Oral Answers to Questions
Simon Hoare Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Caroline Nokes
The hon. Lady will have heard an earlier answer, which stated clearly that nobody on a shortage occupation list has been turned away. Both I and the Home Secretary are very conscious of the points that have been made repeatedly this afternoon. We know that there is a real challenge in the NHS accessing trained doctors. The Department of Health and Social Care is doing excellent work to make sure that we increase the number of training places in the UK, but the calls are being heard.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary agree that the current shopfront advertisements of Lush are clearly anti-police, are in very poor taste and should be withdrawn?
Sajid Javid
People can have legitimate concerns about the so-called spy cops issue, and that is why there is an inquiry, but I very much agree with my hon. Friend. I do not think that Lush should be tarring all police officers with the same bath bomb.
Windrush
Simon Hoare Excerpts(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ms Abbott
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. I was going to make that point in the course of my remarks.
The Windrush generation were the first cohort to come here, but then there was south Asia, Sri Lanka—there is a whole series of Commonwealth migrants who, unless the Home Secretary does what it takes, will suffer the same humiliation as the Windrush generation.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
At the moment the right hon. Lady has not said a word that I have disagreed with, and I thank her for how she has said it. She referred to an issue that will not go away. Another issue that will not go away is, of course, the issue of illegal immigration, which is absolutely embedded within this whole debate. Can or will the right hon. Lady be—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
I am sorry; I normally am heard, but I have a very quiet voice, as you well know. Lots of people here have a very keen interest in this debate, and I want to make sure that everybody who has put their name in does speak. If we are going to have interventions, will those who are hoping to speak please try not to intervene? You will end up moving yourself down the list—and please, interventions must be short.
Sajid Javid
I was just coming on to the greater transparency measures that I want to put in place. First, I will be writing each month to the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) to give her and the House a report on progress. Secondly, I will also be writing to her each month on the latest position on detentions, removals and deportations. Thirdly, I will bring independent oversight and challenge to a lessons-learned review already under way in my Department. That review will seek to draw out how members of the Windrush generation came to be entangled in measures designed for illegal immigrants, why that was not spotted sooner and whether the right corrective measures are now in place. I have asked my permanent secretary to give the review the resources it needs and to aim to complete its work before the summer recess.
Simon Hoare
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Since his appointment on Monday, vile left-wing trolls have called him, among other things, a coconut and an Uncle Tom. Has that abuse motivated or depressed him in the challenge he faces?
Sajid Javid
I said earlier in the House that I am interested in a compliant, not a hostile environment. But, talking of a hostile environment, my hon. Friend reminds me of some of the hard left who have joined the Labour party ever since the right hon. Member for Islington North became Leader of the Opposition and how their anti-Semitism has been tolerated—[Interruption.]
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey). On Monday, we had a first-class debate in the quiet environment of Westminster Hall. All of us who took part, including particularly though not exclusively the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), spoke to the heart of the issue and said what a number of colleagues on both sides of the House have said this afternoon: we are talking about people—people with aspirations, needs, family and commitments. Very often we reduce things too much by talking about a battery of statistics, telephone numbers and all the rest of it, and we lose sight of the fact that we are talking about people and their hopes and aspirations. Unfortunately, the motion and—I say this with the greatest respect to the shadow Home Secretary—the tone and manner in which she introduced the motion were not conducive to our seeing a replication of the debate that we had in Westminster Hall.
I say this not to be particularly partisan, but I think there is a very clear disconnect on this issue between the Opposition Front Benchers and their Back Benchers. Their Back Benchers are talking about people; they are talking about the principles that underpin their stances and objectives. The motion before us, which probably has very little to do with what many of our speeches have been predicated on, is all about politics and the process of politics. I would assert, I hope without contradiction, that most people who are affected by this issue really do not give a damn about the process. They just want to get it sorted out.
Legitimate questions have been asked, such as, “If we call up the Home Office number, and so on, will we compromise ourselves?”, and I hope that all of us feel that we have a duty to take back to our friends and constituents the fact that on this issue, the Government have recognised that there has been an error. The error has not necessarily been solely authored by this Government—it goes back to the end of the Blair-Brown era—but the people affected need confidence that the Government and the House are now on their side. They need to have confidence in the robustness, honesty and integrity of what Ministers say, whether that is in the media or at the Dispatch Box. If we decide, through narrow partisan political interest, to play politics with those people’s lives because we think that it might nudge us up one point or another in the opinion polls, that will let down our constituents.
Part of the problem, and I make no apology for rehearsing the point that I made on Monday, is that—
Yvette Cooper
I listened to the hon. Gentleman’s thoughtful words earlier this week as well, but I really would ask him to withdraw some of the things that he has said about the Labour Front Benchers and the approach that they are taking, and in particular, about the shadow Home Secretary, who has been a passionate advocate for individuals who have been badly affected by the Windrush crisis. By all means, disagree with the motion, if the hon. Gentleman takes a different view, but I strongly urge him to withdraw the points about the shadow Home Secretary’s motive and approach, given the speech that she made earlier.
Simon Hoare
I say to the right hon. Lady that nobody in this House would doubt—let us be frank about this—the sincerity with which the shadow Home Secretary has faced fighting racism and abuse in this country. She is a leader in the field. I say to the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, that if only the motion had reflected that, because it does not—it is about process.
