UK Border Force

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Our task now is to ensure that those responsible are punished and that border force officials can never take such risks with border security again. That is what I am determined to do, and I commend this statement to the House.

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

I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement and welcome her agreement to establish an independent inquiry. That inquiry must get to the truth, but it should do so considerably more rapidly than by January.

Reports have already reached me from the UK Border Agency today that the shredders are on and that there is a ban on internal e-mails. Will the Home Secretary look urgently into those allegations, and into what documents perhaps are being shredded and what e-mails deleted in the Home Office and UKBA on this issue? It is also important that the inquiry has access to all communications between Ministers, the Home Office and UKBA. The scope must cover the resource pressures facing UKBA. We now know that 6,500 staff are being cut from the agency, including 1,500 from the border force. We need to know what pressures officials were put under to cut corners as a result and keep queues down with reduced staff.

We also need some answers from the Home Secretary now. In questions earlier and in her statement, she could not tell the House how many people came through our ports and airports this summer without proper checks. On average, 100,000 foreign citizens enter Britain every day. UKBA staff have claimed that reduced checks were in place almost daily from August, lasting at least half of the shift. How many people were not checked against the watch list? How many people did not have their biometrics checked? What is the Home Secretary’s estimate of whether anyone from the watch list entered Britain at that time? Did any convicted criminals or security suspects enter? The truth is that the Home Secretary does not know. She says that we will never know. Even now, she seems to be doing nothing to find out and assess who has entered the country and what the security risk might be.

The Home Secretary has admitted that she took the decision to reduce checks for EU citizens in July—not checking under-18s against the warnings index or doing biometric checks on EU passports—yet she will know that cases have been identified by border officials involving EU citizens, including people involved in organised crime, people trafficking, falsifying passports or removals of children who are wards of court. She made that decision—not Labour Ministers in the past: this Home Secretary—and that decision is her responsibility. She cannot run away from it or hide behind cases from 2004, long before new systems were introduced. She knows that the intention of Labour—and, we had assumed, Conservative—Ministers was to roll out e-Borders and to put the technology in place so that everyone could be properly screened entering and exiting the country, and not only at quiet times. In fact, the immigration Minister claimed in May that 90% of non-EU flights and 60% of EU flights were covered, but it turns out that he meant 90% of flights in the winter or at quiet times in the afternoons.

The truth is that instead of strengthening the checks year on year, as all previous Ministers had committed to do, this Home Secretary decided to water them down, as official Government policy, even though she never told the House. She has blamed officials for relaxing the checks further than she intended, yet she gave the green light for the weaker controls. She claimed in her statement that she did not intend it to be routine not to check the biometric chip in EEA passports, yet I have a copy of the interim operational instruction that she has refused to publish, which states:

“We will cease routinely opening the chip within EEA passports, checking all EEA nationals under 18 against the warnings index”.

It adds:

“If for whatever reason it is considered necessary to take further measures, local managers must escalate to the Border force duty director to seek authority for their proposed action.”

So the Home Secretary gave agency staff the green light to go ahead and experiment to meet the pressures from queues, and look how far they went. A member of the Border Agency staff said this morning:

“Every day I let in 10 people who I think there would be a good case against”.

How on earth did Ministers not know about this? How on earth could there be continual complaints from staff for months without the immigration Minister or the Home Secretary knowing what was going on? At best, they were deeply out of touch; at worst, they were complicit in a loss of control at our borders.

This Home Secretary is presiding over growing chaos and corner cutting at our borders: Raed Salah was banned from this country by the Home Office, yet he was allowed to waltz in at Heathrow; 100,000 asylum cases have been written off as just too difficult to deal with; Ministers have now given the green light to an experiment to water down, rather than increase, border controls; and the Home Secretary does not even know how many people entered Britain without proper checks this summer. Thousands of people entered without proper checks, and without the Home Secretary having a clue what was going on. It is no good blaming the previous Government, or blaming officials. This is happening on her watch, these are her decisions, and this is her Government’s mistake. She needs to get a grip and stop passing the buck.

[Mrs May]

I must say that I regret that response from the right hon. Lady. There is no more serious issue than border security, but, instead of engaging with the facts, she has chosen to play party politics. She knows that the checks that I approved and the relaxation of checks, which I did not approve, are two very different matters.

Let me take her points in turn. She alleges that the pilot scheme and the unauthorised actions were the result of cuts. I explained the basis for the pilot scheme in my statement. I would remind her that the last Government were planning to cut the UK Border Agency and that it remains the stated policy of her party in opposition to cut the Home Office budget. She mentioned in passing that the House had not been informed about the pilot programme, but it has never been the policy of any Government to notify the House of operational matters such as those. Her own Government did not notify the House when they introduced a risk-based warnings index policy, or when they let passengers through Heathrow without even looking at their passports.

The right hon. Lady suggests that the problem was related not to unauthorised official actions but to the measures that we piloted in July. Let me remind the House again that, as I said in my statement, these measures allowed greater intelligence-led checks to be made against higher-risk passengers. Does the right hon. Lady think that was wrong; if so, why did the last Government introduce a warnings index policy that allowed risk-based checks back in 2007?

Let me remind the right hon. Lady of what I said. The pilot allowed officials in limited circumstances to use their discretion whether to check the biometric chip of EEA nationals and whether to run EEA nationals’ children travelling in family groups or school groups against the warnings index. Under her Government in similar circumstances, adults were not run against the warnings index, and on at least one occasion at Heathrow the border was opened up, so no checks were made against inbound passengers. She says that officials at UKBA are telling her that they were suspicious about individuals, yet they were being let through. It was clear in the guidance on the policy that for any EEA national or EEA national child against whom suspicion was felt, the officer should do the necessary biometric chip checks or warnings index checks.

The right hon. Lady asked whether the inquiry should include the decisions of Ministers as well as officials. I have already said that I am happy for John Vine’s investigation to look at what decisions were taken by Ministers and when. She asked about the publication of paperwork between Ministers and officials. We will certainly make all the relevant paperwork available to the investigations. I can assure her and the House that the paperwork will show without ambiguity that the relaxation of checks that occurred was not sanctioned by me.

The right hon. Lady asked whether any dangerous individuals had managed to come to Britain. That is a very serious issue; that is why I addressed it in my statement. I made it clear to the House that we are not in a position to be able to say how many people entered who should have been prevented after being flagged by the warnings index. We would have known, however, if anybody had tried to enter the country during the pilot, as the pilot was due to operate, because all adults were run past the warnings index and all non-EEA passengers were checked against that index. It was only EEA nationals’ children travelling with their parents or in a school group who were not automatically run against the warnings index. That is more stringent than the controls put in place by the last Government, who in similar circumstances did not check all adults against the warnings index.

I have said on a number of occasions that there is nothing more important than the security of our border, and I made clear in my statement the measures we are taking to address the lapse. In addition, we are reforming every route to the UK to reduce net migration; we are clearing the asylum backlog; we are improving removals; we are addressing the problem of article 8; and we are creating a border policing command in our National Crime Agency to improve our border security in the long term.

I will take no lectures, however, from the party that gave us a total net migration of more than 2.2 million people, the foreign national prisoners scandal, Sangatte, widespread abuse of student visas, the botched e-Borders contract, a 450,000 asylum backlog, no transitional controls for eastern Europeans, the Human Rights Act and a points-based system that failed to reduce immigration. My task now is to make sure that those responsible for this lapse are properly dealt with and to make sure that border force officials can never take these risks with border security again. That is what I am determined to do.

Gangs and Youth Violence

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

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

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the cross-Government report into ending gang and youth violence. Following the shocking scenes of disorder over the summer, the Prime Minister asked me to lead a review, alongside my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, of gangs and youth violence. Today’s report is not the end of that process. It is merely the start of a comprehensive, long-term programme of work to tackle the violence that blights too many of our towns and cities.

We have visited front-line projects; we have analysed youth violence and street gangs; we have met local authority chief executives, senior police officers, voluntary organisations and former gang members; and we have hosted an international conference of experts. Using this research, we have identified what can be done by Government and other agencies to stop the violence and to turn around the lives of those involved. Today’s report is an important first analysis of the problem, and of the interventions that work. It provides a platform for the intensive support we will provide to the most affected areas.

If we are honest with ourselves, we need to accept that not enough was done over the years to deal with a problem we all knew existed and we knew was not being addressed. But the riots brought home to the whole country how serious a problem gang and youth violence has become. The statistics show that one in five of those arrested in connection with the riots in London were known gang members. Similar figures were recorded by West Yorkshire police, and Nottinghamshire had only a slightly lower proportion. Most other police forces identified fewer than 10% of all those arrested as known gang members, so gangs were not the sole cause of the riots, but they were a factor. The fact that so many young people who are not involved in gangs were still willing to carry out such serious acts of criminality merely reinforces the urgent need for action.

Gang members and young people engaged in violence do not appear out of the blue. Analysis of their life stories shows certain common factors: parental neglect early in life, often linked to drug addiction or alcohol abuse and violence in the home; a history of poor discipline at school, truancy and exclusion; early brushes with the law for more minor offences; and exposure to older gang members, often based around their local estate. Those factors come up time and again, and during the review we heard powerful real-life examples. Our analysis also showed that gang membership itself can be an important driver of criminality and violence. In London, for example, almost 50% of shootings and 22% of serious violence are committed by known gang members.

Our considered and evidence-based approach is designed to deal with each and every aspect of gang culture and youth violence. It will be based on five areas: prevention, pathways out, punishment, partnership working and providing support.

Preventing young people from becoming involved in gangs and youth violence means starting at the beginning. Research shows that early intervention is the most cost-effective way of reducing violence later in life, so we are recruiting 4,200 extra health visitors and doubling the capacity of family nurse partnership schemes, to help 13,000 young mothers. We are providing £18 million to identify and support domestic violence victims and their children, who are at particular risk of turning to violence in adulthood.

In schools, the pathway for young people into crime is all too clear: from low-level absence, to persistent absence and truancy, to low literacy and poor attainment. That is why our education reforms are focused on: early intervention in the foundation years; taking a rigorous approach to eliminating illiteracy; improving behaviour and discipline; and ensuring that every young person is taught in a way that inspires them and prepares them for the world of work.

If prevention fails and young people are drawn into gangs and youth violence, we need to ensure that we provide viable pathways out. Moments of crisis in a young person’s life, such as arrest, exclusion from school or attending an accident and emergency department offer vital opportunities to intervene, so we will work with A and E departments and children’s social care providers to help young people who may be affected by gang violence.

For those who are arrested, we will expand schemes to help young offenders with mental health and substance misuse problems, and we will look to provide ways out of gangs for those who have been convicted and served their time. We will therefore improve education provision in young offenders institutions and ensure that all young people who leave prison and claim jobseeker’s allowance are referred immediately to the Work programme.

We will also establish a new ending gangs and youth violence team of community activists, NHS experts and police officers. It will offer intensive support to gang-affected areas to help them understand their problem and develop their own solutions, which could include rolling out schemes to re-house gang members who want to exit the gang lifestyle and mediation schemes to prevent retaliatory violence.

