Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 12th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Home Secretary give way?

[James Cleverly]

I will give way one more time, and then I will make more progress.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

The Home Secretary says he will not reveal to the House the Attorney General’s advice, and that is fine, but on the issue of the money, his permanent secretary was in front of the Public Accounts Committee yesterday and told us that, as well as the payment of £50 million due next year, there are payments planned for years four and five. Is he willing to share with the House how much will be paid to Rwanda in years four and five of the programme?

[James Cleverly]

The hon. Lady will know that we have committed to a reporting schedule that is completely consistent with other Government Departments and with the reporting schedule of the Home Office in other areas. We intend to commit to doing that.

This Bill builds on the Illegal Migration Act 2023 and complements all other measures that this Government are employing to end illegal migration. The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill makes it unambiguously clear that Rwanda is safe and it will prevent the courts from second-guessing the will of this sovereign Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

The decision to leave office is always a difficult one. The decision to disagree with the Prime Minister—someone I want to support in good times and bad—is always a difficult one, but politicians are sent here to make difficult decisions. No one is forced to be a Minister. With high office comes responsibility, and no responsibility is greater than protecting our borders and securing us from untold damage as a result of mass illegal migration.

We have made huge progress as a country over the last year as a result of the work that the former Home Secretary—my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman)—the Prime Minister and I have done, and I wish my right hon. Friend the new Home Secretary and his Ministers all the best in taking that work forward. Our record stands among the best of any European country. We have, as my right hon. Friend said, reduced the number of small boat arrivals to our country by one third. That compares with a one-third increase across Europe, and an almost 100% increase on Europe’s southern border in Italy, so the plan that the Prime Minister set out a year ago is working. It is the most comprehensive plan of any European country.

We have just heard from the Opposition that they have no plan at all. They said that even if the Rwanda scheme was working and having the deterrent effect we all want, they would still scrap it, because ultimately they do not believe in border security and they cannot be trusted to protect our borders. But this problem is not going away. It is going to be one of the defining issues of the 21st century. There are millions of people on the move—some are fleeing climate change and persecution, while others are economic migrants understandably in search of a better life. It is a great compliment to our country that so many want to come here, but it is not sustainable.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will give way to the hon. Lady in a moment.

We have to secure our borders, which means that all the good work that we have done over the course of the last year—the Albania deal, the asylum backlog work, and the deals with Bulgaria, France, Italy and others—is not enough. We are not going to stop the boats purely through that work. We have to interject the strongest possible deterrent, and the best deterrent—the only deterrent—that we can use in the course of the next 12 months is the Rwanda deal. That is why it is so critical that we get it up and running.

I genuinely believe, having immersed myself in this issue for 14 months, that this is a good policy, that it can work and that it will help our country to fight back against this great scourge. In my job, I have seen the consequences of that every day. I have gone with my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) to meet her constituents whose homes have been broken into and whose lives have been ruined by illegal migrants. I have spent time with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Sir Conor Burns) and read about his constituent who was murdered by an asylum seeker, who posed as a child and then killed somebody on the streets of Bournemouth. I have worked with almost every Member of this House on their determination to close asylum hotels. Even the greatest advocates for open borders change their minds when there is an asylum hotel in their constituency. Hypocrisy is all over this issue.

That is why we have to fix this problem. When I said “whatever it takes”, I meant it, and I honestly believe that that view is shared by all of us on this side of the House and many good colleagues on the other side as well. To do that, we have to make sure that this policy works. This is a good-faith disagreement—there are good people on both sides of the House, and certainly within my party, who have disagreements about how we can make the policy work—but my point of view is this: untold damage is being done to our country and this issue will be with us for years, if not decades, to come. If we do not operationalise this policy correctly, we will see the numbers rise for many years to come. If, God forbid, there was a Labour Government, there would be a decade of small boat arrivals. I want to stop that.

To my mind, there are two big flaws with this Bill. First, as I have said to many who have asked me, including on the media, it does not address the question of individual claims. If I have learnt anything in this job, it is that those seeking to frustrate their removal from our country will stop at nothing. The small-boat-chasing law firms and legal representatives will help them to fight, each and every way. Give them an inch and they will take a mile. Even the best-meant things the country has done in recent years, such as our world-leading modern slavery laws, are abused. Some 70% of the people we are seeking to remove put in a modern slavery claim at the eleventh hour.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I will give way in a moment.

First, such a provision would bring legal certainty; secondly, there are operational reasons for it. I have met no one who really understands the operationalisation of the policy who does not believe such a provision is crucial. Those advisers have told me time and again that the scheme will be seriously impeded. People will put in claims and go to court. The upper tier tribunal, which is already under pressure, will be overwhelmed. Our detention capacity—just a few thousand spaces—will be full. In a single week in August, 2,000 beds in our detention facilities could be filled. Those arrivals will go on to our streets. They will abscond, as they always do, never to be seen again, and the scheme will be brought into quick disrepute. I do not want to see that happen. I will give way to the right hon. Lady.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

The right hon. Gentleman casts aspersions on Labour’s approach to this issue. He is in the presence of two former Immigration Ministers: myself and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne). At the end of the last Labour Government, there was one person being returned every eight minutes. I know from my own caseload that people who have reached the end of the line are still dribbling around the system, even though, as others have raised, they want to leave the country. What was the right hon. Gentleman’s record after 14 months as an Immigration Minister?

[Robert Jenrick]

There has been a tenfold increase in the pace of asylum decision making, so we have absolutely transformed the decision-making system. We have massively increased the number of returns—the hon. Lady is on rocky ground on this one, I am afraid—as 22,000 people have been returned. The difference between our side of the House and hers is that we have the guts and the determination to fix this problem once and for all, which means interjecting the strongest possible deterrent. Were there a Labour Government, I would worry for this country, because we would see a massive increase in the number of small boat arrivals, and the people smugglers would be celebrating. That is why it is so important to Conservative Members that we—

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have heard the sounds of optimism over truth coming from the Conservatives. The idea that the measure is a deterrent has not yet been proven, yet it has been cited as if it is actively deterring people from arriving in boats. We all know that the boats are a challenge. They are a real problem; people are dying in the channel. But let us be clear: the Government were the architects of this policy, and it is the second time they have legislated on it. Its architects have stood up, including the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) just now, and said how proud they are that they drew up the policy. But they drew it up so badly that they are having to revisit the legislation. I think they should be a bit less proud. Even though I do not agree with the policy, proper policy making means ensuring a policy works before announcing it. There are so many flaws in this scheme that the Government are struggling along, believing that a headline and a pledge that it will deter people is enough. That is not good policy making.

We on the Labour Benches have often been challenged on what we would do differently. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) and I were on the frontline dealing with immigration matters during the last Labour Government, and my right hon. Friend was the architect of a system that meant that one person was being returned every eight minutes. I have people in my constituency who have reached the end of the line, and they know it. They come to me and we talk about voluntary return, but it is difficult to do that when the Home Office does not return those people’s documents and they have all these problems. These are people who actively want to leave because they know that is their only option, but they cannot do so.

