Violence against Women and Girls Strategy

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

My hon. Friend hits on a point that anyone who has actually worked with victims on the frontline would make. It is very easy in this building to only want to see criminal justice outcomes—it is a political thing that we do—but in the vast majority of cases I have handled in my life, that is not actually what people are seeking. They are seeking safety usually for them, but more importantly, safety and access to support for their children. She is talking about supporting children who have been sexually abused as part of a pattern of sexual violence and domestic abuse, and the issue of children and childhood sexual abuse in whatever form will absolutely be part of the strategy.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Is the strategy going to emphasise in any way the role of parents in trying to protect their sons from a torrent of online violent abuse of women, which inevitably is going to distort their attitude to relationships? Schools can do some things, but some things, surely, have to be done within the family?

[Jess Phillips]

I absolutely agree. Schools need to play a vital part, as do the tech companies that have been identified, but absolutely there is a need for parents, who are often pulling their hair out trying to know the right thing to do. Parents who become abuse victims by children with some of those attitudes is a long under-served group within violence against women and girls. If we look at the femicide data, the number of matricides speaks to a broader problem. Ensuring that parents are part of the solution will be part of the strategy.

Grooming Gangs: Independent Inquiry

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

Let me give her that reassurance, and I hope that the progress the Government are making on implementing previous recommendations gives her and others some more of that reassurance. In the end, we prove ourselves to victims and survivors by doing and by taking the action that is so desperately needed, both from older recommendations and from the new ones that will come.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Few of us here today were present in 2003 when the then MP for Keighley, Mrs Ann Cryer—a courageous Labour Member on the left of her party—spoke out about the grooming gangs. For her troubles, she was smeared as a racist, she was shunned and she was threatened to the point at which she had to have safety devices and emergency alarms installed in her home. Will the Home Secretary join me in paying tribute to her courage belatedly—it has never received any recognition, of which I am aware? Does she not think that Ann Cryer might even now have some insights to share with an inquiry as to what it is like when those who are supposed to be protecting people close ranks to protect the offenders instead?

[Shabana Mahmood]

Let me immediately right the wrong of Ann not having the recognition that she deserves and pay fulsome tribute to the work that she did in exposing not just the crimes themselves but the state failure that meant that so many people who are supposed to keep young girls safe were looking the other way. The right hon. Gentleman is right; it took immense courage for Ann to speak out all those years ago. She has deep experience and expertise, which I am sure Baroness Longfield and others will want to avail themselves of.

It can be a lonely road when someone exposes this kind of criminality, as it can be when holding to account other parts of the state that might not want to face up to what they have done. Ann walked that lonely road and we are only here today, with the knowledge that we have, because of the work that she started.

Maccabi Tel Aviv FC: Away Fans Ban

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I completely reject the right hon. Gentleman’s framing. We have been clear, and the Prime Minister has been clear, from the minute this decision was made that we believe it to be the wrong decision, and we worked tirelessly from that point to try to ensure that the match went ahead with the fans present. There was a weekend of activity to try to enable the match to go ahead in a safe way with whatever resources were required. There were lots of conversations across Government, and locally as well. Of course, Maccabi Tel Aviv then decided that they would not bring their fans, so the need for that process ended.

We then asked HMICFRS to look at this properly so that we can shine a light on what happened and what has gone wrong—we have been very clear about that, and it is completely right. I am not making up my mind on the hoof, but doing this through a proper process. I hope the right hon. Gentleman agrees it is a proper process. We are also looking at whether we need to change the wider structures so that an issue like this does not arise again.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It is fairly clear that my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) is right that this was a predetermined decision, and that the evidence was something for which West Midlands police scrabbled about later, but whatever the outcome of the Minister’s inquiries, whether it turns out, heaven forbid, that there was an antisemitic element to this or—in my view, more probably—that the police thought they would have a quieter life if they went down this road, will she guarantee to the House that whatever lessons are learned will be communicated in the strongest terms to the chief constables of all the other police forces so that they do not follow a bad example?

[Sarah Jones]

Yes, I can absolutely assure the right hon. Gentleman that we will learn whatever lessons we need to learn and take whatever action we need to take. Of course, that applies across all forces, not just West Midlands police.

Angiolini Inquiry

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

I can give an example from this morning, when I met around 60 stakeholders from organisations that work with children, with women and girls, and with perpetrators—lots of civil society organisations and businesses. We were in Downing Street with the Prime Minister, but it was not an event that was about drinking warm wine and eating nibbles; it was a working event to look at how we actually implement things. I know that people criticise the delay in the strategy, and that is fair enough, but the strategy is a piece of paper. How we actually make it work is much more important to me, and that is why we are working on it with stakeholders and providers. I genuinely welcome engagement with Members in this House, but I have learned something over the years; if you don’t mind me saying, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have felt slightly gaslit when people tell me that the sky is blue but then every case I handle tells me something else.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The House is rightly united in horror at what happened to Sarah Everard and in sympathy for her family.

