where a mother told me, “Every time my daughter wants to get the bus on Slade Road, I have to take her down there because she fears going out by herself.” There is the impact on a settled, strong community such as Castle Vale, with the outbreak of crime and antisocial behaviour. As ever fewer police officers have been on the beat, the problems have got ever worse. There is also the impact on the Fort shopping area, with a rapid growth in crime and antisocial behaviour.

We will see whether the statement made by the Home Secretary is translated into practical action at the next stages. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) said in his brilliant speech, if the Government are saying that they get it, they now need to act on it. What is so extraordinary is that, up until now, the Government have been in complete denial. The current Prime Minister, previously the Home Secretary for the best part of seven years, would say, “We cut police, yes, but we cut crime.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

The explosion in crime all over Britain is deeply worrying, as is the progressive hollowing-out of neighbourhood policing. At the heart of this debate are the concerns being expressed by the West Midlands police service as to what will happen to neighbourhood policing. Neighbourhood policing is not just crucial in terms of safety and security—actually, neighbourhood policing is the bedrock of counter-terrorism. It is about the systematic cultivation of relationships with the community, the acquiring of intelligence and the identifying of wrongdoing that is absolutely essential. The West Midlands police have said that, if they have to pay these pension costs, 450 more police officers will go as a consequence. That will stretch the thin blue line ever thinner, with ever more serious consequences.

[Gareth Snell]

I think we all know in this House the dedication that my hon. Friend has to the police services not just in the west midlands but across the country. He speaks very much to the situation we have in Staffordshire, where neighbourhood teams are now being asked to look after increasingly large areas, meaning that they lose the connections with local communities whereby they gather intelligence and prevent much more serious crime from happening. Does he share my concern that there is only so far that we can stretch neighbourhood policing before it becomes meaningless and before what we actually have is policing that is no more than numbers of officers sitting at a desk because they simply cannot patrol the patch they have been sent to?

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is the hollowing-out of neighbourhood policing, with the immense dangers that I have described in relation to, for example, counter-terrorism, as well as the role that neighbourhood policing plays in engaging people, diverting them from crime, and preventing crime in the first place. All of that goes. Across the west midlands—and, indeed, across the country—every effort is being made by our chief constable and our police and crime commissioner to preserve neighbourhood policing, but increasingly it is neighbourhood policing in name only because police officers are getting pulled off neighbourhood policing and put on to response. That absolutely cannot be right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

In the context of this discussion on the impact of yet further cuts to the police service, I want to mention a police officer in my constituency—it would not be right to name him—who was in tears because he could not believe what was happening. He was under real and growing pressure. He was absolutely dedicated to the service that he had given his life to, and he wanted to remain in the service. The fact that really good men and women are contemplating leaving the service they love as a consequence of the growing impact of cuts is fundamentally wrong.

The Government can no longer be in denial. It is simply not true that they cut police and they cut crime. Crime is soaring, including new forms of crime. The police statistics now take account of cyber-crime, of which there are 5 million incidents a year and more. We are at a defining moment in the history of the police service in our country. At the sharp end, our police and crime commissioner David Jamieson and Chief Constable Dave Thompson, who give outstanding leadership, are doing everything they can. They are modelling what happens if they have to find the money necessary to avoid 450 more police officers going as a result of police cuts.

The voice of the police service is clear: enough is enough. The Government cannot ask the overstretched and underfunded police service to pay the costs of much-deserved increases to pension entitlements. Neither should they ask the public to pay. The Government are saying to local authorities, “Oh yes, by all means fund the increase—use the precept,” which devolves responsibility and blame, and absolves the Government of their responsibility through the Treasury to give priority to investment in our police service.

[Gareth Snell]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving away a second time. Does he share my concern regarding the precept that the indiscriminate way in which council tax varies so greatly across the country means that there is a 2% increase in Staffordshire, but it is considerably less than 2% in some London boroughs and possibly 2% more in other places? We are therefore building inequality into police funding, rather than the equality we need.

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have a bizarre situation under the current formula in which high-need, high-crime west midlands suffers disproportionately much more than low-need, relatively low-crime Surrey. That cannot be right.

In conclusion, this is a defining moment for the police service. Labour, led by our excellent shadow Policing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), is time and again making the argument as to why policing matters. If the Policing Minister came to the streets and estates of Erdington, he would see increasing fear and hear people saying, “The police are great, Jack, but we never see them any longer. We’re losing contact. We rang up, but they couldn’t come out; they said they were overstretched.” That cannot be right. That is why it is crucial that the Government commit to funding these much-deserved pension increases, reversing the tide of the last eight years and investing in their first duty, which is the safety and security of the British public.