This Government must look much more closely at the existing system and how it is working. It has been 13 years of downgrading the asylum system and the immigration system generally, and now all these extra people have gone into dealing with the backlog of asylum cases—there are 20,000 legacy cases still left. Was 13 December the day on which the Prime Minister said that number would reach zero? He has missed that target, and 160,000 people have been backing up in the asylum system. People in my constituency, including a top surgeon, those coming in on work permits and those on student visas, are all behind in the queue because all the Home Office’s effort is going into the Prime Minister’s pledge to deal with the backlog, which is just creating more chaos in the entire system. That approach is not working.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) touched on the question of money, and of course, we on the Public Accounts Committee have been trying to look at the money on this issue. I will not go through the figures, because my right hon. Friend has already set them out, but this is a five-year plan, and we have no figures for how much money will go to Rwanda in years four and five. My right hon. Friend and I, along with the other members of the Public Accounts Committee, asked the permanent secretary that question yesterday, but he was not forthcoming on that figure. He only released a figure to us when it was leaked to the International Monetary Fund—an investigation is happening into why that was. That is a ridiculous way of releasing figures. It is not normal parliamentary protocol to release information about major projects in the annual report and accounts, especially when we are voting on them in this House.

For the benefit of colleagues who may not follow the annual accounts of Departments with the same enthusiasm as members of the Public Accounts Committee, the accounts for the financial year we are in will be published to Parliament in July next year, 15 months after the £100 million was allocated this year. That is not scrutiny. In other areas and for other projects—I look to the Minister to answer on this point, or take it back to the Home Secretary—we get updates to the House every six months, or even more frequently, through Committees or laid before the House. That is not uncommon, yet the Minister’s permanent secretary was saying that it is normal to provide updates just through the accounts. We need more scrutiny of this issue: if it is a flagship Government policy, there is nothing to hide, so let us see those figures. The Public Accounts Committee and the Home Affairs Committee will work together on that issue—it is really important that we do that.

We need to tackle the backlog and we need transparency on the numbers, and I would be also be grateful if the Minister clarified whether any conditions are attached to the money going to Rwanda. We got a useful breakdown from the permanent secretary in Committee yesterday—I will not repeat it, but it is on the record from yesterday’s Committee meeting—but is there anything that it would be out of order for the Rwandans to spend that money on? It has been spent on reasonable things such as education, health and so on, but is there anything on which the Rwandans cannot spend the money that is given to them by the UK? It would be very helpful to know that.

There was also an expression of interest for a contract for Manston and Western Jet Foil. That is a £700 million contract for the first six years, which could extend to be worth £1.16 billion over 10 years. The money is intended to improve those reception centres, which definitely need improving, but according to that pre-tender document, the facilities are expected to be active between 2030 and 2034. I am a bit puzzled: £700 million is being invested in Manston and Western Jet Foil, and although that may be necessary, we have been told all afternoon—I have been here for five and a half hours—that the Rwanda policy is already deterring people. If it is working so well, why do we need to invest that much money in those facilities? They need the investment, but it seems to me that the Government are trying to have it both ways. I would welcome clarity from the Minister.

Town Centre Safety

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris]

I am grateful for that intervention from my Co-operative party colleague, because I can express our pride that the Co-operative party is spearheading this work in Parliament. I agree that there needs to be work between retailers and staff, but we should take pride in the work that has already gone on between retailers and the unions. They are in lockstep on this, which is not always the case, and that co-operation is a great asset in this fight.

Even when the Government have attempted to reverse the disastrous implications of cutting 20,000 police officers, they have failed, because in adding back officers, they have squeezed out police staff and moored warranted officers away from the frontline, so we are 10,000 neighbourhood police short of the previous figure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) said. Each officer is another gap in that thin blue line, allowing criminals to run amok. Half the population say they rarely see police on the beat, a figure that has doubled since 2010.

However, we know that the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire has a cunning plan, which he unveiled last week at Home Office questions. To beef up the number of neighbourhood police, the Government are now going to count response police as neighbourhood police. That is risible nonsense. The clue is in the name: neighbourhood police are out on the streets, in their communities, providing a named presence, and building trust and relationships. The dynamic is different.

Neighbourhood police can be proactive, go to local community projects, get to know people, and build trust and relationships. That is a different dynamic from response police, who might attend a community event, but then a day later be in a situation down the road where they have to put in someone’s door or supervise a significant or difficult moment in a community. The relationship with the community is inherently different.

Similarly, response police can be called away at a moment’s notice, to the other side of the force area. It is simply not the same and it is deeply worrying that the Government think that it is. It represents a triple failure: officers cut, officers added back in the wrong place and now other types of officers being rebadged. They are failing communities and failing our hard-working police.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend talks about rebadging officers, but our wonderful police community support officers are worth a shout-out. They do day-to-day work and often stay in the job for a long time. When I am on doorsteps in Hackney, the residents often know the name of the local PCSO. Obviously, we need more police, but it would be good to have more PCSOs as well.

[Alex Norris]

My hon. Friend is exactly right and I will come on to our plans for more PCSOs. They provide a neighbourhood link and, as she says, a more sustained connection to a community. They also ensure our police forces are more representative of the communities they serve, so they add an excellent dimension to our policing.

However, policing has not been the only problem. We are still reaping the pain from the catastrophic decision to downgrade thefts of £200 and under in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which has been a godsend to shoplifters. It has created a generation of thieves who think they will not be caught or even investigated. On the back of that, high-volume organised retail crime has been generated, with huge criminal enterprises that we are now asking the police to dismantle—what a dreadful failure of public policy. Even now, when we know the impact that has had, the Government will not match our call to scrap that measure. Instead, Ministers cling to the idea that the police are geared up to follow all reasonable lines of inquiry and that, once again, they can do more with less. Of course they cannot do that. Our officers, police staff and communities deserve better than being set up to fail.

The Government weakened antisocial behaviour powers 10 years ago and brought in new powers that were so useless they are barely used, such as the community trigger. Getting rid of powers of arrest has proved a poor idea, even though they were warned not to do that. Community penalties have halved and there is a backlog of millions of hours of community payback schemes not completed because the Government cannot run the scheme properly. That is before we get to the failures with early intervention, with £1 billion taken out of youth service budgets and the dismantling of drug and alcohol services. The disruption we see in our town centres today stems from a litany of bad decisions taken by those on the Government Benches over the last 13 years. The Government have failed and our communities are paying the price.

Criminal Justice Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the detail and I hope that, in the evidence-gathering sessions in Committee, evidence is properly taken on that. It is an area where the legislation needs to be got right and concerns have been raised. There is also the wider problem of a toxic mix of rents and the failure to end no-fault evictions, which is hitting vulnerable people hard, and the Conservatives still have not kept their promises to act on that.