Our review found some excellent police work to identify and manage the highest-risk gang members through a combination of targeted surveillance, enforcement and arrest for any offence, however minor, and positive offers of training, employment and drugs treatment for those who want a different life. However, those not prepared to break away from violence will face harsher and tougher punishments. That is why we will consult on making a new offence of possession of an illegal firearm with intent to supply, and on whether the penalty for illegal firearm importation should be increased. We are also consulting on whether the police need additional curfew powers. It is why we are extending the new gang injunctions to 14 to 17-year-olds, for example, to stop gang members entering rival territory, prevent them from being in public with dangerous dogs and require them to undertake positive activities; and it is why we are strengthening our laws on weapons possession so that anyone, including offenders aged 16 or 17, convicted of using a knife to threaten and endanger others will now face a mandatory custodial sentence. Any adult who commits a second very serious violent or sexual crime will now face a mandatory life sentence.

This is not, however, solely a police and criminal justice programme. All the agencies that young people deal with, from teachers to health service workers and social services, need to develop better systems for identifying high-risk individuals, sharing information and working together. Simply throwing more money at the problem is not the answer. We need a more intelligent approach.

We know, for example, that there are families on whom multiple Government agencies spend hundreds of thousands of pounds each year, yet their problems persist. That is why Louise Casey is today starting her work as the head of a new troubled families team to drive forward our commitment to turn around the lives of 120,000 troubled families. We will also deliver our commitment that all hospital A and E departments should share anonymised data on violent assaults with the police and other agencies. Sharing information and taking a multi-agency approach might not sound very exciting, but they work.

Finally, to support local areas, we will target Home Office funds on those places where the most serious gang and youth violence problems exist. We will therefore provide £10 million in funding next year to support up to 30 local areas and invest at least £1.2 million of new resources over the next three years to improve services for young victims of sexual violence in our major urban areas, with a new focus on the girls and young women caught up in gang-related rape and abuse.

For too long, communities have lived in fear of gangs. Many young lives have been ruined; many young lives have been lost. The summer showed that it is time for society to take a stand. It is time for a long-term programme, with intervention at each stage of vulnerable people’s lives; it is time for a locally led approach, with agencies working together and sharing information; and it is time for tough enforcement to be backed up by work to address the root causes of gang and youth violence. That is what our programme will deliver and I commend this statement to the House.

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

I thank the Home Secretary for early sight of her statement and the Government report.

The Opposition agree with the Government’s aim of tackling gang culture. The Home Secretary is right to point to the devastating impact on the victims of gang violence and intimidation and to be concerned about the damage that gangs do to those who get sucked into them, sometimes even in the search for protection. The violence is horrifying; the long-term scars for young people and society are severe. She is right that gangs played a part in the riots, but also that they have played a part in problems such as knife crime that affect some of our major cities.

The Home Secretary also recognises that the overwhelming majority of young people do not get involved in gangs. Indeed, youth crime fell over the course of the previous Parliament as fewer young people were drawn into criminal activity, but we want youth crime to fall further, not to go back up. That is why action on the pernicious effect of gang culture is so important.

I therefore agree strongly with the Home Secretary that effective action requires prevention, early intervention, working in partnerships, tough action and crackdowns on persistent gang activity, and punishment. Effective action needs to involve the NHS, schools and councils as well as the police. We also need action on domestic violence and to consider the impact on women and girls. She should also consider increasing the focus on housing and on the victims of gangs.

I welcome the Home Secretary’s work to build on Labour’s approach in government, including the family intervention projects and implementing the extension of gang injunctions to 14-year-olds, for which the previous Labour Government legislated before the last election.

I agree with the Home Secretary that we need to go further. I, too, am impressed by some of the work that police and local councils are doing in some areas to target gang members by offering them a way out, but rightly getting tough on them if they will not take it, but I am deeply concerned that the reality of the Government’s policy does not live up to the rhetoric. For a start, there is still complete confusion about sentencing policies. Last week, the Home Office told the papers that there would be longer sentences for gang members; yesterday, the Home Secretary told them that there would not be. Her plans on powers are also confused. She will know that many police forces and councils find that ASBOs are one of the most useful tools in disrupting gang activity, yet her policy still is to abolish them and replace them with weaker injunctions, so she is making it harder and not easier for the police to crack down.

We welcome the emphasis on early intervention in the report, but that sits badly with the 20% cuts to Sure Start and well over 20% cuts to the youth service. We welcome the learning of lessons from successful work in places such as Strathclyde, but here is the real problem: the work in Strathclyde alone required an additional £5 million, but she has announced only £10 million for the country as a whole, and the Home Office has already said that that funding is not new. At the same time, she is halving the local community safety budgets, which councils and the police use for gang prevention work right now—£44 million of cuts over the next two years alone, on top of the cuts to community safety funding in the emergency Budget.

Before the election, Haringey, where the riots started, received £2.2 million for community safety, including the action it was taking, with the police, to target gangs. By next year, that figure will be £200,000—a 90% cut in one borough alone. In Liverpool, the youth offending service, which works with gangs and young offenders, is facing more than £2 million of cuts—an overall reduction in its budget of 34%. All that comes on top of 16,000 police officer cuts, nearly 6,000 of which are in the forces that face the biggest problems with gangs.

The Government are cutting too far, too fast, hitting not only the criminal justice system, but our economy, which risks costing us more. Higher unemployment and higher crime will cost us more. Ministers are right to be concerned about gangs and youth crime and to want action, but what does this really add up to on the streets of Lambeth or Liverpool or for the young people of Birmingham or Brent? Given that the Government are pushing up youth unemployment to nearly 1 million, cutting 16,000 police officers, ending ASBOs, slashing youth services and cutting crime prevention, can the Home Secretary put her hand on her heart and tell the House that during this Parliament the youth crime rate will fall, as it did in previous Parliaments?

We agree with much of what the Home Secretary said today, but when we look at the reality behind the rhetoric—the reality behind her words—we see the truth, which is that the Government are still making it harder, not easier, for the police and communities to tackle gang violence and cut crime.

[Mrs May]

We have heard a typical response from the right hon. Lady. I shall start with the statements where she agreed with what we were doing, with the need to do more to draw young people out of gangs and reduce youth violence and with the point that this is not just about the police, but about how the NHS, schools and a variety of other agencies need to be involved. As I said in my statement, that is the basis of this first truly cross-Government report. She mentioned good projects by the police. There are a number of very good projects out there in parts of the Metropolitan police, Greater Manchester, the west midlands, Merseyside and, of course, Strathclyde. Those projects are already starting to make a difference.

Sadly, however, having said that she agreed with a lot of what I said, the right hon. Lady then, as she did in August when we were talking about the riots, chose to be party political. I am sorry that she chose to do that, but I shall address her various points. She said that we should not scrap ASBOs, but what good have ASBOs done, given that, as she said, gang culture has been getting worse? We are getting rid of ASBOs and replacing them with measures that will actually deliver for local communities, deter antisocial behaviour and put communities back in charge. She mentioned funding for Sure Start. That funding is provided through the early intervention grant, but, crucially, we are ensuring that Sure Start is focused on the very families it was set up to help in the first place—the very families that most need our help and support.

The right hon. Lady talked about police cuts. She never misses a chance to demonstrate her fiscal irresponsibility, and I knew that today would not be any different. She attacked cuts in police spending, but she did not say that it was the stated policy of her party to cut police spending. On her comments about police numbers, let me tell the House what she said about gangs and police numbers in August:

“Boots on the streets are not enough to sustain safe communities”.—[Official Report, 11 August 2011; Vol. 531, c. 1151.]

I wonder why she has changed her mind.

The right hon. Lady also talked about other spending cuts. Let me tell her what Jacqui Smith, the former Labour Home Secretary, said just this morning:

“You need to be much better at measuring the impact of the money we spend as well as simply spending it.”

I suggest that the right hon. Lady take a lesson from her. The shadow Home Secretary seems to think that gang problems have been caused by this Government and did not exist under the previous Government, but let me remind her what she said in August:

“I agree that more needs to be done about gang culture, which has been getting worse.”—[Official Report, 11 August 2011; Vol. 531, c. 1151.]

Yes: getting worse under the Labour Government. Just this morning, Jacqui Smith said that Labour “hadn’t done well enough” in tackling gang violence”. She has been straight about her record; it is a shame that the shadow Home Secretary cannot bring herself to be straight too.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Commons Chamber

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

I join the Home Secretary in thanking all hon. Members who have toiled throughout the passage of the Bill, and pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), whom I congratulate on his appointment to the shadow Cabinet, and my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), who, conveniently, has been moved to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport just in time for the Olympics. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), who has done important work particularly on child protection, and my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), who has kept us all in order. I thank, too, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who in the last couple of days have stepped in admirably to steer the debate through its final stages in this House.

There are sensible measures in the Bill that we support, such as removing old convictions for gay sex, removing restrictions on marriage, adding sensible extensions to freedom of information and putting in place tighter restrictions on the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and stop-and-search powers. We also welcome the action on rogue wheel clampers, but we would have preferred the Government to go further by taking further action on rogue ticketers. We agree, too, with the principle of moving down to 14 days of pre-charge detention. However, the Home Secretary was unwise not to have made changes as a result of the last debate, in which Members from both sides of the House who served on the Joint Committee that she set up raised concerns that the mechanism that she has put in place to deal with emergencies will be impractical and unworkable. Why did she set up a Committee if she was just going to ignore its expert views?

We have some serious and deep concerns about the Bill, however, which mean that we cannot support it tonight. We agree with making changes to child protection, especially now that Criminal Records Bureau checks can be made portable, but it is vital that as we do so, we make sure this House can reassure parents throughout the country that sensible and strong safeguards are still in place to protect their children.

The Government cannot now do that, as a result of this Bill, because they are creating serious loopholes in child protection. They have been urged to close them not just by our Front-Bench team but by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Action for Children, the Children’s Society, the Government’s own Children’s Commissioner, the Scouts, the Rugby Football Union, UK Athletics and many more sports organisations. The Government have consistently ignored their advice.

I wonder how many Conservative Members realise what they voted for in the Lobby this afternoon. They voted to stop someone who has committed a sexual offence against children being automatically barred from working with them in future. Conservative Members voted today to stand up for the right of convicted child rapists not to be included on a barred list: that is what they voted for. The Bill also means that if someone who has been barred for grooming a child applies for a supervised post working with children, the organiser will not be told that they have been barred.

The Government have chosen to stand up for the privacy of people who have been barred by the experts from working with children, against the concerns of head teachers, sports organisations, children’s charities and, above all, parents who want to know that their children are safe. I say to the Home Secretary very strongly, as a parent, that parents across this country do not want to discover that a voluntary teaching assistant or a supervised sports coach who spends hours with their child has, in fact, been barred by the experts from ever working with children again, but that—thanks to the Home Secretary’s decision to protect that person’s privacy—nobody was told. That is the consequence of her Bill; it is the decision that Government Members have just voted to support.

It is not just on child protection that the Government are getting the balance wrong. The Home Secretary’s decisions on DNA will also make it harder, not easier, for the police to fight crime. She has talked with pride about the 13,000 convicted criminals that she wants to put on the DNA database, but what she fails to point out is that taking retrospective DNA, which we strongly agree with, was made possible only by Labour’s Crime and Security Act 2010, which was passed before the general election and which she opposed. Not only did she oppose the whole Bill then, but she failed to enact those provisions when that should have happened, straight after the general election. She waited for a year to get round to it, and she still has not enacted the provisions in Labour’s Act to take DNA from people who commit crimes abroad.

