Extremism

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary to make a statement on her conduct regarding the Government’s action on preventing extremism.

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

The Government take the threat of extremism—non-violent extremism as well as violent extremism—very seriously. That is why, in line with the Prime Minister’s Munich speech in 2011, I reformed the Prevent strategy that year, and it is why, in response to the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby, the Prime Minister established the extremism taskforce last year.

The Prevent strategy we inherited was deeply flawed. It confused Government policy to promote integration with Government policy to prevent terrorism. It failed to tackle the extremist ideology that undermines the cohesion of our society and inspires would-be terrorists to murder. In trying to reach those at risk of radicalisation, funding sometimes reached the very extremist organisations that Prevent should have been confronting. Ministers and officials sometimes engaged with, and therefore leant legitimacy to, organisations and people with extremist agendas.

Unlike the old strategy, this Government’s Prevent strategy recognises and tackles the danger of non-violent extremism as well as violent extremism. Unlike the old strategy, the new strategy addresses all forms of extremism. Unlike the old strategy, there is now a clear demarcation between counter-terrorism work, which is run out of the Home Office, and the Government’s wider counter-extremist and integration work, which is co-ordinated by the Department for Communities and Local Government. Unlike the old strategy, the new strategy introduced explicit controls to make sure that public money must not be provided to extremist organisations. If organisations do not support the values of democracy, human rights, equality before the law and participation in society, we should not work with them and we should not fund them.

Turning to the issue of the unauthorised comments to the media about the Government’s approach to tackling extremism and the improper release of correspondence between Ministers, the Cabinet Secretary undertook a review to establish the facts of what happened last week. As the Cabinet Secretary and Prime Minister concluded, I did not authorise the release of my letter to the Education Secretary. Following the Cabinet Secretary’s review, the Education Secretary apologised to the Prime Minister and to Charles Farr, the director general of the office for security and counter-terrorism. In addition, in relation to further comments to The Times, my special adviser Fiona Cunningham resigned on Saturday.

[Yvette Cooper]

The Education Secretary will shortly make a statement about Birmingham schools, but last week the Home Secretary and the Education Secretary turned this instead into a public blame game about the Government’s approach to tackling extremism. There are important questions about the oversight and management of these schools, which the House will debate shortly. There are also real and separate concerns about the Government’s failure to work with communities on preventing extremism and about the narrowness of the Home Secretary’s approach.

Both issues are complex and require a thoughtful, sensitive approach and for Ministers to work together, just as Departments, communities, parents, local councils and the police need to do. Instead of showing leadership on working together, the Home Secretary and Education Secretary chose to let rip at each other in public, making it harder to get the sensible joint working we need. That is why the Home Secretary needs to answer specific questions about her conduct in this process, particularly about the letter she wrote to the Education Secretary, which the Home Office released and which has made it harder to get that joint working in place.

The Home Secretary has said that she did not authorise the publication of the letter on the Home Office website, but why did she not insist that it be removed, rather than leaving it in place on the website for three days? She wrote that letter and sent it after she had been advised that The Times newspaper had briefing from the Education Secretary. Did she write that letter in order for it to be leaked, and did she authorise its release to the media? Section 2.1 of the “Ministerial Code” makes it clear that

“the privacy of opinions expressed in Cabinet and Ministerial Committees, including in correspondence, should be maintained.”

Did she and her Department breach the “Ministerial Code”?

Secondly, the Home Secretary made it clear in her letter that she disagreed with the Education Secretary’s approach. She said:

“The allegations relating to schools in Birmingham raise serious questions about the quality of school governance and oversight arrangements in the maintained sector”.

Does she stand by her claim that the oversight arrangements for Birmingham schools under the Education Secretary were not adequate?

Thirdly, the Home Secretary’s strategy on preventing extremism has been criticised from all sides—not just by the Education Secretary—for failing to engage with local communities and for having become too narrow, leaving gaps. She now needs to focus on getting those policies back on track, because it matters to communities across the country that there is a serious and sensible approach to these issues and joint working at the very top of the Government.

The reason why the Home Secretary needs to answer these questions about her decisions last week is to assure us that she and the Education Secretary will not put their personal reputations and ambitions ahead of making the right decisions for the country. We cannot have a repeat of the experiences of last week. It is shambolic for the Government, but it is much worse for everyone else.

[Mrs May]

On the specific allegations of extremism in schools in Birmingham and the wider question of how we confront extremism more generally, there are very important issues that I will come on to, but I should perhaps first remind the shadow Home Secretary of a few facts.

Under this Government, foreign hate preachers such as Zakir Naik and Yusuf al-Qaradawi are banned from coming to Britain. Under her Government, they were allowed to come here to give lectures and sermons, and to spread their hateful beliefs. In the case of al-Qaradawi, he was not just allowed to come here; he was literally embraced on stage by Labour’s London Mayor, Ken Livingstone.

I have excluded more foreign hate preachers than any Home Secretary before me. I have got rid of the likes of Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada. The Government do not give a public platform to groups that condone, or fail to distance themselves from, extremism. For the first time, we are mapping out extremists and extremist groups in the United Kingdom. We make sure that the groups we work with and fund adhere to British values, and where they do not, we do not fund them and we do not work with them. None of these things was true when the Labour party was in power.

The shadow Home Secretary asked about the “Ministerial Code”. I can tell her that, as the Cabinet Secretary and the Prime Minister concluded, I did not break the code. As she has no evidence for suggesting I did, she should withdraw any allegation of that sort.

The right hon. Lady asked about the letter, its presence on the website and why action was not taken, but action was taken immediately, because the Prime Minister asked the Cabinet Secretary to investigate, and he did.

The right hon. Lady referred to schools in Birmingham. I am afraid she will have to wait for my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary to make his statement; he will do so shortly, and answer questions about school inspections and oversight arrangements.

I would just say this to the right hon. Lady: I am responsible for the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy and, within that, the Prevent strategy, but she seems to misunderstand how the Prevent strategy works, so I think I should perhaps explain it to her. The Home Office sets the Prevent strategy and it is up to the rest of Whitehall, including the Home Office, as well as the wider public sector and civil society, to deliver it. There is always more to be done, things we can improve and lessons we can learn, but we have made good progress under this Government. Yes, we need to get to the bottom of what has happened in schools in Birmingham, but it is thanks to this Education Secretary that the Department for Education has, for the first time, a dedicated extremism unit to try to stop this sort of thing happening.

The shadow Home Secretary repeated her complaint that Prevent has become too narrowly drawn under this Government, but she does not seem to realise that we took a very clear decision back in 2011 to split Prevent into the bit that tackles non-violent extremism as well as violent extremism and counter-terrorism, and the Government’s integration strategy, which is quite consciously run out of the Department for Communities and Local Government. If what she is suggesting is that Prevent and integration work should go back to being together and being confused, she needs to think again because her Government’s approach was damaging and caused a lot of resentment among many British Muslims.