There is still a series of substantial omissions from the Bill that we would like to see added to it. There is nothing to ensure that neighbourhood policing is properly restored. We have set out proposals for 13,000 more neighbourhood police and police community support officers, and we want to see that underpinned in legislation.

There is nothing in the Bill to turn around the shocking collapse in charge rates. For example, there is no plan to tackle the problem of redaction—a problem I know the Policing Minister recognises—where officers effectively spend hours and the equivalent of a bottle of Tipp-Ex having to redact a whole series of things before files are even passed to the Crown Prosecution Service. Many have argued that legislation needs to be changed to tackle that. Doing so could save police officers hours and hours of time, and I think it is included in the police productivity review. Surely we ought to be able to tackle that, but it is currently not in the Bill.

The Bill is also not strong enough in its measures to tackle town centre crime. A law brought in by the Conservative Government, again around 10 years ago, means that shop thefts under £200 often are not investigated, even if the same gang comes back time and again. We should end that £200 rule to tackle the shoplifting gangs. We also have shop staff who are petrified to go to work when there are 850 incidents a day of violence and abuse against shop workers.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The week before last, during Respect for Shopworkers Week, I had the pleasure of visiting one of my local Co-ops. They have had £155,000-worth of goods stolen in the first six months of this year. For many stores, that is enough to close them down. I commend USDAW—the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers—and the Co-op for the work they are doing on that, but the police are just not turning up or taking it seriously. I commend what my right hon. Friend says; let us see whether she can push the Government to move further here.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the impact of shoplifting. If town centres do not feel safe, it is local businesses that are hit and can end up going under as a result, undermining local economies and putting off local residents who want to go shopping. Sometimes elderly residents, in particular, will simply not go into town anymore if they do not feel safe, and if they feel that laws are just not being enforced when they watch people leaving the shops with a big bag of goods stolen from the shelves and see nothing being done. It is just not good enough.

That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) rightly called for stronger measures to tackle assaults on shop workers. The Government did finally agree, as a result of his campaigning, to an aggravated sentence for assaulting shop workers, but that is not enough. The whole point is to make it simpler for the police to take action and to send a clear message from Parliament to police that this is an offence we take immensely seriously. That is why Labour will be tabling amendments that reflect the campaigns by USDAW, the Co-op, Tesco, the British Retail Consortium and small convenience stores for a new law and tougher sentences for attacks on our shop workers. Everyone should have the right to work in safety and to live free from fear.

--- Later in debate ---

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the opening Front-Bench speeches, to which I have listened with interest. It feels like groundhog day, if I may say so, on many counts and fronts.

First and foremost, there is much to welcome in the Bill. I bear the scars of having taken a number of criminal justice measures through the House—with great pleasure and through working with colleagues, including some Back-Bench colleagues who served with me in government. I think we can all reflect on how important it is that this criminal justice legislation strikes a fundamental balance between protecting civil liberties; supporting victims wholeheartedly in everything that we do as legislators; preventing crime, which must be absolutely front and centre of what it does; and punishing offenders.

This is a point of reflection. We in this House have discussed all those themes in separate debates, urgent questions and statements over a number of weeks. When it comes to punishing offenders, I know that the Lord Chancellor has, from the Dispatch Box, tried to address the issues to do with prison spaces. At the same time, we have been having conversations about preventing crime and supporting victims. Those are all personal and human aspects on which we must get the balance right.

I cannot emphasise this enough: we need to bring in and operationalise practical measures that deliver the desired effects and outcomes. In the debate thus far, we have not fully reflected on what it means to put into practice the delivery of such measures—what it means for resourcing, policing, prison spaces, the use of stop and search, and, importantly, how we put victims front and centre of everything we do. We must also demonstrate why those desired impacts are needed above and beyond what is already in place. We have good measures in place already, but now we have to reflect on them and go over and beyond, in the light of some of the points that have been made in the debate. I will come to many of those points.

I know that, while the Bill is going through Parliament, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will have to brace himself for the significant amount of lobbying that will come his way from inside and outside the House. I reflect on that because a great deal of experience that will come his way, and those important discussions will be moments for him to reflect on the practicalities not just of what goes in the Bill, but of its delivery. I thank him for the conversations that we have had in the past week. He will build on the many practical suggestions that will come his way.

Before I comment on the measures in the Bill, it is important to reflect on the actions that have been taken in recent years and the difference that they are making. It is too easy to come in and throw the baby out with the bathwater. A lot of good was done in previous Bills. I will pay tribute later to the work to invest in and recruit 20,000 more police officers. That has had an effect not just on the criminal justice system, but on building public confidence in policing—we should never stand still on that. At the end of the day, the public look to us all—certainly to a Conservative Government—to ensure that we have the manpower to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour, which has been mentioned. Importantly, we must give the public confidence that law and order is on their side and will use every pillar and strain every sinew, including police officers and the criminal justice system, to be on their side. Of course, the beating crime plan contained significant details about measures to target hotspots of criminal activity, including many dreadful aspects that have been touched on today, such as antisocial behaviour, homicide and knife crime. For example, the plan included the introduction of violence reduction units and investment in safer streets through the safer streets funds—important measures that must be built on to deliver safety practically and to build confidence in the criminal justice system.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

The right hon. Lady talks about having confidence in the criminal justice system. I will park for a moment the reason we are seeing an increase in police numbers: that, obviously, there was a drop previously. Does she agree that one of the biggest problems is the huge backlog in the courts—not as a result of covid; that has exacerbated it, but it was there before—that will take until 2025 to get anywhere near back to previous levels? I have a constituent who was violently attacked in front of her seven-year-old child. It was three years before her court case was taken. The situation leaves the police powerless, as the individual in question can keep breaking his non-molestation order, with no further action taken. It is all very well having the police officers, but does the right hon. Lady have anything to say about the court system?

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Member is absolutely right. We have discussed that issue more broadly in relation to an end-to-end criminal justice system being fit for purpose: working to a sensible timeframe; the police being able to process the cases with the Crown Prosecution Service; and then, obviously, the cases going to court. I am afraid that there is a lot of merit in the whole debate, particularly around sexual violence and rape cases. We have discussed the matter many times and much more can be done.

Good support has been brought in to address violence against women and girls—the rape review has taken place and there has been investment in independent domestic violence advisers—but there are fundamental criminal justice system issues around cases of this nature, including: the time such cases take; the level of attrition; and the retraumatisation of victims, because these cases are absolutely appalling. I have raised this subject in the House many times, including from the Dispatch Box, and have spoken about personal cases that have come to me through constituents. We all have tragic constituency cases, and we have to make sure that we are strong advocates to bring about justice for those victims.

Let me turn to a number of strong measures that are already in place. A great deal of work has taken place to tackle drugs gangs, organised crime and county lines. The Government deserve great credit for that and for their work on the ring of steel. I used to harp on about the fact that we do not grow these drugs in our country—and some are obviously manufactured—but it is vital that we have in place a ring of steel around our ports and airports to make sure that we do absolutely everything we can to stop at source the scourge of terrible chemicals and drugs coming into our country. We should never, ever stop doing that work; and that goes back to the point about the investment required in our ports and in law enforcement.