As for the provisions in this Bill, the Home Secretary is ignoring the evidence. She is ignoring not only the evidence from the police, who estimate that 1,000 fewer crimes will be solved every year as a result of these measures, and the wise words from my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), who tabled amendments, but the evidence that Ministers tried to hide, which was produced by their own Department. It shows that every year crimes will be committed by 23,000 people who would have been on the DNA database under Labour’s plans but will not be on it under her plans. We are talking about 23,000 criminals each year, and these are cases in which she wants to make it harder for the police to bring them to justice. Some 17,000 rape suspects will be taken off the database straight away as a result of these measures.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the hon. and learned Gentleman, but I ask him whether he can give a good reason for removing those 17,000 rape suspects so swiftly from the database, against the advice and the pleas from Rape Crisis.

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful for the right hon. Lady’s anticipation of what my intervention might be. What would she say, and what would her party say, to the millions of innocent people who regard it as offensive that their DNA is retained when they have never been convicted of any crime whatsoever? Is that really the policy that the Labour party thinks ought to be pursued in this country?

[Yvette Cooper]

I point out to the hon. and learned Gentleman that that is his policy and that of his party. That is what he has voted for. People will be on the DNA database who have not been convicted of any crime, but his party wants to hold their DNA for three years, based on no evidence whatsoever, whereas we believe that it should be held for six years, based on the evidence, because that is the best way to ensure that we get the balance right between protecting people’s civil liberties and ensuring that we can take the action needed to solve crime. The hon. and learned Gentleman has not given an answer to Rape Crisis and others who are deeply concerned about the impact of these measures on our ability to prevent rapes and to solve rapes in future.

We know that every year there are nearly 5,000 cases in which someone has been arrested on suspicion of rape and the police believe that there is a case to answer and have passed the file to the Crown Prosecution Service, but the CPS has decided—we know that rape cases can be complex—not to charge. In all such cases, the DNA will be wiped straight away under this Government’s proposals, despite the fact that there is considerable evidence, as well as the concerns raised by organisations such as Rape Crisis, that more, not less, needs to be done to tackle the crime of rape and to bring more rapists to justice.

Government Members have their priorities wrong if they think that it is more important to keep people’s DNA for three years rather than six than it is to solve 1,000 more crimes, that it is more important to do that than to have DNA matches for 23,000 more criminals each year, and that it is more important to protect the rights of a rape suspect to keep their DNA code off the database altogether than to take the action that Rape Crisis has called for to make it easier to catch rapists in future.

Finally, on CCTV, which was critical in identifying the culprits in the riots, the Bill adds layers of bureaucracy that make it harder for the police to do their job.

We believe that it is important to protect people’s freedom, but protecting people’s freedom means not just protecting them against unwarranted interference by the police or by the state but protecting them against unwarranted interference, abuse or violence by other people. Freedom means protecting people from crime, too. The measures to which the Home Secretary objected in her speech helped cut crime by 40% and mean that there are now millions fewer victims of crime each year because we brought crime down. Yes, balancing acts and difficult decisions are required, and the freedom of victims of crime as well as the freedom of crime suspects should be considered. Decisions should be based on evidence, and time and again the Government have either ditched or denied the evidence in front of them.

The Home Secretary has made great play of attacking the Human Rights Act 1998, which at its heart includes protection for people’s freedom against oppression or abuse, but we should be clear that it is not the Human Rights Act that is putting privacy for child sex offenders ahead of sensible child protection measures, or putting the privacy of rape suspects above action to prevent rape in future, but this Government. It is not the Human Rights Act that is putting three years of holding DNA above action to solve 1,000 crimes a year, but a Conservative-led Government. Although the Home Secretary is very keen to be tough on the Human Rights Act, it would be rather more effective if she were tougher on crime and made it easier for the police to do their job.

We believe that this is a risky Bill that puts at risk freedom for crime victims, makes it harder for the police to do their job and ignores important evidence about the way in which crimes need to be solved. That is why we cannot support it on Third Reading, and will vote against it tonight.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

If I may say to the right hon. Gentleman, I expect to be having a further conversation with the Mayor after Home Office questions, but I hope to be sending a recommendation to the palace, and I firmly expect to do so, later today.

In relation to the funding figures for the Metropolitan police, the right hon. Gentleman will know full well that we are providing support to it, and indeed to other forces, as a result of the riots that took place recently. However, I am pleased to say that the previous Metropolitan Police Commissioner was able to increase visibility with police on the streets within the resources he had, by the simple and effective method of moving from police patrolling in pairs to single-patrol policing.

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

It is intriguing to discover that the Home Secretary and the Mayor have not yet agreed on the next Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

The previous question was about the comprehensive spending review. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary estimated that 16,000 officers would be cut as a result of the CSR. Since then, the police have faced substantial additional costs of £125 million from policing the August riots. The Home Secretary has said that she is supporting the Met police and other forces, but the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice said in his letter that this will be only

“where forces are not in a position to cover the costs of recent events themselves”.

That leaves the police with no clarity at a time when their budgets are already being cut. Will she therefore now guarantee that no police force will have to cut any officers or services to pay for policing the riots, and will she stand by the Prime Minister’s commitment to pay this extra money to the police?

[Mrs May]

It is absolutely clear—and has been made clear to police forces affected by the riots—that police forces should put in claims to the Home Office and that we will look at them. We will be looking at claims for operational costs and riot damage costs. On the right hon. Lady’s first statement, however, I do not think that she should try to transpose on to this Government the sort of disputes that took place within the previous Government. As I understand, from reading the recent book by the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), she even disputed the extent of the deficit—as she and other Labour Members appear still to do.

[Yvette Cooper]

I am afraid that the Home Secretary did not answer the question. She said that the Home Office is “looking” at the claims. That provides no certainty for the police or clarity for police budgets. Police officers are having to make decisions right now about making people redundant. The truth is that she is happy to find extra resources for elected police chiefs, but she will not find the extra money for the police. She is spending more than £100 million on elected police chiefs that no one wants when she could spend the same money on the costs of policing the riots or on 3,000 extra constables in Olympics year. Does she think that the public would prefer the money to be spent on elected police chiefs or on constables who will cut crime?

[Mrs May]

I think that the public want a Government who actually look after taxpayers’ money, which is exactly what we will do. The police forces know that there is a process by which they can put in claims to the Home Office. Those claims will be properly considered, and as we have made clear, the Home Office will be making funds available in relation to the matters that the right hon. Lady has raised.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

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

I join the Minister in commending those who have participated in the debates both in Committee and in the House today. This debate has been serious and important, and we have heard considerable expertise from all parts of the House in the discussions that have taken place.

Counter-terror policies are extremely important. They are vital to public safety, so our approach is, wherever possible, to seek to support the Government in their counter-terror policy. However, tonight we cannot. We cannot vote for the Bill because we do not believe it is the right thing to do for our national security. We do not take that decision lightly, but we are afraid that the Government are taking unnecessary risks with national security and public safety by introducing the Bill, and we do not believe that Parliament should support that approach tonight.

Control orders are not desirable but, sadly, they are needed. That is why they were introduced. However, the Bill, in its response to control orders, raises some serious problems: it weakens counter-terror protection in important ways; it weakens the safeguards—the checks and balances—that are needed to prevent abuse; it does not live up to the promises that were made about it; and it creates a shambolic legislative process and legal framework that will make it harder, not easier, for the police and the security services to do their job and keep us safe.

From the start, concerns were raised that the Bill was simply a fudge. Control orders are being replaced with something very similar. Curfews are being replaced with overnight residence requirements, and restrictions on movement and communications are being replaced with prescriptions on movement and communications. However, in key areas, the Bill weakens the powers of the Home Secretary to deal with very difficult cases.

My hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) and for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) set out in Committee a series of our concerns and tabled amendments. Today we heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) set out his concerns and very powerfully speak to amendments on additional measures. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) spoke to amendments on relocation, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) spoke of specific Opposition security concerns. That is particularly important in Olympic year.

I shall focus particularly on our concerns about relocation—they were discussed on Report, but they are fundamental on Third Reading. In some cases, the courts, the security services and this Home Secretary have agreed that the power to relocate someone to prevent terrorist activity is needed and justified. In May this year, just four months ago, the Home Secretary argued in the case of CD that he needed to be removed from Greater London to protect the public from a terrorist attack. The judge said:

“I have concluded that the relocation obligation is a necessary and proportionate measure to protect the public from the risk of what is an immediate and real risk of a terrorist attack.”

That was just four months ago, but now the Home Secretary believes that those powers are not needed. What has really changed since May?

In July of this year, just two months ago, the Home Secretary said in the case of BM that relocation outside London was “fundamental” to preventing terrorist activity. In that case, BM admitted that he was committed to terrorism. The Home Secretary now believes that those powers are not needed. Again, what has really changed since July?

Ministers claim that they will put more surveillance in place, but the Met expert on this, when giving evidence to the Public Bill Committee, said:

“To get the resources that we anticipate we need will take more than a year, in terms of being able to get people trained and to get the right equipment.”––[ Official Report, Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Public Bill Committee, 21 June 2011; c. 9, Q27.]

It is simply not credible that the security environment has changed so substantially in the past two or four months that the powers were needed then but are not needed now. Are the Government really telling us—in Olympic year, of all years—that the powers are less needed in the coming year than they were last year, when this Home Secretary has felt that she needed to use them five times?

Ministers have conceded that the powers could be needed, but they are promising only emergency legislation to solve the problem. However, that is a deeply disorderly and shambolic response. It is not fair on the police or security services—or, ultimately, on the public—to say, as the Minister has today, that the Government cannot tell us in what circumstances the emergency legislation will be passed. When pressed, he suggested that it might be passed in the case of multiple threats or in the wake of a terrorist attack, but neither circumstance applied in the cases of CD or BM, when the Home Secretary decided that the powers to relocate were needed.

Ministers know that it is hard to predict how long primary legislation will take, even when there is an imminent threat. The Joint Committee on the emergency legislation, which the Home Secretary set up, concluded that it was a flawed response to difficult counter-terror situations. That is not the way to set a stable framework for our security services to operate, and removing powers in one Bill and promising to reinstate them in unspecified circumstances is a chaotic way to treat Parliament.

While the Government are weakening the counter-terror powers, however, they are at the same time weakening the safeguards, the checks and balances and the parliamentary oversight. Our view is that we need strong powers but also strong checks and balances, so the Government are wrong to remove the annual vote and recourse to Parliament. These powers should be treated as exceptional, not routine. If Parliament is prepared for such powers to be used, as I believe it should be, it should also be prepared and required to reflect on those exceptional powers each year, rather than waiting until 2017. Indeed, the Liberal Democrats should reflect carefully on what they have really achieved in this process, because if this emergency legislation is passed, not only will we be back where we started—round the Houses, through two new laws and back again—but we will have restored all the same security powers, but with fewer checks and balances in place than we had when we started with control orders.

Instead of amending or withdrawing the Bill in the face of these problems, the Government have tied themselves in knots because they are still in thrall to their irresponsible pre-election promises. Legislation that began as a political fudge now looks more like treacle. This is not a responsible approach to national security, and nor is it a responsible approach to Parliament. I hope that the decisions that the Home Secretary and the House are taking tonight do not prove dangerous, but on the basis of the evidence and expert advice that we have, the Opposition do not believe that it is right to take the risk. We will not be supporting the Bill on Third Reading tonight.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Public Disorder

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

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

We gather today in sober circumstances, when the scenes on the streets of Britain’s cities have disturbed and appalled us all: burning buildings, looting, beatings, smashing windows, setting cars on fire, with shop owners fearful for their livelihoods and residents fearful for their very lives. City dwellers, who have been proud of regeneration and the reclamation of the streets as urban crime fell, suddenly feel afraid to walk outside their doors.