As the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), the former Home Secretary, said at the time we made that change, it follows

“the eminently sensible objective of keeping the ‘prevent’ strand of counter-terrorism separate from the ‘integration’ initiatives of DCLG.”

He continued:

“I completely agree with what the Home Secretary has said about Prevent.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 1011.]

The shadow Home Secretary should listen to her right honourable colleague.

What has happened in Birmingham is very serious indeed, and the Education Secretary will set out his response in due course. We need to do everything we can to protect children from extremism and, more generally, to confront extremism in all its forms. The Government are determined to do that. However, it is quite clear from what the shadow Home Secretary has said today that on extremism, like on so many other things, the Labour party would take us backwards, not forwards.

Stop-and-Search

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for early sight of the statement.

It is four years since the Equality and Human Rights Commission report described serious problems with the way stop-and-search was being used, describing disproportionate and inefficient use of stop-and-search and raising concerns about racial discrimination, because we know that, as the Home Secretary herself said, young people from ethnic minorities are six times more likely to be stopped. Since then there has been strong support across the House for reform, and it is welcome that the Home Secretary has finally come forward with proposals, but these proposals are extremely limited. They do not match up to her previous promises and they do not go far enough.

We all agree that the police need to have powers to stop and search individuals suspected of crime or to prevent a serious threat. Officers have to deal with serious problems such as teenagers in gangs carrying knives and organised criminals carrying guns or stolen goods or dealing deadly drugs, and intelligence-led targeting of suspected criminals helps to cut knife crime and youth murders. The right hon. Lady and I agree that too many searches, however, have not been targeted at all. Last year there were a million stop-and-searches; of those, only 10% led to an arrest. That means hundreds of thousands of stops and searches led only to resentment.

The Home Secretary and I agree that resentment creates barriers between communities and the police, particularly in ethnic minority communities that are most affected. That is bad for the innocent people who are regularly and unfairly stopped, bad for the police because it is an expensive waste of time, and bad for community safety because it undermines the very relationships we rely on for policing by consent.

The Home Secretary has powerfully described the problem, but four years on her proposals are very limited. They are welcome but they do not match the scale of the problem that she herself has described. A new assessment for police officers using stop-and-search is sensible and welcome. Revising the code of practice is fine, but it is not clear why she could not have done that straight after the EHRC report four years ago. Commissioning the College of Policing to review training is sensible, but she could have done that last July. A new “best use of stop-and-search” scheme that sounds very sensible will be only voluntary.

What about the things that we called for? Why is the Home Secretary not banning the use of targets given to police officers to stop and search a certain number of people? Why will she not put the guidance on race discrimination on a statutory basis? Why will she not insist that all forces abide by case law, rather than some? That is what she called for five months ago. She wrote to the Prime Minister in December saying that she wanted to change the law on section 60 stop-and-search

“so that the test for the power’s use is ‘necessary’ and ‘expedient’”.

We agreed, but instead all she is introducing is a voluntary scheme. She said then that she would raise the authorisation to a senior officer and strengthen the test for using the powers. We agreed. Instead, she has a voluntary scheme that forces do not even have to sign up to. Her plans have been frisked of serious substance and we need to know why the Home Secretary has backed down.

The right hon. Lady’s advisers have blamed regressive attitudes in No. 10, but why has she listened to them? She was right and they were wrong. These proposals are too weak and the Home Secretary has given in. Why is the Prime Minister ignoring the voice of ethnic minority communities? Why is the Prime Minister ignoring the impact on good policing, and why is he blocking sensible reform? Why is the Prime Minister not listening to his Home Secretary?

[Mrs May]

That was a disappointing response from the shadow Home Secretary, but it was characteristic of her. She complains that we are not going far enough and seems to imply that Labour would like to go further on stop-and-search, but perhaps I could remind her of some of the facts.

When Labour was in power, overall stop-and-search powers were not curbed; they were extended. Perhaps she has forgotten the stop-and-search powers introduced by the Terrorism Act 2000—powers extended by her Government and limited by this Government. When Labour was in power, section 60 powers were not curbed; they were extended. Has she forgotten the decision to extend the reasons for the police to be able to use section 60, the extension of the time limits for section 60, or the decision to reduce the rank of the authorising officer from superintendent to inspector for authorising section 60—powers extended by her Government and now limited by this Government?

When Labour was in power the PACE codes of practice were not strengthened; they were weakened. Has the right hon. Lady forgotten the date when breaching the PACE codes ceased to be a disciplinary offence? That date was April 1999, when her party was in power. Checks and balances were weakened by her Government and strengthened by this Government. When Labour was in power, no-suspicion stop-and-search did not go down; it went up. Section 60 stops went from fewer than 8,000 in 1997-98 to 150,000 in 2008-09, but down to 5,000 last year. [Interruption.] Stops under the Terrorism Act went from 32,000 in 2002-03 to 210,000 in 2008-09, but down to zero last year. No-suspicion stop-and-search was up under her Government but down under this Government.

When Labour was in power the overall use of stop-and-search did not fall; it went up from just over 1 million in 1997-98 to more than 1.5 million in 2008-09 and down to 1 million last year, so overall stop-and-search under the right hon. Lady’s Government went up and it has gone down under this Government. The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), a former policing Minister, was commenting from a sedentary position earlier. Speaking in 2008, he boasted: “We have increased stop and search powers”.

In 2007, when the Home Affairs Committee recommended:

“Alternatives to stop and search that might help the police engage better with young people should be considered”,

Labour’s Home Office replied, “We disagree.” Let us not rewrite Labour’s history when it comes to stop-and-search.

This is a serious subject. It is about the relationship between the public and the police, and it is about police time. The right hon. Lady mentioned a few issues to which I will turn. She mentioned the EHRC report from four years ago and seemed to imply that there had been no Government action since then. In fact, I have been working with HMIC, the Association of Chief Police Officers, chief constables and, in particular, the Metropolitan police since I became Home Secretary. I refer to my earlier point that the powers were extended under the right hon. Lady’s Government and have been reduced and limited under ours.

The right hon. Lady asked about the issue of officers having targets to stop and search people. I am clear that that is entirely unacceptable, and in my letter to chief constables I have told them that any such targets should be abolished.

The right hon. Lady asked about section 60 and why I was not introducing legislation now. She commented on the need to change the law so that stops can be used only when they are necessary to prevent incidents involving serious violence, rather than expedient. She obviously did not hear what I said in my statement and she obviously does not appear to know that the case law established in Roberts effectively does precisely that. There is no longer any need to legislate in that respect. The right hon. Lady commented on legislation to bring in action, but what we are doing will bring in action this summer, whereas legislation, as she well knows, would take a considerable amount of time.

The right hon. Lady talked about some of this just being voluntary. The Metropolitan police has signed up to it. I say to her that if she wants to see these changes and the “best use of stop-and-search” scheme extended, she should be encouraging the Labour police and crime commissioners in metropolitan areas to adopt these exact proposals, and I hope she will do just that.