As I said on Monday, at the back of all our minds, on the Government Benches and on the Opposition Benches, there is probably a little echo of guilt. Whether it was UKIP, the BNP or some of the more excessive narratives of our tabloid press, issues of “asylum” and “refugee”, “illegal” and “legal”, got conflated with “them” and “us, “foreign” and “different”, “alien” and “domestic”. All of us, looking to our political bases, became anxious about seeing our support nibbled away, and instead of making the positive, liberal case for the contribution that immigrants make—the case made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) and by my constituency neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), on “Newsnight” on Monday—we ran away from those uncomfortable conversations on the doorstep. All of us—all of us—probably wish we had been a little more robust in making that positive case. That we did not make it is no excuse for not facing it now.
The Windrush generation answered our call in time of war and in time of peace, and the Government will answer their call to find a solution to this issue. Members on both sides of the House with equal passion owe all their constituents a duty to support that endeavour and to get it right—for people.
Fiona Onasanya (Peterborough) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this very important debate, but I am saddened that the debate is necessary. The Government assert that it is unhelpful to refer to their policies and the scrapping of protections afforded in the 2014 Act as fostering a hostile environment. I am sorry but I do not apologise. This is not, and cannot be considered, a compliant environment. It is correct to call it what it is: hostile.
I find it increasingly frustrating that the Government seek to conflate the Windrush debate and debacle with illegal immigration. To combine two sets of information is to conflate, so let me be clear: we are talking about people who were here legally being considered illegal. It is too late for warm words and simple apologies. The architects of this crisis must now step forward to give an immediate, full and honest account of how this inexcusable situation has happened and answer questions on the compensation and legal protections for the Windrush generation.
Simon Hoare
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to talk about the need for honesty in this debate. She will be aware that one of her activists in Peterborough has called my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary a “coconut” on Twitter. What is she and her party locally doing about that? Such abuse cannot be tolerated.
Fiona Onasanya
I advise the hon. Gentleman that the activist is not actually a Labour member, but I hear what he says. I disagree with any form of racism, especially racism pointed towards or coming from Members of this House, such as Conservative Members using the N word.
The Home Secretary must confirm that full compensation will be paid—compensation not limited to but including: loss of income, loss of benefits, legal fees, Home Office application fees, air fares, emotional distress and unlawful detention. Will the Home Secretary factor in such considerations as I heard when I went to a Committee room? I heard members of the Windrush generation talking about how being held in a detention centre for nine months left them unable to pay their mortgage and that as result their home was repossessed? When will things of that sort be talked about and explained to us in the context of compensation?
This crisis was foreseeable and foreseen when legislation was being introduced. We have heard from both sides of the House that warnings were given to Home Secretaries but that nothing was done, no action was taken. In respect of action being taken, I also heard from a member of the Windrush generation in that Committee room that they had a biometrics card due to expire in 2024. Why would a British citizen not be given a British passport? This is not about targets; it is about justice for the Windrush generation. Until we have answers to these questions, we will continue to seek transparency.
Simon Hoare
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have notified the hon. Member for Peterborough (Fiona Onasanya) about this point of order. Earlier in the debate, I inadvertently misled the House in an intervention that she very kindly took during her speech in relation to Mr Tariq Mahmood of Peterborough. While it is true that Mr Mahmood has been found guilty of vote rigging and has campaigned and been photographed with both the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. Lady very recently—he has also been a local Labour party secretary—I alleged that he was a member of the Labour party, but it transpires that he is just a Labour party activist, not a member. As I hope you know, Sir, I cherish this place very much, and I would not have sought to have misled it advertently.
Mr Speaker
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he has said, and it has been duly noted. It will—or, alternatively, will not—be pored over by hon. Members who take a very keen, and even anorakish, interest in his pronouncements.
Minors Entering the UK: 1948 to 1971
Simon Hoare Excerpts(6 years ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) said from a sedentary position that my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) was wrong in how he had intervened.
Simon Hoare
The hon. Lady keeps saying an awful lot of stuff from a sedentary position. Does my hon. Friend accept that the rewriting of history on such a sensitive issue is unhelpful to both sides of the debate and to moving this thing forward? For perfectly legitimate reasons at the time, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) referred not only to having a hostile environment but to seeking to flush out illegal migration. “Illegal” is the key word.
Steve Double
My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point. We must be clear in differentiating between illegal immigration and people who clearly have a right to remain in this country but, for all sorts of reasons, are having trouble proving that right. That is the difference. Governments of different parties over many years have taken various steps in robust action against illegal immigration, and rightly so, but when we conflate those two issues in the current situation we do a disservice to those of the Windrush generation who have a legal right to stay.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Austin, and to follow the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who made an incredibly powerful and moving speech.
The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) was absolutely right when he pointed out that we cannot forget history. We should not try to forget history, warts and all, the good and the bad. Any nation that tries to pretend that all its history is one or the other is a nation that is not at ease with itself and that is trying to fool its residents.
It is important for both the Labour party and the Conservative party to remember where quite a lot of this stuff came from. Looking back to the middle and the end of the Blair-Brown premiership and the early days of the coalition, both the main parties in this country had become terrified of either the British National party or the UK Independence party. We saw them nibbling away at our bases; we saw them pandering to prejudices, very often long held, but very rarely spoken of. We saw it in industrial areas; we saw it in all sorts of areas in this country.
I do not like using the phrase “dog-whistle politics”, because I always think it is a blunt instrument. To an extent, however, Governments of both persuasions—of both colours—were under the most enormous pressure to be tough, and sometimes we slightly lost our nerve. Principled mainstream politicians lost the resolve to kick back against that, to face it down and to say why that narrative was wrong. I am absolutely concerned that, as our concern grew, so did some of these policies, which were put in place by both Governments, and which, with hindsight, might have been phrased a little better and should have been thought of a little more deeply.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) made an incredibly powerful speech, which was thoughtful and sensible—his hallmarks. He was right to draw our attention to some of those quotes from Labour Ministers involved with the Home Office or with immigration specifically. John Reid, now the noble Lord Reid, said as Home Secretary:
“We need to make living and working here illegally evermore uncomfortable and constrained.”
