Child Rape Gangs

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

I agree with every one of the asks of that sexual assault referral centre. I am working closely with the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), to try to do all those things. Unfortunately, we cannot mend a very broken system overnight. It is very important for me to say, though, that the cases of grooming gangs that I have come across are horrible—some of the worst I have ever seen—yet sometimes we forget how harrowing it is for children who have been raped by their fathers, their stepfathers or people in children’s institutions. There is no hierarchy; they all deserve our love, care and dedication to taking action for them.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

Thousands of young, white, British working-class girls have been raped, tortured and abused by Pakistani grooming gangs, yet the Minister refuses to support a full national public inquiry. What I want to know is: is she part of the cover-up?

[Hon. Members]

Shame!

Headingley Incident

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I do not want to get into trouble with you, Mr Speaker, but I am very conscious of the excellent work done by the Mayor of West Yorkshire and her deputy, Alison Lowe, on violence against women and girls, and of their real commitment to making policies that will have a dramatic effect on the women and girls of West Yorkshire.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

Unhinged individuals are roaming the streets of our towns and cities with crossbows, knives, saws and other dangerous weapons, and no tinkering around with legislation or licensing will stop this madness. Is it not about time we had mandatory jail sentences for people who carry such weapons?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

We are working as quickly as possible to understand and identify the nature and scale of the growing cohort of predominantly young men and boys who are fixated with violence. We want to ensure that we have a proper approach and multi-agency interventions to manage the risk that they pose. The Prime Minister has already said that if the law needs to change in recognition of this new and dangerous threat, we will change it, quickly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I agree strongly with my hon. Friend and that is why today’s immigration summit, where 40 countries will be co-operating and attending, is such an important event. Today we also announced that, since we came into government, we have returned more than 24,000 people who have no right to be here. We have also tightened up the illegal working regulations to make certain that they apply across the board to the gig economy and to casual workers, too.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

Since the Labour Government came to power, more than 30,000 people have entered our country illegally. The Prime Minister says he is very angry about that, but he is not as angry as the British taxpayer, who has to fork out £1.2 billion a year to keep those illegal invaders in our country. Does the Minister agree that anybody arriving here illegally should be detained and deported?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

We have a duty to ensure that those arriving on our shores who claim asylum are properly processed. The Conservatives prevented themselves from doing that by becoming obsessed with the Rwanda scheme and they left us with a huge backlog. We will speed up immigration processing so that we can deal with those people, protect those who have a right to be here and send back those who have failed. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will welcome the steep increase in returns and removals that I have just announced.

Legal and Illegal Migration: Suspension

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Hayes]

I would like to think that the hon. Gentleman, who is my constituency neighbour, spends more time in Lincolnshire than Clapham. I am sure he does. Perhaps, though, we could have an outing on the Clapham omnibus together.

When I go about my constituency, and I imagine this is the same in Lichfield and many constituencies across this House, I hear the frustrations; a feeling of resentment that so much harm has been done by so many people in power who have been oblivious to that harm. The last Government very belatedly, after overtures from people such as me and the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson)—when he was still in the light, before he went into the shade—clamped down on some of those abuses. They cut the number of work visas in a range of sectors and they reduced the number of dependants that students could bring.

It was preposterous that students could come and bring their families, was it not? When people go to study somewhere, they do not go in order to bring their family; they go specifically for an academic purpose. That ability was curbed, and it had some effect on overall numbers, but it was too little too late. It was not sufficient, and it took a lot of hand-wringing to get to even that point.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

On that point, will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

Now that I have been half-kind to the hon. Gentleman, I will give way.

[Lee Anderson]

The right hon. Gentleman is being most generous with his time in giving way, especially to a Member from a minority party. He raises an interesting point about people coming here to study and bringing dependants. Does he know of any British students who have gone abroad and taken their family with them?

[Sir John Hayes]

The key difference is the type and number of students. The hon. Gentleman and I rarely disagree, and we certainly do not disagree on this subject very much. If someone is studying for a PhD, and they are coming here to work for a considerable time and looking to build a long-term career in academia, I can understand why they might want to build a family life here. If they are coming for a shorter course such as a master’s, it is pretty hard to see why they would want to bring their family, given that they would expect to go home at the end of it. Most of those people will also be very young, so it is unlikely that they will have children, wives or husbands—so who are these dependants that they might be bringing? I agree with the hon. Member for Ashfield that the idea was preposterous to begin with. Happily, in the end we curbed it.

I know that others want to contribute to the debate, so I will not take up any more time, except to say that it is high time there was a sea change, and that we recognise those

“finger posts on the road to achievement”,

the failures by successive Governments. While I know that, to quote CS Lewis again,

“An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason”,

the cause of this situation has been a fundamental reluctance to measure the medium and long-term effects of things that in the short term seemed attractive because they dealt with shortages or gaps in the economy.

I hope that we can now make the necessary changes. I hope that we can reunite those in power with those whom their power affects, and that we can re-engage with a population who know the premise with which I began my short contribution: that there has been too much immigration into this country for too long—a widely held view by people who think that enough is enough.

