Police Leadership Commission Report

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head, because no police officer should fear that. The reforms suggested in the report are there to support officers and staff to move through the force in a way that gives them the skills and training that they need to do the job that we have asked them to do. That is at the core of what we are trying to do. In relation to his remarks about his Conservative police and crime commissioner, we made the difficult decision to remove police and crime commissioners—that was a hard thing for them to hear, for obvious reasons. They have consistently continued to work with me and the Home Office, to help with the reforms and to keep giving their ideas and time, and I am very grateful to them for that.

[Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that a big part of the leadership malaise outlined in this report can be attributed to the lack of clarity from this place and the Government about what we expect of the police? While this report is welcome, the definition of police leadership in paragraph 90 runs to almost two pages.

Does the Minister agree that, in essence, this is about two things? First, this is about cutting crime. Too often, the leadership of the police is focused on being all-purpose social workers trying to solve every problem in society, leading to the extraordinary situation in which social media is policed more aggressively than shoplifting or burglary. Secondly, this is about having officers’ backs. Too often, police officers fear acting, because they will be hung out to dry if they make the wrong call. I am afraid we saw exactly that this weekend in the extraordinary scenes at the Pride march, where there was explicit antisemitism and people directly attacking Jews while the police stood back and watched. We have to achieve a cultural change. Does the Minister agree with those objectives?

[Sarah Jones]

I agree. The police have a duty to police without fear or favour, and that needs to be absolute. Everybody is equal under the law. I suspect that over the years, political decisions might have been made that may have made that job harder for the police. However, I do not agree with the right hon. Member’s analysis of what good leadership is. There are many different ways to cut crime and have officers’ backs, so I would not say that he has hit the nail on the head.

We expect our officers to cut crime and to keep people safe. We can all agree on that, because that is what we need people to do, but the question is about how we do that. How has leadership been so poor over the years that we are not achieving that outcome? It may be that decisions made in this place are partially to blame, but it cannot be right that, for example, out of 140,000 officers and many thousands more staff, only about 500 officers and staff will start a centrally delivered national leadership programme this year. We cannot be designing good leadership when we are not training people how to do it.

National Security (State Threats) Bill

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 17th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

I pretty much wholeheartedly endorse everything said by the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst). Let me begin by declaring my interests, as set out in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, including those relating to my role as the chair of the United Arab Emirates all-party parliamentary group.

I will not restate the arguments for this legislation in the first place, as they have been made eloquently by many other Members. Suffice it to say that we have seen in our lifetimes the nature of the threats facing the United Kingdom evolve from being primarily state-based, to terrorist-based after 9/11 and 7/7, and to the hybrid of grey zone warfare that we are all familiar with. Many of us struggled with and sought to address that issue when we were in government, not least when I was the Deputy Prime Minister. I sought to co-ordinate across national resilience and security and international relations. I worked closely with Members of this House, including the former Security Minister, my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat).

Given that this is a debate on Second Reading, I wish instead to use the limited time available to me to make three points in relation to the application of the powers under the Bill—and, indeed, the inability to use powers under the Bill. The first point relates to Iran and the IRGC. As Members will know, for many years this House has debated whether and how to deal with the IRGC. The essence of the problem has always been that it is not just a conventional non-state terrorist organisation; it is part of the Iranian state, but it also operates through military structures, intelligence functions, cyber-capabilities, proxy militia and criminal intermediaries. As I read this Bill, and as the Government have strongly indicated, I think that is precisely the sort of body or network of bodies that this legislation appears designed to address. This really does matter, for the reasons set out by the hon. Member for North Durham.

In Hertsmere, I have the privilege of representing one of the largest Jewish communities in the country. For that community, this is not just an abstract debate about legal architecture; it is real. It is about whether people feel safe at synagogue. It is about whether parents feel confident in sending their children to Jewish schools. It is about whether community centres, charities and places of worship can operate without fear.

The Jewish community has long seen the malign role of Iran and its proxies. After the terrible spate of recent attacks, they live in a different world—one in which fear and intimidation have deepened and intensified near to breaking point. I therefore hope that the Government genuinely understand that fear and that they will use the powers granted by the legislation to act and to act fast.