Yesterday, I talked to a woman in West Bromwich outside her shop. It is a small shop, which she staffs alone. Two of her neighbours were also small business women running their own high street shops. On Tuesday afternoon, those women were terrified by gangs who tore down that high street, throwing bricks and setting a van alight outside the sweet shop on the corner. Yesterday, they were back in their shops—they work hard—but they were afraid. The jeweller’s opposite had decided not to open at all. The security and confidence in going about their daily lives that they normally took for granted had been destroyed.

We have all been horrified by the extent of criminality—the opportunistic looting, the aggression, the greed, the lack of respect for people, property, community or the law—that we saw in those involved over a series of nights. However, we must not let that blind us to the heroism, bravery and determination of communities to support law and order and to stand against the violence and the chaos.

In particular, I want to join the Home Secretary in paying tribute to those police officers who have worked so hard to face up to the criminals and restore order. Many have been out on the streets working 17 or 18-hour days, standing up to baying mobs. Officers have come from throughout the country into cities to help, and specials and police community support officers have been doing everything they can. We should pay tribute to their bravery and to that of the fire and other emergency services.

We should also pay tribute to those in our communities who have worked hard to prevent violence from escalating: the thousands who have joined clean-up campaigns; the people who are helping the police now, reporting the neighbour who has suddenly got three new tellies; and those who are reaching out to young people to prevent them from getting drawn into criminal activity. We should recognise that millions of young people across Britain were also deeply appalled by the violence of a minority. They reject the criminal action that we have seen.

All our thoughts will also be with the family and friends of those who have died. I particularly want to send condolences, as the Home Secretary has done, to the families of the three young men in Birmingham who were killed in the early hours of yesterday morning in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood). She has told me how much those young men were loved and how devastating their loss is to their friends, families and communities. Special tribute must go to Tariq Jahan, who stood before the public, just hours after losing his son Haroon, to appeal for calm. He said:

“'Today we stand here to plead with all the youth to remain calm, for our communities to stand united.”

That was the sentiment of a man and a family in their darkest hour, which has resonated—and should—throughout the country.

It was a disgrace to see literally thousands of British citizens, many of them not yet even old enough to vote, ripping through our urban fabric, but standing against them now are not just thousands of British police officers, but millions of British people, who love their cities and towns, and who support their communities and the rule of law. That is what has been so shocking and disturbing for city dwellers over the past few nights: the fear that the rule of law, which we so often take for granted, could suddenly seem to be ripped up. Those women in West Bromwich whom I talked to yesterday need the confidence to keep their businesses open and to be able to lock up at night and walk the streets home to their families in safety. People have a right to feel safe in their homes and safe on their streets. Maintaining respect for the rule of law is a fundamental part of our democracy and why we as democrats in this House all stand to support it now. Ultimately, it is about respect for other people—for their safety and their livelihoods.

That is why we now support the Government and the Home Secretary in their work to restore order to our streets and normality to our communities. I know that the Home Secretary has been deeply worried and concerned about these events from the start. I know that she called my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on Sunday to express her concern and that she returned to the Home Office on Monday. I commend her for doing so, and for her early grasp of the seriousness of the violence. We support her and the Prime Minister in their determination to restore order to Britain’s streets. As other Members have said, it is important that we come together in this House to condemn the criminality that we have seen. There is no excuse for the violence, destruction and theft, putting lives as well as livelihoods at risk. The perpetrators must take responsibility and face the consequences of what they have done.

The Government were right to convene Cobra, were right to recall Parliament and are right to support the police in the action that they need to take. Thankfully, last night was relatively calm, and we have seen progress being made. However, Ministers will also know that it is not sufficient to restore calm for a night or a week. Our cities cannot afford for these problems to simmer and bubble, and then to spill over again in a week or month, or when the next big public event takes place. We need a clear strategy for tackling this violence throughout the summer and beyond. That is the task for Parliament now: not just to condemn, but to debate the action that must be taken.

That means, first, support for strong action through the police and the courts, and considering the powers that the police and the courts have. More than 1,500 people have been arrested so far, and that is rising all the time. Those who committed criminal acts must face the full force of the law. The Home Secretary was right to show her support for robust police action as well. I welcome the all-night sittings of the London courts to ensure that charges can be swiftly brought. I welcome too the use of CCTV, which has played a powerful role in identifying the culprits, and the use of dispersal orders and other powers to intervene fast, rather than waiting for disorder to take hold. We also support looking further at the issues of face coverings and curfews.

However, those now in government have in the past criticised the use and the existence of many of the powers concerned, previously voting against many measures on face coverings and now, in the Protection of Freedoms Bill, making things harder for the police, including on CCTV. I particularly ask the Home Secretary to look again at her proposals to introduce considerable additional layers of new bureaucracy for the police and councils who want to introduce CCTV. I hope that she will think again. As she does so, she may also want to consider looking again at plans to ban antisocial behaviour orders.

[Mr Burrowes]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. I wanted to intervene when she was being particularly measured in her response, which I welcome. Will she dissociate herself from the ill-judged comments by the former London Mayor, who sought to put the blame for what happened on the streets of London on Government actions?

[Yvette Cooper]

No, that is not what Ken Livingstone was saying. He has been very clear that those who have committed criminal acts need to take responsibility and to feel the full force of the law.

Let me add a word of caution to the Government briefing on water cannon and baton rounds. The perception in the newspapers has been that it was only the Prime Minister’s intervention that has made possible the use of water cannon and baton rounds, and the Home Secretary seemed to suggest something similar in her statement today. However, it is important to be clear that the police already had the power to use baton rounds or to ask police in Northern Ireland for the use of their water cannon. That is an operational matter for the police, not a political judgment for Ministers. The Home Secretary will know that the ACPO head, one of the few chief constables to have used water cannon, has made it clear today that those options are open to senior officers but would not have been useful in the particular circumstances that the police faced.

The Home Secretary has rightly backed the police when they need to be able take robust action, but I hope that she will also—as part of that backing—affirm that the police are able to make independent operational decisions based on the individual circumstances that they face and that politicians are not trying to direct the police on issues as important as the use of water cannons and baton rounds. Fundamental to the rule of law that we are now working so hard to sustain is the principle of an impartial, professional police service, involving policing by consent, and that must be preserved.

I would also caution against any consideration of the use of the Army to play a policing role. If we have enough police, we do not need the troops. They have their own important job to do.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Lady not agree that while of course the police have discretion to use water cannon and baton rounds, it is very important for our political leaders to articulate their support? We must not fall into the trap that her Government did when Ministers in the Ministry of Defence failed to give backing to troops doing very difficult jobs in very difficult circumstances. It is important that Ministers back the actions of our police.

[Yvette Cooper]

I simply disagree that when we were in government we failed to back our troops in difficult situations. We were very clear always to back the troops in the very difficult job that they did.

It is right to back the police and be very clear that we will support them when they have to take very difficult and robust decisions, but some of the briefings to the newspapers suggested that the police did not have the powers to use water cannon or baton rounds, and that they had them only because the Prime Minister had stepped in to authorise them and to encourage their use. This issue needs to be carefully handled. The police have always had those powers and it is right that they should use them in operational situations where that is appropriate and they judge that they are needed. We should back them in such circumstances, but I caution that we should be clear that it is an operational judgment for those police officers, not a matter of direction by politicians.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. If these horrendous events were to occur in the era of police and crime commissioners, is she confident that chief constables would have the power to make such decisions should a baying public demand different action from the commissioners? Would chief constables be able to withstand that pressure?

[Yvette Cooper]

Senior police officers whom I have spoken to are concerned about the possibility that their activities will be constrained or inhibited by inappropriate intervention by American-style police and crime commissioners in operational decisions. It is important to note that the operational independence guidance has not yet been agreed between the police and the Government.

[Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister rightly made great play of the ability of the Metropolitan police and, for example, the Greater Manchester police to draw on officers from other forces, but it is not clear to me whether it would still be possible to move police around the country following the introduction of political commissioners. The pressures against it would be enormous.

[Yvette Cooper]

The Met’s ability to put 16,000 police officers on the streets of London depended partly on mutual aid. It depended on the ability to draw on officers from other parts of the country, which is a hugely important principle. It is part of our policing model, and it has been effective. However, as my hon. Friend says, we should consider whether a chief constable and a police and crime commissioner campaigning to be re-elected by the local community will put local policing before their obligations to neighbouring areas that may face greater pressures. That is another major concern that has been raised with me.

This issue raises serious questions about resources that need to be addressed. Like the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, I have asked police representatives whether they need more powers to do their job in the present circumstances. One senior officer put it very bluntly: he said that the problem in the early stages had been not a lack of powers, but a lack of cops. As the Home Secretary has confirmed, there were not enough police officers on the streets when the violence started. No one anticipated the scale of the violence that our cities would face. In some instances, the police did not step in to make arrests because they did not have enough officers out there to do so while also containing the public order problems that confronted them.

Last night, again, the Met put 16,000 officers on the streets. That is more than five times the normal likely strength in the capital, and it worked, but it came at a cost. Thousands of officers from other areas must be paid for, as must the cancelling of leave. The last couple of nights have probably cost the Met alone millions of pounds, and we need some clarity about the Government’s position. The Prime Minister said that, under Victorian legislation, the costs of riot compensation would be borne not by police budgets but by the Treasury reserve, and I welcome that announcement. However, the Prime Minister also appeared to say, in answer to a question asked by Members, that the Treasury would stand behind all the extra operational policing costs as well. I hope that that is correct, because the Home Secretary seemed to say something very different. She appeared to suggest that the pressure would sit on the reserves of the police authorities and forces involved.

I shall be happy to give way if the Home Secretary wishes to clarify the disparity between her comments and those of the Prime Minister. I hope she will agree that the costs of policing unprecedented riots and criminality must not necessitate cuts in the very neighbourhood and community police whom we need in order to prevent further criminal action.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

First I want to give the Home Secretary an opportunity to clarify the position in relation to the immediate additional operational costs that the Met and other forces will incur. [Interruption.] The Home Secretary says, from a sedentary position, that she has already clarified that. The Prime Minister may need to correct the record, because he certainly gave me the impression, and I think he gave many other Members the impression, that the Treasury would stand behind any of the additional operational costs faced by the Met and other police forces as a result of this unprecedented criminal activity. Those costs could well be considerable, because we do not know how long the police activity will need to continue. Will it continue through the weekend or into next week, and how will it be paid for? Will it have to be paid for by police budgets which are already extremely stretched and already under pressure? Will normal, routine policing be overstretched as a result of the Government’s decision not to fund these extra, additional and exceptional costs?

[Keith Vaz]

The Prime Minister was answering a question that I had put to him, and I was very clear that what was meant was if a police authority dipped into the contingency, the additional costs would be reimbursed to it. I think that what the Home Secretary just said in answer to me was that an authority would have to make an application for that, but she tended to support what the Prime Minister said. That was my understanding; is it also my right hon. Friend’s understanding?

[Yvette Cooper]

The Home Secretary will be immensely grateful to my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs for desperately trying to create some consistency between what the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have said. I will certainly give the Home Secretary the opportunity to confirm whether my right hon. Friend is correct and in what circumstances the police forces will be able to get additional help, because I am afraid she has not clarified that. I am sure my right hon. Friend would make an excellent Home Secretary, but I think the current Home Secretary may need to answer his questions, and mine as well. I still await the Home Secretary’s answer, but she remains silent.

[Christopher Pincher]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman on the Government Back Benches, to see whether he can provide clarity where the Home Secretary still refuses to do so.