Returning to an earlier exchange about vetting, which I understand will be coming up in the next stage of the Angiolini process, can the Minister tell us whether it will examine the effect of extreme pornography online and of toxic masculinity influencers online, and whether there is any prospect that a vetting process would enable people to be, at the time of recruitment, spotted as having watched this stuff and commented favourably on it, even on the dark web?

Maccabi Tel Aviv FC: Away Fans Ban

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

The right hon. Member is right to say that confidence in policing is incredibly important. We need that confidence across all our communities, and we know that there is a lot of work to do in some areas in particular. I am not going to comment on what appears to be the case, but I can reassure him that, as I have said, the Prime Minister believes it was the wrong decision in the first place. We want to understand what happened, and we want to take a wider look at the safety advisory groups, which, as I said, were set up in response to a problem of safety within our football venues. We recognise that things have moved on, and we need to look at whether the SAGs are working in the way that they should be.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It sounds as though the Minister is getting to grips with this, and I am very grateful for that. Will she accept that the counterpart or corollary of operational independence for the police is their political impartiality, and does she agree with me that the last thing we want is a poisonous cocktail of football hooliganism infected by the hatreds arising out of the middle eastern conflict?

[Sarah Jones]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to talk about political impartiality. It is absolutely crucial that our police are not making decisions based on politics. We ask them every day to almost do that, even though we are very clear that they must not. It is difficult and complicated, and when they are policing—for example, in London or our big cities—protests with multiple causes, and protests in response to events around the world that are deeply interesting to a lot of citizens of this country, we do ask a lot of them. We need to appreciate that, in the vast majority of cases, they make the right call, and they also do things behind closed doors that we do not see. For example, there is lots of negotiation with lots of protest organisations about changing the route of a protest, and making sure that it is moving in the right way to avoid more conflict. In the main, they do a very good job, but we need to make sure that we get to the bottom of this case.

Injury in Service Award

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mike Tapp]

I cannot give a timescale right here and now, but I will meet the Policing Minister in the next week and we will come back to you with an answer on that.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Before Sir Julian Lewis makes his intervention and the Minister responds, I remind the House that “you” and “your” are not permitted. Let us stay focused.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I have listened carefully to the whole debate, and I thoroughly support the proposal. From the Minister’s summing up, it sounds as if the decision is more in the hands of civil servants than in those of Ministers. May I gently point out to him that civil servants are never remiss when it comes to awarding themselves all sorts of decorations and recognition? Here, it is more a question that the feeling of the House has made itself heard, and it really ought to be conveyed to those people to whom this task appears to have been delegated that they ought to do what they have been told by the elected representatives of the people of this country.

[Mike Tapp]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the spirit of his question. I reassure the House and those in the Gallery that the Policing Minister is a Minister who has authority. We saw that in the past week with the scrapping of police and crime commissioners—something that is well overdue. That came well and truly from the Minister, but of course she will have heard these words today.

If Members will indulge me for a second, I will set out some general points about medallic recognition that are relevant to the debate and my response. In this country, all medals are a gift from Government on behalf of the monarch. They are instituted by royal warrant and sit firmly under royal prerogative powers. The advantage of this is that we keep our medal system above the political fray, and no amount of political patronage can affect the criteria. That is why the British model for such recognition is highly respected across the globe.

My reason for mentioning that is not to offer a commentary on the merits of the proposal we are debating today, but to set the discussion in its proper context. I wholeheartedly agree with the general notion that acts of extraordinary courage, sacrifice or selflessness should be recognised and celebrated. Having worked in law enforcement and served in the military, I am behind that notion. That is why in policing, for example, we have worked closely with forces and staff associations to increase the number of officers and staff receiving formal gallantry awards.