Modern-day Slavery

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered tackling modern-day slavery.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. Before I progress with my short speech, I need to place on the record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), who cannot be present this evening because he is away at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. His chairmanship of the all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking and modern slavery does so much to ensure that this issue is always at the top of the political agenda.

I also briefly place on the record my thanks to the Co-operative party for pursuing the matter so vociferously. The Co-operative party has ensured that modern slavery is now taken exceptionally seriously both inside this place and outside. As a result of its vociferous campaigning, 30 local authorities have signed up voluntarily to a modern slavery charter that takes them above and beyond the requirements of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which I shall talk about later. Clearly, a concerted political effort can ensure that we get safety for people fleeing horrible circumstances.

[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

I apologise for intervening on the hon. Gentleman so early on, but I wanted to put something on the record as well: the great contribution made in the other place by Alastair Redfern, the Bishop of Derby, as we took the Bill through both Houses to become the Act. Without his dogged determination, we would probably not be sat in this Chamber today having this debate. He has actually just retired as Bishop of Derby, at the end of August. I am sure that putting that on the record will be well received by him and the people who worked with him.

[Gareth Snell]

It is true that where we are today is the result of a collective effort and political will across not only this House but Parliament as a whole. That is demonstrated not only by the number of Members present today but by how the matter has been pursued through APPGs, private Members’ legislation and amendments to various other Bills.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Before my hon. Friend moves on, may I add another name to the list of the illustrious? Home for Good, a Christian charity, has been working so hard to raise the profile of the real dangers of certain institutions that look as though they are orphanages but are actually involved in the trade. Separation of children from parents—even from one parent—is a dangerous activity. Will he look at the Home for Good report and study it carefully? He will find it very helpful?

[Gareth Snell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman—

[Mr Sheerman]

Hon. Friend!

[Gareth Snell]

Indeed, he is my friend, but he is now only the second most famous person from Huddersfield following the debut of the new Dr Who. I do not know whether he has a sonic screwdriver, but we can sort one out for him.

My hon. Friend is right. A number of organisations and charities sent me briefing notes, and what I found interesting as all that information came into my office was the sheer volume of work being done quietly and diligently to ensure that this issue of our young people and others being abused and exploited is tackled. If we look at the work and try to quantify it, we can see that in addition to the efforts of Government and Parliament, civil society is once again demonstrating that it is a force for good.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

This is a timely debate. Has my hon. Friend’s all-party group looked at the legislation that was passed some years ago after the tragedy in Morecombe bay and the problems with gangmasters? Has he any comments on that? I am surprised that we still experience modern-day exploitation— for want of a better term—in all age groups.

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend must be somewhat prescient, because he has read ahead in my speech before I have managed to get to that point. I shall touch on it later.

I welcome the announcement by the Government of the review of the Modern Slavery Act, which will be ably chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) and the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), as well as the noble Lady Butler-Sloss. That is a triumvirate of expertise if ever there were one. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for being present this afternoon.

I want to talk about the processes in the Modern Slavery Act. It was a step forward in properly attacking and dealing with some of the horrible situations people find themselves in, but it also contained important preventive measures that helped to reduce modern slavery in all forms, whether sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, forced labour or criminal exploitation.

For me, one of the most important parts of the Act is section 54, which requires large companies with a turnover of £36 million or more to place on record transparency in their supply chains. Such modern slavery statements are a welcome process to deal with these problems but, if we are honest and up front, the implementation is simply not working properly. At a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee, on which I sit, the Home Office confirmed that it does not compile a list of companies that may be required to make a declaration, does not have a list of those that have done so and, importantly, does not maintain the database. Any further analysis of the information in the declarations is made by non-governmental organisations.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

On that point, will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating TISCreport, which was developed and is based in Bristol? It has looked at the 18,000 companies with revenue of more than £36 million, and it is the only organisation that maintains a database of the companies that comply with section 54. The database is now searchable via a zoomable map. Will he encourage the Minister to engage with TISCreport and to allow it to help the Home Office in its endeavours?

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. NGOs are doing some excellent work but, fundamentally, I believe that such work should be done by the Home Office and by Government—because we are talking about something set out in statute—rather than relying on the benevolence of third-party organisations.

Despite the work of the organisation in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and even though the matter has been progressed, I know that the Minister is aware of concerns about how section 54 is being implemented. Back in April I asked a question in the Chamber of a Department for International Development Minister, who confirmed that a hub was being set up. Will the Minister present today confirm what progress has been made on that hub?