The violence against women and girls strategy and the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 have helped victims of the most horrific crimes, but I will touch on what more can be done. I welcome the new Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), to her place. I look forward to working with her on these sensitive and difficult issues.

On policing, the Government have enshrined the police covenant in statute, given the police more powers to fight crime and increased prison sentences. That is all part of offender management and making our communities safer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) for his contribution, but I feel I have to pick up on his point about stop and search.

As I know from my own constituency, done badly, stop and search can have a lifetime impact on trust in the police. I know men of my age who can still remember when they were stopped and searched frequently and badly. It absolutely has to be intelligence-led and done respectfully, so that any young person—or any person stopped by the police—knows their rights and is treated properly, because not everybody carries a weapon. There is a point to it when it is well-targeted, but we have to keep monitoring the police so that the number of stop and searches and the number of weapons found are proportional. Across London—I know my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) will find this as well in her constituency—people caught with a weapon will often hide it in the bushes or somewhere else because they know it will be found by stop and search. If it is used badly, it does not work; if it used well, it does have a place in policing. It cannot be got rid of completely, but it must be done respectfully and properly.

Given the current challenge the police are facing, particularly in London, in terms of trust with the community, we need to be really careful. In my constituency, I watch the statistics closely for who is stopped and searched, and the proportion of knives caught. It is important that we all keep an eye on that. We are at a point of disagreement, but I hope we can disagree well on this issue. The tone of the debate has been like the old days— we are actually discussing the matters in the Bill.

I want to focus on a number of issues, starting with that important matter of public trust in policing, which we know is currently a real challenge. We have policing by consent in this country and that is a prize worth fighting for. In my constituency, over a very long period of time, before my election 18 years ago and since, we have seen that lack of trust and challenge played out viscerally at times. Nationally, we had the shocking cases of police officers Wayne Couzens and David Carrick. They were serving officers and continued to be in employment despite previous incidents that were clear red flags.

I strongly commend to the House Baroness Casey’s review into the standards of behaviour and internal culture in the Metropolitan police. It sets out clearly the scale of the problems and is a seminal piece of work, but it will only be a seminal piece of work in reality if it is actually taken on board. I therefore welcome the commitments made by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, to tackle those issues, and his strong acknowledgement of the systemic problems in the force he now leads. The leadership has to come from the top, but it needs to be root and branch from below as well. We need to have confidence that the police can report issues among their colleagues —the duty of candour is an important element. The idea that things are hidden from senior management, or that senior management will not deal with them, needs to be in the bin now. Sir Mark Rowley needs power to his elbow to continue to deliver what he is trying to do. I am very concerned about how we got here and there are still lessons to be learned.

Very many years ago, I became a Home Office Minister. I had responsibility for the vetting and barring service. Building a picture about an individual police officer and vetting is still not being applied to the police. I served as a Home Office Minister for the three years from 2007 until the general election in 2010. Colleagues may remember the Bichard report, published in 2004 after the tragic murder of two young girls in Soham. The importance of recording and aggregating inappropriate and concerning incidents and behaviours carried out by people in professional roles, or indeed anyone, was not being managed well. Someone could commit a crime in one area—or not even commit a crime, but come to the attention of the police force in that area—and then move to a different area and repeat the same actions, and there would not be an overall picture of what that person had done.

As the Minister responsible for the then vetting and barring scheme, since subsumed, alongside the Criminal Records Bureau, into the Disclosure and Barring Service, I helped to shape that picture, focusing particularly on people working in education and health settings and bringing together and changing the rules governing the way in which people were supported. But that picture building also plays a much wider role. I know, having dealt with it in such detail at the time, that if it is used and shared properly, it can prevent opportunities for more serious crimes to be committed.

It is a tragedy and an irony that that type of intelligence gathering, which is now well established in many professions, including education and healthcare, had clearly not been happening in policing. The vetting system alone was different. Someone could be vetted and passed to become a police officer in one area, but in another area the vetting would disbar him or her from that force. Actions could be registered on people’s files and records as employees in one force, and in another force—or, indeed, in the same force—the accumulation of those actions did not lead to those people losing their jobs.

Before Wayne Couzens was convicted of rape and murder, six incidents of indecent exposure were linked to him, and in a previous job he was known as “the rapist” because of how he made women feel. David Carrick’s offences spanned a 17-year period—almost as long as I have been in the House—with reports to the Met first made in 2000. Here we are in 2023, more than 20 years after the tragedies in Soham, and that picture building and intelligence gathering across police forces has still not been happening. There is a great deal to be done to build trust between the public and the police, and it is clear that immediate progress needs to be made on the issues that I have mentioned.

I want to say something about the Home Office’s recent review of police officer dismissals, in particular its recommendation that misconduct hearing panels should be chaired by senior police officers supported by a legally qualified panel member and an independent member. Previously the panel would have been chaired by the legally qualified panel member, supported by the other two members, in order to ensure, rightly, that those chairing misconduct hearings had the appropriate knowledge and skills and were removed from any actual or perceived conflict of interest in the case. I fear that the change in the make-up of the panel threatens public confidence in the transparency and independence of the proceedings.

For example, a police chief or a police and crime commissioner might be required to make a statement immediately following a police incident, something we regularly see on our television screens and read about in the media. After that, the officers involved could be subject to a disciplinary hearing. How could that police chief then chair the panel objectively? There would be a clear conflict of interest.

The Bill creates the right of a chief constable to appeal against a decision made by a misconduct hearing panel. The rationale for that is that police chiefs should have a right to determine whom they employ in their forces. On one level I completely understand that, and, as I say, all power to the elbow of Mark Rowley in wanting to get rid of bad officers in his employment. However, it adds another layer of proceedings—another potentially lengthy and resource-draining element.

Policing is not a regulated profession, which is extraordinary when we think of comparable professions. As the IOPC points out in its response to the Home Office’s review of the process of police officer dismissals,

“Police disciplinary proceedings have their origin in the employer-employee relationship between a constable and their chief officer. However, that relationship has been overlaid incrementally by a statutory regime intended to promote public confidence. As has been noted in various legal judgements, the legislative regime that has resulted is very complicated.”

In regulated professions, the professional body deals with the public interest in fitness to practise issues, which means striking off people from the professional register when that is appropriate, while employers deal with breaches of the contract of employment, which means dismissal or some lesser sanctions. In the absence of a fitness to practise model in the police, a neat solution would be to separate findings relating to misconduct from the sanctioning element. A panel—chaired, I suggest, by an independent member—could find an officer guilty of misconduct and make a recommendation regarding an appropriate sanction, but the police chief would then make the decision to retain or sack that officer on the basis of the independent findings.