[Jacob Collier (Burton and Uttoxeter) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson), who is also my office buddy, for opening this important debate.

The petition demands a five-year suspension of all immigration. Although I understand the concerns that have led to more than 200,000 people signing it, if we were to do what the petitioners are asking for, we would make Liz Truss look like a saint and suck out the rich cultural tapestry that makes our country so great.

Migrants make up a fifth of our workforce. The NHS alone relies on more than 160,000 staff from overseas. Suspend all immigration tomorrow, and who will fill those roles? Who will care for our sick? Who will work on our buses—including the Clapham omnibus, perhaps? Who will staff our hospitality sector?

[Lee Anderson]

The hon. Member asks who will fill the skills gap or the labour gap. How about the 7 million people in this country who are economically inactive?

[Jacob Collier]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and I am grateful that he is here in Westminster Hall today; he has had a busy weekend, so it is nice to see him.

It is the Government’s plan to train up more British people and get them into the healthcare sector and other sectors. That is what the Government are going to drive forward, and I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be interested in the announcements later this week by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who will lay out our steps to get people back into work.

This particular petition is not a serious proposal or one that any serious Government should follow, but I recognise, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield said, the underlying concerns raised by the petition and the concerns that my constituents have about migration. Migration must be controlled, and the Government have rightly taken steps to bring down net migration to sustainable levels. We will not tolerate the vile trade of human smuggling, including the criminal gangs that are exploiting vulnerable people and making millions at the expense of our national security. That is not immigration—it is lawlessness. That is why the Government are investing in the new Border Security Command, delivering crackdowns on smuggling networks, increasing enforcement and expediting removals.

In the last six months alone, 16,400 people without any right to be in the UK have been returned to their home countries, and I know that the Minister and his Home Office team are working hard on this. That is real action and not just words.

[Lee Anderson]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way again; this is the last time that I will intervene. He said that 16,000 people with no right to be in this country have been deported. I agree with that figure, but is he aware that most of those people are overstayers on student visas or work visas, that they have been paid £3,000 to be deported, and that not one of them came over on those small boats?

[Jacob Collier]

The fact is that this Government are getting on with deportations, and we did not see that under the last Government. Indeed, they pursued the Rwanda policy, which cost the taxpayer millions of pounds and sent only four volunteers. What we are seeing from this Government is real action.

The Government know that secure borders are not an option, but a necessity. Legal migration is another matter entirely. Shutting off our borders to all might be a simple gimmick that some in this House support, but this is a serious issue and not one for snake-oil solutions. That is why we must take a balanced approach by investing in training and upskilling British workers to fill more vacancies in crucial sectors such as healthcare, while also ensuring that overseas workers with the skills we need come here and contribute to our society.

Beyond economics, this is about the very fabric of our society. In Burton and Uttoxeter, we see a diverse community because of migration. While Muslims observe Ramadan in their mosques, local Christians are helping the homeless, the Polish community are shopping in the mini market, and the Burton Caribbean centre is blasting out soul music. That makes us a better place. Today, as we mark Commonwealth Day, I am reminded of the contribution that those nations and their people have made and continue to make to our country.

Earlier today, I was at Burton town hall, where Mayor Shelagh McKiernan and her cadet raised the Commonwealth flag. Sheila reminded us of the six Commonwealth values. No. 4 is tolerance, respect and understanding. In this debate, too often we forget that people are at the centre of it: people who contribute, build and enrich the very communities that they join. From the engineers who build our infrastructure to the care workers looking after the elderly, these people are integral to our national story, and always have been.

I am proud to be British because of the fundamental values of tolerance and respect for others. That is how I was brought up in school, and that is what my parents taught me. We owe it to the British people to have a debate and immigration system that are worthy of those values and the complexity of the issue, not slogans and not hysteria.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

This Government are clear: we need to get more police back on the beat. The number of police community support officers has halved over the past 10 to 15 years, and there has been a big drop in the number of neighbourhood police officers on the beat. That is why next year we are increasing neighbourhood policing, with an additional £200 million of investment. That is part of up to £1.1 billion of additional funding next year for our police forces across the country.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

The Home Secretary will be aware that councils up and down the country have real problems with nuisance tenants creating mayhem, committing crimes and making residents’ lives a misery, so does she agree that there should be a “one strike and out” policy for these tenants, and that if they keep creating problems, they should be out and the local authority should have no duty to rehouse them?

[Yvette Cooper]

We need stronger action against antisocial behaviour, whether that involves havoc in town centres, off-road bikes or nuisance neighbours making the community’s lives a misery. That is why the Government are increasing neighbourhood policing and giving the police and local communities much stronger powers to crack down on antisocial behaviour so that we can take back our communities from the vandals, the thieves and those who make others’ lives a misery.