We also heard how the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), when immigration Minister, said:
“What we are proposing here will, I think, flush illegal migrants out. We are trying to create a much more hostile environment in this country if you are here illegally.”
I intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) to draw our attention back to the different definitions. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Immigration Minister, the former Home Secretary, the current Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper)—the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee—who has joined us, and all of us should and must be at the most enormous pains to point out that division of public policy. All of us will have been annoyed and irritated over the years, when we have entered into debates with members of the public, who could be constituents of ours or not, in which asylum seekers, refugees, legal immigrants and illegal immigrants have all been put into one pot. Instead, we should look at the silos and the policies that flow from that.
My right hon. Friends who are involved in the Home Office, and who are at the head of Government, have made clear the Government’s shame at what has happened and have made clear their apology. I cannot think of a single colleague on the Conservative Benches who would demur from that position.
I happen to be one of those Conservatives who has been perfectly relaxed about immigration and the freedom of movement. As somebody who is a quarter Irish, a quarter Greek and half Welsh, and as somebody who was born and brought up in Cardiff, how could I not be relaxed about immigration? Cardiff’s marvellous docks were a huge melting pot for the world’s nations as they came to work in and grow our south Wales economy. They enriched south Wales not just financially, but culturally, and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude.
We have to be clear. We must not throw the baby out with the bath water by conflating, yet again, the clear legal definitions of legal and illegal migration. The Windrush generation are not becoming British citizens. As the right hon. Member for Tottenham has said, they are British citizens, and the law seeks to confirm those rights and privileges.
In central and local government, not just in the arena of public policy, but across the piece, we have moved too much towards the “computer says no” approach—to use the “Little Britain” phrase—where boxes are ticked or they are not. In any future arrangement, we must ensure that officials and Ministers who are dealing with these often complex matters have the opportunity—the space, as it were—for more discretion and discernment in taking important decisions.
As the Member for North Dorset, and as someone who has never had their right to be in this country questioned, I am not sure that I can envisage how people’s lives must have been turned not just upside down, but inside out. Like one of those snow domes, their lives have been shaken, and the whole picture of their everyday lives has become so distorted that they cannot recognise it and they feel like aliens in their own country.
I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) when he intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay: people fall into saying it is either a cock-up or a conspiracy. I would be the first to stand up and say so if I believed something was a conspiracy, but I do not. I think it was genuinely an oversight. “Oversight” may be a trivial word to use, as it in no way encompasses the emotional gamut of how people have had to respond to these issues, but I take enormous comfort from the fact that we as a Government are seeking to put these things right.
As the right hon. Member for Tottenham reminded us, and as I pointed out in my opening remarks, we should not forget history, and nor should we seek to rewrite the welcome, or sometimes the lack of it, that the first Windrush generation received. On the posters in the bed and breakfasts in Kensington, Notting Hill and Portobello Road that said, “No Irish, no dogs, no blacks”, the blacks were always at the bottom of the list—dogs were preferred to black people. Other issues included the colour bar and access to housing—the Rachmanisation of the London housing stock.
We should not delude ourselves. These people answered the clarion call of the—I use the phrase of the right hon. Member for Tottenham— mother country. Just as they had answered in time of war, so they answered in time of peace. The battlefields of the first and second world wars were indelibly stained not only with the blood of white Anglo-Saxons, but with the blood of empire—of people who realised that the values that we were trying to defend and the attempt to deter and defeat the foe were right. It was right for them to come to fight alongside us. I am never quite certain that that debt has ever been truly recognised.
As we all know, the 1968 speech cast a long shadow over the immigration debate. People would often veer away from discussing immigration for fear of being accused of having racial or racist tendencies. We have moved on from that, but, by golly, when such events come about, we have to pause to remind ourselves, and to reinforce the fact, that the debate is not anchored by racial prejudice or a racial agenda in any way.
I do not like the phrase “Illegals will be flushed out”, but I fully support, as I believe do the vast majority of people who are here legally, irrespective of colour, the need to be firm and resolute in our approach to migration to this country, for the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham alluded to. We need to ensure that those who are here legally are given the warm embrace of a friend and neighbour, through which we entirely recognise the unquantifiable contribution that they make to our society, not just economically, but socially, culturally and from a community base.
My right hon. Friend the Minister is all too aware of the scale of the task and the speed with which it needs to be completed, as is my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, whom I welcome to his new position. Nobody should be under any illusion as to the seriousness and determination of Her Majesty’s Government, not just to resolve the problem properly, promptly and speedily, but to ensure that the “computer says no” response, and this sort of problem, do not arise again.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Austin.
In many ways, our debates over the Windrushers have been too small, too fixated on destroyed immigration documents or on who knew what when. Like those of EU citizens, the interests of the Windrush citizens have not been given the attention they should have been afforded; they have been afterthoughts as far as too many UK politicians are concerned. The political game has seemed more important than the people whose lives are affected, and the point scoring more important than sorting the matter out.