We all know that confidence in policing is the foundation of our system and that policing by consent is something we should prize. It is essential for my constituents in Hackney and for people up and down this country that we take concrete steps to address the problems and fix the long-standing systemic issues. I think there is an opportunity to do that in policing. I can see why the police will have lobbied the Government to have the right to chair misconduct proceedings, but I think there is a way of resolving that and keeping the independent oversight while giving police chiefs the right to sack people who have done the wrong thing.

I also want to touch on something I mentioned in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) in relation to shoplifting. Shoplifting has increased 25% in the last 12 months alone, with offences under £200 rarely being enforced. I recently visited the Gainsborough Co-op in Shoreditch to talk to the staff there, and I thank them for hosting me. I have also spoken to the trade union USDAW. It was interesting and sobering to talk to the member of staff at the Co-op who is responsible for collecting the information about shoplifting across the Co-op group. A lot of evidence is collected. We have heard examples of people going in and sweeping up food, with the same person often making several visits a day; they know when the security guard is on a break and go in then. They case the joint and steal repetitively. They are also increasingly aggressive, and staff tell me that they now go behind the tills more often.

The staff now wear cameras to try to record video evidence. They collect video evidence and they collect evidence from staff, who have to take time out of their duties to report it. They tell me that they are assiduous in doing that because they see the importance of trying to tackle the issue. The Co-op then pulls together that data—USDAW tells me that it is the same for other stores—and presents it to the police en masse to try to get a conviction, yet so little is taken up. A police officer will not necessarily attend an individual incident. I understand the pressures on the police in my borough, where there are lots of things going on. There always has to be a priority, but shoplifting is so often down the list of priorities that it is a real tragedy for those working in those shops.

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady and I see eye to eye on quite a few of the points that have been raised today. She mentioned a Co-op store, which is part of a wider group that clearly has a few more resources than independent retailers do. Does she agree that we really need to change not just the mindset in policing but the law to ensure that all crimes are treated equally, particularly when it comes to shop crime and its impact on retailers?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

The right hon. Lady and I are perhaps surprised to find ourselves in such agreement, but absolutely. I will finish highlighting what the Co-op does, because I think it plays into what happens in smaller stores.

The staff pull together enough information to make it evidentially strong enough to take through the prosecution service and into court, but even then they often struggle to get any interest—and of course, if the stores clamp down in one area by putting more security into a shop where there has been a particular issue, the criminals just move to the next property. We have to deal with this problem area-wide, which is why it needs to be a police matter and not just dealt with store by store. Crucially, as the right hon. Lady says, if the Co-op, Tesco or Sainsbury’s clamps down on a particular store or stores in an area, other shops are left with less support. They are often small corner shops with a lone shopkeeper, and the fear for them is palpable. It is really worrying. If they know that the police are not going to come, they just have to back off and their goods are stolen.

The Co-op that I visited has lost £155,000-worth of goods in the first six months of this year. For a small shop, that is the difference between existing and not. We rely on those local shops, and in lockdown we needed their support. Now we need to support them, and this needs to be a higher priority for the police. The Government could also be doing more. This is something that my own party is keen to look at. I am a Labour and Co-op Member of Parliament, so I am particularly keen to see this dealt with. I was struck as I talked to the staff in store by how helpless they feel when someone pretty much jumps across the till to take cigarettes and booze. They have to hide things, and they have to stock dummy products, which is inconvenient for customers. Of course, customers sometimes go into one of these shops and find that the goods they want to buy are not there because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) said, the shop has just had a large-volume raid.

Shoplifting needs to be taken much more seriously. Nobody should go to work and expect to be attacked. Everyone I spoke to had suffered an incident of shoplifting. Even if they stepped back and were not violently attacked, it is still very damaging psychologically. No wonder we see such turnover among shop workers.

[Sir John Hayes]

Does the hon. Lady agree that perpetual shoplifters of the kind she describes, who intimidate people and make the lives of shopkeepers and shop assistants a misery, should be banged up?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

Again, I find myself breaking out in agreement with the right hon. Gentleman.

If the sanction is too low, people will keep doing it. As with county lines, it is clear that criminal gangs are often using and exploiting vulnerable people to do their dirty work. Those vulnerable people get caught, but we do not get Mr Big. Shoplifting is becoming an epidemic in many of our areas.

[Florence Eshalomi]

One of my conversations with shop workers was about the mental health impact of being attacked and abused day in, day out. A number of them were thinking of changing profession. We might think they have support, but the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) mentioned that, in most circumstances, smaller shops have just one person in the store. Does my hon. Friend agree that their safety has to be paramount and that we need more action?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Like her, I have spoken to shopkeepers and it is heartening that they want to do a good job. They said the problem is that, after a shoplifting incident, not only do they go home with it in their head but they have to take time out to record it all. This is what one said to me, and it was really heartfelt: “It stops me doing what I’m here to do, which is to help customers.” He was so proud of his job, and he wanted to help customers. Nobody should be forced not to do their job well. Frankly, there is a real issue here, and there needs to be a strong signal that there will be action on the ground, with the police working with the retailers. The big retailers can help, but action needs to be area-wide. We need to take a completely different approach to shoplifting.

I commend the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall on knife crime. She highlighted the utter tragedy that she and I have experienced too often. It is not right that our young people feel unsafe roaming the streets. They should have the right to roam, but instead they and their parents are constantly worrying about knives on the streets.

Just banning zombie knives is not enough, because people will hide them. As with county lines, people will find a way. An 11-year-old in my constituency was recently asked to hide a gun, and when the gun went missing—it was taken from him—he had to pay back the person who had asked him to look after it. That is a classic example of grooming, and the same thing will happen with knives, which are not always held by the criminals themselves. Those who want to get hold of a dangerous weapon can do so all too easily, even if it is banned in law. That alone is not enough for somebody who is determined to do this.

We need to take a much more holistic public health approach to knife crime. I was in the Home Office when my party was last in government. The right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) and I are proud of our service in the Home Office, which is a great Department to be in, but it is also frustrating. At that time, we were trying to work with accident and emergency departments to get the data so that we could track what was happening, to make sure we had a more holistic approach. This is not just a crime issue; it is about making sure we are helping and diverting young people, who are often drawn into this activity not because they want to be but because, for young people living in certain areas, it is safer to be part of a gang than to step away. It is hard to resist that pressure at times, and those innocent young victims need as much support as other victims.

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. We can all reflect on where other parts of the state drop the ball on this issue, for young people in particular. Tragically, as she will know from her constituency—I have spent a lot of time with families in central London who are grieving because they have lost their children, their nieces or their nephews—these children get trapped into bonded labour, basically. They are treated like slaves. Somewhere along their journey the state, whether it is social services or the Department for Education, has failed. These kids may have been kicked out of school. That is where we need early intervention to stop the rot setting in.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I absolutely agree on that, and we need resourcing for that early intervention. Something we look at on the Public Accounts Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing, is what I call “cost shunting”. A classic example of that would be where mental health services get cut and the police end up picking up mental health patients and having to divert resources there. We could have early intervention to support young people so that they are not caught up in this. I am not blaming young people, as they themselves are not a problem—the young people in my constituency are amazing and are going to be great leaders of the future—but some of them, sadly, get sucked into this. That little bit of money going in early can prevent a lot of challenge for young people.