The second area I will touch on relates to the question of ideological movements that may intersect with state-threat activity. I urge the Government not to treat ideological extremism, particularly Islamist extremism and state-threat activity, as entirely separate worlds. We know that the hatred unleashed on the streets of this country often finds its source in Islamist extremists, who have nothing but contempt for the values of this country but who are adept at using our openness and our institutions to undermine us. In that way, a mutual interest is created between this hateful ideology and hostile states. We have foreign funding, ideological influence, proxy activity and hostile state interests overlapping. This Bill rightly targets foreign states and agents, but we must look at the broader ecosystem too.

[Dame Karen Bradley]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Select Committee recently looked at new forms of radicalisation and extremism, and we were very struck by how things can be looked at through an ideological lens or not, and that sometimes things fall through the cracks in the middle because they are not looked at as a whole. Does he agree that the Bill could present an opportunity to address that issue?

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

I totally agree, and it is dangerous for this country that there is a mutuality of interests among extremists who do not share our values and hostile states who are opposed to us. This Bill should seek to deal with that overlap. For example, the Muslim Brotherhood is in certain places backed by foreign states and has an equally subversive agenda here in the UK. Although its relationship with violence on our streets is often more subtle and obscured, the threat to our social cohesion and democratic fabric is no less severe. We have seen in recent months the United States Government designate various regional branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organisations, and an excellent article by Lord Godson highlighted today how many European states are taking steps to address this issue. The west is waking up to this reality and we in this country cannot afford to lag behind.

[Sir John Hayes]

This situation is worsened, of course, by the values we seek to defend being used against us. Fair-minded British people want to believe that every side deserves a hearing, so we afford to some groups that do not deserve it a kind of equivalence—on one hand we have the west and Britain and America, and on the other hand we have these other groups. That equivalence is entirely bogus of course, because we are defending an open society and they are seeking to close it.

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

My right hon. Friend is of course entirely correct. Members on the Labour Back Benches are, given their presence in the Chamber for this debate, at the more hawkish and national security end of the left-wing spectrum, but there are elements of the liberal left who succumb to that equivalence argument and it is profoundly dangerous.

The 2015 review of the Muslim Brotherhood concluded that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered a possible indicator of extremism. A decade later, in the current far more dangerous geopolitical environment, we need to look again at that assessment. That is why I continue to believe that the Government should take up the opportunity to do so. Some of our closest allies have done so and indeed have taken a much more robust approach. For example, the United Arab Emirates has designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation. We should ask ourselves why a country such as the UAE has such concerns about the radicalisation of its own students in our mosques that they are restricting their study here. The test under this Bill is rightly a foreign powers threat test, and there may well be other avenues for addressing this issue, but none the less I make the point that where an ideological body or a body linked to an ideological movement is acting to the benefit of a hostile state, this regime, alongside others, should apply.

Finally, I would like to address the future-proofing of this legislation, which has been touched on by some Members. Just as threat actors have evolved, so too have their methods, and foreign powers and their proxies no longer exclusively rely on the old-school methods of human surveillance, forged documents and so on. They can deploy bots that distort the democratic debate, as we have seen; ransomware to cripple business; cyber-attacks to disrupt public services; and deepfakes to impersonate trusted public figures. That list goes on, and AI will accelerate all of that—a point I made at the UN General Assembly ahead of the Bletchley Park AI safety summit. Cross-Government co-ordination to address this issue is more urgent than ever.

In this country we cannot just look at state threats purely in a physical silo, detached from the digital domain. Hostile states will use AI to automate reconnaissance, scale spear phishing, identify vulnerabilities, and so on. A criminal who once needed specialist skills may increasingly be able to purchase or access those capabilities through AI-enabled tools, and hostile states that once needed sophisticated cyber-units may be able to outsource, automate or accelerate parts of that work. Many Members will be familiar with the concerns and indeed opportunities surrounding Claude Mythos and its advanced cyber-capable AI models. That is a warning to us, but it is a warning of much more to come in this space.

[Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an important point. As AI develops, the threshold for non-state actors to conduct cyber, physical and other attacks against our democracy is lowered further, and that is happening almost weekly. Does he agree that we need to move quickly on this legislation, and on the effective regulation of artificial intelligence?