[Mr Laurence Robertson in the Chair]
The debates are too small in another way, too. They are about a group of cases regarding the symptoms of a policy malfunction, not about the policy malfunction itself. It is not, as was suggested earlier, simply a structural problem in the Home Office. The anti-immigration rhetoric of successive UK Governments has created an environment of xenophobic mistrust, hate and fear. The “go home” vans that the Prime Minister created in her previous post of Home Secretary were a development from Gordon Brown’s “British jobs for British workers”. We know, too, that the Government of Clement Attlee was not the benign, welcoming and inclusive regime it has recently been painted as. We know that the Ministers in that Government wanted immigration to be a temporary phenomenon. I am afraid I cannot agree with the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) on that, although I welcome many of his very measured remarks on the topic.
Racism runs deep in the political psyche here. A bias is embedded in the minds of many politicians that will not easily be dislodged. Windrush is not some isolated case, and it is not an aberration or a deviation from the norm. It fits right into the institutional racism of this place. From the attempts of Attlee’s Ministers to turn the ship away to the Immigration Act 1971, and on to the vicious, hostile environment of the current Government, there is a thread of hate linking the attitudes of the generations. Those attitudes have driven public perceptions too, in the casual racism we all too often see. The right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) can testify to that, I believe, with the appalling flood of bile that is directed at her.
Even with that evidence so easily available to us, all the attitudes persist here, and that has driven the debate on a number of issues, not least of which has been the debate on our relationship with the EU. For all that nonsense about that bus with the promise to pay the NHS millions every week, the main driver of the leave debate was racist. It was an argument of exceptionalism—an opinion that we are somehow better than everyone else. It has continued into the aftermath too, with the Government’s disregard for the worries of EU citizens concerned for their future here. Treated as pawns, they have been left with no certainty about their position post-Brexit. People who have contributed to our communities, paid their taxes, made society better, and built lives and futures here have been dispossessed by a Government who seem determined to fight Agincourt again.
Three million people who—like the Windrush generation —live, work, study, pay taxes and contribute to society here have had their lives thrown into question. EU citizens have been packing up and leaving ahead of Brexit: shutting down businesses, resigning from the NHS and leaving their research labs and universities. That damages Scotland. We need the people who will help run our services, build businesses, support our academic sector and build our future. People who come to share Scotland are as welcome as they are necessary, and we need them.
The Government’s attitude is disgraceful. They have targets for deporting immigrants. Imagine that: those are not targets as in, “This person or those people should not be allowed to stay”, but targets as in, “8,337 a year”. What could possibly be the driver of that, other than racism, a sense of exceptionalism and an attitude that we are somehow better than others?
Simon Hoare
I fear that the hon. Lady is falling into the trap I alluded to in my speech of conflating “legal” and “illegal”. I think most people in this country, including legal migrants, would say that any Government has a duty and responsibility to ensure that everybody who is here is here legally. If that means setting targets to remove people who should not be here, most people support that, irrespective of their national heritage.
Deidre Brock
I am afraid I cannot agree with the hon. Gentleman on that point. Right hon. and hon Members have made comments about Gypsy Travellers in debates here that have caused my mouth literally to drop open in astonishment and horror. There has been case after case in my constituency office of the most appalling treatment of EU and non-EU nationals alike by UK Visas and Immigration and the Home Office. My contention is that those attitudes come from successive UK Governments’ attitudes towards the issue of immigration as a whole.
Successive UK Governments have created an atmosphere of mistrust and fear, and they are proud of it—the Prime Minister even praises the “hostile environment”. They thought that they had tapped into a source of votes by painting immigrants as some kind of threat to an imaginary British way of life. Now Windrush is blowing up the dust of the UK’s imperial past. People who came to these islands as British citizens are being deported. People who came here half a century ago are being told to go home. The vans may be gone, but the attitude has not. They are being told to go back to countries they would not recognise now. Their children and grandchildren are also targeted—people who were born in the UK and have never lived anywhere else. Some have already been deported, some have declared themselves stateless to avoid deportation and many more are living in fear that their lives are about to be utterly broken. These people came here when there were labour shortages. They worked, paid their taxes and built lives and communities. They had children who worked, paid their taxes and built on that legacy. They have grandchildren who are doing the same.
The UK is unlikely to change any time soon, but Scotland needs immigrants—we need population growth, and we need the energy and the impetus that comes with them. Our country is damaged by the right-wing xenophobia of deportation, document checks and fear-mongering. EU citizens and Windrush people should not be discouraged or deterred; they should be welcomed and encouraged. This debate is less than it should be—it should be an in-depth and unflinching analysis of the continuing racism of the body politic here. That is our shame and our disgrace, and we should not be content to hand it on to future generations.
Windrush
Simon Hoare Excerpts(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Amber Rudd
That is a very fair question. I recognise that there needs to be a cultural change in the Home Office’s approach to individuals. There are two steps I have taken immediately that will be coming into place. One will be a contact centre in July. The hon. Lady will know from experience that it is difficult to phone up to get advice. Everybody thinks they have to get legal advice. We will put the phone advice in place. I will also put in place 50 senior caseworkers, so that when junior caseworkers might think they need to make a certain decision, they will be able to refer up to a senior caseworker who has more discretion. Those two elements will be an important start in addressing her particular concern.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
Having raised the issue of compensation with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary in the urgent question last week, may I say how much I welcome what she has added to that today? That will be welcomed across the House. Can she confirm two things? First, can she confirm that the telephone lines she referenced will be free for those who use them? Secondly, as some Opposition Members seem to be trying to rewrite the pages of history, can she confirm that the phrase emanating from the Home Office of creating a “hostile environment” for illegals was created under the last Labour Government?
Amber Rudd
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; the phrase “hostile environment” was used, I think, by two former Labour Home Secretaries. I welcome his point about compensation, and he is right that there will be no charge for the individuals who call these lines. That is an important part of making sure that people do not feel there is any barrier between them and the help and support and the papers that I want to make sure they get.