Many years ago, a police chief in Lambeth, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), did a bit of work to analyse the tragic knife crimes of that year and a clear pattern of victims emerged, one that often related to their being in care and to challenges in the education system. I give credit to Hackney’s gangs intervention unit, which finds the young people who are at risk of getting involved or who are involved. It then finds a way to divert them out of that path, through rehousing and education, and supports the family in doing that. This is a real challenge and so many parents want to talk to me about it. They do not want a uniformed police officer coming to the door if they know that there is a drug or gang issue in their area, because they do not want the young person in their family, often their son or daughter, to be targeted. We can talk about that issue.

Frankly, it will be cheaper for the Home Office to put money into early intervention than deal with the aftermath—the victims, the deaths and, later, the prison system, which goes to the Ministry of Justice budget. We need to break the government spending silos, looking across them with a mission statement as the leader of the Labour party has suggested. No longer can we look at individual silos; we need to find a way of tackling these wicked issues.

On fraud, the PAC has been looking at the issue for some time, and it is a failure of the system that we have such a poor response to it. The PAC looked at fraud in 2017 and again this year. Outlawing SIM farms is all very well, but victims continue to be let down. This is like the tip of an iceberg; it is as though the Government had to put something about fraud in the Bill so they went for SIM farms. Is that going to solve anything, given that most of the crime is overseas? When we looked at this again this year, the Committee concluded that fraud is

“everyone’s problem but no one’s priority”.

The Bill backs up that premise. Some 41% of all crimes currently committed are frauds; we are talking about 3.8 million instances of actual or attempted fraud in the year to June of last year. Such little progress has been made in the past year, with fraud increasing and victims paying the price. The cost of fraud to individuals cumulatively is £4.7 billion. We all want to boost the economy, so if we stop fraud, we could have £4.7 billion being spent in our economy. I am not being flippant, because this has a huge impact on the individuals who get hit, sometimes to the tune of several thousand pounds. For many of my constituents, even £50 or £100 is enough to tip them over the edge in a month, so this is a really big concern. Of course, this is about not just financial fraud, but other fraud.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I am pleased that my right hon. Friend is talking about fraud. The Home Affairs Committee has just started an inquiry on fraud and we learnt that only about one in seven people who are the victim of a fraud report it, because of the shame and stigma attached. Is she is concerned as I am that people are not reporting fraud and so this is the tip of the iceberg?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I absolutely am. I recommend to my right hon. Friend our report of this year and, I am sorry to say, our back history of reports on this issue, because things have moved so slowly that people might as well read the 2017 report as not much has moved on since.

I am going to come on to the issue of how reporting works, because the Bill misses an opportunity there.

[Sir John Hayes]

The right hon. Lady may recall that when I was a Home Office Minister—we are all sharing our Home Office histories here—we set up the National Cyber Security Centre and the national cyber-security strategy. We have made significant progress, but she is right to say that, as with shoplifting, fraud and cyber-crime are at epidemic levels. Part of that is about the way we constructed systems that are interdependent, interconnected and interoperable. Sometimes that adds to vulnerability, so we must change culturally how we go about doing business and interacting.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I do not dispute what the right hon. Gentleman says, but there is a danger that that lets the Home Office off the hook. In the five or six years during which the Public Accounts Committee has been looking at the issue, fraud has got worse. Indeed, I was dealing with some of the issues when I was a Home Office Minister, and we are seeing a growth in the crime but not a growth in the action in response to it. That is not surprising, as the volume and complexity of cases are overwhelming police forces and Action Fraud, the civil body to which people report such crime.

The point that the right hon. Gentleman makes about interdependency is valid. Because the Home Office is dependent on the banking, technology, telecoms and retail sectors to fight fraud, its response has been slow and sluggish, relying on voluntary agreements with organisations in those sectors to deliver change. Frankly, those agreements have not delivered enough. The banks were reluctant to give evidence at all to the Public Accounts Committee—I suggest to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), that she pushes the banks to give more information—and when we suggested publicly reporting fraud levels against the banks, they were apoplectic. We ended up recommending slightly time-delayed reporting as a way of keeping institutions on their toes, so that customers could vote with their feet and know exactly which banks were on top of dealing with fraud. We think that the different sectors where fraud is happening could do more.

Over 70% of fraud has an international element, so whatever we do domestically will not resolve the situation unless we have better relationships with overseas criminal justice agencies. This is immature in the Home Office currently, as we concluded in our report published earlier this year, and the matter is not helped by the lack of capacity in the UK. Only 1% of police are dedicated to fraud, yet it represents 41% of crime. The Home Secretary said that percentage balancing was not possible, but we can all acknowledge that if 1% of police officers are dedicated to fraud and 41% of crime is fraud then the balance is out of kilter.

Some 20,000 new police officers are being recruited, which is a welcome step, but only around 2% of them—some 380 officers—will be focused on fraud. The Public Accounts Committee looked at new officer recruitment; recruiting fast can mean that a lot of junior staff are recruited, not the specialists that are needed, so there has been a missed opportunity. I will not go into that further, as it is outside the scope of the Bill.

Public communications could be improved by the Home Office, working in partnership with others, as campaigns can be effective. When the Committee looked at communications this year, there were 13 public campaigns running about fraud, but fewer than 10% of citizens were aware of any of them. We raised the matter five years ago, when the Take Five campaign was run by the National Crime Agency. However, five years on, that campaign is still being evaluated, so it is not working very well.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North raised the issue of fraud not being reported by people. Only 300,000 cases were reported to Action Fraud by the public, which given the overall numbers is not very many, and another 600,000 were reported by business and industry. Of the 900,000 cases reported annually, fewer than 15% end up with further action and only 1% result in a criminal justice outcome. Action Fraud is set to be replaced in the new year, yet the Bill does not mention the victim experience, which is a missed opportunity. I hope that will be probed further by members of the Bill Committee.

It is sobering that the time taken by law enforcement agencies to take on and tackle fraud is often longer than the sentence that the fraudster receives, so something is going wrong. We need a concerted effort to deal with this wicked issue, which cuts across many areas.

The measure relating to intimate images is welcome. I pay tribute to my previous constituent, Emily, who has now moved back to the United States, who worked tirelessly over a period of years to shift the dial on the issue, after she was filmed naked without her consent. I held an Adjournment debate in April 2018 calling for exactly this issue to be addressed and made an offence. New section 66AA sets out three offences of taking or recording intimate photographs or film, including an offence of “intentionally” taking a photograph or recording a film that shows another person in an intimate state without that person’s consent or a reasonable belief in their consent.