I am afraid the right hon. Lady has just shown a complete lack of credibility on this issue as she carries on complaining and playing party politics. Whenever I have raised this subject in the past, she has said nothing about it. She only got interested in it when it appeared in the newspapers and she thought she could play party politics with it. She can play party politics, but I am interested in the national interest. I am clear that stop-and-search should be used less. It should be targeted and it needs to be used fairly. If that does not happen, we will bring back primary legislation. The difference between her party’s record and that of mine and this coalition Government is clear: we are serious about stop-and-search reform and she is not.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. I am clear that people detained under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983 should be taken to police stations only in truly exceptional circumstances. I am pleased to say that the work we have been doing with the Department of Health and the triage pilots involving health workers going out with police officers in certain parts of the country are already bearing fruit, with fewer people being taken to police cells as a place of safety. The Health Secretary and I have already commissioned a review of the operation of sections 135 and 136 because we want to ensure that appropriate support and provision are available for people who are experiencing mental health problems, and to ensure that they are dealt with in an appropriate way.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

New figures show that in the past 15 months there has been a 7% drop in the number of sex offences being taken to court, at a time when the number of such offences being reported to the police has gone up by 16%. Over the past 12 months, there has been a 9% drop in convictions for violent crime, even though the number of recorded violent crimes fell by only 1.5%. The Home Secretary has said that her police reforms and policies are working. Why, then, are more criminals getting away with it on her watch?

[Mrs May]

I challenge the right hon. Lady’s comments. The basic issue here is that the overall number of crimes has been falling, which is why some of the figures relating to the number of people being taken to court are falling. When concerns are raised in relation to how the police are dealing with domestic and sexual violence, of course we take action to look into the matter. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims said earlier, we have seen good movement in the figures relating to the way in which rape is being dealt with, particularly in relation to the number of successful prosecutions.

[Yvette Cooper]

But the Home Secretary’s action is not working. Fewer rape cases are going to court, as are fewer domestic violence cases, fewer child abuse cases and fewer sexual offence cases, even though the numbers of sexual offences and domestic violence and child abuse cases being reported to the police are all going up. According to analysis by the House of Commons Library, the resulting drop in convictions is the equivalent of 13,000 more violent offenders, 3,500 more sex offenders, 13,000 more domestic abusers and 700 more child abusers getting away with their crimes. This is happening on the right hon. Lady’s watch. Those are the facts. The number of cases going to court is going down in areas where the recorded crimes are going up. What is she doing about it? She is the Home Secretary. Why will she not act to ensure that victims get the justice they deserve—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We must have an answer.

Justice and Home Affairs Opt-out

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Today’s debate is one that the Home Secretary and Justice Secretary did not want to have. They have been forced into it by the three Select Committees because time and again they have tried to avoid coming to Parliament, avoid providing information to Parliament and avoid having a vote. The Select Committee on Home Affairs told them:

“we have been disappointed with the extent and timeliness of the Government’s involvement of Parliament”.

The European Scrutiny Committee described the Government’s approach as

“a serious omission as well as a missed opportunity to inform the debate in Parliament and beyond.”

The Select Committee on Justice summed up its report by saying

“we criticise the ‘cavalier fashion’ in which Parliament has been treated.”

The Home Secretary was in cavalier mode again today, because although she announced the opt-out in July last year and the Select Committees reports came out in October—we can presume that she has been negotiating since then—we had today no update on the progress of the negotiations, no sense of the timetable and no sense of when the vote will be called. We have to wonder what the Home Secretary has to hide. The truth is that she is hiding because this whole opt-out, opt-in is a massive con. She has done a U-turn again on the main measures, and is opting out and opting back in to them again. The only measures she is staying out of are ones that were largely redundant in any case, and what she is doing is a complex negotiation with our European partners, which is playing games with European security co-operation: “We’ll pull the arrest warrant out; we’ll put the arrest warrant back in. We’ll in out, in out, shake it all about. Play the opt-out hokey cokey, and you turn around. That’s what it’s all about.”

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the hon. Lady, who is a member of the Fresh Start group and who, I am sure, must have been very disappointed with the Home Secretary’s conclusions.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Does the right hon. Lady regret the fact that the previous Government did not give the British people a say before they signed up to the Lisbon treaty, which created the muddle this Government have had to try to deal with?

[Yvette Cooper]

I must say to the hon. Lady that we do not think that it is a muddle to have co-operation with European police forces to bring criminals to justice and to provide victims with justice. I know that the Fresh Start group, of which she is a leading member, thought that we should replace all of this with a new international treaty. The Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee and many Government Back Benchers wanted to opt out and stay out of everything. The last time we debated the subject, a queue of Members stood up to say how much they wanted us to opt out and stay out of not just the European arrest warrant but all the major measures.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

The Home Secretary has boasted a lot about giving the people a referendum, but up until the last general election, her party refused the British people a referendum, and we are the only political party that ever gave the British people a referendum on Europe.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend has a point, but it is not just about referendums; those on the Government Front Bench do not even want this House to vote on the measures that the Select Committees have proposed.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

I cannot resist giving way to the hon. Gentleman, given that he and I ended up agreeing with each other the last time we debated this matter. Let us see whether I agree with him this time.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I hope that the right hon. Lady will agree with me. Does she recall that the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in an answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) when reporting on the agreement of the Lisbon treaty, said that his reasons for not giving a referendum were that there was an opt-out to justice and home affairs, and an opt out to the charter of fundamental rights. As the latter opt-out is non-existent and the former opt-out is being given up, is it not now time for a referendum?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman seemed to be opting out and opting in all over the place there. The problem with the opt-out that he wanted is that, by the time we have opted back in to the main measures, it will not really be there at all. Here is what the Prime Minister said about these measures. He described the European arrest warrant as “highly objectionable” and the Home Secretary’s package, which is before us today, as a massive “transfer of powers”.

The Home Secretary said that it was

“the first time in the history of our membership of the European Union that we have taken such a set of powers back from Brussels.”

She described it as

“something that should be celebrated by anybody who cares about national sovereignty, democracy and the role of this place in making the laws of our country.”—[Official Report, 15 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 770.]

So what does she want us to celebrate today? The truth is that the Home Secretary now wants us to opt back into the important measures again—thank goodness. Finally she has listened to reason. I was delighted to hear her list many of the cases in which the European arrest warrant has been used—rightly used—and needed; in fact, they were many of the examples that Labour Members were putting to her 12 months ago when she was refusing to listen. Finally, she has listened to the police, who have said that many of the measures, if we opt out and stay out of them, would let criminals run free. She has listened to the victims who feared that they would be denied justice. Finally, she has listened on cases such as that of Jason McKay, who was extradited from Poland within two weeks for murdering his partner. Under the old extradition arrangements, it would have taken several years to get him back to face justice for a murdered woman. So yes, she has rightly done a U-turn on the European arrest warrant, joint investigation teams, Schengen information sharing and co-operation over online child abuse.

