Suella Braverman
Main Page: Suella Braverman (Conservative - Fareham)Department Debates - View all Suella Braverman's debates with the Home Office
(11 months, 1 week ago)
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Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman)
Antisocial behaviour brings misery and menace. On 27 March, the Government launched the antisocial behaviour action plan, giving the relevant agencies all the tools they need and communities confidence that it will not be tolerated. The plan focuses on making communities safer, building local pride, prevention and early intervention. These proposals will ensure perpetrators are punished and help to restore pride in our communities.
Paul Howell
I compliment the Secretary of State on driving the increase in police numbers on the streets. While Durham has 239 more police officers since 2019, will she confirm that recruitment will continue, as we have not yet returned to the 2010 level? Will she advise me and my Sedgefield constituents how to ensure that the emphasis is on frontline deployment to antisocial behaviour hotspots?
Suella Braverman
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his doughty campaigning in his constituency. Durham has received £3.4 million through four rounds of the safer streets fund, including just under £1.5 million in the current round. This is funding projects such as youth diversionary activity, ASB education programmes and target hardening measures. This Government are putting more police on the streets and engaging with communities to enable them to prevent crime.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Driving without care or consideration is described as one of the worst forms of antisocial behaviour, as the consequences can be fatal. If caught speeding, does the Home Secretary agree that no one should be above the law?
Suella Braverman
As I said earlier, last summer I was speeding. I regret that. I paid the fine and I took the penalty. At no point did I attempt to evade sanction. What I am focused on is working for more police officers, so I am proud that this Conservative Government have secured a record number in the history of policing. This side of the House is focused on the people’s priorities.
Peter Dowd
According to a joint letter I received from the Home Secretary and the Levelling Up Secretary on 27 March 2023:
“Tackling antisocial behaviour is an absolute priority for this Government.”
In the real world, how can 450 fewer police officers in Merseyside since 2010, and 69p per person invested in the immediate justice pilot, be classed as anything approaching tackling antisocial behaviour?
Suella Braverman
I am pleased that, thanks to this Government’s commitment, Merseyside has received millions of pounds of increased funding compared with previous years, but, most importantly, there have been seven rounds of safer streets fund projects in Merseyside, with 2.9 million in total provided over four rounds. I am glad that Merseyside has been chosen as one of our pilot areas for our immediate justice scheme, which is one way we will kick antisocial behaviour.
Jonathan Gullis
I thank my right hon. Friend for her earlier answer. In Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, we are delighted to have seen more than 330 brand-new police officers recruited, new CCTV in Kidsgrove parish and more than £2 million in safer streets funding for Stoke-on-Trent. Sadly, however, in places such as Cobridge, crime increased by 75% between January and December 2022, which is why I launched the safer streets petition, which has more than 430 signatures. Will my right hon. Friend work to get the police and crime commissioner and the city council to bid with me for the next safer streets pot, to keep the streets safe in Tunstall, Cobridge and Smallthorne?
Suella Braverman
My hon. Friend does a great job of standing up for his constituents on antisocial behaviour. In March, we launched the action plan to crack down on precisely the behaviour he has been talking about. The plan is backed by more than £160 million of new funding. That includes funding for an increased police and other uniformed presence in ASB hotspots. I am glad that his force has also been chosen as one of the pilots.
Dr Evans
I am pleased to see the plan being brought forward, because only last week I was speaking to parish councillors from Bagworth who have had real problems with vandalism and graffiti in some of their playgrounds —so much so that they are thinking of closing them. I have heard of this happening in places such as Earl Shilton and Barwell, too. Will the Home Secretary say how the plan will support communities such as mine?
Suella Braverman
I was pleased to visit Leicestershire police force some months ago. I am committed to supporting communities and the police. I am pleased that Leicestershire police has received £2.8 million through four rounds of the safer streets fund, including £800,000 in the current round, to fund projects such as youth diversion activities, antisocial behaviour education programmes, and target hardening. We have funded several initiatives, and that is how we work together with other agencies to ensure that our streets are safer, communities can restore pride, and ultimately that criminals are put behind bars.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
In Kendal we are proud of the recently set up Youth Matters project, which is about engaging young people with worthwhile activities to do with their time. Does the Home Secretary agree that as well as tackling antisocial behaviour by firm and adequately resourced policing, it is important that she works with her colleagues in the Department for Education to boost youth work, in particular detached youth work, to help give young people worthwhile things to do with their time? What is she doing to improve funding for that part of our armoury against antisocial behaviour?