Windrush Children (Immigration Status)
Simon Hoare Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Amber Rudd
Unfortunately, I cannot comment on individual cases in the Chamber, but if the hon. Lady would like to write to the Home Office or bring to me that particular case, I will make sure that it is looked at.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
I welcome what my right hon. Friend has said, but urge her to consider whether, if applicants who ultimately prove successful have already incurred legal fees in trying to make their case, those fees could be compensated.
Amber Rudd
I am happy to take that away and come back to my hon. Friend on it. Going forward, it is my strong commitment to ensure that the system that we put in place will not require legal advice. It will be straightforward and effective to use. My team in the taskforce will work with individuals to deliver that.
Police Grant Report
Simon Hoare Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hurd
I will take no lessons on distorting the truth from Labour Members who continue to peddle the lie that there is such a thing as free Government money, or that someone else will always pay. The response from people on the ground who were asked, “Are you prepared to put a bit more money in to support your local police?” was a resounding “Yes”. I am not misleading the House. The combination of flat cash from the centre and increases in precepts—the ability to maintain growth in council tax precepts—means that we have moved, at local level, from flat cash to “flat real”, before we come to the additional investment from the centre. That means that next year the Government will invest over £1 billion a year more in local policing than we invested in 2015-16.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Excuse my ignorance, but is it in order for an hon. Member to accuse a Minister of the Crown of misdirecting the House?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I think the spirit of the debate is that feelings are running high. I have not yet heard anything that I considered to be disorderly, but Members will obviously bear in mind that they should be careful about they say.
Louise Haigh
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Today we will be voting against a completely inappropriate police funding settlement that leaves our communities exposed and the public at risk.
On top of all the demand I have listed, there is the unprecedented terrorist threat our country now faces. It is frankly unbelievable that, as the National Police Chiefs’ Council has recognised, the report before us fails to meet those growing needs and exposes gaps in the protection of the public.
So we have no choice but to vote against the motion tonight. We do so for three key reasons. First, the report prescribes an eighth consecutive year of real-terms cuts in Home Office funding. Secondly, it pushes the burden on to hard-pressed local taxpayers, and the very areas that have seen the most substantial cuts will get the least, inevitably creating a lottery of winners and losers that has no place for public safety. Thirdly, it fails to meet the needs identified by police chiefs, first and foremost in the area of counter-terrorism but also in local policing.
Simon Hoare
I am sure the hon. Lady has done a lot of homework before today’s debate, as we all have. Therefore, given the backdrop to what she has just said, can she advise us how much money—how many pounds, shillings and pence—her party would be adding to the police grant this year?
Louise Haigh
As the hon. Gentleman will know, our manifesto spelled out very clearly that we would dedicate 10,000 additional neighbourhood policing officers. The settlement before us today does not dedicate any additional funding to local policing and in fact, as I will come on to, would be swallowed up almost completely by inflationary and cost pressures.
One of the chief jobs of Parliament is to hold the Government accountable for the promises they make to the public and for their record of action in office, so I want to briefly focus on the context for this year’s police settlement. In 2015, the current Prime Minister promised the public that after a period in which £2.3 billion had been taken from police budgets, the Conservatives would now “protect police funding”. On many occasions that promise has been repeated to the public and to this House. Indeed, it was repeated by the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s questions just today. In fact, the House of Commons Library has shown that real-terms central Government funding to local forces has fallen by £400 million since 2015—the equivalent of more than 7,000 officers.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), who has spoken this afternoon, as she has done on a number of occasions, with great passion and clarity on the type of policing we want to see in our country and how it is delivered. Conservative Members are clear that there is a widening gulf in the Labour party on this issue. I am convinced that the vast majority of Labour Members, like all Conservative Members, support our police and policing. We follow up our speeches and words with our actions in that sort of support.
I am not sure I will take lessons from some Labour Front Benchers—I exclude the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) from that, because she spoke with great force and passion. We have a shadow Chancellor who believes that MI5 should be disbanded and the police should be disarmed. We have a shadow Home Secretary who has just left her place but who has, over the years, with her party leader, supported and revelled in IRA terrorism. We have also had the police berated by some for policing, quite properly, industrial action. When I asked the question, which again got no answer, about what the Labour party would do differently on this grant, we were reminded of the manifesto pledge of 10,000 extra police, yet even with all the months that have elapsed since that general election, Labour still has no idea how they would be funded and how much it would cost.
I will, though, take some lessons from my right hon. Friend the Policing Minister. Until the most recent reshuffle, it was my pleasure and honour to serve both him and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Security and Economic Crime as their Parliamentary Private Secretary. Both are men of complete integrity and are dedicated to combating crime in this country. They are, one might say, the Batman and Robin of the Home Office. I will not say which is which; I shall leave that to my right hon. Friends to fight out.
As my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) did earlier, I pay tribute to the work of the Dorset constabulary under the leadership of Debbie Simpson, our chief constable, who is leaving office having served five years as chief and 35 years as a copper. I also pay tribute to Martyn Underhill, Dorset’s police and crime commissioner. Martyn and I do not agree on everything, but what is beyond doubt is his commitment to trying to ensure the very best deal for my residents in North Dorset and for those throughout the county. He has just finished his consultation, in which 79% supported an additional £12 on the precept for band D council tax to deliver the sort of policing that people in the county quite rightly want to see. He is a good example, in a county that splits broadly 50:50 between rural and urban—certainly in population terms—of what can be done with imagination and fixity of purpose.