[Christopher Pincher]

The right hon. Lady asks the Home Secretary to clarify a point, but may I ask her to clarify a point about her earlier comments on Ken Livingstone? On the BBC, Mr Livingstone said that the Government’s policies were creating social division, bringing conflict between the communities and the police. Does she support that point of view, or will she condemn it?

[Yvette Cooper]

Ken Livingstone was very clear about the need for people to take responsibility for their actions and for those involved in recent events to be punished. He was very clear about there being no excuse.

I have to say to the Home Secretary that we still do not have an answer. In the discussions I have had with the Met police, they have expressed concern that the additional cost of the extra policing required as a result of this criminality will come not from the Treasury reserve, but from their own reserve. Like the reserves of many police authorities across the country, the Met reserve is extremely stretched as a result of the police cuts. If this situation continues over many days, I am deeply concerned that the Met may end up having either to reduce the level of policing on the streets before it is ready to do so or to make cuts elsewhere in its budgets on routine policing. The Home Secretary has still not given any answer as to what she would do to support the Met police and other police forces. She really does need to think again on this and provide more information to the House, and to police forces and communities across the country about what support they will get.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I must, I am afraid, take the right hon. Lady back to what other members of her party have said, and seek clarity on that. The hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) tweeted that

“the Tories are back alright. Why is it the Tories never take responsibility for the consequences of their party’s disastrous policies”,

with the hash tag “tottenham”, but the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) has said:

“Cuts don’t turn you into a thief.”

Which of them does the right hon. Lady agree with?

[Yvette Cooper]

I noticed the hon. Gentleman’s nerves when holding his piece of paper to read out what was clearly another Whips’ question, but I say to hon. Members that serious issues need to be addressed in this House about what the Government are doing, and what this House should be doing, to address the serious criminality that is taking place.

Let us deal with the wider problems this raises about resources for our police and the views that are being expressed to us—and, I am sure, to Members on the Government Benches in their constituencies—about the scale and pace of the policing cuts across the country. The Prime Minister claimed that he was making only 6% cuts, but he used cash figures, not real figures, when he knows that inflation is high and that the cuts set out in the spending review—according to the Treasury’s figures, not mine—were for a 20% cut in the Government’s police budget. The independent Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary report makes it clear that 16,000 police officers are going as a result—the equivalent of every one of the police officers on London’s streets last night will go.

Any of us who were on London’s streets last night will know quite how many police officers were on the streets of our capital. We have heard the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary tell us that front-line, visible policing will not be hit, but, with respect, it is being hit already. The HMIC has confirmed that front-line officers will be lost this year. The Prime Minister himself used a figure of 7,000 officers in back-office jobs, but 16,000 will be cut.

We agree that the police need to make savings and efficiencies, that they need to do more to get police officers out on to the streets and that they can sustain sensible reductions in their budgets, but the cuts set out by the Government go too far, too fast, and we do not agree that now is the time to cut 16,000 police officers across the country.

[Miss McIntosh]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the hon. Lady, if she can tell me whether she supports cutting 16,000 police officers at a time such as this.

[Miss McIntosh]

I think the right hon. Lady would agree that recent events have united those of us living in the north and the south and in rural and urban areas. May I take her back to the time of the previous Government, who introduced a raft of community support officers with no power of arrest and had a load of police officers with the power of arrest filling in forms? Does she think that that was the best use of police resources at that time?

[Yvette Cooper]

I think it was right to increase the number of police officers and to introduce police community support officers. PCSOs have done an excellent job across the country, working with police officers and communities, and have been an important part of addressing some of the tensions, concerns and difficulties that we have faced in the past few days.

Today, the Prime Minister again ruled out reopening the police budget. I implore him to think again. The newspapers report that Ministers now have doubts, and I urge him to listen to them.

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Lady is making much of a point about police cuts that was made by a number of her right hon. and hon. Friends during questions to the Prime Minister. Will she clarify for us the Opposition’s policy on police cuts? Do the Opposition still support police cuts of 12%, or do they want a review of or a moratorium on that? Will she guarantee police numbers, or will she not?

[Yvette Cooper]

The Home Secretary will know, because we have had this debate in the House many times, that we believe it is important to give the police enough resources to sustain the number of police officers. We maintain that position now.

The HMIC gave its view that the police could sustain a reduction of about 12% in their budget over the course of the Parliament. The former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), also said that his assessment when he was in office was that 12% could be sustained over the course of the Parliament and that that would allow the police to sustain the police numbers that we believe are so important. Instead, the Government are cutting by 20% and the steepest cuts are in the first two years. They are cutting more in the first few years than we would have done over the course of a Parliament. That is why the police, despite making immense efficiencies and taking immense actions to deliver savings, are finding that the number of police officers is being cut. That includes some of the most experienced police officers in the country, who are being forced to take early retirement against their wishes—officers whom we need and whose experience and contributions we need now.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I ask the hon. Members who are standing in a frenzy to listen. If they will not listen to the members of their Government who are clearly starting to have doubts, or to Opposition Members who have been saying for many months how dangerous it is to make such large cuts in the policing budget, will they at least listen to their constituents, who are deeply concerned about the decisions that they are taking and the scale of the policing cuts that the Government have announced? The public know that more officers on the streets of the capital have made them safer, and they do not want those cuts now. The Liberal Democrats have raised an interesting point: if the Government called a halt to American-style police and crime commissioners, that alone would save £100 million that could go back into policing and restoring confidence.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Given the right hon. Lady’s great concern about the number of police officers, will she join me in congratulating Cambridgeshire constabulary? The chief constable has committed to ensuring that he has more police constables at the end of this Parliament than at the beginning, and he is already recruiting. Will she congratulate the constabulary on that, as well as on its performance over the last few days?

[Yvette Cooper]

The HMIC’s independent assessment of Cambridgeshire’s position is that it will lose around 80 officers over the course of the Parliament and the spending review. It will need to have a discussion with the HMIC, which has carried out a detailed assessment, not simply of what will happen in the first two years, but of the consequences over the course of the Parliament.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I need to make progress, because hon. Members all want to make serious points. This is a time for us to have a debate about the events of the past few days, and I want to give Members across the House the opportunity to speak.

We need to look at the wider action that is essential for maintaining order, and to see why so many people became involved in rioting and criminal action. Boots on the streets are not enough to sustain safe communities for the long term; that requires all of us to do our bit to stand up for law and order. It requires parents to ask where their children are, and where that new pair of trainers has come from. It requires teachers, neighbours, classmates, friends and family, social workers, youth workers and the neighbourhood police—each one of us—to ask what we can do to stop people getting caught up in gangs or frenzies of criminal activity.

We should ask why some people had so little respect for the rule of law and for others in society, and why some people felt that they had nothing to lose by breaking the law. We should look at respect, responsibility and aspirations, but asking those questions is not about excusing individuals—quite the reverse. Nothing excuses the way people behaved. It is not about avoiding justice or appropriate punishment; those engaged in criminal acts must take personal responsibility for them, and they must feel the full force of the law. It is about preventing further crime and disorder. We will have that debate in more detail in future. I would caution against over-simplistic approaches. I agree that more should be done on parenting, but that will be harder if family intervention projects and Sure Start are cut. I agree that more needs to be done about gang culture, which has been getting worse.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

South Wales, and Wales as a whole, has been fortunate in experiencing no rioting. In fact, the devolved Administrations collectively did not have the experience that England had. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is most important to look at why forces in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland successfully held their communities together and have, in partnership with their communities, avoided the riots that England has had, despite south Wales facing £47 million of cuts over this Parliament?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about why some areas fell victim to looting and criminality on such a scale, and others did not. A series of important questions needs to be properly addressed. The Home Secretary raised some of them—for example, the speed and nature of the police response, and the role of social media. That is why we Labour Members believe that there is a case for a special commission of inquiry that can ask the questions that a Select Committee might not be able to ask because of its departmental remit. That needs to be properly done to give those communities that have been most affected a stronger voice in this debate about what has happened and what needs to happen now.

I welcome what the Home Secretary has announced about action on gang culture. London Members have been warning for some time about the problems that it is creating and the fact that it has been increasing. Most recently, my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) did so in her Adjournment debate, and the Home Secretary will know that other Members have done so, too. The Home Secretary needs to move fast on this. In June 2010—14 months ago—an independent report by the independent inspectors commissioned by the Youth Justice Board on the rise of gang culture was published. It said that a national strategy to deal with gang culture among under-18s was urgently needed. It set out specific measures for the police, the prisons and others. That was 14 months ago.

In March, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) asked for the Government’s response, but the record in Hansard shows that the Government were still considering how to respond. Clearly, it is a concern that there have been delays in responding to the report, but we have the recommendations available now. I urge the Home Secretary to implement them urgently and to use them as the basis for further work that I hope we can support. I hope that action on gang culture is something that we can agree on across the House. Indeed, I believe that there is much that we can agree on, including action in the criminal justice system and support for the police.

There are still four areas in which we ask the Government to think again. The first is setting up a proper commission of inquiry to look at the wider problems and why the riots happened. Secondly, they must look at the immediate resource pressures faced by the Met and other forces as a result of policing the rioting and criminal activity. Thirdly, there is the wider issue of resources and the serious need to reopen the policing spending review. Fourthly, they should make it easier, not harder, for the police and councils to use CCTV, which has been so important.

I began by saying that these are sober circumstances. We have seen awful events. But we cannot just despair that nothing is to be done, and we must not. When street crime became a serious problem 10 years ago, we seemed to face an epidemic. Action was taken by the Government and police. Prevention work was done and work was undertaken through the courts. It made a difference, and street crime came down. It is possible to tackle criminality, to work together to bring crime down. That is what must happen. We have seen crime fall; we must do so again.

People I spoke to after the rioting and the violence told me not that they are ashamed of their country but that they are still proud of our communities, our towns and our cities. The shop owners to whom I spoke had posters in their windows saying “I love Sandwell”. People want to stand together to support their communities and to stand against this awful violence and crime. We now in this House must stand together with them to do so.

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In view of the level of interest in our debate, and after discussion through the usual channels, it is my intention at 6 o’clock not to move the Business of the House motion in the name of the Prime Minister, which would have terminated our proceedings at 7. It is my intention to move an alternative motion to enable us to continue until 8 o’clock to enable another 12 Members to take part in this debate.

Metropolitan Police Service

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

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

With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on the resignations of Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates, the Metropolitan police investigation into phone-hacking, and allegations of police corruption. I apologise to the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), for the late receipt of the statement. As I am sure she will appreciate, events have been changing rather rapidly through the day.

As the House will know, last night Sir Paul Stephenson resigned as Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. As I told him last night, I am sorry that he took that decision. He has led the Met through difficult times, and, although current circumstances show there are still serious issues to be addressed, the Met is stronger operationally today than it was when he took over. I will turn to those difficult circumstances in a moment, but first I wish to update the House on today’s developments and on the next steps for the Metropolitan police.

I have already started work with the Mayor of London and the Metropolitan police to arrange an orderly transition and the appointment of a new commissioner. I have agreed that Sir Paul Stephenson will leave his post as swiftly as possible. In the meantime he will remain commissioner, in post at New Scotland Yard and in operational command. Sir Paul will be replaced by Tim Godwin, who will again become acting commissioner, a role that he filled very effectively during Sir Paul’s illness between December and April this year. With Tim Godwin as acting commissioner, the Mayor and I are clear that additional resilience is essential from outside the Metropolitan police. I am therefore pleased to announce that Bernard Hogan-Howe has agreed to take on the responsibilities of deputy commissioner on a temporary basis. We are seeking to expedite the process for selecting and appointing the next commissioner.