The Home Secretary is right to admit that we cannot go back to the days when it took 10 years to extradite a terror suspect to France, or when it took 11 years to get Ronnie Knight back from the costa del crime. She is right to support the deportation of thousands of foreign suspects to their home countries to face charges. I agree that co-operation is needed in a whole series of different areas. We are glad, too, that the Home Secretary has accepted the need for the exchange of criminal records, Eurojust, the co-operation to protect personal data and measures on football hooliganism. We cannot go back to the days when foreign criminal gangs were untouchable and criminals were able to seek sanctuary on the continent. I am glad that the Home Secretary has decided to ignore her Back-Bench colleagues and the Fresh Start group and to listen instead to Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the police and victims of crime.

What is left that the Home Secretary wants us to remain opted out from? What is the massive transfer of powers—the historic transfer, the repatriation—that the Home Secretary wants us to celebrate today? We will not be signed up to some joint proceedings on driving licences, but they are not in force and are out of date. We will not be signed up to a directory on international organised crime, but it was closed down two years ago. We will not sign up to the guidance on the payment of informers, but we will carry on following it. We will not sign up to guidelines on working with other countries on drug trafficking, but we will carry on doing that anyway. We will not sign up to measures on cybercrime and mutual legal assistance, because they have all been superseded by other measures to which we have signed up instead. We will not sign up to minimum standards on bribery, but we will still meet them because the Bribery Act 2010 is still in place. We will not sign up to measures to tackle racism, but we will still meet them because we have hate crime legislation in place. We will not sign up to measures on accession, because they never applied to us in the first place. And we will not sign up to receive a directory of specialist counter-terrorism officers, but someone will probably send it to us in the post.

That is it. That is the historic transfer of powers that the Home Secretary boasted about—the great liberation from Europe and the great cause for celebration that she promised us when we last debated these matters. We have the power not to do a whole series of things we plan to carry on doing anyway, the power not to follow guidance we already follow, the power not to take action we already take, the power not to meet standards we already meet, the power not to do things that everyone else has already stopped doing and the power not to do a whole series of things we want to do anyway. This is her historic moment. She said it would be a first in the history of our membership of the EU; she wanted it to be her Churchill moment. Churchill? Only if it is the nodding dog in the back of the car.

This is a political charade. Now that we are playing charades, will the Home Secretary at least reassure us that she is not doing any lasting damage? Can she assure us that, for the sake of a few opt-outs, the warrants will not be lost?

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Lady not understand that if we opt back in to many of the big and serious measures we are discussing, a future Home Secretary in this House would be impotent in large areas of criminal justice?

[Yvette Cooper]

I must say that I am baffled that the right hon. Gentleman could consider a bit of guidance on this and a bit of a directory on that to be a huge, powerful thing in relation to criminal justice—[Interruption.] Oh, he is talking about the European arrest warrant. On that point, I think that he and I simply disagree. He would like us not to be able swiftly to deport foreign suspects to their home country to stand charge. He would like us not to be able swiftly to bring back to this country those who are suspected of serious crimes and need to face justice. Before we had the European arrest warrant, we waited years to get back the people we needed to have charged with serious crimes.

[Mr Redwood]

Of course I do not want to deny us that right, but I want us to have that right in a way that is accountable to this Parliament and in ways that we can amend.

[Yvette Cooper]

Unfortunately, the right hon. Gentleman wants us to sign huge numbers of different extradition treaties when the extradition treaties and arrangements we had before the European arrest warrant took years. I do not think that that is fair on the victims of crime who want to see justice done.

[Keith Vaz]

On the European arrest warrant, is there not also an obligation on member states to consider their own legislation and ensure that they are not issuing such warrants for trivial matters? Poland, for example, issued 3,809 European arrest warrants, clogging up our courts. That is where we should be negotiating to ensure that member states also understand their responsibilities.

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. We have said that we should argue within Europe for reforms to the way in which the European arrest warrant system works to make sure that it is properly proportionate. We must recognise that this is partly about the people we want to return to this country so that they can stand trial here. It is also about our not harbouring criminals from abroad who have come here and who should go back to their home country to stand trial. He is right that the system needs to work effectively, which means having that debate in Europe with other European countries about the reforms that we hope they will make. There has been considerable interest from many other countries in making such reforms. We need assurances from Ministers that we will have guarantees that we can immediately opt back into the European arrest warrant and important measures on 1 December, when the opt-out is given legal effect, and we want to know whether other member states have agreed to the plan.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

The right hon. Lady gave a useful list of the fluff and nonsense that we are opting out of, but one thing that we are not opting back into is the European judicial network, which is an important body that helps to prosecute European arrest warrant cases. Does the Labour party have any view about what we should do about that to ensure that we can opt back in?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman points to a series of areas where the Government have proposed opting out or where it is not clear why they want to opt out and what the benefits are of doing so. We gather, too, that the Austrians, the Germans, the Spanish and the French have all called for the UK to opt into other measures as part of the negotiations. In addition to the list of 35 measures that the Home Secretary wants to opt back into, they list a further 13. The Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary should tell us whether they support those 13 measures or whether they will make them a red-line issue and call a halt to the negotiations if other countries insist on them so that a deal can be negotiated by 1 December.

The British head of Europol, Rob Wainwright, is worried about Britain opting out of some of the Europol regulations, because the new ones that the Home Secretary is prepared to support are not ready yet. He told the Select Committee on Home Affairs:

“I don’t think it is likely the new regulation will enter into force before December 2014 so there is likely to be a gap and, if there are not sufficient transitional measures in the meantime, then those accompanying eight measures would leave a gap, frankly, in terms of UK capability to carry out its work against international organised crime and terrorism.”

The Home Secretary should tell the House what she is doing about that, because it sounds serious and concerning. Has she put those measures back on her list to opt back into, and has she drawn up transitional measures?

We need to know, too, how much time and diplomatic resources the negotiation has taken up. For the remainder of the negotiating period, Italy will hold the presidency of the Council, and we understand that the Home Secretary is trying to persuade the Italian Government to make this a major priority and allow time for the European Council to negotiate. She should tell us if she really sees that as the top priority for the Council, and how many of her officials have to work on the issue, as opposed to the more substantial matters on which we should argue for reforms, such as changing the rules so that we do not have to pay child benefit and child tax credit for children abroad; or changing the rules on free movement for new accession states; or revisiting the posting of workers directive to strengthen protection for workers; or other things that would be worthwhile reforms in Europe. Instead, they are working on the power to opt out of a guidance document that we already follow. This is one of the most incredible examples of the gap between rhetoric and reality that the Government have come up with.

[Andrea Leadsom]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I shall give way one last time.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Will the right hon. Lady clarify for the benefit of the House whether the Opposition would invoke the opt-out or not?

[Yvette Cooper]

We debated this last year when we had the vote. We do not object to the opt-out in principle. We negotiated it so that Britain would have more time to look closely at the measures. We said last year that the most important thing was to be in the European arrest warrant. We said then that we would not exercise the opt-out without guarantees that we could opt back into the European arrest warrant and other measures.