Suella Braverman
Tackling antisocial behaviour is one of my priorities. That is why I launched the plan with the Prime Minister. It requires a multifaceted solution, and a lot of work must be focused on youth diversion. I was pleased to visit a boxing project a few weeks ago, in which money from the Home Office was diverted to encourage young people off the streets to take up a sport, work with mentors, and learn a new skill. It is a great way of reducing crime.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
The Home Secretary rightly said that antisocial behaviour brings misery and menace. As part of local antisocial behaviour plans, neighbourhood and traffic police across the country will rightly be cracking down on speeding and dangerous driving. Does the Home Secretary think that people who speed should be given the option to get private speeding awareness courses, rather than doing them with everyone else, and in her own case, what exactly did she ask her civil servants to help her with?
Suella Braverman
Hopefully we are not going to be too repetitive today, Mr Speaker. As I said earlier, last summer I was speeding. I regret that. I paid the fine and I accepted the points, and at no point did I seek to evade the sanction. But let us be honest about what this is all about. The shadow Minister would rather distract from the abject failure by the Labour party to offer any serious proposals on crime or policing. Labour Members want to talk about this because it distracts from the fact that they voted against tougher sentences for paedophiles and murderers. They want us to ignore the fact that Labour MPs would rather campaign to stop the deportation of foreign criminals than back our Rwanda scheme. They would rather the country does not notice their total abandonment of the British people. This Government are focusing on delivering a record—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. The Home Secretary said that she did not want to be repetitive. That goes all around the Chamber.
Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman)
Our Illegal Migration Bill will end illegal entry as a route to asylum in the United Kingdom, breaking the business model of the people-smuggling gangs and restoring fairness to our asylum system.
Suzanne Webb
Tackling illegal immigration, like small boats, is a hot topic for many of my constituents; I hear about it time and again on the doorstep, and I see it in my inbox. Can my right hon. Friend assure the people of Stourbridge that it is this Government who can be trusted to make every possible effort to address this complex problem and ensure we stop the illegal boats?
Suella Braverman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Prime Minister and I are determined to stop the boats—we are doubling the number of UK-funded personnel in France, and for the first time specialist UK officers are embedded with their French counterparts—whereas I am afraid the Labour party has consistently voted against our measures, not just in the Illegal Migration Bill but in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. We know that Labour Members would scrap Rwanda. The truth is that they do not want to stop the boats; they want to open our borders.
Tom Randall
In a recent interview, the Leader of the Opposition was unable to say whether he would repeal the Public Order Act 2023, which protects the public against seriously disruptive protests. Given this flip-flopping on key legislation, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is only this Conservative Government who can be trusted to stop the boats, and that it is entirely possible that the Opposition, having tried to vote down the Illegal Migration Bill several times, will change their mind on that as well?
Suella Braverman
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The British people would be forgiven for failing to keep up with changing Labour policy. On the one hand, Labour Members opposed our Public Order Bill; on the other hand, they said that they would not repeal it. They are in favour of campaigning to keep foreign criminals in the country, yet they want to scrap our Rwanda plan. This Government, this Conservative Prime Minister and this side of the House are focused on stopping the boats, taking the fight to the militant protesters and standing up for the British people.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Last December, the Prime Minister promised that the Home Office would recruit another 700 new staff to the small boats operational command. How many of those 700 staff are now in post?
Suella Braverman
Last year, the Prime Minister set out a detailed plan on how we are stopping the boats. The hon. Gentleman is right to refer to our increased personnel on our small boats operational command. I am pleased to say that we are making very good progress on increasing the personnel working on the channel. We have increased the number of caseworkers, we are making progress on our asylum backlog and we are increasingly bearing down on this issue.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
Afghans make up one of the largest cohorts of small boat migrants, in part because the legal routes are not working. Let me give the Home Secretary a quick example. Families who have been approved under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy are stuck in Islamabad and are now being told that they need to source their own accommodation to get here, but there is no published guidance on how they should go about doing that. Given the obvious challenges of securing accommodation, not least if they are stuck in a hotel room in Pakistan, can the Home Secretary say precisely what support her Department is providing to this cohort of people who are stuck in Pakistan?
Suella Braverman
Both the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme make clear the criteria by which people will be assessed when they are applying to come to the United Kingdom. I am proud that this country and this Government have welcomed over 20,000 people under those schemes. Of course there will be individual cases and we are happy to consider them, but overall the scheme has worked well and thousands of people have benefited from it.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
One of the justifications for using former military bases rather than hotels was that they would be a deterrent. We now learn from the Home Office that RAF Scampton will not take people from hotels, but that it might be a detention centre or it might take migrants from Manston. The whole policy is in chaos. Is that why the Home Secretary’s own civil servant, on 6 February, recommended to her that the Home Office should agree to stop work on proposals for RAF Scampton and agree that it should immediately notify the local authority that it was no longer developing proposals for the site? Why has the Home Secretary ignored her own civil servants?
