Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Browne]

The House will not be surprised to learn that I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. Scrap metal theft is a serious crime that can have serious and expensive consequences, but Members in all parties will feel that when it involves the desecration of war memorials, particularly those relating to the two great wars of the past century, in which so many British and Commonwealth soldiers died, that is particularly offensive to our sensibilities. I very much hope that his private Member’s Bill, and other measures being taken by the Government, will help to address that appalling behaviour.

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

The theft of war memorials is a real problem, so what conversations is the Minister having with the taskforce chaired by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on how the Departments can work together to tackle this problem further? I say that notwithstanding the excellent work being done by the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway).

[Mr Browne]

I am happy to have discussions with any parties that are interested in trying to ensure that we can make improvements, but I can tell the House that new measures will be introduced as early as 3 December to create a new criminal offence that prohibits cash payments in the purchase of scrap metal. We are putting a series of measures in place; we are not merely waiting for my hon. Friend’s private Member’s Bill to come into effect, which we hope will happen. We are acting more swiftly than that and I am keen to draw on support from all parties and none to try to ensure that we tackle this serious crime as effectively as possible.

Olympics (Security)

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

No, I would say that G4S came forward and made a statement to the Government that it would not be able to provide the numbers required. It would have been easy for G4S to carry on saying, “We will provide the required numbers”—but it did not; it recognised that it could not and at that point it came to the Government and we took the necessary action.

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

On 14 December, the chief civil servant in the Home Office gave evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, assuring us that everything was fine with the G4S contract. We now hear from G4S that 9,000 people are still being processed. Does the Home Secretary share her senior civil servant’s confidence now?

[Mrs May]

I explained this on a number of occasions last Thursday and this afternoon. There was a rolling programme for G4S for recruiting individuals and taking them through the training and accreditation process. G4S repeatedly assured us that it was going to overshoot rather than undershoot its target. It came forward and said it could not meet its contractual obligations only last Wednesday.

Olympics (Security)

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I assure my hon. Friend that discussions are taking place among Departments about the funding. The funding will not reside with the MOD. The matter of penalties is one between LOCOG and G4S, but the Government will discuss it with them. As he rightly says, if the required numbers have not been delivered, the financial penalty proceeds should revert to the Government to make extra money available.

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

I share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) about the number of people, including in my constituency, who would have loved to have had one of the 12,000 jobs that are now going not to security staff but to the armed forces.

The Home Secretary has been in her post for two years and two months. In that time she has had three security Ministers, and Olympic security needs have more than doubled. The Home Office knew that there was a problem in May 2010. When did she know there was a problem, and why did not she or one of her three security Ministers ask LOCOG more detailed questions about its poor forward planning?

[Mrs May]

If I may just correct the hon. Lady on one fact: there have not been three security Ministers over the past two years and two months.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point. That is precisely why we are not just treating this as a purely policing matter, but drawing in local authorities, voluntary organisations and other specialists, so that that kind of positive intervention to keep people on the right track and off the wrong track can be part of our overall strategy.

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

Will the Minister update the House on the progress and uptake of gang injunctions and, in the light of that update, advise us on whether the Home Office is reconsidering its plan to abolish antisocial behaviour orders, which also have a role to play in tackling gang culture?

[Damian Green]

I think that the hon. Lady will recognise that ASBOs felt like a good idea at the time but did not work and straightforwardly failed. Far too many ASBOs were breached, and increasing numbers of them were breached the longer time went on. I am sure that the policy was devised with the best intentions, but it did not work, which is why we have moved on to other policies that will be more effective in combating antisocial behaviour and gang-related violence.

UK Border Agency

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I understand that the last time there was an immigration debate in the House, not a single speech was made from the Labour Back Benches.

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

One of the Government’s first acts was to abolish plans to put fingerprints in British passports. We now hear that the Immigration Minister gave the impression to officials that it was okay to implement the suspension of secure identity checks. Does he have the Home Secretary’s full confidence?

[Mrs May]

Absolutely, and I have already answered the points about the Immigration Minister’s comments. The hon. Lady needs to recognise that secure identity checks were suspended before January/February 2011, that they were suspended until May, and sadly, despite the fact that I explicitly said that they should not be suspended in May, they remained suspended. That was without ministerial authorisation. It is high time that she and her right hon. and hon. Friends recognised what was happening without ministerial authorisation.

Border Control Scheme

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

The Labour party, predictably, has passed the information on to newspapers, so we know what it has. [Interruption.] I do know about that. I will not stand here and condemn people for using leaked information. I merely point out to the shadow Home Secretary that it is rather more effective when one produces documents that show that Ministers have done something wrong. Throughout this affair, she has so far signally failed to do that.

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

Will the Minister please tell the House how many of our border operations he has visited in the past 18 months?

[Damian Green]

All the big ones. I have been to all the major airports and all the major UKBA centres, as well as to several of the biggest overseas visa operations. The hon. Lady is quite right to suggest that Ministers should get out and talk to people who are actually doing the job. I do that as often as I can.

Border Checks Summer 2011

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

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

We have heard a lot about the intricate detail of this policy, but I want to pose two key questions. First, what is the role in the Government of the Home Secretary and her Minister for Immigration? The second question concerns the Government’s overall approach to immigration policy.

Let us wind back to the end of last year. The chief executive of the UK Border Agency announced that she would be leaving her post, and from January she took up another post in Whitehall. At that point, an acting chief executive was appointed, while several acting directors were also in post—as I understand it, some of them remain in post. Of eight posts, up to five at any one time were acting. All were operational posts—not backroom posts, but front-line operational director posts. On 26 September, the new chief executive of UKBA was appointed.