In the end, this is about serious measures. Crime does not stop at the border, and criminals do not stop at the channel. Fighting crime and getting justice for victims depend on co-operation across our borders. Most people in Britain want our police and intelligence services to work with other forces abroad to share information, to track down dangerous offenders, to rescue abducted children and to stop online child abuse.

I want the House to hear the words of Beatrice Jones, who was the mother of Moira Jones, of whom I have spoken before in the House. She said:

“I have been appalled to read that a group of Tory MPs is putting pressure on the Prime Minister to use his right to pull out of EU crime and policing, including the EU arrest warrant. You may remember that my beloved daughter Moira Jones was assaulted, abducted, and savagely raped and murdered by an EU national who was allowed to come here . . . He fled the country but because of the dedication and determination of Strathclyde police, along with the cooperation of the Slovakian police, he was arrested and extradited back to this country. . . there is more cooperation and information between a much greater number of EU states . . . We want it to go much further so that another murder like Moira’s cannot occur . . . EU police cooperation is essential for the safety of all.”

That, in the end, is what this debate should be all about. The Home Secretary should be proud of that co-operation. The hard work of police forces across Europe and the commitment of victims groups working across Europe—that is what we should be celebrating and applauding today.

Yarl’s Wood Immigration Centre (Detainee Death)

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary to make a statement about Yarl’s Wood.

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

I am sure that the whole House will join me in offering our very sincere condolences to the family of the woman who died at Yarl’s Wood yesterday. This was tragic news, and I was certainly very sorry to receive the information. The House will understand that what I can say at this stage is limited.

The established procedure in this situation is to bring in the police to look at the circumstances. Bedfordshire police are currently leading that work. No cause of death has yet been established. Once police inquiries are concluded, the established process is that the prisons and probation ombudsman will begin an investigation. That will happen in this case. However, our focus in the immediate aftermath must be to support the family and to keep public comment to a minimum until the circumstances of yesterday’s sad news become clearer.

Following any death in detention, we ensure that detainees are offered counselling and access to a support plan. We review the detention of any individual in the centre who is considered to be vulnerable and ensure that they are given appropriate support. That also applies to staff working in the detention centre.

What I can say, in general, is that the operation of immigration removal centres is a serious responsibility that falls to the Home Office. Nobody involved in this work is in any doubt about the seriousness of the role. In taking on my role as Minister for Security and Immigration, I made it an early responsibility to visit an immigration removal centre to help me understand fully the range of issues connected to detention in such an environment; I visited Brook House and Tinsley House in February.

Like other immigration removal centres, Yarl’s Wood is subject to oversight from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons, whose most recent report was published last October. There were some key recommendations for the Home Office to review. However, the assessment of the regime in general was that it was improving. I commend to the House Nick Hardwick’s overall introduction to the report, which succinctly highlights the difficult circumstances of women in detention and the improvements that have been made to the regime. The report, and the Home Office’s response to its recommendations, have both been placed in the Library.

The responsibility for the detention of immigration offenders is taken seriously by everyone involved; I underline that it is a personal responsibility. I hope that the House will understand that it is far too early to draw conclusions at this stage and that to indulge in speculation would be distressing to the family and irresponsible, given the seriousness of the issues involved.

Detention and removal are essential elements of an effective immigration system. It is important that our centres are well run, safe and secure and that our detainees are treated with dignity and respect, and provided with the proper facilities. Detainees’ welfare is extremely important, which is why are committed to treating all those in our care with such dignity and respect. The House will be as distressed as everyone to hear of this news and will want the family and loved ones of the lady involved to know that they are in our thoughts and prayers at this difficult time.

[Yvette Cooper]

The whole House will agree with the Minister that the news of a 40-year-old detainee dying in Yarl’s Wood is extremely sad. All our thoughts must be with the family and friends, and it is important that they should get appropriate support.

I welcome the Minister’s response that a full investigation is in place. He will be aware that there are unconfirmed reports that the detainee was initially denied medical assistance. Can he assure the House that all those reports are being fully looked into as part of the police and wider investigations? He will also be aware that there are reports that Yarl’s Wood had turned down offers of help from the local NHS for other women detainees who were distressed after witnessing the death. Is that the case, and what further support was provided to others at Yarl’s Wood yesterday?

The whole House will agree that immigration rules need to be enforced, and that does require deportations. Some people need to be detained in advance of deportations, and that is never easy. The House will also agree that this must always be done humanely, with high standards and safeguards in place. Last October’s prisons inspectorate report on Yarl’s Wood referred to some dismissive responses from health staff within Yarl’s Wood, and research by Women for Refugee Women says that many women detainees felt that they were not believed by health staff and raises concerns about physical and mental health support. What action has been taken about that?

What action have Ministers taken since last year’s deeply disturbing reports of abuse of vulnerable women by Serco employees at Yarl’s Wood, including having sex with women detainees and sexual bullying? We have not yet seen a full investigation into what happened and what action has been taken to prevent it from ever happening again.

The inspectorate has also said that women who had been abused or trafficked are still wrongly detained in Yarl’s Wood. These are clearly very vulnerable women who need support, so what is being done to stop them being detained?

The Minister will be aware of the case of Yashika Bageerathi, who is being placed in Yarl’s Wood just before her A-levels despite the Home Office guidance about not separating families and not moving teenagers just before exams. In the light of the concerns raised, will he personally review Yashika Bageerathi’s case?

Given the continuing concerns about Yarl’s Wood, will the Home Secretary commission a joint inquiry on its operations and the Serco contract by the prisons inspectorate and the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, and will she then report swiftly back to the House?

I welcome the Minister’s response to the question. He and I both agree that while immigration rules must always be enforced, detainees must be treated humanely, and it is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that both take place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend raises an important issue. The Government are already taking action to tackle rogue websites which masquerade as legitimate Government services, exaggerating the nature of the services they provide or deliberately underplaying the services that people can get for free or at a lower cost from official sources. The Government Digital Service is leading a cross-government exercise with organisations such as the Advertising Standards Authority, the National Trading Standards Board, Which? and search engines to raise awareness of the issue and ensure that enforcement action is taken, where appropriate. Ministerial colleagues have also met Google to discuss the enforcement of its policies for advertising on its search results pages. Google will continue to support us by removing misleading adverts and by closing the accounts of repeat offenders.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) on his promotion and his ability to generate headlines in his new job, and welcome the hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) to her post in the home affairs team.

I join the Home Secretary in paying tribute to the Lawrence family, who have had to endure further betrayal with the information from the shocking Ellison review last week. Twenty-one years after the death of Stephen Lawrence, reforms are needed so that those failures do not continue to cast a long shadow over the vital and valiant work that so many police officers do each day and, in particular, so that we can build confidence among the black and ethnic minority communities. Does the Home Secretary therefore agree that the Independent Police Complaints Commission should now be replaced with a new, stronger police watchdog? Will she tell me whether she agrees with the four proposals I made in my letter to her on reforming stop and search—on section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994; on section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984; on race discrimination; and on banning targets?