What is really worrying, however, is that an investigation by The Guardian demonstrated that of the companies that had made a modern slavery statement, more than two thirds had failed to refer specifically to the risk of modern slavery. They had made a declaration, but it did not comply with the requirements of the Act. More worryingly, only 19% of all agricultural businesses that should be making a statement have done so, and that is an area in which exploitation could be rife.

Unfortunately, because everything is being done by third-party NGOs, the ability to compel necessary information simply does not exist. Until the Government introduce something on a formal statutory basis, more and more organisations will seek to put aside their responsibilities. The Co-operative Group, which I shall talk about later, has estimated that it is cheaper and easier for organisations simply to ignore the requirements than it is for them to produce the statements and submit them. There is no validation and so no penalty for failing to make a declaration.

The section 54 requirement also applies only to commercial organisations. The public sector, however, is a huge spender of money—billions and billions of pounds are spent in procurement—yet no public authority is required to make declarations to demonstrate their actions to reduce modern slavery. Were we to extend section 54 to cover public bodies and authorities, that might not stop certain aspects of modern slavery happening, but we would be able to have oversight of where the billions of pounds in public procurement are ultimately being spent, and Members could look for the impact on modern slavery.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that smaller businesses ought to be included in the overall remit of the Act? After all, they include nail bars and people working on tips. If we had a system whereby when a licence was granted by local authorities, businesses had to tick a box on their compliance with modern-day slavery rules, that would be a real step forward.

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. The current scope of section 54 is well meaning, and in some ways if it was implemented correctly it would have a huge impact on large organisations. But if we are being honest and up front, most of the places where modern slavery is perpetrated in the UK are small businesses that are not properly regulated. It is tied employment, with people living in a room above a shop and being told that their rent and board is all paid for as part of their salary but, “By the way, you can’t ever leave us.” Local authorities having a remit would be a way of tackling that. However, we must be clear that if we are to give local authorities new responsibilities, new funding must come with that, because simply asking local authorities to do more with their depleted amounts of money simply will not do.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that modern slavery sometimes happens at an individual level? I have a case where someone was brought to this country for work, to look after someone’s care needs. Yet when the care was no longer needed, they got rid of them and refused to pay the money they owed, and that person is now completely rootless and needs support in this country. Does he see that as a particular problem?

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; I will touch on individual cases later on, where there should be greater support and strength for victims of modern slavery.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend for making the important point about the contribution of local authorities. Local authorities are under incredible financial pressure, as he rightly outlined, but 40 local authorities have still signed up to the charter, one of which is my council, Liverpool City Council. In the spirit of the cross-party attendance at this debate, does he agree that it is vital that councils, no matter their political make-up, debate and adopt that charter as quickly as possible?

[Gareth Snell]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. It is sad that the council that I used to lead, which is now not run by our political party, decided not to adopt the charter because it is worried about being too political. I am not sure how we can be too unpolitical in tackling modern slavery, but unfortunately there are still some organisations and local authorities that see the issue as partisan. If only they looked at Parliament, where partisan issues have been put aside and everyone looks at this issue collectively to find ways of dealing with it across both Houses and across parties, they could learn some valuable lessons from us. My hon. Friend is right that where local authorities are going above and beyond they are making a real difference to individuals whose existence would otherwise be one of daily toil and exploitation. The more we can do to tackle that, locally or nationally, the better.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that for victims of modern-day slavery, rebuilding their lives is a challenge in itself? I pay tribute to the Co-operative Group and other businesses that are offering paid work placements for victims of modern-day slavery.

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend is right; the Bright Future project, which the Co-op Group runs, is a demonstration of the tangible activities that ethically minded organisations can carry out to give people fleeing modern slavery a real opportunity.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

rose—

[Gareth Snell]

I give way to my right hon. friend the Member for Spellar—

[John Spellar]

For Warley!

[Gareth Snell]

They will name it after you one day, I suppose.

[John Spellar]

My hon. Friend mentioned the role of local authorities in providing a lead. The role of my own council, Sandwell, has been recognised with a public award, precisely for working with other agencies to tackle this menace. Councils and public bodies also have to be receptive to information; many people who live next to the places involved and sometimes go in and work in them provide information. The authorities—whether the police, the Home Office or the local authorities—have powers, but they need to be receptive to the information and use the powers they have, even though they need more.

[Gareth Snell]

As always, my right hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. I would add that local authorities have struggled with their existing requirements. If we are to give them more things to do, and I think we can, that has to come with the required funding. This is too important to do half a job badly; I would rather we did all the job properly. Once again, Sandwell Council in the west midlands demonstrates how that can be done. Having heard my right hon. Friend’s intervention, I am sure that other councils will look to Sandwell as a model to follow in future.