This is a moment to pay tribute to Emily Hunt, who bravely named herself, took on the system and was a force of nature in making sure the issue was tackled. We could not understand why the crime of taking such a photograph was not identified in law. At the time, the fact the person who had taken it had not published it was the issue, but this measure has now been introduced and it would have protected Emily. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) highlighted what happens to many young teenagers, particularly teenage girls, so this measure acts as a protection. In addition, we need to ensure we educate people that such behaviour should not happen. As the Bill makes progress, I hope some of those issues will be picked up in Committee.

No Recourse to Public Funds

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 11th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) for helping to secure this debate and for the work his Committee has done on this issue. I will not repeat the important points that he helpfully laid out for the House, but I wanted to turn to some cases in my own constituency.

Just after the lockdown, I went out doing a roving surgery and I met a man who worked as a hospital porter in my local hospital, earning £1,400 a month. He was working but had no recourse to public funds. He had been renting two rooms in a private rented property for him and his daughter, at £400 a room. When the landlady—understandably hit by challenges due to the pandemic—put the rent up to £550 a room, he and his then 17-year-old daughter had to share a room because there was no other option.

My constituent could not qualify for housing benefit and there was no prospect of promotion at work as a hospital porter, yet he was working in our NHS. In many ways, that underlines one of the big problems here: these are people who are working hard, contributing to society and paying their taxes and their national insurance, but getting nothing back in return. It is perhaps sometimes painted that we want to ensure that people are paying their way. Well, those people are paying their way, but in an area as expensive as Hackney, housing is well out of reach because of the way in which housing benefit is structured, and of course, they cannot have access to that anyway. The 10-year route to citizenship is a big issue here as well. It is very expensive for those concerned, who are often in this bracket. They pay the fees every two and a half years. I will get to asks later, but it would be a great help if the Minister were to look at how that worked and reduce the fees and timeframe.

Let us look at the issue across London. According to London Council figures, London boroughs spent about £53 million on supporting an estimated 2,881 households with no recourse to public funds in 2016-17—that was some years ago. It is difficult to assess the figures precisely. The estimated average total annual expenditure was nearly £1.7 million per borough, at an estimated average annual cost of nearly £19,000 per household, so it is not cost free. Somewhere in the system, people have to be picked up and that burden is falling on local authorities. At that point in 2016-17, for which we have reasonably reliable figures, the average time spent supporting cases was nearly two years.

A lot of that support is spent on accommodation, for the reasons that I have highlighted. In my borough, you cannot get a family home under the housing benefit cap, which affects everybody, but particularly the group in question and, of course, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and those who require support under the Children Act 1989. That means that it is a big issue. As an estimate, 3,000 children may be in households with no recourse to public funds across London. Other colleagues have made points about the need to support those children, who will not be going to live anywhere else. They will stay in this country and become, hopefully, taxpaying, working adults who contribute to society. We need to welcome and support them, rather than hindering them at an early stage in their development.

I have some quick asks of the Minister—well, not so quick for him to deliver, perhaps, but easy for me to ask. I thank Praxis and the NRPF Network for some of these thoughts—I have worked with Praxis in particular. Could the Home Office conduct a one-off case resolution exercise systematically ensuring that people, particularly those without indefinite leave to remain at this point, are getting regularised support, and that, if they do not qualify to stay, they are being put on the route to leave the country? That would resolve the matter.

What we have is a lot of people dribbling around the system. As one of the top-six customers of Home Office Ministers on immigration cases over 18 years—so not just in one Government—I have seen the problem of people waiting a long time for resolution of their cases. Even when they have exhausted their appeal rights, sometimes they are still dribbling around the system. We need proper returns preparation support for them to leave. Many of us London MPs will have those conversations with our constituents, telling them that they have reached the end of the line and need support to leave. So it works both ways, but where people are allowed to stay, we can get through that quickly and give them the recourse to public funds that they need.

On that point, we should end the 10-year route or, at the very least, reduce the fees. I know that the Minister is committed to trying to speed up the backlog on immigration cases. Every 30 months, people have to pay and go through the system again; they are just clogging up the queue. Really, there is not much difference in someone’s life usually, and unless they have committed a horrendous crime or something that will obviously change their case, most people—I would hazard a guess of well over 95%—will just go through the system every 30 months and have to pay a fee. That comes out of their often meagre wages—even on good wages, it is quite challenging—and causes them real problems.

My right hon. Friend touched on data. How many people are affected by that? We need to understand and assess the impact and cost on local authorities. As I have said, saying, “You have to exist without recourse to public funds,” is not a cost-free option. At the moment, the Home Office cannot even tell us how many people need biometric residence permits and that is a big issue in my constituency. I hope that, when Atlas comes forward, it will be a start towards better data, but it would be helpful if the Minister updated us on its progress. Not being able to get data has been a long-standing woe of the Home Office, so I do not lay it all at the Minister’s door, he will be glad to know. I will give him as much support as I can in getting that system running so that we can get data and ensure that people are properly supported.

As I have said, this is not cost free. We need to lift the restrictions. The number of people who applied for restrictions to be lifted rose—unsurprisingly—from 900 in the first quarter of 2020 to 6,000 to in the second quarter of 2020. Even last year, 3,200 people applied to have those restrictions lifted and 60% of those requests were granted. If the Minister looked at that issue, he could free up a lot of time in the Home Office for the civil service to deal with getting people through the immigration system, rather than having them go through a system that eventually brings benefit, but very slowly.

Metropolitan Police: Casey Review

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

Baroness Casey is clear that the vast majority of serving police officers in the Met uphold the highest professional and cultural standards. This report is not about them but about the unambiguous systemic failings of culture, management and accountability. I am very keen for us all to learn from this diagnosis, from which reform must grow.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Home Secretary is primarily responsible for the funding, which has seesawed, the vetting, which she just touched on, and, critically, the structure of the Metropolitan police. On the latter point, she has talked about the need for reform. Can she tell the House whether she has had any discussions about, or whether she is even considering, breaking up the Metropolitan police to take out counter-terrorism and leave a London police force for Londoners?

[Suella Braverman]

Even Baroness Casey does not recommend breaking up the Metropolitan police, so I do not support that proposal. The hon. Lady mentions funding, so let me be clear that cash funding for the Met has increased since 2010. The Met gets 57% more funding per capita than the rest of England and Wales, and 24% more than the next highest-funded force, Merseyside, which has a higher level of crime. On all accounts, there is funding for the Met and there should be no reason for a failure to improve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

2. What steps she is taking to tackle backlogs in (a) asylum and (b) other immigration applications.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

14. What recent progress her Department has made on reducing the backlog of asylum applications.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be happy to look into the case that the hon. Lady raises. With respect to visas, I would just say that the UK visa service is now meeting or exceeding every one of its service standards, so the Government are providing a good service generally, but I would be happy to look into that case.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

The Minister says that the Government are providing a good service, but that is not my experience, either of asylum cases or across the piece. There are so many cases of work visas, visitor visas and so on being delayed for longer than I have seen in the 18 years I have served as an MP, which have included serving in the Minister’s role. When will he get a grip? It is all very well saying that he is dealing with asylum, but it is like whack-a-mole: he puts effort into one area, and another area goes badly wrong. When is he going to get a grip?