I pay huge tribute to PC Claire Dinsdale’s work leading Dorset’s rural crime team, which was the result of our commissioner responding to an issue and to which he has provided manpower and resources to combat rural crime, including wildlife crime and crime on farms. That is an illustration of how fixity of purpose and determination to clamp down on waste can ensure that money is best focused on the delivery of services. I recommend that model to other authorities.
As my right hon. Friend the Minister pointed out, the nature of crime in this country is changing, so the nature of policing has to change, too. The idealised picture of Dixon of Dock Green wandering around the beat, knowing every little old lady and little old man and clipping schoolchildren around the ear for scrumping apples is a rather nostalgic picture that brings a lump to many people’s throats. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) laughs; perhaps there are no apples to scrump in Liverpool—I do not know—but there are certainly plenty in North Dorset. We do not run through wheat fields in North Dorset; we are frightfully well behaved because we know of the rural police team.
I am absolutely convinced that, in difficult circumstances, this year’s grant will continue to deliver the requirement of a changing policing response to the type of crimes people face, so the Government will have my support on the motion.
Neil Coyle
On terrorism and the threat that we face, does the hon. Gentleman know why the Government have not yet taken up the opportunity to close the loophole on terrorism insurance? That would help the police to do their job and to protect businesses from terror attacks. While I am on my feet, may I suggest that, whatever he believes the shadow Home Secretary to have done, it is deeply offensive to suggest that she has ever revelled in IRA attacks on this country?
Simon Hoare
On the latter point, I direct the hon. Gentleman to the comments made by the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). She said that every activity moved one step closer to a united Ireland and should be celebrated. I will leave it up to the hon. Gentleman to decide whether to use the word celebrated or revelled, but I think that we know where her sentiment was at that time.
I was privileged to serve on the Investigatory Powers Bill Committee. My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General and the then Security Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), performed a balancing act with the often competing and rather tense environment of the civil libertarians on one side and the civil lawyers on the other, and a political imperative to keep the country safe. That is always kept under review. We all know the figures—I am not going to bombard the House with the statistics—but I do not think that anybody could seriously question the commitment of Conservative Members and the Government to combating terrorism in all its forms and to ensuring that our law enforcement agencies and the laws under which they prosecute are always fit for purpose, with an element of flexibility to meet new challenges.
I urge my right hon. Friends the Home Secretary and the Policing Minister to look favourably on the proposal to merge Devon and Cornwall police with the Dorset constabulary. They are collaborating hugely well at the moment and that is clearly the next stage. It will deliver savings that can be focused on frontline policing in the great county of Dorset, to the benefit and safety of my constituents.
Rural Policing and Hare Coursing
Simon Hoare Excerpts(7 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
I echo the thanks and congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) on raising this important issue. Although some people might view the debate and the problem as merely an issue of animal welfare and wildlife crime, which of course it is, as others have suggested, it goes much wider than that. We are talking about vandalism of property; loss of income for farmer and landowner; theft, atrocity and intimidation of farmers, their families and in some instances gamekeepers and others employed on estates; and a lot of road traffic issues, including the driving of unlicensed and uninsured vehicles, driving while disqualified and so forth. This all adds up to the picture of criminality that my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) alluded to in his intervention.
My constituency is easily split between east and west. The western part of North Dorset is the Blackmore Vale, which has heavy clay, and nobody would try to course on that. The hares do not like it, and it is too heavy to make a form; sometimes even a 4x4 will get stuck in the clay of Blackmore Vale. Cranborne Chase on the eastern side of my constituency, however, is beautiful, undulating chalk downland, very similar to the area at the border with Wiltshire. It is, of course, an ideal and fertile ground for illegal hare coursing, and it happens on all too regular a basis.
My hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) talked about the chief constable of Essex blaming the robustness of his colleague in Lincolnshire for transporting a problem across a county border. In Dorset, we have also seen an element of that, given the significant success that the chief constable and officers of Wiltshire have had in clamping down in that county. The problem has merely translocated over the border to us.
I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury said with regard to value of the sighthound used for this purpose. I was told by one of my local police officers that, having confiscated a telephone from a hare courser, he looked—I could not tell the House why—at the gentleman’s photo album on his phone. He had 184 photographs: 20 of his family and 164 of his dog. That, I think, demonstrates the importance and value that these people place on their livestock. The problem is exactly as my hon. Friend suggested. Local authorities have pulled away from taking stray dogs off the street and have contracted it out, often on narrowly defined contracts. The police do not have kennels to house these dogs. I would prefer a far more robust approach, not just in the provision of kennels but in the removal and permanent confiscation of dogs and their rehousing.
Robert Jenrick
Last year in Scotland was, I think, the first time that a hare courser or a group of hare coursers were prosecuted successfully and imprisoned using DNA evidence taken from a confiscated dog. We have heard in the debate about the scale and importance of these crimes, so perhaps the police elsewhere in the country should look to take that forward.
Simon Hoare
I very much agree with my hon. Friend. The deployment of technologies that may have been advanced for other purposes can easily be used for exactly the sort of incident my hon. Friend suggests.
I want to draw the attention of the House, if I may, to the excellent work undertaken by the Dorset constabulary in this area under the leadership of Martyn Underhill, our police and crime commissioner, and the chief constable. After discussions with me as a Member of Parliament, we now have a dedicated rural team—and not in name only. The team has the right vehicles—4x4s and Polarises—telephones, equipment and so on. It is doing a fantastic job. It was my pleasure, if that is the word, to join them on a night operation ranging from 8 o’clock in the evening to two o’clock in the morning, where a collaboration of three police forces—officers from Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire—came together with local farmers and gamekeepers. I was obviously the “heavy” man brought in for intimidation. We drove around the countryside using intelligence and telephones to identify where people might be and disrupting activity as it was about to unfold: the interception and interruption of illegal activity taking place in our countryside.