Migration: Settlement Pathway

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

Nothing I have said today changes the position of those who have come to this country on the Ukrainian scheme. That is a bespoke scheme for the people who have arrived here from Ukraine. In fact, it is seen not as a refugee route, but as a temporary scheme. All its provisions were supported by us in opposition, and they continue to be supported by us in government. Nothing in the position of Ukrainians in this country will change as a result of anything in the asylum policy statement or today’s Command Paper.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

As the descendant of immigrant grandparents, I have a high degree of empathy with the Home Secretary’s opening remarks about her own family. Does she agree that the reason that both main parties are facing the possibility of an electoral bloodbath is not so much the overall level of immigration, but the fraction of it—still a very large number of people—who come to this country on small boats and by other illegal means? We do not know what they believe, we do not know what values they have, and because in many cases they destroy their documents, we do not even know who they are. Can she explain how the measures she has outlined today will have an impact on deterring that sort of person from breaking into our country?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I have acknowledged that the way the system is working—or, more appropriately, not working—is causing deep unease across the country, including in my constituency and among people who are of immigrant backgrounds themselves, because of a sense of unfairness. A lot of people in my constituency regularly report overstaying to me, which they see as an abuse of visas and as a particular problem, while others are more concerned about the small boats. I acknowledge that those concerns are legitimate, real and felt deeply across the country. That is why I think it is so important that we rebuild public trust in the overall system by dealing with both illegal migration and legal migration, based on the principles of fairness and contribution, and give the public confidence that the rules we have can be maintained, enforced and followed properly.

The right hon. Gentleman is right that the destruction of documents and the other ways in which people seek to frustrate our ability to remove them from this country is driving some of the discontent. That is why the reforms I set out in the asylum policy statement are designed to say to those making the calculation in the north of France, “Don’t get on a boat. It’s not worth it. That is not the way to come to this country.” As we build safe and legal routes to this country—which will clearly be a much more privileged way of entering, with a faster path to settlement at 10 years, as I have said—the reforms will show very clearly to people making that calculation which path is worth it and which one is not.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

Nationally, we have taken 60,000 knives off the streets, knife murders are down 18%, and knife crime is down 5%, but every single offence is one too many. We will keep pushing on the policing response—as well as, crucially, the prevention response; we will work with our young people to stop them getting involved in crime in the first place.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It is often reported that a high proportion of people who enter the country illegally do so without any reliable identifying documentation. Can any Minister say, in percentage terms, roughly what the proportions are of illegal immigrants who do and do not have documentation?

[Alex Norris]

I will have to follow up in writing with the specific percentages for the right hon. Gentleman, but I assure him and the House that we are doing full biometric checks at the front door. We are checking against European databases, as well as our own databases, to make sure that we know who is here and, if there is any offending history, what that history is.

Huntingdon Train Attack

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

We will publish a knife crime strategy very soon. I understand the reason why some people think that round-tip knives are part of the solution, and I will consider all the evidence, but in the end millions of normal kitchen knives are available. We have to do a much better job on all the other areas, such as prevention.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I will be very brief. When the Home Secretary undertakes lessons learned and recommendations for the future, will she look into the question of whether there is any protective equipment, or even disabling equipment of a non-lethal nature, that could be issued to staff for use in such an emergency?

[Shabana Mahmood]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that tasers were deployed on Saturday to bring this incident to a close. However, I can assure him that even if that is not part of the wider lessons learned from this case once all the facts are known, I will take his points into consideration.

Manchester Terrorism Attack

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

When I visited soon after the attack, I was very clear that the main findings from the arena attack related to the ability of the emergency services to respond in a timely way and therefore save lives. I can tell my hon. Friend that between them, the emergency services—the fire service, the police, the ambulance service and everybody else—took on board the direct learnings from what happened in the arena attack. Only seven minutes passed between moment the first call came in and the moment the attacker was shot dead, so I pay direct tribute to all those emergency services. A role was played not just by armed police, but by the ambulance service and the fire service—fire services happened to be going to a different fire, but they re-routed to deal with the aftermath of the attack. I pay tribute to them. Those are direct learnings from the arena attack.

On the wider picture, we will know more about the preparation and planning of the attack once all the facts are in. I will inform my hon. Friend and others in the House if I think there are wider lessons to be drawn, but it is a little early in the investigation to say whether there are.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

As in the case of the attack on Parliament in 2017, this attack was a combination of the use of a vehicle as a deadly weapon and an attempt to break into premises to kill people indiscriminately. On both occasions, brave men had to sacrifice their life to prevent access. Would it not be a sensible first step for all vulnerable premises to have doors that can be easily locked, so that people do not have to put themselves at risk physically holding them closed? I congratulate the Home Secretary on an excellent statement.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question and comment. He is right: there are wider learnings here. That is why the Government are implementing Martyn’s law, which is about making premises safe from attack and draws on lessons from the Manchester arena attack. That is due to be implemented. I know there is some concern in the House and elsewhere—in the Jewish and other communities—about the length of time for implementation, which is up to 24 months. I will make sure that we interrogate whether that implementation can occur more quickly; if it can, I will ensure that it does.