Suella Braverman
I very much appreciate the efforts of my right hon. Friend in standing up for his constituents; he is doing a fantastic job. What I would gently say to him is that we have over 40,000 people accommodated in hotels today and we are spending over £6 million a day on that accommodation. It is an unacceptable situation, and that is why the Prime Minister and I have made it a priority to bring on and deliver alternative, appropriate and more cost-effective accommodation.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The problem is that there are no safe and legal routes. I have children in my constituency who are separated from their parents because they were brought to the UK under the UNHCR scheme and their parents cannot now come and join them. They have moved from Afghanistan to Pakistan, but they have no means of coming here to be with their children. Why is the Home Secretary keeping families apart as opposed to reuniting them?
Suella Braverman
I just do not agree with the hon. Lady’s characterisation. I am incredibly proud—[Interruption.] I am incredibly proud of the immense generosity that the Conservative Government and, more importantly, the British people have demonstrated over recent years. We have welcomed over half a million people seeking humanitarian protection to these shores through safe and legal routes. On top of the country-specific routes, there are non-country-specific routes through which people can apply. The reality is that we have millions of people seeking to come here and we have to take a balanced approach, but overall we have extended the hand of generosity and we have a track record of which we can be proud.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman)
Countering foreign disinformation that seeks to subvert and undermine the UK’s democracy, prosperity and security is vital. The National Security Bill, which is currently making its way through Parliament, will further strengthen our ability to counter hostile state threats.
Christian Wakeford
It is now more than two years since The Times reported that Iranian cyber specialists were peddling disinformation in an attempt to influence the result of the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections. In the same year, the US Department of Justice shut down 36 Iranian-linked websites in a disinformation crackdown. How do the Government intend to combat and disrupt the threat of disinformation spread here in the UK by the murderous Iranian regime?
Suella Braverman
Disinformation is the concerted effort to create and deliberately spread false or manipulative information, and the hon. Gentleman is right to say that hostile states such as Iran use disinformation as a hostile act against the United Kingdom’s interests. We are constantly reviewing our position on Iran, and this is something we take very seriously at the top of Government.
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
Microsoft’s digital defence report outlines how nations including Russia, China and Iran are deploying social media-powered propaganda operations to shape opinion, discredit adversaries and incite fear, with harrowing examples of Russia’s use of hybrid warfare in Ukraine. During the passage of the National Security Bill, the Labour party called for an annual report on the extent of disinformation originating from foreign powers, which this Government rejected. Does the Home Secretary accept that the Government have been far too slow in responding to the scale of this threat, and that such an annual report represents the bare minimum that the Government should be doing to protect the UK from foreign hostile and sustained cyber-interference?
Suella Braverman
I disagree with the hon. Lady’s characterisation that the Government have been too slow to act on Russian state threats. Following the invasion of Ukraine last year, the UK introduced trade sanctions in relation to internet and online media services, preventing designated entities from using platforms to connect with UK audiences online. The Government designated TV-Novosti and Rossiya Segodnya on 4 May 2023, choking off the Russian Federation’s ability to disseminate misinformation across the internet through its state-sponsored RT and Sputnik brands. There has been a lot of effort and a lot of work to counter Russian state disinformation.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman)
Fraud is a despicable crime that accounts for more than 40% of all crime in England and Wales. The Government’s fraud strategy will do far more to block fraud at source by working closely with the private sector and law enforcement. The Online Safety Bill obligates tech platforms to protect users from fraud, and we will consult on banning cold calling for financial products and clamp down on number spoofing. We will ban devices that let criminals send mass scam texts or disguise their number when making scam calls. New powers will take down fraudulent websites.
I have told police forces that I want tackling fraud to be a priority, and a new national fraud squad with 400 new investigators will go after the worst fraudsters. We will change the law so that more victims of fraud get their money back, and Action Fraud will be replaced with a state-of-the-art system.
Siobhain McDonagh
My constituents Mrs L and Mr M, from Hong Kong, came to the UK on a British national overseas passport. They came to see me because they had been paying into a pension for the whole of their careers and sold their home before coming to the UK, but because of their BNO visa status, their bank account was frozen at the direction of the Chinese state, in contradiction to Hong Kong law. They are not alone; the Home Office has issued BNO visas to more than 160,000 Hongkongers who have moved to the UK. Does the Home Secretary think it is right that at the behest of the Chinese communist party, BNO passport holders are being denied access to their own money, from their own bank accounts—
Mr Speaker
Order. Topical questions have to be short. People cannot have full questions on topicals, please. I am sure you have come to the end and that the Home Secretary will have a grip of the answer.
