Oral Answers to Questions

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

What steps her Department is taking to prevent hate crimes against places of worship.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins) [V]]

We are committed to protecting places of worship from hate crimes through the places of worship protected security scheme. The funding for next year, at £3.2 million, is an uplift of nearly double the amount awarded last year. A public consultation on providing greater protection from hate crime for places of worship closed on 28 June. We are reviewing the responses and will respond in due course.

[John Howell]

There is a balance to be struck between worshipping openly and being provided with adequate security. Will the Minister say what success the Government’s places of worship protective security funding scheme has had in achieving that balance?

[Victoria Atkins]

Very much so. I can assure my hon. Friend that the places of worship protective security funding scheme has been designed so that each place of worship can apply for practical security measures that suit their individual needs, ranging from CCTV to alarm systems. This allows each place of worship to remain open and accessible for worshippers, while providing greater security. We want to ensure that this scheme listens to worshippers and their communities when seeking to achieve the balance to which he rightly refers.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

What progress she has made on preventing the sexual exploitation of children by organised gangs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

What steps her Department is taking to tackle online harms on social media platforms.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

We are firmly committed to making the UK the safest place in the world to be online. We will be publishing a full Government response to the online harms White Paper consultation in the autumn and our ambition is to bring forward legislation in this Session. In the meantime, the Home Office continues to engage with social media platforms on the safety of their users. We are clear that these companies need to take action now to tackle illegal harms.

[Mr Dhesi]

It has been more than a year since the Government published their online harms White Paper and yet there is still no proper protection in place. Instead, all we have had are delays, ministerial briefings about potentially watering down the sanctions within the White Paper, and continued intensive lobbying by tech giants, which are still failing to remove harmful content and disinformation. That really is poor, so can the Minister update the House about what conversations she has had with social media companies about taking down harmful content and when exactly will the online harms Bill finally be published?

[Victoria Atkins]

The online harms White Paper was world leading in its ambitions to sort out the online world. We are very clear that what is illegal offline is also illegal online and that has been the driving force behind our work on this White Paper and on the consultation. As I have said, we will be responding to the consultation in the autumn. We are very much working at pace on this, but we should not shirk the fact that we are leading the world potentially with this work, including our work on tackling online child sexual exploitation, and we all want this abuse to stop.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

What assessment she has made of the adequacy of support and accommodation for asylum seekers during the covid-19 outbreak.