[Robert Jenrick]

I prefer to trade in facts, and the fact is that in every single one of the visa categories the UK visa service is at or exceeding the service standard. It is true that we moved a number of people away from work and visit visa duties to ensure that we met the demands of the Homes for Ukraine scheme last year, but those people are now back on the job and the service is performing well. If the hon. Lady wants to give specific examples, I shall be happy to look into them.

Knowsley Incident

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am aware of the site in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and the protests around it. I spoke to officials earlier today regarding it and they gave me an update. I would be happy to connect him with those officials so that he can raise his concerns and they can support him in any way.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister speaks as though all of the issues were someone else’s problem. He has acknowledged some changes he is bringing into the asylum system. I am one of the top six customers of the Home Office for my constituents and it is the worst it has been in 18 years, but in truth what we are seeing here is the chickens coming home to roost in the impact on communities, the appalling situation that many asylum seekers are living in and the danger around these sites. When we will see a real change, a step change, as a result of the changes he is introducing? I cannot see it happening any time soon.

[Robert Jenrick]

The Prime Minister set out a plan at the end of last year and I am working every day to implement it. We are already seeing significant progress on the asylum backlog, with cases falling significantly with every passing week, and we are recruiting more decision makers into the Home Office to do this. We are working intensively with local authorities to find better and greater value for money accommodation through the national dispersal scheme, rather than hotels. If the hon. Lady, as a valued Member of this House, has suggestions as to ways in which we can improve the quality of service, I would be happy to meet her to discuss them.

Windrush Lessons Learned Review: Implementation of Recommendations

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Miss Dines]

I understand that that was part of the argument put forward in the seemingly inaccurate article in The Guardian. The level of engagement has been incredibly high, and engagement is a key part of delivering the review. Home Office officials are actively engaging with internal and external organisations and staff at all levels, including unions, support networks and the Department’s race board, to ensure that the findings of the review are implemented. Across the whole community there have been many engagement exercises, but, again, it is not appropriate to comments on leaks or news articles that may not be accurate.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

One would think from the way the Minister is speaking that this was an urgent question on an article in The Guardian. This is an urgent question about a Home Office that, as the Home Affairs Committee and the Public Accounts Committee have both repeatedly pointed out, failed to recognise the pattern of behaviour despite many flags in the system, introduced a compensation scheme that then did not deliver, had to review the compensation scheme and is now goodness knows where. One of the recommendations from the Public Accounts Committee was that more work be done to identify people from Commonwealth countries other than from the Caribbean who were also impacted. Can she update the House on progress on that?

[Miss Dines]

It is regrettable that some of the work the Home Office has done has not been acknowledged. There has been a sea change. Things have changed. The process has been improved and there is a constant system of review; even since the August changes were made, more work has been done. I mentioned earlier the introduction of preliminary payments for close family members, which allows for part of a compensation payment to be made far earlier, meeting one of the core concerns of close family members about receiving that assistance and money. The commitment is definitely there. It has been suggested that this has now become a UQ on The Guardian, but that is because of the fallacious and inaccurate information in The Guardian that has seemingly led to these questions being asked.

Hotel Asylum Accommodation: Local Authority Consultation

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

On asylum seekers working, there are respectable arguments on both sides of the issue. I take the view that, for a range of different reasons, there are already significant pull factors to the UK and it would be unwise of us to add a further pull factor. However, I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman takes a different view.

With regard to the backlog, we are now going to institute the processes piloted at our Leeds office, which will ensure that productivity is increased significantly. However, he is right that we need to get through the backlog. It should never have been allowed to get to this level in the first place.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Added to the chaos, we now see a bidding war where local authorities find themselves competing against Home Office procurement for temporary accommodation. That is not new. The Public Accounts Committee highlighted those very issues in its report in November 2020 and made a recommendation to the Home Office, which the Government accepted, that:

“The Department should, as a matter of urgency, communicate with NHS bodies, MPs and other key stakeholders such as police, setting out how it will consult and engage with them in future.”

We also asked the Department to write to us further about that approach. So this failure was on the desk—everybody knew that it was happening—and it is still a failure now. Why?

[Robert Jenrick]

As I have said in answer to other questions, we want to move forward to a much better level of engagement with local authorities. From my prior experience in local government and seeing the confluence of issues from Homes for Ukraine, the Afghan resettlement scheme, the Syrian scheme, the number of asylum seekers and the general lack of social housing, it is important that Departments such as mine and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities work closely together and that the Government take a place-based approach where we understand the specific pressures that we are placing on particular local authorities and work with them as closely was we can.

Remote Observation and Recording (Courts and Tribunals) Regulations 2022

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2022 General Committees

[Miss Dines]

In relation to the finances, a great deal of money has been put aside by the Government to fund the infrastructure and technology generally, and for the draft regulations. In 2021, we spent £15.8 million on audio and video technology in our courtrooms. The Government are investing more than £1.3 billion to transform HM Courts and Tribunals Service, and invested a further £142 million during the pandemic to upgrade court buildings to ensure that they are digitally enabled. On the specific costs, digitally enabling Crown courtrooms costs £90,000 and magistrates courtrooms £70,000. About 70% of courts and tribunals have audio and video technology in place, and for Crown courts the figure jumps to more than 90%.

There have been extensive informal consultations. Judges and tribunal leaders have discussed implementation regularly. I stress that we do not in any way find that the draft regulations impose any fettering of the already wide discretion of every judge to have control of his or her court. There is nothing new here.

In relation to the protection of witnesses and other participants, exactly the same principles are in place. Judges, being in charge of their courts, look very carefully at each and every application for somebody to observe, whether it is remote or in person. The general nature of the draft regulations is to make observation more transparent and to make it more possible, including for those whom I mentioned earlier who might not find it physically easy to attend. I hope that responds to most of the points made by the hon. Member for Stockton North.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Minister to her position. I have two questions. First, when we looked at the issue in the Public Accounts Committee—at all issues around remote proceedings—no proper evaluation was planned by the Ministry of Justice for the impacts on how justice is done, in particular with regards to witnesses. Secondly, while people have to give their name, address and details to the judge before any agreement for them to watch something remotely, what safeguards are in place to ensure that they are not doing so in an open environment? That might be against the law, but it is very easy for someone, whether a journalist or another, to be watching, or for someone even just to wander through the space in which it is being watched. There are sanctions in law, but what safeguards are in place to prevent that happening inadvertently or deliberately?

[Miss Dines]

As I mentioned earlier, under section 199 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, it is an offence punishable by a fine of £1,000 and up to two years in prison if found to be a contempt. That is a high level of punishment for any unexpected forward transmission, which would be against the law. The courts take this extremely seriously. The hon. Member will probably recall from newspapers and the media that contempt of court has been dealt with extremely seriously by judges. I have no doubt that this would be dealt with in the same way. I emphasise that the measure is to create more open justice, but in a safe way, where there has been proper evaluation.