A number of hon. Friends mentioned intimidation. My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury provided statistics on the number of people brought to court and the rather lenient slap-on-the-wrist fines. If someone is prepared to wager £10,000 on one greyhound getting a hare, a fine of £276 is but a drop in the ocean. I wonder, as I often do in these circumstances, whether our local magistrates feel intimidated, given the reputation of a lot of people involved in hare coursing knowing no bounds to the retribution they wish to see. I hope our magistrates are made of strong and robust stuff, but that might not necessarily always be the case.
I again congratulate Dorset constabulary on its work. I echo entirely the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury that the funding requirement is, as so often in our rural areas, very bespoke. If one talked to councillors in Manchester, Bristol or Birmingham about rural crime on farms as a result of hare coursing, they would probably scratch their heads and look very bemused, but it causes a great loss of income, great degradation of the countryside, a vast amount of cruelty and a huge amount of illegality. These niche issues that need to be policed with robustness, intelligence and co-ordination do need to find, in our rural policing and its funding formula, an identification of how best to marry funds with the very clear demands elucidated by my hon. Friend in what has been an excellent debate.
Child Sexual Abuse Cases: Metropolitan Police
Simon Hoare Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Brandon Lewis
I am not quite sure what the hon. Lady’s direct questions were. She referred to a timeframe and mentioned 1999. I am not sure that she has read the full HMIC report—maybe she should do that—but 1999, of course, was at the start of a period of Labour Government, so I am not sure why she is criticising her own Government.
As I said, the Home Secretary has commissioned HMIC to go in quarterly. She has spoken to Mayor of London and I have spoken to the deputy Mayor. They have a plan for how they want to hold the Metropolitan police to account. I have to say, we seem to have more confidence in the Labour Mayor of London than the hon. Lady does, which I am slightly surprised by, but it is important that we focus on this issue, and that the House gives a unified statement of clear intent. We should be united in saying that the Metropolitan police—which, as the report makes clear, is responsible for this, and for the shocking situation whereby nobody in senior management took responsibility for it—needs to get to grips with the situation, deal with it and do that now.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the heinousness of child sexual exploitation means that this should not have happened with any police force in the land but particularly not the Metropolitan police, given its size and London’s geopolitical location, with its access to major airports, ports and so on? The defence that some seem to be putting forward is extraordinary: that in the absence of an email, a memo or an explicit instruction, it was felt that this could in some way be a lower priority for policing.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a very good and powerful point, particularly when we consider London, where we have arguably the best funded and resourced police service in the country, with the largest number of police officers. He is right that we should not have to say specifically to the Metropolitan police—or any police force—that this issue should be dealt with, bearing in mind the public profile of the issue and the fact that the police’s first duty should be defending our citizens, with the most vulnerable at the core of that. It should go without saying.
Investigatory Powers Bill
Simon Hoare Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
I rise to speak to the group of amendments and to Lords amendment 15 in particular. I pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), who did so much work, on a cross-party basis, to bring the Bill to its current position. However, we still need to investigate unfinished business concerning the relationship between various authorities and the media. That is why the Labour party fully supports the Lords amendments, particularly Lords amendment 15.
The Minister has told us about his landmark consultation, but we are baffled as to why it is needed when we already have the Leveson report, which had so much time, effort and expertise poured into it. It seems to me that the Minister’s vaunted landmark consultation is merely a stalling exercise.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
The hon. Lady is new to her position, as is the Minister. I served on the Bill Committee and she is right to point to the work that the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) did to build cross-party consensus on what could have been a difficult Bill to land. If the Lords amendments are ultimately rejected by this place and the other place caves in, will the Opposition continue to support the Bill, or will the hon. Lady use that as a crutch on which to base the withdrawal of their support?
Ms Abbott
We are not in the habit of artifice or crutches. Let us see what Members in the other place do with the Bill, and then we will make our position clear.
The Opposition have consistently called for the Leveson recommendations to be implemented in full. The public have waited long enough. In 2013, following extensive consultation with victims of press intrusion, a new system of independent self-regulation was agreed by what were then the three main political parties. It is therefore disappointing that Members in the other place have had to table an amendment, and that we have to debate it, to get the Government to honour their promises. It is disappointing also that the Minister calls legitimate amendments, which have been passed in good faith in the other place, blackmail. What kind of way is that to talk about our friends in the other place?
Simon Hoare
I have heard the hon. Lady say in other places what a future Labour Government would deliver. That, surely, is a supposition. She should deal with the supposition in question.
Ms Abbott
When the hon. Gentleman heard me say those things, I was not yet shadow Home Secretary.
There were concerns when section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 was not commenced in summer 2015. The right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, was asked about it by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, but he refused to be drawn on it. He said at the Society of Editors conference in October 2015 that he was not minded to commence section 40. We believe that that is a breach of the cross-party agreement and that it breaks the promises made to the House and, perhaps even more importantly, those made to victims.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I was struck by the Minister—well, not physically—I was struck by the Minister’s accusation that I was an impatient man. That felt just a little bit patronising. It reminded me of the time I was in the theatre and the couple in front of me, as the curtain was about to rise, were having a terrible row. The woman said, “The worst of it is that you are so blasted paytronising.” The man kissed her on the forehead and said, “It’s ‘pahtronising’, dear.” [Laughter.] I don’t know how Hansard will write that up.