[Mrs May]

Of course it is important that we ensure that the IPCC is able to deal with the cases of complaints against police officers. I have been concerned for some time about the fact that the police have, in effect, been investigating serious and sensitive complaints against police officers themselves. That is why I am changing the arrangements for the IPCC, increasing its resources and ensuring that in future it will be taking on the serious and sensitive cases. It is also why we have provided a number of other new powers to the IPCC to ensure that it has the capability it needs. However, as I said on Thursday, I am of course continuing to look at this issue.

I assure the right hon. Lady that we do need to look at stop and search. I have consulted on it and the Government are now finalising the package we wish to put in place in response to that consultation.

[Yvette Cooper]

I thank the Home Secretary for her answer, but given the seriousness of this, I urge her to go further and faster, both on the IPCC, which is simply not strong enough, and on stop and search. She and I agree that its targeted use is really important, but too many searches are simply not targeted at all. We have not heard anything from her since her statement in July; the critical Equality and Human Rights Commission was four years ago; and we are told now that reform is being blocked by regressive attitudes in No. 10. It turns out that the Prime Minister said before the election that he wanted to

“free the police to do far more stopping and far more searching.”

Does the Home Secretary agree with the Prime Minister or is she losing the argument within the Government?

[Mrs May]

What we all want is to ensure that stop and search, a particularly valuable tool for the police, is properly used by the police. The recent report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, which I requested, found that the stop and search powers were not being used properly in far too high a percentage of cases—about a quarter of the cases it looked into. Stop and search is important and a very valuable tool; when it is used properly and well targeted, it has the right impact. I am pleased to say that the Metropolitan police have already started to make some changes in their operation of stop and search, which is having some impact.

Ellison Review

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the statement that the Home Secretary has made and the work of Mark Ellison in drawing up this extremely important but serious and disturbing review. The findings of the Ellison review are extremely troubling and the Home Secretary’s statement today is serious.

Nearly 21 years ago, a young man of 18 was killed by racist murderers. Stephen Lawrence and his family were denied justice then and it is clear that they have been denied justice ever since. The findings of the Ellison review are all the more serious because, in the 21 years since, repeated attempts have been made to get to the truth and to deliver justice but, despite all those attempts, that still has not happened. We in this House should show our support today for the Lawrence family in their continued determination to get to the truth and to justice, but we also know that no family should have to keep fighting in this way for so many decades.

Let me touch on some of the key findings that the Home Secretary has set out. First, she said that the Ellison review stated that there were reasonable grounds for suspecting that one of the officers involved in the Lawrence investigation acted corruptly, but that has never been fully investigated. This is extremely serious and a full investigation is needed of the outstanding lines of inquiry identified by the Ellison review. I welcome the Home Secretary’s confirmation that this will now be looked at by the National Crime Agency, and also her confirmation that links with the Daniel Morgan inquiry will be pursued. Will she ensure—I am sure she will—that the House and the Lawrence family are kept updated with the timetable and course of this investigation?

Secondly, the Ellison review found that the full information about corruption and internal corruption investigations was not given to the Macpherson inquiry, and also that the Macpherson inquiry may have come to different conclusions as a result. It found also that the Metropolitan Police Service’s record keeping was a “cause of real concern” and that key evidence was the subject of “mass shredding” in 2003. Will the Home Secretary ensure that the NCA looks at whether information was wilfully withheld from the Macpherson inquiry or whether it was wilfully destroyed, and also looks at the wider issue of record keeping within the Metropolitan police?

The Home Secretary will be aware that we have asked before for an updated Macpherson-style review of progress since the original inquiry, because clearly a lot of changes were made as a result of the Macpherson inquiry. Does she not think this would be timely and that it would be an opportunity to look again at the conclusions of the review and whether they would have been different in the light of this further information?

Thirdly, the review found that undercover operations were carried out against those around the Lawrence family, and that information from those operations was given to those within the Metropolitan police who were involved in the legal case brought by the Lawrence family. It states:

“The reality was that N81 was, at the time, an MPS spy in the Lawrence family camp during the course of judicial proceedings in which the family was the primary party in opposition to the MPS.”

The review also found that the SDS, as the Home Secretary mentioned, was inappropriately and unjustifiably reporting on Duwayne Brooks. These findings are deeply disturbing. The Ellison review describes these operations as completely improper and wholly inappropriate, but the whole House will be shocked and we should condemn it in the strongest terms.

The Home Secretary is right: these revelations may mean that there have been miscarriages of justice. So I welcome her decision to instigate a public inquiry into the activities of the SDS. She will know that we have called for an inquiry into undercover policing, and it is right that there should be one. The Home Secretary is right to say that intelligence is a vital part of policing and the Ellison review says so, but it needs to be within a clear legal framework with proper safeguards in place. It is clear that that did not happen in these investigations and operations by the SDS against the Lawrence family and those linked to them at the time. We do not know how wide these miscarriages may go, but we cannot have a branch of policing that operated in this way, against the very ethos of policing and justice that it was charged with protecting and that the vast majority of police officers across the country have signed up to. Will the right hon. Lady discuss further not just with the family but with others on the Opposition Benches what form that public inquiry should take? We would welcome further discussions on that.

I welcome the Home Secretary’s decision to keep pursuing the truth. The Macpherson review was set up to get to the truth in the first place. It is important, too, that we should also keep pursuing justice. Will she ensure that in pursuing all these lines of inquiry, consideration is given to any lines that could lead to prosecutions of the further suspects in Stephen Lawrence’s murder?

Finally, I urge the Home Secretary to consider going further in the reforms that she talked about towards the end of her remarks. There is a serious question about whether the IPCC was able to investigate in the way that the Ellison review has done when it carried out an inquiry in 2006. The IPCC is the independent body charged with such investigations and should be able to get to the truth, but it was not able to do so. It is bad for justice and for policing not to have a credible body able to get to the truth the first time round.

I agree with the Home Secretary about the importance of force-level professional standards. She will know that forces have raised concerns that resources are being transferred from force-level professional standards in corruption investigations to the IPCC. Clearly, both need to be able to do that important job.

I also ask the Home Secretary to go further on the oversight of undercover policing. Clearly that will be considered in the public inquiry, but I urge her to look, in parallel, at further safeguards. As she will know, we have previously suggested additional safeguards, including on pre-authorisation for longer-term operations, because the current oversight regime has clearly not been effective enough in preventing some of the problems that have arisen.

I also ask the Home Secretary to look at the implications for the Hillsborough inquiry. As she will know, when we had the discussion three weeks ago, we also raised concerns about whether there was inappropriate surveillance or intercept against the Hillsborough families. It is hugely important that we get to the full truth about that and that it comes out at the earliest possible opportunity.

Twenty-one years later, no one should underestimate the gravity of the institutional failure two decades ago or the seriousness of the continued institutional failure to get to the truth. The Home Secretary has rightly said that we need to get to the truth. Police officers do a vital job, helping to keep the public safe every day. They need public trust and confidence, and we all need truth and justice. Three weeks ago she made the statement about the failure of the criminal justice system to get to the truth and to get justice for the families of Hillsborough victims decades ago, and today we have heard about that failure over the murder of Stephen Lawrence decades ago.