The House will know that within the last couple of hours Assistant Commissioner John Yates has also resigned. I want to put on record my gratitude to John Yates for the work that he has done, while I have been Home Secretary, to develop and improve counter-terrorism policing in London and, indeed, across the whole country. I can confirm to the House that Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick will take over his role.

I want hon. Members, Londoners and the whole country to know that the important work of the Met—its national responsibilities such as counter-terrorism operations as well as its policing of our capital city—must and will continue. That important work includes the related investigations Operation Weeting and Operation Elveden.

Operation Weeting, the investigation into phone hacking led by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, is now going through the thousands of pieces of evidence relating to the allegations. Unlike the original investigation into phone hacking, Operation Weeting is proceeding apace, with officers interrogating evidence that was neglected first time round, pursuing new leads, and—as we saw once again at the weekend—making arrests.

Operation Elveden, also led by Sue Akers, is investigating allegations that police officers have received payments from the press in return for information. This investigation has independent oversight by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. At this stage, it is a supervised investigation—which means that the IPCC sets the terms of reference and receives the investigation report—and as soon as individual suspected officers have been identified, IPCC investigators, overseen by an IPCC commissioner, will take over and lead a fully independent investigation of those officers.

In the future, both these matters will be considered by the Leveson inquiry established by the Prime Minister. In the meantime, I can tell the House that Elizabeth Filkin, the former Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, has provisionally agreed to examine the ethical considerations that should in future underpin relationships between the Metropolitan police and the media, how to ensure maximum transparency and public confidence, and to provide advice. The management board of the Met has agreed a new set of guidelines relating to relationships with the media, including recording meetings and hospitality and publication of information on the internet.

These allegations are not, unfortunately, the only recent example of alleged corruption and nepotism in the police, so I can tell the House that I have asked Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary to consider instances of undue influence, inappropriate contractual arrangements and other abuses of power in police relationships with the media and other parties. I have asked HMIC to make recommendations to me about what needs to be done to address that.

There is nothing more important than the public’s trust in the police to do their work without fear or favour, so at moments like this it is natural that people should ask who polices the police. I have already asked Jane Furniss, the chief executive of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, whether she has the power and the resources to get done the immediate work at hand. She has assured me that she does, but additional resources will be made available to the IPCC if they are needed.

I can also tell the House that I have commissioned work to consider whether the IPCC needs further powers, including whether it should be given the power to question civilian witnesses during the course of its investigations. Given that the IPCC can at present only investigate specific allegations against individual officers, I have also asked whether the commission needs to have a greater role in investigating allegations about institutional failings of a force or forces.

Finally, I want to say one last word about the future of the Metropolitan police. The Met is the largest police force in the country, and has important national responsibilities beyond its role policing our capital. The next Metropolitan Police Commissioner will lead thousands of fine police officers, community support officers and staff, the great majority of whom have spent their careers dedicated to protecting the public, often at risk to their own safety. Just three nights ago, hon. Members will know that in Croydon an unarmed Metropolitan police officer was shot as he tried to arrest a suspect. I know that the whole House will agree with me that it is for the sake of the many thousands of honourable police officers and staff, as well as of the public they serve, that we must get to the bottom of all these allegations. Only then will we be able to ensure the integrity of our police and public confidence in them to do their vital work. I commend the statement to the House.

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

I thank the Home Secretary for her statement, and also for her apology; I understand the timing pressures she faced. May I also join her in paying tribute to the Metropolitan police officer who was harmed during the course of duty in Croydon?

The Home Secretary rightly paid tribute to the work of Sir Paul Stephenson. He has done excellent work in London, backing neighbourhood policing and taking action to cut crime in the capital. The Home Secretary also recognised the vital work of John Yates on counter-terrorism. She referred to Sir Paul Stephenson’s decision to resign. It was an honourable decision, to protect the ongoing operational work of the Met from the ongoing speculation, but his departure raises very serious questions for the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister.

Yesterday, Home Office Ministers told the press that the Home Secretary would make a statement today on her concerns about the appointment of Neil Wallis. Today she has been completely silent on that issue in this House. The truth is that the Met commissioner and the head of counter-terrorism have now gone because of questions about this crisis and about the appointment of the former deputy editor of the News of the World, yet the Prime Minister is still refusing to answer questions or apologise for his appointment of the editor of the News of the World. The judgment of the Met has been called into serious question for appointing Neil Wallis, but so has the judgment of the Prime Minister for appointing Neil Wallis’s boss, Andy Coulson. People will look at this and think there is one rule for the police and one for the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister agreed with that this morning. He said this morning:

“The situation in the Metropolitan Police Service is really quite different to the situation in the Government, not least because the issues that the Metropolitan police are looking at, the issues around them, have had a direct bearing on public confidence in the police inquiry into the News of the World”.

But the Prime Minister runs the country. The issues that he is looking at and the judgments that he makes have a direct bearing on public confidence in the Government’s ability to sort this crisis out.

The Home Secretary is right to have had serious concerns about the appointment of Neil Wallis, but it would have been better if she had told us what they were today. She is also right that she should have been told about the potential conflict of interest in the Met. This does raise serious questions for the force, but the Met commissioner has said that he could not tell her or her boss because of the Prime Minister’s relationship with Andy Coulson. So how did it come to this? The most senior police officer in the country did not feel able to tell the Home Secretary about a potential conflict of interest for the force because of the Prime Minister’s compromised relationship with Andy Coulson—it was an ongoing relationship, as they met at Chequers in March, months after the new police investigation began. This morning, she refused to defend the appointment of Andy Coulson and today the London Mayor refused to defend the appointment of Andy Coulson. They all seem to have forgotten rather quickly what Andy Coulson used to say—they are “all in this together”.

The Home Secretary has been absent from this crisis, despite the serious allegations that have been made about phone hacking potentially affecting criminal investigations, the serious questions for policing and the growing cloud over the national and international reputation of British policing as a result of this crisis. She has said nothing and done nothing for two weeks. We welcome many of the announcements that she made today, but they are precisely the things that we called for last week.

I called last week for five things, three of which the Home Secretary has now done. First, I called for new standards for the Met to govern the relationship between officers and the press. Secondly, I called for a review by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary into the wider concerns about leaks of information, payments for the press and corruption in other forces too. Thirdly, I called for work to strengthen the Independent Police Complaints Commission and an independent complaints procedure to deal with failed investigations in future. We welcome those, just as we welcome her agreement to the judicial inquiry that we called for too, but she should have announced two further things that we also called for.

First, the Home Secretary needs to call for immediate openness and transparency across the Met in respect of all the dealings between senior officers and members of the press, including those at the News of the World—that needs to cover private as well as public meetings. Secondly, she needs to review her decision to go forward with elected police and crime commissioners. The nearest that Britain has to an elected police chief is the London Mayor, and that did not stop the problems at the Met—instead it made them worse. Boris Johnson described the phone-hacking allegations as “codswallop” and said that it

“looks like a politically motivated put-up job by the Labour party”.

What backing does the Home Secretary think Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates would have expected from the Mayor if they had decided to reopen an investigation that he had described as “politically motivated”?

Instead of their tackling this problem, we have had an AWOL Home Secretary, a “codswallop” Mayor and a compromised Prime Minister. There is a problem—it is one of leadership. The work of police officers across the country is too important to be tarnished by her failure to get a grip of the problems now. The Home Secretary will not answer all the questions, so I leave her with just one. She knows the importance of leadership to get the country through this crisis and she has criticised the misjudgment of the Met in taking on Neil Wallis, so will she now apologise to the House for the Prime Minister’s misjudgment in taking on Andy Coulson, so that the Government can now move forward, exercise some leadership untarnished and sort the crisis out now?

[Mrs May]

I say to the shadow Home Secretary that from the response she has just given one could have been forgiven for thinking that the Prime Minister had not been anywhere near the House of Commons in the past week, but he stood at this Dispatch Box last week, he answered questions in this House, he answered all the points that the shadow Home Secretary has made and he will be in this House again on Wednesday.

The right hon. Lady asked a long list of questions. She asked why I had not said anything about openness and transparency across the Met, as I had promised to. I made specific reference in my statement to the management board decisions taken by the Metropolitan police to publish details of meetings held by senior officers with members of the press, and they will be available on the internet.

The right hon. Lady asked about the difference between the Met and the Government. Of course there is a difference. The Metropolitan police were investigating allegations of wrongdoing at the News of the World, and it is absolutely right that there should be a line between the investigators and the investigated. The issue I raised with Sir Paul Stephenson—which she is aware of because it was made public last week—was the fact that I had concerns that he had not informed us about a conflict of interest. The police in this country should be able to act against crime and criminals without fear or favour, but when they think there is a conflict of interest that should be made transparent.

The right hon. Lady asked about the impact of elected police commissioners. I think everything that has happened shows not that we should be going slow on reform of the police but that we need to ensure that we reform the police.

We then have the extraordinary situation in that the shadow Home Secretary appears in one breath to be saying that I have been absent and doing absolutely nothing and in the other breath saying that I am doing everything she asked for. She cannot simultaneously claim that I am doing nothing and doing something—that is the have-your-cake-and-eat-it opportunism of Opposition politics to which I note that both she and the shadow Chancellor belong.

Finally, let me remind the shadow Home Secretary of a few things—[Interruption.]

Police (Detention and Bail) Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The answer to the question about the written note is that we were waiting for the judge who had made the decision to produce his own written judgment, so that it would be absolutely clear to us what we would need to interpret. What Greater Manchester police were dealing with was the oral judgment that had been delivered on 19 May. As I have just said, Mr Justice McCombe himself indicated that he did not think that the consequences would be especially severe. Only after further consideration did Greater Manchester police conclude that it would be necessary to appeal against the judgment.

It is important to understand that it was not simply a question of looking at the legal judgment. It was for the police to consider, in operational terms, whether they were able to work within that judgment. When the written judgment was made available to them, the operational implications became clear. It is those operational implications that give cause for concern, and they are the reason for the Bill that we are introducing today.

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

The Home Secretary has been dealing with issues relating to the emergency legislation. Will she tell us why the Attorney-General did not immediately join Greater Manchester police in applying for a stay of judgment as well as joining them in applying for an appeal?

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Lady has already raised a number of questions relating to this matter, including the question of the stay of judgment. She has claimed that there was a considerable delay before we came to the House, but, as I said earlier, one hour and two minutes after we received the formal and final judgment from ACPO on the basis of advice from the two QCs whom it had been consulting, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice made his statement here. As for her previous question about why the Home Office did not join the police in requesting a stay, the answer is simple: we had no locus standi. We were not part of the initial legal proceedings, and it was not open to us to be party to that request.

Let me add—just in case the right hon. Lady intends to ask about this—that she has implied in the past that if Greater Manchester police had applied for a stay earlier, a different decision would have been made and everything might have been okay. However, it is now clear, both from the decision that the Supreme Court issued earlier this week and from what has been said by leading legal commentators such as Joshua Rozenberg, that it is not even certain that the Supreme Court has the power to order a stay in relation to such an appeal.

[Yvette Cooper]

Did the Attorney-General consider joining the case for both the appeal and the stay as soon as he was made aware of the position? In the end the Supreme Court asked him to do so, but did he consider doing so as soon as he was told, and when was he told?

[Mrs May]

I thought I had made the position clear to the right hon. Lady. Those who were party to the initial legal proceedings were able to grant a stay, and Greater Manchester police were able to make a decision—which they did at a certain point in the timetable—on whether to apply for one.