The Minister’s only argument was that this is the wrong Bill—that was his only argument. Interestingly, the Minister in the House of Lords, when these Lords amendments were carried, said that a clear message had been sent by the debate, which would not be lost on her right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport as she considered these matters. Well, that was then. Today, we have seen that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has no interest whatever in what their lordships have to say on this matter, even though this was a Cross-Bench Lords amendment carried by a majority of very nearly 100. She has decided today to effectively try to unwind the whole of the Leveson provisions. That is the problem we face.
Let me take the House back to 18 March 2013. It was an extraordinary day. Lord Justice Leveson had produced his report on 29 November 2012. For the first time in our history, the Prime Minister came to the House to seek a Standing Order No. 24 motion, so that we could urgently debate the regulation of the press and the royal charter that had been agreed over the weekend in 48 hours of negotiations in the Leader of the Opposition’s office. The royal charter, which can be amended only by a two-thirds majority in this House and a two-thirds majority in the House of Lords—it is here to stay, I would suggest—would set up a press recognition panel. Accompanying that was to be an amendment to the then Crime and Courts Bill. Why do those who argue that the Investigatory Powers Bill is the wrong Bill because it does not relate to press regulation think it was right to amend the Crime and Courts Bill on the matter of press regulation, something the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) advocated?
Simon Hoare
Is the hon. Gentleman not—I dare say inadvertently—making the point that underscores, rather than undermines, the Minister’s position? He is drawing attention to the fact that when this place acts in haste in response to an event, as heinous as it might be, it very often gets it wrong. That is why the announcement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport today, now that a passage of time has elapsed since all the brouhaha about it and we will have the 10-week consultation, is the proper way to deal with what is a serious issue to which the hon. Gentleman has drawn the attention of the House—not to tack something on to the end of a Bill.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) cannot give way and the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) does not have to tell him to give way. I recognise the sarcasm. What he meant was that the intervention was too long. The hon. Member for North Dorset will have the opportunity to make a really long speech if he would like to, but please we must have short interventions.
Chris Bryant
Well, I do not think the hon. Gentleman will be allowed to make a very long speech, as we do not have much more time. He is completely and utterly wrong. He has dragged himself into a hermeneutic circle and he will never get out of it.
When the amendment—which was carried by 530 votes to 13 to become section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013—was tabled, the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) said:
“Today marks a turning point. We can move on from simply talking about Lord Justice Leveson’s report to start acting on it, with a new package...The package includes a new royal charter, as announced by the Prime Minister earlier; a new costs and damages package that seeks to maximise incentives for relevant publishers to be part of the new press self-regulator; and one short clause reinforcing the point that politicians cannot tamper with the new press royal charter, which is the subject of debate in the other place.”—[Official Report, 18 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 698.]
Why was there an all-party deal? Because the Leveson inquiry exposed real failings both in the press and in the regulatory system. Many of us felt that we, the elected politicians of this country, had failed. Whether out of partisan ambition, deference, cowardice or a genuine determination to do everything in our power to protect the freedom of the press, we had nonetheless failed. We had developed relationships with the press and the media that were so cosy that the people no longer trusted us to make the best decisions on these issues in the national interest. We were on trial as much as the press itself. That is why we all agreed that we had to find a better way forward.
Above all, we knew there had to be a genuinely independent system of redress. I do not often agree with the hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), but he said that it could not just be
“an updated version of the Press Complaints Commission. God forbid that it is”—[Official Report, 18 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 662.]—
because that would be doomed to failure. But without the commencement of section 40, that is precisely what we have got. IPSO is the Press Complaints Commission in all but name. It is not independent in terms of its finances, the membership of its board or the decisions it makes. It is entirely compromised, as recent decisions have shown. The press marks its own homework and, surprise, surprise, it always gives itself gold stars. Five hundred and thirty Members wanted it to be independent of government and independent of the press, too.
Orgreave
Simon Hoare Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Brandon Lewis
Again, the hon. Gentleman misinterprets what I have said this afternoon. What I have said very clearly is that the decision not to have a public inquiry is based on looking at the wider public interest. Included in that are the facts that there were no wrongful convictions and no deaths and, importantly, that police structure and behaviour has changed. This was seen partly under the last Labour Government, but predominantly under this Government. I ask the hon. Gentleman to support and join us in carrying out the further work to continue those reforms and to work with the South Yorkshire police to improve their relationship with people as we go forward. I have spoken to the police and crime commissioner of South Yorkshire, and I know that he is very keen to be transparent and to deliver more. He has employed an archivist to try to ensure that South Yorkshire police get all the archives they can. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will want to engage with that.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
The synthetic indignation from Labour Members cannot mask the fact that in 13 years of a Labour Government, the issue of Orgreave was completely neglected and forgotten. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, notwithstanding the absence of an inquiry—I concur wholeheartedly with the Home Secretary’s decision—the clear and necessary changes in governance and mind-set required within the South Yorkshire police will continue and be delivered?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a good and important point. It is very important that we continue to reform the police service for the future. Some reforms are outlined in the Policing and Crime Bill, and there are others that the former Home Secretary, now our Prime Minister, has taken on, and that the Home Secretary is determined to deliver. It is part of the task of changing how the police work from how they used to work some 30 years ago. I spoke to Dr Alan Billings, the police and crime commissioner for South Yorkshire yesterday afternoon. I am determined to work with him and his chief constable to make sure that they get a good relationship with the people of South Yorkshire in the future. We want to ensure that the police service delivers on the work that the police do every single day—policing by consent.