Families should never have to wait decades to get to the truth. Everyone must recognise that, unless we get to the truth and get justice, these tragedies will continue to cast a long shadow over the vital work that our criminal justice system and the police need to do. We owe it to the families, but we also owe it to confidence in the justice system.

[Mrs May]

I entirely agree with the right hon. Lady’s comments on the significance of the review. Of course, as she said, it is not alone in identifying problems with how cases have been treated; the Daniel Morgan case and the results of the Hillsborough Independent Panel also revealed failings that had taken place. As she said, it is absolutely imperative, in order to ensure that there is trust and confidence in the police, which is vital for us all, that we deal with these failings appropriately and get to the truth.

As the right hon. Lady and I have said, the results of the Ellison review are truly shocking. I suspect that it will take hon. Members some time to examine all the aspects that Mark Ellison has brought out, but the extent to which the report shows that a deep failure occurred at the time of the incidents and behaviours he examined is obvious from the remarks I have made today. It is therefore necessary that we follow that up by a number of different routes.

With regard to the timetable for the further investigation I have referred to the director-general of the National Crime Agency, I will of course be happy to keep the House informed of the results and how it will be taken forward. I would expect the director-general to look at the various issues the right hon. Lady referred to when considering how the investigation should take place and what is necessary to ensure that prosecutions, if they are required, can take place.

I do not think that it will be possible for us to discuss the form of the public inquiry properly until we have seen more of the next stage of Mark Ellison’s work, which is considering the wider issue and the question of miscarriages of justice. However, I will of course want to ensure that the public inquiry has the right terms of reference and that it is able to conduct the job that we want it to do and that the Lawrence family will obviously be concerned that it does. At the right time, I think that it will be appropriate to have discussions about the form of the public inquiry and its terms of reference.

On the IPCC, as the right hon. Lady said and as I said, Mark Ellison finds that its inquiries and work were not adequate and that it did not find the corruption that is alleged to have taken place. I have already given the IPCC more resources, more power and more of a task. The right hon. Lady referred to transferring resources from professional standards departments. That is a reflection of the fact that we are transferring work to the IPCC. One concern that people have always had is about the police themselves investigating serious complaints against them. That is why we are transferring that responsibility to the IPCC and the resources to undertake it.

On the safeguards on undercover policing, we have recently made changes to enhance them so that although longer-term deployments—anything over 12 months—must be authorised by a chief constable, undercover deployments can be authorised by an assistant chief constable. The independent Office of Surveillance Commissioners must be notified of all deployments, so the oversight framework is already stronger.

The right hon. Lady rightly raised the concern of Hillsborough families that they may have been subject to inappropriate surveillance. I understand that a formal complaint has been made to the IPCC about that, and that it is considering how best to investigate the concerns that have been raised.

There is much still to be done. Change has taken place over the years but sadly, what we have seen today is that it is necessary to continue the inquiries and investigations to ensure that, for the sake of the family particularly and for all of us and our trust in the police, we get to the truth.

Hillsborough

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for her statement and welcome the points she has made updating the House on the progress made in getting justice for the families of the 96 people who lost their lives at Hillsborough.

This year we approach 25 years since that dreadful day. I pay tribute, alongside the Home Secretary, to the Hillsborough Family Support Group, the Hillsborough Justice Campaign and Hope for Hillsborough, which have shown such determination in their campaign for their loved ones. None of us should underestimate the strength they have shown and what they have endured over the last quarter of a century, or how difficult it is still for them as the inquest approaches—something that no family would ever want to go through. We should show them our respect and our support in their pursuit of justice.

In October 2012, when the Home Secretary last addressed the House on the disaster, we all welcomed the independent panel report and paid tribute to the panel, led by Bishop James Jones. I join the Home Secretary in paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and the work he did to establish it, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), who I know spoke to her about giving today’s statement, my hon. Friends the Members for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) and for Halton (Derek Twigg), and colleagues in all parts of the House who continue to support their constituents in the pursuit of justice.

The list of failures exposed by the panel at that time was extensive, shocking and deeply distressing—the failure to improve the safety of the ground in the years before Hillsborough; the holding of the game at a ground without a safety certificate just four years after the Bradford fire; the failure to organise crowd safety; the failure to close the tunnel; the failure to help fans speedily; and also the failure to be honest about what happened and to investigate, and the falsehoods that were perpetuated afterwards. This House came together to make clear our view that it was a betrayal of victims and their families.

Since the panel’s report, I welcome the overturning of the original coroner’s verdict, at the instigation of the Attorney-General, and the plans to reopen the inquest next month. I welcome the Home Secretary’s agreement to our proposal for more powers for the IPCC and her decision to provide more resources for such a substantial investigation. I welcome the work by the Stoddart and IPCC inquiries and the substantial investigations that are under way. She is right to highlight the importance of support, including information and legal support for the families, but let me ask her some further questions about developments.

The Home Secretary will obviously know the importance of the inquest to everyone and the concern at how long everything takes. Can she assure the House, first, that the inquest will start on 31 March and that every effort is being made to ensure that all evidence and papers are in place, and that there are no further delays? Secondly, will she tell the House what more she is doing to ensure that every police force organisation and agency provides full disclosure to the Stoddart investigation and the IPCC, and does not simply wait to be asked for information? She will know the distress it has already caused to find that important and shocking information was never revealed to the independent panel—the pocket books she referred to—but also that far more police and witness statements were altered.

We have heard, for example, the disturbing testimony of one witness, who was a teenage student at the time. He told the BBC’s “Newsnight” programme that he was threatened with prosecution for complaining about failings by South Yorkshire police, saying:

“I’m a 19-year-old boy, three weeks out of Hillsborough, traumatised, and he’s threatening me that he’s going to put together a case for wasting police time because he didn’t like my evidence”.

I know that the Home Secretary would agree with me that it is a matter of deep concern that full information was not given to the panel at the time and would welcome the work done by the investigations to get more evidence since, but will she give a direction to all forces to provide all information related to the Hillsborough disaster to the two investigations?

The Home Secretary will also be aware of concern among the families about surveillance operations against families in the aftermath of the tragedy. I understand that the IPCC is not currently investigating those claims or concerns. Will the Home Secretary commit today to ordering the release of any material on surveillance, including intercept surveillance, of Hillsborough families in the aftermath of the disaster to the IPCC?

Thirdly, will she update us on the progress that has been made on the wider investigations that go beyond the inquest and on decisions on prosecutions? Clearly, the main focus of the investigations has been preparing information for the inquest, but what progress has been made in investigating criminal wrongdoing? According to what timetable does she believe files will be passed to the Crown Prosecution Service from the IPCC and the Stoddart investigation?

Finally, will the Home Secretary reassure us that the IPCC will have the resources it needs and that she will ensure that the inquiries work effectively alongside each other? She will know that concerns have previously been raised about co-ordination between the inquiries. Will she keep that under review to ensure that the investigations are fully co-ordinated?