If the right hon. Lady is trying to play party political games with the question of the application for a stay, she should consider the comments that have been made and the decision of the Supreme Court, which, as I have just said, suggests that there is considerable doubt not about the timetable for a stay, but whether the court even has the power to order one in this case. The right hon. Lady should think about that very carefully.

I think it important that the Home Affairs Committee has had an opportunity to scrutinise the Bill and also, fortuitously, an opportunity to ask me questions about it during the evidence session that I held with the Committee on Tuesday. I also note the support of leading legal figures such as Professor Michael Zander—who was mentioned earlier—and Liberty, which has said:

“Liberty supports the Government’s intention to amend the law as proposed. In our view the proposed reform is clarificatory and would do nothing more than return the law to the original intention of Parliament and the way in which it has been interpreted—by judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers—for the best part of 25 years.”

I could not agree more.

--- Later in debate ---

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

We should take the opportunity to pay tribute to the victims of the 7/7 bombings and to their families, as the anniversary is today.

The Labour party supports this legislation, as it is needed to overturn the judgment made on 19 May in the case of Greater Manchester police and Paul Hookway. The Home Secretary has set out the judgment’s implications for policing practice and the difficulties of suddenly treating time spent on bail in the same way as time spent in custody, which was clearly not Parliament’s intention when the legislation was drawn up and is clearly not the intention of this House today. The judgment does cause serious problems for policing operations, for ongoing investigations and, potentially, for the delivery of justice and, most seriously of all, for the protection of victims and witnesses. We should pay tribute to the chief constables, the custody sergeants, the other officers and police staff who are having to deal with this situation as the professionals that they are.

The situation does mean that the police are not able to recall people from police bail if they have been bailed for more than four days, unless they have new evidence that allows them to re-arrest. It also means that the police are constrained in enforcing bail conditions if the period of up to four days from the initial arrest has elapsed—that has serious implications, especially as 80,000 people are on police bail right now.

Currently, the police will routinely bail people in ongoing investigations but may need them to return to the police station for further interviews, even where there is no new evidence since the original arrest. They might need them to return for an identity parade or for clarification of a victim’s statement, pending advice from the Crown Prosecution Service. There are many such cases where, in practice, there is no new evidence since the time of the original arrest.

The situation also raises serious issues in terms of the application of bail conditions, particularly in domestic violence cases, as these conditions can include important protection for the victim. Such conditions could include someone being prohibited from going to their ex-wife’s workplace, to the family home or to their children’s school. Bail conditions are an extremely important part of protecting the safety of victims and witnesses, and if they cannot be enforced, protection is put at risk.

[Hazel Blears]

My right hon. Friend will have heard the response that I received from the Home Secretary. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, if conditions are appropriate to be applied to those suspected of involvement in serious crime, it is illogical and inconsistent if those same conditions are not at least to be considered and to be available to be applied to those suspected—to those “reasonably believed”, under the new test in legislation—to be involved in terrorism-related activity?

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely important point, as we are rightly discussing this measure because of the seriousness of the situation and the need to protect people. In police bail cases, that need often applies in respect of particular individuals—victims and witnesses. In the kinds of terrorism cases that she is talking about, the risk may be much wider and may involve a much wider group of people, so we would expect that additional and even greater protection might be needed. It raises concerns if the security services and police do not have the ability and the powers to provide that protection. She is right in what she says and I know that she is continuing to raise that issue as part of the debate on the other legislation.

[Dr Huppert]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that the logical consequence of what the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) was just saying is that we should be trying to use police bail conditions to deal with terrorist cases, as far as is possible and given sufficient safeguards?

[Yvette Cooper]

There are cases where police bail can, of course, be used and there ought to be cases where we should explore that. Our view remains that there are also cases where that is not possible, which is why we need control orders, the son of control orders or whatever we are calling these things now—we need some other kind of safeguard. Clearly, where more traditional aspects of the criminal justice system can be used instead, they should of course be used. Control orders are always a last resort and should be used only in those circumstances.

We have seen some worrying cases across the country, and this goes to the heart of why emergency legislation is needed now. Hon. Members are right to say that we should bring in emergency legislation only on the basis of very serious consideration; we should never do this lightly and there are always risks involved. However, Parliament also needs to balance the risks, and there are risks to the public and to the course of justice if we do not legislate now.

The National Association of Probation Officers has warned of a case where a suspect who is already on a 12-month suspended sentence for assault and who has five previous convictions for offences against the same partner was arrested again for assault. He was bailed while drugs found upon his person were sent off for analysis, but that may take a week and the 96 hours have expired. His victims are deemed at physical risk and it is hugely important, in those circumstances, that bail conditions should be able to apply. Another case involves the harassment of a former girlfriend by a suspect who has been arrested and released on bail. His phone and computer were taken for analysis, which takes time—far more time than 96 hours. He is not due back on bail until later this month, but his conditions are not enforceable if the current legal state of affairs persists. I have been told of other cases by police officers, including that of someone arrested as he was accused of sexual assault on women he was supposed to help in the course of his work. Further investigations are under way, but his bail conditions included a requirement that he should have no unsupervised contact with women in his professional capacity and, again, those conditions cannot now be enforced.

In many cases, bail conditions were used to give people a time and date for returning to the police station for further interview once further evidence was expected to be in place. Now, even though that further evidence might subsequently have been gathered, the police will still have to go out to look for the suspect and take that extra time to bring them in. So, in addition to the risks to justice and to the victims, this situation is placing considerable extra burdens on police time and resources, causing additional pressures for them, too.

[Mr Winnick]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful case for the situation that existed prior to the court judgment, and I do not dispute what she is saying in any way, as public safety is absolutely essential and nobody in this House is going to challenge that view. We are dealing with the substance of the matter, so does she not have a concern about the amount of time that a person can be endlessly bailed for as they return to the police station and that happens again? Would it not be far better, as far as is possible, for charges to be brought as quickly as possible where there is sufficient evidence to do so?

[Yvette Cooper]

We are talking about wider issues here and, if I may, I will deal with those later. If my hon. Friend wishes to intervene then, I will be happy to take a further intervention from him. I wish to finish the point that I am making and then deal with his point.

The case for rapid action to resolve the situation is extremely clear. Nevertheless, it is important that we set it out in the House to make it clear to the courts what our view and judgment are. The costs and administrative burdens for the police in trying to manage this interim situation should also not be underestimated. There is also a significant risk that clever defendants or defence lawyers might use that interim period as a way to get off on a technicality, which would mean that justice would not be done, the House and Parliament not having clarified the situation for the police and the courts.

It would be irresponsible for Parliament to wait longer to deal with the situation. It is not possible for Parliament to take the risk of waiting for the Supreme Court hearing on 25 July, as thousands of domestic violence victims alone need the protection of enforceable bail conditions right now, not in several weeks’ time. So we do support the legislation, as I explained in Parliament on a point of order within hours of learning about the issue eight days ago.

However, we should reflect on some genuine concerns. We have not proposed any amendments, even probing ones, because we think that the most important thing today is to get the legislation on to the statute book and to restore the position for the police and crime victims as soon as possible. However, the House should also have concerns about the possibility of the use of endless police bail. There are cases, and there have been cases, where people have been left on police bail, including with conditions, long after another suspect has confessed to the offence. There are other cases where investigations have run dry but action was not taken to end the bail arrangements. Long bail can sometimes mean that delays are allowed to develop, and they eventually become counter-productive in securing justice.

Therefore, we should, in due course, have a wider debate about the appropriateness and proportionality of different lengths of police bail and what safeguards are needed. If Parliament, the Government and the police do not have those debates about what we think is appropriate, we risk the courts making those decisions for us. It is important that the police have the powers and the flexibilities to pursue those investigations, but we need to give them support in doing that, and make sure that that is properly reflected in the arrangements that we have. There are issues to do with the fact that the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 has been amended many times and clarity might be needed on wider matters, too. It would be helpful if the Home Office and ACPO considered more closely when, how and for how long police bail is used and whether the current framework is appropriate or needs amending.

In the meantime, the most important thing is to restore to the police the ability to operate in the way in which they have operated, and with the framework with which they have operated, for several decades.

[Steve McCabe]

I accept my right hon. Friend’s point about not tabling any amendments, but given what she has said about the application of bail conditions, is there not a persuasive argument for having a sunset clause in this emergency legislation so that we deal with the immediate problem but have proper time to debate the issues she mentions?

[Yvette Cooper]

That would have been one way to do it. When the issue came to light last week, we suggested that one option might be to introduce emergency legislation with a sunset clause before considering the subject more widely. The most important thing, given the time we have available, is that the Government have proposed a way to restore the system, and the whole House should support it. I hope that the Government will have further discussions with ACPO about whether any other developments are needed.

As several hon. Members have said, we should never legislate lightly when it takes retrospective effect. Changing the law retrospectively is, in general, undesirable and creates great uncertainty. It threatens natural justice if people end up breaking a law when they did not know of its existence, when it did not exist at the time the act was committed and when they could not have been expected to know that it would exist.

I have thought very carefully about the question and I know that members of the Government have, too. I am clear that a retrospective clause is justified in this case. Indeed, I urged the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice to include a retrospective clause when I discussed the issues with him last Thursday. In this case, we are simply restoring the law to what we in Parliament thought it was, to what we intended it to be and to that which the police, the CPS and others have been following in good faith for many years. We have made clear our intention and so in this period of uncertainty the police, suspects and others should know what Parliament intends. If we had not made our intentions clear, we would have opened the police and victims up to considerable uncertainty about the prospects for individual cases, especially those under investigation at the moment. It would be deeply wrong for a victim to be denied justice and for the offender to escape on a technicality simply because the crime was committed in the limbo period between 19 May and Royal Assent and the police interviews did not comply with the temporary legal position owing to any confusion.

An even more troubling possibility is that historic cases, in which the standard practice was followed in good faith by the police and CPS, could end up being overturned or dragged back through the courts because of the Hookway judgment. In such circumstances, we should legislate retrospectively but we should be clear that we are doing so because we have considered the seriousness of the issue and that we have made the judgment after serious consideration rather than lightly.

I have some concerns about the process and about why we are doing this now, in such a way. I am concerned about the initial judgment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) mentioned the judgment of the judge in Salford, which was confirmed by the High Court judge. Judges, not Parliament, interpret the law and it was the role of the High Court judge to come to a view on what the legislation meant. The fact that the judge came to a new view on the interpretation of the law or a different view from experts, such as Professor Zander QC, is still part of the judicial process. It is possible for us to disagree with the judge’s decision while respecting his constitutional role in making such decisions.

My greatest concern is about the final paragraph of the High Court judge’s judgment, which the Home Secretary quoted. He does not simply interpret the law but makes a practical assessment of the impact of his judgment:

“It seems to me however...the consequences are not as severe as might be feared in impeding police investigations in the vast majority of cases. This is simply because in the usual case a suspect returning on bail will either be released because the evidence is not sufficient to warrant a charge or he will be re-arrested under statutory powers because new evidence has come to light.”

I strongly disagree with that practical assessment and the evidence of cases that the police have to handle at the moment disproves it.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

That does not tally well with the right hon. Lady’s earlier suggestion that the Home Secretary and others have acted in a dilatory fashion, because the judge himself said in his oral judgment that he did not think that the judgment would have those consequences. Was it not right, therefore, to wait for the written judgment and find out what the consequences would be?