Ministers, and the Minister for Immigration in particular, had a strong responsibility to ensure leadership and continuity at a time when there were so many acting officials. It was his responsibility, in particular, to watch the detail, to ask the questions and to set the direction. Clearly the Home Secretary had a role, but I have been a junior Minister supporting a Home Secretary, and I know that the role of a junior Minister is to look at the detail and to ensure that the Home Secretary has what she needs to do her job. So why has the Minister for Immigration been so silent? Was he reading the detail of the briefings sent to him, and was he watching the Home Secretary’s back? She is protecting him now, and he should be very grateful. The named civil servants who have been condemned publicly in the House and elsewhere have not had the same cover. In his closing remarks, will the Minister tell us what progress reports he received from officials, what action he took to ensure that the pilot, as outlined, took place and where the pitfalls were?

Immigration is a complex project, and it needs that oversight. On the approach to immigration policy, the talk was tough. “Let’s reduce the numbers,” they said, “to tens of thousands, and let’s go back to the levels of the 1980s and early 1990s.” They wanted to create a new border force, forgetting that, actually, UKBA was, in effect, that very thing. The rhetoric on immigration and migration was great, but the actions have been weak. At the same time as all this rhetoric, the Minister for Immigration, in a little-known side move as he abolished identity cards, abandoned fingerprint biometrics in passports. The reason he was appointed to the Home Office was to abolish identity cards, but in the process, he threatened the security of the British passport and, therefore, part of our immigration system. He threw out with the bathwater the precious baby of our security.

We have e-Borders, but only for some and only when it suits the Government. Then, let us look at the budget issues. We saw a 23% reduction in the Home Office budget, and it is naive to think that we can conduct a modern immigration service with fewer resources. I know, because I have been in such meetings in the past, that the Department for Transport, the airlines and the operators will have been putting immense pressure on the Home Office to reduce queues. However, the Home Office’s job is to maintain the integrity of security. It seems that it crumbled, but that is hardly surprising, given that it took its lead from No. 11 Downing Street, because, ultimately, those cuts to the budget led to a cut in service.

The buck stops with the Minister for Immigration, the Home Secretary and, ultimately, No. 10 and No. 11. By cutting too far, too fast and at any cost, the Government have put the security of our borders at risk.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman realises that it is right for us to wait for the report by the independent inspectorate and to take careful note of what it says about the policing that took place. Clearly things did go wrong and we have to learn the lessons. The Government are committed to doing so as, I am sure, are the Metropolitan police. As the Prime Minister has made clear, this is not just about the security response, but about the social response and the preventive measures, which I know the right hon. Gentleman is keen to promote, that can deal with this situation and stop such things happening again.

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

18. What financial support she is providing to London boroughs to tackle gang-related issues.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

The police, local government and voluntary groups in London currently receive Home Office funding to tackle gang, gun and knife crime as part of the communities against guns, gangs and knives programme, which was announced in February. Further support will be available next year for local areas across the country to implement sustainable approaches to tackling gang violence.

[Meg Hillier]

In Hackney, the integrated gangs intervention unit has overseen a major reduction in gang violence. It is funded from the base budget of the council, but that might be more challenging in future years. What work is the Home Secretary doing to ensure that boroughs across London are working together and providing funding for similar initiatives so that we do not see gangs being tackled in one area only for them to bubble up in another?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady has made an important point about the importance of tackling this problem across the board. In talking to the Metropolitan police and in the work that will be done by the ending gang and youth violence team that the Home office is setting up at a local community level, we will incorporate the need to ensure that this work does not simply move gangs on to other parts of London. Funding is being focused on areas where there are particular problems. Hackney is in receipt of several amounts of funding for such projects. I fully take on board the hon. Lady’s point and we will look at it in our further work.

Gangs and Youth Violence

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes the point that we did see some opportunist criminal activity during the riots, but I remind him that just under three quarters of the people involved in the riots who have been identified so far had a previous criminal record of some sort and that 25% had 10 or more criminal offences on their record. So what we saw was sheer criminality on our streets.

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

Crime in my borough of Hackney is at its lowest for 12 years and Hackney’s integrated gangs intervention unit has seen a drop in gang violence of 59% in the 18 months that it has existed. I hope that the Home Secretary will place in the Library the details of where the £10 million will be allocated and that she will seriously examine the issue of gang injunctions. My local police and the integrated gangs intervention unit say that there are real challenges in getting gang injunctions to stick. They and I plead with the Home Secretary to re-examine antisocial behaviour orders and keep them until she is sure that gang injunctions work. Will she tell the House how many gang injunctions have been issued to date?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady raised a number of issues. The amount of money made available to Hackney from the early intervention grant allocation in the current financial year was, of course, about £20 million. We will be identifying the areas that the Home Office funding will be going to. As I said in response to the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), we have also already put money into Greater Manchester, the west midlands and London—the three areas where most knife crimes are committed—in looking to work with projects to tackle those knife crimes. So that funding has been available.

Only a small number of adult gang injunctions have been introduced so far. As the hon. Lady will know, the injunctions were introduced only earlier this year, but their use is increasing. I am aware that there were some issues in the early days in relation to their implementation, but we are getting through those teething problems and the gang injunctions have been used in areas where they have been effective.

Identity Documents Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

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

We have absolutely no problem with the programme motion.

Question put and agreed to.