Extremism Review

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

I am always very grateful to the right hon. Member—he speaks with real experience and authority on these matters, and he raises an important and reasonable question. Yes, I am happy to give him that assurance; I work incredibly closely with both counter-terrorism police and operational partners on a daily basis. Of course, we look at these things very closely and keep them under review, and if we think that we need to change the balance in any particular area, we will not hesitate to do so.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

If the Security Minister thinks that there is not two-tier policing in this country, then quite frankly, he needs to get out more. This report states that anybody who calls out two-tier policing is a far-right extremist and that grooming and rape gangs are an “alleged” problem. Does the Minister agree?

[Dan Jarvis]

The point I was seeking to make earlier, which I am happy to reiterate to the hon. Member, is about the importance that we on the Labour Benches attach to supporting the police. We think that the police do an incredibly difficult job, and while the hon. Member might think that I need to get out a bit more, perhaps he might consider spending a bit of time with police officers on the beat in his constituency and in his area. If he were to do so, I am quite confident that he would see that they are exceptional people doing difficult work under difficult circumstances. There is a real risk that seeking to progress this narrative undermines the important work of the police.

Southport Attack

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

We will certainly ensure that that issue is clearly in the scope of the inquiry, which must consider why so many young people are drawn into an obsession with violence and extremist activity, and what exactly is going wrong and why, so that we can take the action needed across society to keep our children safe.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

The Home Secretary told us that, last year alone, 162 people were referred to Prevent over concerns relating to school massacres—a truly shocking and disturbing figure. How many of those people are currently in detention?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Member will know that a referral to Prevent can be for young people who may have expressed an interest in school massacre, as opposed to those who have committed a crime. The point of the Prevent programme is early intervention to take action preventing young people from committing crime. My view is that the powers are not strong enough currently to prevent young people from committing crimes or getting drawn into extremist violence. That is exactly why we need to introduce the youth diversion order—a stronger power for the police to take action in these extremely serious cases.

Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome the work my hon. Friend has done in this policy area. He is right to talk about young people and children being trafficked around the country. There is some concerning evidence that, for example, although work has been done to identify people being trafficked through county lines—often boys and young men—it has not sufficiently identified the young women and teenage girls who are being trafficked around for sexual exploitation. We need to ensure that improvements are made in that regard.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

The Labour lot over there are banging on about playing politics with this important issue, but the last time I attended a debate on child rape gangs only one Labour Back Bencher turned up. They should hang their heads in shame. Does the Home Secretary agree that we need a specific inquiry into why young British white girls are being systematically raped by men of Pakistani heritage?

[Yvette Cooper]

We need to make sure that young people and children are being protected. These are vile crimes against children. Across the country we have seen young girls, teenagers and young boys who have been exploited by perpetrators in the most cruel and horrendous way. We have seen abuse by Pakistani-heritage gangs, we have seen paedophile gangs operating online, we have seen abuse in communities and institutions and family homes, and all those crimes are truly horrendous.

After the Rotherham inquiry in 2014, when we saw appalling abuse by, in that case, a Pakistani-heritage gang, I called for a duty to report. I called for the law to be changed to place a responsibility on public servants to report child abuse, and to make it an offence to cover it up. The Government of whom the hon. Gentleman was a part for many years failed to bring in that duty to report, and we have lost a decade. We have to change the law. We have to make sure that we go after abuse without fear or favour, wherever it is found, in order to secure justice and protection for victims, and that dangerous perpetrators end up behind bars.

United Front Work Department

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

The right hon. Gentleman speaks with experience and authority on these matters, and he is right to mention North Korea. On his point about resources, I am not remotely complacent about that at all. Mindful of the nature of the threat that we face, the Home Secretary and I will work with our colleagues across Government to ensure that our security services have the resources they need. We have exceptional people stepping forward to serve, and it is the responsibility of Government, regardless of political colour, to ensure that they have the resources and technology they need not just to keep pace with the threat, but to retain a competitive advantage. We will ensure that they have the resources to do that.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

Yang Tengbo is the alleged Chinese spy who has been stalking the corridors of power in our country, rubbing shoulders with royalty, Prime Ministers and business leaders, yet his name was withheld from the great British public. Does the Minister agree that his name was withheld only to avoid embarrassment for previous Prime Ministers and for business leaders, and that that was not in the best interests of the British public?

[Dan Jarvis]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that I named H6. His initial anonymity was a result of a court order; it was not a UK Government decision.

Small Boat Crossings

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

My hon. Friend makes an intriguing point, given that Conservative Members have said repeatedly that they were about to start the Rwanda scheme the week after the election, and that all of a sudden it would work and be perfect—after 83,500 people crossed in small boats knowing that the scheme was legislated for and in place. I suspect, somehow, that the date of the election might have had a bit to do with the fact that they realised the Rwanda scheme would fail.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

The Minister is claiming credit for an increase in deportations of people with no right to be in this country. I want an approximate figure, please, of how many of the 9,400 people who have been sent back since the Labour Government came in arrived here in small boats since 2018?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Given that the Conservative party processed virtually nobody who came over in a small boat, they are still in the asylum backlog that we are attempting to deal with.