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

I totally agree with the hon. Member, and that is why we Opposition Members support the legislation. On AI, we can all see these challenges coming. We need to work cross-party and support the Government in finding ways to address them, because this is essentially the challenge of our age. Of course, AI will be able to strengthen our defences, but we should not be naive; the same tool that helps a defender to patch faster will of course also enable an attacker to breach faster. We have seen this with hostile states. Russia has already integrated cyber-sabotage, propaganda and deniable proxy activity into its campaign against the west. The same can be said for North Korea, which has not been touched on much in this debate, and Iran.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The internet outage in Iran knocked out a large percentage—5% or 10%, depending on who we believe—of Scottish separatist sites on social media. Do we genuinely believe that Iran is the only country seeking to weaponise social media? On one account, for example, someone claimed to be a nurse from Glasgow, but was fluent in Persian. Is it not likely that China and North Korea are doing exactly the same thing?

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Separatism makes a country weaker, and there is no doubt that our enemies will encourage it. The example that he cited, which I also saw, is very telling of exactly that.

[Max Wilkinson]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is being very generous with his time. On the use of AI on social media to disrupt, is he also concerned about what happens on X, where unidentified and unidentifiable accounts—sometimes bots, sometimes accounts using a dinosaur or other avatar—seek to stoke hatred on our streets against Jewish people, Muslims and others, and against British values? I am very concerned about that. I have been criticised by members of the Conservative party on the internet for raising this point, but I wonder if he shares my concern.

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

I have great respect for Elon Musk’s ingenuity when it comes to trying to send a man to Mars and set up a colony there. I am slightly more dubious about the activities in relation to X, but that platform should be subject to the same legislation as all others.

As for this Bill, the question is whether the designation regime will be agile enough to deal with not only traditional organisations, but cyber-units, hackers for hire, front companies, AI-enabled threat and state-threat networks, and commercial entities that materially assist hostile state activity. This Bill will not solve the problem of state threats on its own, but it is an important and necessary addition, because the reality is that today’s threat is hybrid; state power, ideology, cyber-capability, organised crime and artificial intelligence are increasingly overlapping. That is the challenge before us all. The law must keep pace with this, and the Bill is an important step along the line.

Oral Answers to Questions

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his attention to these important matters. As we set out in “Protecting What Matters”, the Government recognise countering extremism and enhancing social cohesion as a priority area, and we set out a range of commitments to achieve that. Although there is no explicit offence of extremism, the police have a range of tools and powers to counter the activities of extremists. We are fast-tracking the creation of a new state threats designation power, which will further clamp down on individuals and groups carrying out hostile activity for foreign states.

[Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

I am sure the Minister will have seen footage of a recent attack on Helen Mirren, where she was described—excuse my language, Mr Speaker—as a “Zionist bitch”. This is just another example of deliberate extremist intimidation aimed at frightening off anyone in public life from supporting the existence of the state of Israel or defending the Jewish community. While Helen Mirren decided not to press charges, does the Minister agree that the police should treat such assaults with the utmost seriousness, as they are attacks not just on the individual, but on our shared values in this place of freedom of speech and freedom of expression?

[Dan Jarvis]

The right hon. Gentleman has raised an important point. I have seen the footage. Like, I am sure, all other Members, I was shocked but not surprised by it. The police have an important job to do in cracking down on this kind of activity, but I can give the right hon. Gentleman an absolute assurance of the priority that this Government attach to antisemitism. We have seen a range of abhorrent antisemitic attacks in recent times, and we will do everything we can to stand against them.

West Midlands Police

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I expect to receive Sir Andy’s further findings, particularly in relation to how safety advisory groups function and what changes we might need to make, within the next couple of months—no later than that. I will return to the House to enable all Members to take part in a debate once those findings are out. I agree with my hon. Friend—in the end, we are all safer when we know that we can rely on the police to do their job without fear or favour. We do none of our ethnic minority communities, or indeed any minority community of any description, any favours if we allow a suggestion to take hold that the police change their responses to things based on which community is involved. Everybody is safe when we know we can trust the police to follow the facts and do their jobs properly.

[Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

The Jewish community in this country, including many in my constituency, feel under siege right now. Sadly, this is not an isolated example; it is just another example of where elements of the British state appear to err on the side of the aggressor in the name of community cohesion. We have another example before us. Will the Home Secretary, in her capacity as a senior member of the Government with responsibility for tackling extremism, take the same robust approach to schools that are banning Jewish Members of Parliament from visiting them on exactly the same community cohesion grounds? It has to stop, and a more robust approach must be taken by the Government.

[Shabana Mahmood]

The incident of banning a Jewish Member of Parliament from the school is obviously disgraceful, and the right hon. Member will know that other senior members of the Government have already spoken out about this case. It is unacceptable. I hope he will see that the approach I have taken since I have been Home Secretary is to ensure that the law of our land is applied equally without fear or favour and in a consistent manner that gives every community across the country a sense of what they can expect from their local police, without feeling that they are in a postcode lottery and that it very much depends on the nature of the particular chief constable and the approach they take locally. That is exactly what I am trying to achieve with protest powers and with wider thresholds in relation to the Public Order Act where I have asked for an independent review by Lord Ken Macdonald KC, which will report soon. My intention is to ensure that every citizen of our country knows when it comes to all matters of law and order that we are all on exactly the same footing, and that is right for all our citizens.

National Security Act 2023: Charges

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Monday 19th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right to mention the importance of security for our Jewish communities, which should never be compromised either domestically or by any kind of foreign state influence or activity. That is why we work very closely with the Community Security Trust on a range of issues around support and protection for the Jewish communities across the UK, and why we take immensely seriously any malign Iranian influences that are targeted towards Jewish communities.

[Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

The Home Secretary rightly says that the threats from hostile states are complex and intertwined, so will she update the House on what further steps the Government have taken to protect critical national infrastructure, in particular from cyber-attacks? Our security services commit vast expertise in our protection. Their successes must be hidden, but their failures are often picked over. The one thing they really need is additional resources, and I urge the Home Secretary to make the case for that vigorously during the forthcoming spending review. That is the least they deserve from this House.

[Yvette Cooper]

I know that the right hon. Member took these issues immensely seriously when he was in government. I agree with him about the importance of critical national infrastructure and the implications of cyber-attacks. I know that he will agree that the critical national infrastructure is changing: what is critical now is different from what might have been critical even 10 years ago, let alone 20 or 30 years ago. We need to have the processes to be able to adapt swiftly, and that will be considered as part of the national security review. He can be assured that I will always argue strongly for support for our intelligence and security agencies.

Oral Answers to Questions

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

Again, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. When the Conservative party left office, shop theft was at a record level, up 40% in the space of two years. The shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), now says “ZERO TOLERANCE” on shop theft, even in cases where less than £200 worth of goods has been stolen. Yet, in the two years that he was the police and crime Minister he left that £200 limit in place, allowed thieves to escape with impunity and, in the absence of any police, said that people should make their own citizen’s arrest. While shop thefts soared, all he had to say to the public was, basically, that they were on their own and should sort it out themselves.

[Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

Many of my constituents are exasperated by the fact that the police are unable to turn up when there is shoplifting or a burglary, yet they were able to send six officers to get themselves involved in a dispute with a local school and to warn off local elected representatives from getting involved. Sadly, that misallocation of resources and unwarranted police overreach is not an isolated example. May I urge the Minister to avoid engaging in political point scoring and instead join me in sending a very clear message from both sides of this House that our expectation is that the police should be focused on solving real crimes and staying out of legitimate free expression and democratic debate?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I think it is fair to say that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have been very clear about the priorities of this Government for tackling crime through our safer streets mission. We want to halve violence against women and girls over the course of the next decade. We want to halve knife crime over the course of the next decade. We will deliver the 13,000 neighbourhood police officers back into our communities that were decimated under the previous Government. The priorities of this Government are very clear in tackling crime and policing.

Police Grant Report

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I will go on to talk about neighbourhood policing, but all police forces are getting additional money in the police settlement. On the neighbourhood policing money that is being made available, we are working with all police forces so that they come up with plans for how they can best deliver the neighbourhood policing guarantee in their area. I will talk about that in a moment.

[Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I just want to get my next point on to the record, and then I will certainly give way. In 2025-26, overall funding for policing will total up to £19.6 billion. Of that amount, the funding available to police and crime commissioners for their local police forces will be up to £17.5 billion. That is an increase of an additional £1.1 billion for next year, and a 6.6% cash increase. Just so we are all clear, that is £1.1 billion in addition.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I am happy to give way to the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden).

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

Can the Minister, for the benefit of the House, clarify how much of that uplift will be taken up by the increased national insurance contributions that have to be made by police forces as a result of Labour’s policy?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

The national insurance increases that were announced in the Budget are fully funded in the settlement.

I think I saw the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) rise.

Oral Answers to Questions

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. The percentage of people seeing police on the beat each week has dropped by two thirds over the past 14 years. The percentage of people who say they never see the police has doubled. That is the shameful consequence of 14 years of Conservative policing policies. This Government will put 13,000 more police and police community support officers back on the beat.

[Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

Local volunteers in Potters Bar were left struggling on Remembrance Sunday to stop the traffic to allow the march to take place. They were told by the police that they lacked the resources and the power to stop the traffic, yet on the same day in neighbouring Essex the police managed to visit a journalist regarding a deleted tweet. Every weekend, vast amounts of resources pour into London for pro-Palestinian marches. Does the Home Secretary share the despair of my constituents at this allocation of resources, and will she provide guidance for next year’s Remembrance service, both on police powers and the responsibilities regarding those marches?

[Yvette Cooper]

I just point out to the former Deputy Prime Minister that the state of policing in this country is the policing that we inherited after 14 years of Conservative Government, in which they took police off the beat and in which we lost neighbourhood policing and PCSOs. This Government have made clear what the priorities for policing should be neighbourhood policing, including tackling antisocial behaviour and town centre crime, and reducing serious violence, including knife crime and violence against women and girls. We always believe that Remembrance Day should be respected, which is something that one of his former colleagues as Home Secretary did not respect.

Oral Answers to Questions

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I do apologise if I missed something extremely valuable. If I did, I suggest that the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) place it in the Library of the House, where I imagine it will be regularly and exhaustively consulted.

[Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

10. What steps she is taking to tackle extremism.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Amber Rudd)]

The Government’s counter-extremism strategy, which was published in October 2015, established a comprehensive approach to the tackling of extremism through a wide range of activities aimed at countering extremist ideology. We are also launching a new commission for countering extremism, which will identify and challenge extremism and advise the Government on new policies to address it. The appointment of a lead commissioner will be announced shortly.

[Oliver Dowden]

Flying the flag of the political wing of the anti-Semitic terrorist organisation Hezbollah is provocative, incites extremism and is deeply offensive to our Jewish community, but the flag can still be seen flying at events such as the al-Quds day marches in London. Will the Home Secretary update the House on what steps are being taken to prevent that from happening?

[Amber Rudd]

I am aware of, and very sympathetic to, the issues that my hon. Friend has raised. I have discussed the matter with Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, and I know that the police are not ignoring it. As my hon. Friend has rightly said, only Hezbollah’s military wing is currently a proscribed terrorist organisation, but its flags are the same as those of the political wings that are not proscribed. For an offence to be committed, the context and manner in which the flag is displayed must demonstrate that it is specifically in support of the proscribed military wing of the group.

Policing

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

No. I am a fellow London MP and I have spoken to the commissioner. Any PCCs or police chiefs making projections about losses of officer numbers in future are doing so on the basis that they do not know what the police funding settlement is. I expect and hope that when they look at what we are proposing today in terms of new investment—and it is new investment, given the continued scope for efficiencies and the level of reserves—they will see that there is no reason why any police force should be reducing officer numbers. However, it is ultimately a local decision.

[Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

Community-based policing is the cornerstone of policing in Hertsmere and has a much valued role. I welcome the flexibility that the Minister has shown over the precept. However, what reassurance can he give me that community-based policing will be properly funded in small towns such as Potters Bar that might be disadvantaged relative to larger urban areas?

[Mr Hurd]

I thank my hon. Friend for welcoming an increase of £450 million in our policing system next year. That feeds down into an additional £6.2 million for Hertfordshire. I absolutely take his point about community policing. He needs to have that conversation with David Lloyd, the excellent police and crime commissioner.