I will move on to one of the things that the Government could do to actively address all the points being raised. Baroness Young’s Modern Slavery (Transparent Supply Chains) Bill would extend the section 54 clauses to cover almost everything that has been discussed. The Bill would allow for local authorities, public bodies and smaller organisations, including commercial organisations, to be covered by the requirement to make declarations. The more information we have, the easier it will be to tackle this scourge. I ask the Government to do slightly more. They can no longer rely on non-governmental organisations and charities to enforce the will of Parliament as expressed through the Modern Slavery Act. There has to be direct Government responsibility for the collection and analysis of the data that they have asked to be produced.

I ask the Minister to update the House on the process for appointing the new Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner. That role has been empty since May. According to the Home Office documentation, a meeting should take place this week to shortlist candidates. I wonder whether we are still on track for that. Given the comments of Kevin Hyland about his independence as he left that post, I ask the Minister to reassure us that those comments have been taken on board and that the new Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, whoever that may be, will have the powers, responsibilities and independence they need to do the work that we all know and agree is needed.

To move on from the processes, behind every statistic, case and referral there is an individual whose life has been turned upside down and torn apart because of modern slavery. The Walk Free Foundation estimates that there are 136,000 victims of modern slavery in the UK alone. To put that into context, that figure is equivalent to the population of West Bromwich, Gloucester or Worcester being enslaved in the UK. We should all be worried about that, because unless we tackle this root and branch, we cannot hold ourselves up as a compassionate society.

There is also an international element to the issue: £14 billion of goods are imported into the UK. We can all be pretty much guaranteed that some of those products will be made by slaves or people in servitude. Everyone here and watching at home—I am sure there are millions of them—can be almost certain that something in their home, wardrobe or car will have been made by a slave. Statistically, it is likely that at some point, every single one of us will have an item of clothing made by a slave, if we do not already. We must take that very seriously, because our obligations do not rest domestically; we should set the standard around the world. As our post-Brexit trade negotiations take place, we should ensure that an ethical trade policy that tackles modern slavery here and overseas forms part of our trade policy. If we can use our purchasing power to make the world a better place, we have a duty to do so.

The National Crime Agency statistics from the national referral mechanism suggest that roughly 1,600 referrals are made each quarter. In the first quarter of this year and the second quarter of last year combined, just over 3,200 referrals were made. Although the victims predominantly came from the United Kingdom, they spanned 87 different countries. In the UK, people of 87 nationalities made a referral to the national referral mechanism. What is good about the Modern Slavery Act is that the perpetrators are being prosecuted. Only last week, Zakaria Mohammed was prosecuted under the Act for drug dealing using children and county lines. Although the act of drug dealing itself should be punished—I do not think anyone would object to that—the fact that the use of exploited children in a servitude role was prosecuted sends a message that we are taking this seriously.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend has put his finger on the fact that some very wicked people organise this trade, and they are clever. People up and down the country—this is true even in the case of my pet subject of orphanages that are not really orphanages—are gulling ordinary, good people in this country into donating money for things that will be used for an evil purpose.

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The people who perpetrate these crimes do not do so in a cack-handed way. They are organised individuals who exploit the most vulnerable people in our society purely out of greed. The more we do to prosecute and make examples of them, the more we will do to demonstrate that we take the issue seriously and to put people off.

Another recent case is that of Josephine Iyamu, who sex-trafficked workers from Nigeria to Germany. Because she was a UK national, we prosecuted her in this country under the Modern Slavery Act. Again, as internationalists—as a country that looks out to the world—our responsibilities do not rest at our doorstep. We have a responsibility for people around the world. In Leeds, the Cisar family were caught trafficking people for work and exploitation. Thirty-seven people were found in an enslaved situation, working on building sites for £5 a day. Some of the families had to spend their evenings begging for food because they simply were not able to provide food for their children. One of those 37 people was a one-year-old. If we are serious about tackling this issue, we should start with situations like that.

Another problem, which I am sure the Minister will be able to help us with, is what happens once someone has been identified as a victim of modern slavery. The national referral mechanism is non-statutory. Someone who gets a positive conclusive grounds decision has no legal status. They are simply someone we have almost taken pity on—we support them out of benevolence, not because there is a requirement in law for us to do so.

The Government promised last October to increase the duration of support for people who receive a positive conclusive grounds decision from 14 days to 45 days. I understand that that is still in the process of being worked up—it is not actually being implemented. Again, if the Government wished to demonstrate that they take that promise seriously, they could easily announce that they will bring it forward as soon as possible.

[Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Ind)]

As I have told my hon. Friend, I will have to leave the debate to talk about sanctions in a moment. When we—Members of Parliament and Members of the House of Lords—scoped the original Modern Slavery Bill, the most stunning and terrible evidence we took was from people who had been enslaved. The idea that people get over such bondage easily was knocked sideways by all that. We were in tears listening to the evidence of people who had been broken by modern slavery, but the Government have only just begun to think about that issue.

[Gareth Snell]

We can see from that thoughtful intervention why my right hon. Friend is absolutely the right person to co-chair the review of the Modern Slavery Act. As I said, every statistic is a person whose life has been turned upside down. At the moment, an individual who is found to have been through modern slavery gets 14 days’ support. I do not know about anyone else in the Chamber, but that does not seem sufficient to me. In fact, 45 days really is not enough. The Government made that commitment last October and they should implement it now, but I ask that they do so as an interim step. As my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee says, that would be a step forward, but it would not be enough to establish a pathway for recovery.

There is something the Government could do today to give some semblance of an impression that they want to do something about this issue. They could announce that they will support Lord McColl’s Modern Slavery (Victim Support) Bill, which has been through the House of Lords and has its support. If they guaranteed Government support for that Bill so that it could proceed in Government time sooner rather than later, I am sure that it would get cross-party support and be one of the fastest pieces of legislation to pass the House of Commons.

That Bill would extend support to 12 months—it would give people who have been through horrendous situations a year’s support. Someone who comes out of modern slavery and needs help should receive it because the state and the people want to give it to them, not because of benevolence and charity. Charity is a cold thing—it is self-selecting. The state should be there to provide help and support. I am sure the Minister will be able to indicate one way or the other whether the Government have any interest in supporting Lord McColl’s Bill. I am sure Opposition Members would be happy to vote with the Government if they did support it.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) pointed out, there are organisations doing work in this area. I am going to talk again about the Co-op Group’s Bright Future partnership. That organisation has brought together charities, providers and first responders to give people who have been through modern slavery a way into paid employment—a route back to dignity without waiting for charity. By 2020, more than 300 victims of modern slavery will have been given their lives back through that project. We should commend the Co-op Group for leading the way with that work. I know many other companies are looking at the Co-op Group’s work. All I can say to them is, “Go and ask, and help. They will help you become part of this life-changing partnership.”

We need to prevent people from falling back into slavery. The 45-day period does not give those who are entitled to be in the UK enough time to apply for the required benefits, and it does not give those who are not entitled to be in the UK time to apply for leave to remain. It simply sets them up to fail on day 46. As a society, we simply must not allow that.

I am conscious of the time, so I will wrap up with some very quick points. I am aware that the Minister has a file of information to inform her reply, but I ask her to focus on six very simple areas.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

Just the six?

[Gareth Snell]

Just the six, yes. I have written them down, so it is very easy. Will the Government consider expanding section 54 to cover public bodies and smaller corporates? That would be a good step. Will the Minister update us on the Government’s role in creating a database to properly enforce and actively police modern slavery declarations? Will she update us on where the Government are with the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner post and guarantee that person’s independence? Will she, as an interim measure, implement the 45-day support that her Government promised in October 2017? Most importantly, if she confirmed that the Government were willing to support Lord McColl’s Modern Slavery (Victim Support) Bill, we could all leave this place very happy people.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Snell]

I am good at winding up, Ms McDonagh. I thank the Minister for announcing that she will write to those 18,000 people. That is a good development, so far as I am concerned. I will write to her to try to pin her down slightly more on the early 2019 date; as we know, this Government think that autumn goes up to Christmas eve.

The appetite is there and the need is clear. The only thing holding us back is our political will. By our collective efforts, we can make a real difference in tackling modern slavery, particularly during this month.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her question, and I welcome the comments that various Select Committees have made on this issue. I have absolutely no doubt that she heard the Home Secretary’s comments yesterday, and I reassure her that we are looking at the matter closely.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

24. What steps his Department is taking to tackle modern slavery.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

The Government remain committed to stamping out the despicable crime of modern slavery. We have strengthened the operational law enforcement response and introduced world-leading requirements for businesses to report on slavery in their supply chains, and we are now transforming the support that we provide to victims.

[Gareth Snell]

Kevin Hyland, the independent anti-slavery commissioner, stated in his resignation letter that he had too often felt that his independence was subject to the discretion of the Home Office, rather than being on a statutory basis. What will the Minister do to ensure that the next commissioner is given the independence that he needs for his role to be flexible?

[Victoria Atkins]

May I record our thanks to Mr Hyland for the invaluable work that he did as the commissioner? The whole point of the role of the commissioner is that it is independent, so we very much look forward to filling the position with a similarly robust and independent person in due course.