The last quarter century has been immensely difficult for the families of the 96, and they know that the coming months will be very hard, too. The House should pay tribute to them and to their faith and determination over a quarter of a century, as well as to those who have stood by them, particularly the people of Liverpool. We should strain every sinew to ensure that they get justice now.

[Mrs May]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her comments and echo her point about how difficult it will be for the families when the inquest starts to have to relive the tragedy yet again. None of us can fully appreciate how difficult and traumatic that will be for the families and our thoughts are with them at this difficult time.

As for the date of the inquest, as I said in my statement, Lord Justice Goldring has said that the fresh inquest will start on 31 March. That is obviously a matter for him and not for me as Home Secretary, but I am sure from the way he has conducted matters so far that he will recognise the significance of the inquest over which he will preside and the importance of ensuring that it goes ahead according to an appropriate timetable.

The right hon. Lady asked about disclosure, what information is available to the two investigations and what information was not made available to the panel. The panel saw some 450,000 documents from more than 80 organisations, so it did an extremely good job and, having seen all that evidence, it was able to come up with its shocking results about what had happened at Hillsborough. However, everybody has been perhaps not surprised but disappointed that further documents have emerged as a result of the two investigations, particularly the police pocket notebooks and other such documents. I have written to both Dame Anne Owers, as chairman of the IPCC, and Jon Stoddart—they are in charge of the investigations and it is up to them to amass the information they need—to ask whether they were having any problems getting material and whether it would be helpful for me to write to the chief constables of all police forces to ask them to look for any material that they might have.

The right hon. Lady asked about possible undercover operations and although no formal complaint or allegation has been made to the IPCC, it is aware of the concerns and is considering how best to address them. It is reviewing the material on Hillsborough so if it discovers any evidence in its investigation that suggests that surveillance such as that which has been suggested took place it will pursue that evidence.

I recognise, particularly given what has happened over the past 25 years, that everybody is keen to ensure that there should be no sense that the timetable is not be followed appropriately. I discussed the matter with Operation Resolve and the IPCC when I was in Warrington. They are keen to ensure that at every stage they do everything properly so that there can be no opportunity to challenge their results. We would all agree that that is appropriate, but it takes time to do that. I can assure the right hon. Lady that I am making resources available to the IPCC and we talk to it and Operation Resolve regularly about what is necessary.

I was pleased to see—I am going to use the term appropriate again—the appropriate level of co-ordination between the two investigations. They are considering separate issues, although of course the IPCC is managing part of the Operation Resolve investigation, and they are working together in a manner that is fit and proper, ensuring that everything that is being done is being done in a way that will ensure that people have confidence in the results when they come out, whether they result in criminal charges or other findings.

Points of Order

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Home Secretary, in answer to my earlier question, said that it would not be the practice of the police to confirm whether or not surveillance had taken place. Chief Constable Mick Creedon did provide such information to the Select Committee on Home Affairs when allegations were raised about surveillance of the Lawrence family. May I therefore ask her, given the helpful way in which she has responded to all the comments on the statement today, to look further at the points that were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram)?

[Mr Speaker]

It is open to the Home Secretary to respond to that point of order if she wishes to do so.

Immigration Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I, too, thank those who sat on the Committee and all those who have contributed throughout the Bill’s passage. I thank Opposition Members who have been involved, including my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) and especially my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who has worked tirelessly in responding to the Government’s proposals at the various stages.

The Immigration Bill has been a complete car crash for the Home Secretary. She and the Prime Minister launched it as their flagship Bill. It was the pride and joy of their legislative programme, and yet they have been hiding it away for months. It has been nowhere to be seen. They would not bring it back because they were so scared of their own Back Benchers.

[Pete Wishart]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I am going to make some progress, because time is very tight.

The Home Secretary has become terrified of her own legislation. Even though Parliament has had hardly any business, she has kept the Bill away from the House and has then tried to rush it through in four hours today. We have had just four hours to debate a series of important amendments. On our proposals to tackle the impact of immigration on jobs and growth, and to take stronger action on the minimum wage and agencies that exploit immigration, there has been no debate today. On the proposals of Tory Back Benchers on Bulgaria and Romania, there has been no debate today. On the workability of the housing proposals, there has been no debate today. On the fairness of the appeal proposals, there has been no debate today. A series of amendments has been tabled by Members from all parts of the House, but none of them has been debated today.

What have we had instead? The Home Secretary pulled out of her hat, at the last minute, a new power on citizenship, with no consultation and no scrutiny, in a desperate attempt to distract her own party, but it failed. She then stood up for an hour and a half—I have to admire her resilience—to kill time, without even knowing what her position was on the key new clause, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab).

[Mrs May]

As the right hon. Lady was not here for the whole debate on Report, perhaps I should enlighten her on what happened. Yes, I did speak for an hour and a half, but I took a large number of interventions, including many from Labour Members.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Lady did indeed take a considerable number of interventions. However, she informed my office yesterday that she would not be responding on Report, but only on Third Reading. She decided at the last minute that she would come to the House to respond to the amendments.

I have a lot of sympathy with the hon. Member for Esher and Walton, who tabled his new clause today. He is right to say that the Government are not doing enough to deport foreign criminals: the number being deported has dropped by 13% during the past three years. The Home Secretary should be doing more, and we think that there are more things the Government could do that would be legal and workable. That is the key. The problem today is that the Home Secretary and Downing street have told us themselves that the hon. Gentleman’s new clause is illegal and could make it harder to deport foreign criminals, not easier.

The Home Secretary told the House that she disagreed with the hon. Gentleman’s new clause, so how on earth could she simply sit on her hands and not take a view on it when it came to the vote? How on earth could she tell the Prime Minister:

“I propose that the Government does not support this amendment because it would be incompatible with the ECHR and counter-productive”,

and then—as Home Secretary, responsible for upholding law and order in Britain—just sit there, scared of her own Back Benchers, and fail to vote against it? There is no precedent for Ministers simply abstaining in this way. This is not a free vote, in which Members are able to make their own decision. The Government simply thought that they would not take a view on the new clause, despite the Home Secretary having told the House that she was opposed to it.

The Home Secretary has lost control of her own policy. She told the Prime Minister last year that the hon. Member for Esher and Walton’s proposal would

“significantly undermine our ability to deport foreign criminals.”

She also told him that, under the provision, she would be unable to deport 4,000 criminals a year and would have to release “significant numbers” on bail while she went through the necessary legal proceedings, yet she was too scared to vote against it. We know that she opposed the new clause. If she had supported it, she could have voted for it and got it through, but she did not do so. She sat on her hands because she was scared.

What kind of Home Secretary is that? What kind of Government is this? The Home Secretary needs to get her act together.

The Bill will not sort out Britain’s immigration problems. There are some sensible measures in it, but there is an awful lot missing. Maybe the Home Secretary can get it sorted out in the Lords, but she should start acting in the interests of this country, rather than simply in the interests of the Conservative party, which has scared her away from making the right decision today.