Suella Braverman
I am very concerned by the issue the hon. Lady raises. We have welcomed more than 100,000 people from Hong Kong via our BNO scheme. We have also had similar reports and we have heard from a group of BNOs who have raised concerns of a similar nature. My right hon. Friend the Immigration Minister, and potentially the Security Minister, will get back to her on the details, but I share the concern she is raising.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
On a difficult anniversary, I pay tribute to the brave soldier Lee Rigby and to the innocent children, women and men who lost their lives, and the many more who were injured, at the Manchester Arena, as well as to their families, who remind us of the commitment to never let hatred win.
At the heart of the Home Secretary’s responsibility is to ensure that laws are fairly enforced for all. But when she got a speeding penalty, it seems that she sought special treatment—a private course—and asked civil servants to help. She has refused to say what she asked civil servants to do, so I ask her that again. Will she also tell us whether she authorised her special adviser to tell journalists that there was not a speeding penalty when there was?
Suella Braverman
As I said earlier, in the summer of last year I was speeding. I regret that. I paid the fine and I accepted the points. At no time did I seek to avoid the sanction. What is serious here is the priorities of the British people. I am getting on with the job of delivering for the British people, with a record number of police officers and a plan to stop the boats, and by standing up to crime and for policing. I only wish the Labour party would focus on the priorities too.
Yvette Cooper
The trouble is that the Home Secretary is failing to deliver for the British people too, and everyone can see that she is not answering the basic factual questions on what she said to the civil service and to her special adviser. It matters because it is her job to show that she is abiding by the ministerial code, which she has broken before, on private and public interests, and to enforce rules fairly for everyone else. Time and again, she seems to think that she is above the normal rules: breaching security even though she is responsible for it; trying to avoid penalties even though she sets them; reappointed even after breaking the ministerial code; and criticising Home Office policies even though she is in charge of them and is failing on knife crime, on channel crossings, on immigration and more. The Prime Minister is clearly too weak to sort this out. If the Home Secretary cannot get a grip of her own rule-breaking behaviour, how can she get a grip on anything else?
Suella Braverman
I have some gentle advice for the right hon. Lady. The person who needs to get a grip here is the shadow Home Secretary and the Labour party, as they have wholly failed to represent the priorities of the British people. When, Mr Speaker, will the Labour party apologise for campaigning to block the deportation of foreign national offenders? When, Mr Speaker, will the Labour party apologise for leaving this country with a lower number of police officers—
Mr Speaker
Order. May I just say that I have no responsibility for the Labour party?
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
My heart and the hearts of all those on the SNP Benches go out to those affected on the anniversary of the Manchester Arena tragedy, particularly the family and friends of Eilidh Macleod whose memorial trust stands as a legacy to her love of music.
Speeding can affect a person’s eligibility for leave to remain in the UK, so should not the same motoring offence and, indeed, the further breaches of the ministerial code by attempting to get special treatment affect the Home Secretary’s right to remain in her job?
Suella Braverman
As I said earlier, in the summer I was speeding. I regret that I was speeding. I accepted the points and I paid the fine. At no point did I seek to avoid the sanction. What I find regrettable, however, is the SNP’s wholesale failure to deliver for asylum seekers, to deliver for justice and to deliver for vulnerable people. Its Members are opposing our Bill to stop the boats, they are opposing support to break the people smuggling gangs and they are opposing a pragmatic approach.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
Suella Braverman
As I have made clear, last summer I was speeding, and I regret that I was speeding. I was notified of the matter, I paid the fine and I took the points. At no point did anything untoward happen and at no point did I try to avoid the sanction.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
My constituents are rightly appalled by the organised nature of so much immigration crime. Can my right hon. and learned Friend set out what work is being done to tackle those organised groups’ operations at source, and what impact that is having in reducing the numbers of arrivals of illegal immigrants?
Suella Braverman
Part of our plan to stop the boats focuses on causal factors such as serious organised immigration crime gangs, which are networked and highly resourced. We have had some success in arresting hundreds of people involved in those gangs and disabling several such gangs, but we are employing more resource in our National Crime Agency and increasing the numbers of officers working with the French so that we can clamp down on the problem at cause.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
Suella Braverman
As I said earlier, in the summer of last year I was speeding. I regret that I was speeding. I paid the penalty and I accepted the points. At no time did I seek to avoid any sanction or consequence.