Business of the House

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

I am glad that the hon. Lady recognises that legal routes are the best routes to get to the United Kingdom. We have a great track record to celebrate. We are a very compassionate country: we have taken refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and now Ukraine, and that will continue. The Home Office is working very hard to expedite the process as quickly as possible.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

In 2016, a court judgment established that joint enterprise had been incorrectly applied for more than 30 years, but research by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies with the campaign group JENGbA—Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association—supports the belief that that judgment has had little to no effect on joint enterprise convictions. Young black men are disproportionately targeted. Will the Leader of the House agree to a debate in Government time on the miscarriages of justice arising from joint enterprise laws and on the legislative solutions, including a private Member’s Bill, that are needed to correct those historical and current injustices?

[Mark Spencer]

I hope that the hon. Lady will be present for Home Office questions on 20 June to raise those matters directly with the Home Secretary, but let me say now that the Government take the fight against crime very seriously. That is why the Queen’s Speech included an economic crime Bill and a victims Bill, and that is why we have committed ourselves to providing an extra 20,000 police officers, 13,500 of whom have already been recruited. Dealing with crime is at the top of our agenda, and we are delivering on that.