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

No, I disagree. I think that the judge was wrong in that aspect of his judgment. There are serious questions about the fact that there is no sign that he considered any extensive evidence on the practical application of his judgment and about why he did not consider making clear that the judgment should be stayed pending appeal and consideration of the wider evidence. However, that does not go to the heart of the role of the Home Office and the Home Secretary. The Home Office could have done considerable things between the oral statement and the written judgment, rather than simply hoping for the best, which is what it appears officials have done.

Let me turn to the Government’s response. The oral judgment was given on 19 May and Home Office officials were informed soon after that—certainly before the end of May. The Home Secretary and the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) have claimed that they had to wait for the written judgment, and of course the written judgment brings the decision into effect and can provide further clarity, but that does not mean that everybody had to suspend action and judgment until the written judgment was available. Given what Home Office officials should have known from the oral judgment, they should immediately have notified the CPS and the Attorney-General. The Home Secretary did not explain when she discussed the decision with the Attorney-General or at what point the Attorney-General was made aware of the seriousness of the case.

[Michael Ellis]

Does the right hon. Lady not appreciate that, at the time of the oral judgment, it could have related only to the instant case before the judge in question? It was only clear later that it would have a wider-reaching effect.

[Yvette Cooper]

The point is that the Home Office should have prepared. Immediately after the oral judgment was issued, it was possible that there would be concerns and Professor Zander knew enough about the judgment to write a considered view in Criminal Law and Justice Weekly on 17 June. He was clearly extremely worried and on that basis he was already offering advice. Home Office officials should have sought information and should have been concerned even on the basis of the oral judgment.

[Mrs May]

On a point of clarity, will the right hon. Lady confirm the time line? She just referred to Professor Michael Zander in a way that might give Members the impression that his article was written off the back of the oral judgment. Will she confirm that it was made available after the written judgment?

[Yvette Cooper]

The article was published on 18 June, following the written judgment becoming available on 17 June. He will have needed time to write it, however, and to seek more information and details about the case; Home Office officials, however, chose not to do that—[Interruption.] Hon. Members on the Government Benches might think that this is amusing or a case for dismissing the argument, but they ought to consider the serious consequences for domestic violence victims and police operations across the country. Faced with such circumstances, Home Office officials are obliged to consider that risks are involved. They might not have known the final details until the written judgment arrived, but they should have been preparing, asking for further information from the judge and starting to work out options in case Home Office Ministers needed to act fast when the full information became available.

[Keith Vaz]

Evidence was given to the Select Committee on Home Affairs on Tuesday that a note was written by counsel for Greater Manchester police, which could have alerted officials to a possible issue, but my right hon. Friend would need to have the opportunity to read that note.

The point I wanted to make was that there is the Treasury Solicitor’s Department, which is headed by the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, so there are resources that could have allowed this issue to be looked at when ACPO was taking advice from Clare Montgomery and Steven Kovats. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is relevant for the future and that, if alarm bells start ringing again, there is machinery in Government to allow the Home Secretary to have the kind of advice we are talking about?

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is right. He makes his points diplomatically, but the complacency of Home Office Ministers is worrying. They seem to think that they have done everything right in this case, that there have been no delays and that everything has moved as rapidly as possible, but that clearly is not the case. I hope that they will learn lessons for the future from this incident because there clearly has not been rapid movement every step along the way. Whether that applies to what Home Office officials should have done when they received the note on this case, what work they should have done, or what further information they should have sought either from the judge in question or through legal advice at that point, it is their responsibility to prepare options for Ministers, so that Ministers can take rapid judgments, know what their options are and move very fast. That is especially true given the significant risks from this case to the operation of police work and to justice.

My right hon. Friend’s point about the role of the Treasury Solicitor’s Department is important. The point of having the Attorney-General and those solicitors is to be able to seek additional legal advice from them. The Home Secretary said that it is not normal practice for the Government to confirm whether and when they have sought legal advice, but in fact it is very common for Ministers to say that they have had legal advice from the Attorney-General or others. They might not reveal the detailed content of that advice but in this case the Home Secretary is not even confirming whether she has had or sought separate legal advice or whether the Attorney-General provided any such advice to set out options, so that the Government could move fast and deal with this matter considerably faster than has been the case.

[Mark Reckless]

Will the shadow Home Secretary accept that the Government and the Home Office were not parties in the proceedings? We can see from the judgment that counsel for Greater Manchester police were asked at the end of the oral judgment whether they would like to apply for a certificate in relation to an appeal. To the extent that questions have to be asked, surely they should be addressed to Greater Manchester police about why they did not apply to the judge for a stay or for a certificate despite having been specifically asked about doing so. We should be addressing those questions to Greater Manchester police, who are party to the case, rather than trying to twist this in relation to the Home Office.

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman is right that there are issues for Greater Manchester police in terms of how fast they respond and react and whether they apply for appeals and stays, but the issue for the Home Office is that, in the end, it matters to the Home Office if policing practice and the protection of victims right across the country are jeopardised. His point goes to the heart of my concerns about the way in which the Home Office and Home Office Ministers have responded. There seems to be an attitude that “We’ll let Greater Manchester police and ACPO do their bit; we’ll just sit back and wait until it all comes to us.” Ministers finally acted only when ACPO said that emergency legislation was needed, rather than Ministers and the Attorney-General recognising that they would have to take responsibility for the consequences. Even if Greater Manchester police did not take the first steps, there was still a responsibility on the Home Office and the Attorney-General to go and talk to Greater Manchester police about whether they had applied for a stay of judgment or appeal. That is where there have been delays and, frankly, incompetence in the way the Home Office has responded.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I have sat and listened very carefully to the debate. I am no lawyer but it strikes me that the Government have tried to act as fast as they can. We are having this emergency debate at speed because we have to make sure that when a judge makes a wrong decision we put the law right—first, to protect the public and, secondly, to allow the police to proceed properly. Does the right hon. Lady not agree?

[Yvette Cooper]

We do have that responsibility, but my reason for continuing to press this point is that these things will come up again because that is the nature of home affairs and Home Office work. There will inevitably be judgments and other issues that cause problems and suddenly raise difficulties in the criminal justice system. We have dealt with them previously, sometimes through emergency legislation and sometimes through other responses. These things happen and the question is whether, when they happen, the response is fast enough or active enough. My concern is that, if the Home Office continues to be complacent about how it has responded, there will be further difficulties in future.

It is worth considering the time line. We are now seven weeks from the original judgment, three weeks since the written judgment was put in place and two weeks since Ministers were informed. That gap alone between Home Office officials’ being informed of the written judgment, the written judgment’s being published and Ministers’ being told puts Ministers in a deeply difficult position. I have considerable sympathy with the position they were put in when the written judgment came out and was commented on almost the same day by Professor Michael Zander, who said:

“This is a very unfortunate decision if it is not quickly overturned on appeal it will need to be speedily reversed by legislation.”

That criminal expert came out with that statement, the written judgment was published and it was still a week until Home Office Ministers were even told there was a problem. I think that is of concern and that the Home Office should recognise it is of concern.

[Mr Winnick]

Given that my right hon. Friend is giving her full support to the Government, is she at all surprised by how sensitive Conservative Members are to any form of criticism whatever?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. Given the number of Back Benchers who have leapt up to mention, as part of their intervention, “the speedy action from Ministers” and “the fast response from Ministers”, one might think that a Whip’s note has gone around saying that that might be the phrase to put into every intervention, whatever the point might be.

Our first concern is about the initial delay before the Home Office got the written judgment. I am very clear that more work should have been done between the oral judgment and the written judgment. Then, once the written judgment arrived, there should have been very fast advice to the Home Secretary and the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice about the risks in this case. Instead, the Home Office seems to have sat on this for a week before Ministers were informed. Once they were informed, it was then important for them to accelerate action because the Home Office clearly had not been acting fast enough before then.

What did happen once Ministers were informed? We still do not know when the Home Secretary discussed the matter with the Attorney-General and we still do not know why it has taken so long for there to be support via the Attorney-General, working with Greater Manchester police and the Supreme Court, to get an expedited hearing for a stay of judgment. I recognise the point that the Home Secretary made about the stay of judgment. Clearly, a series of different issues are relevant, some of which the Supreme Court has raised in relation to its powers. The Court also raised the issue of timeliness because by the time it was considering a stay of judgment, that judgment had been in place for many weeks. Timeliness is always a factor when the Supreme Court takes decisions and those delays might well have made it harder for the Court to bring in that stay of judgment.

[Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I shall give way to the hon. Lady, who I am sure will say something about how speedily the Home Office has acted.

[Mrs Laing]

No, indeed—I have no Whip’s note or other briefing on this matter whatever. The right hon. Lady was statesmanlike in her opening remarks in supporting what the Government and Parliament are now doing out of necessity and—I am not going to say speedily—as soon as it could be done in Parliament, and the whole House agrees that the Bill must be passed today. Might I point out, however, that whereas the right hon. Lady was statesmanlike in her tackling of the issue, she is now grovelling around looking for party political points to make, which can sometimes be unseemly?

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Lady might think that the speed with which the Home Office has responded is okay, but I think it demonstrates a worrying level of complacency that might cause problems in future. The reason for making that important point about the delays we have seen is that such delays cause risks for victims and the judicial process. At the heart of the matter is the question of whether the Home Office is prepared to take responsibility for justice in this way, or whether it will just sit back and leave it to the police and ACPO.

The Policing Minister has told us that the Home Office waited for ACPO to conclude that emergency legislation was needed. When he responds, will he state at what point Ministers asked for draft legislation to be prepared, even if only on a contingency basis, because that is important? Ministers should have commissioned emergency legislation on a draft basis as soon as they were informed of the problem and saw the clear advice from Professor Zander that emergency legislation might be needed. Instead, they appear to have waited for ACPO to commission legal advice twice, but it is not just a matter for ACPO. Inevitably, ACPO will always try to make existing legislation work—they are the police and that is their job—but the job of the Home Secretary’s officials was to contingency plan and get emergency legislation on stand-by, yet there is no sign that they did that. Also, they appear to have made no effort to start discussions with the Opposition through the usual channels on how we could get the legislation in as fast as possible. After the Home Secretary was made aware of the situation, it took her a week to raise it with the Opposition and ask whether we would support emergency legislation if needed. The usual channels could have started making contingency plans a week before and we could have had this debate earlier. In the end, the reason for making this point is that in these cases every day matters, because the risks to people who rely on bail protection are considerable and persistent. Therefore, every day matters in how fast we can get this legislation in place.

We support this legislation, will give it a fair wind through the House today and hope that it gets through the House of Lords as rapidly as possible, but I must say to the Home Secretary that it is important when things go wrong and she has to respond that lessons are learnt so that the same mistakes are not made again. There have been a catalogue of delays at every stage of the process, things could have been done faster and we could have moved to resolve this earlier. Unless the Government recognise those delays, I worry that we will see further problems and risks. The Home Secretary cannot always pretend that everything in her Department is perfect; it will not be, and we all know that. A little more recognition when failings take place and learning from them would help us to have a more effective Home Office and a better criminal justice system for the future.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Take two: Lorraine Fullbrook.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) began his speech by reminding the House of the impact of 7/7, on this, the anniversary of that atrocity. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary also paid her tribute to the victims of that crime this morning. It is a sobering reminder of the continuing importance of public protection, which is what we are debating today. I am grateful that right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House have supported the need for this emergency legislation. Certain issues have been raised, and I shall try to deal with them briefly now. It is important to note, however, that there was no dissent over the principle behind the legislation. It is widely accepted that there needs to be a correction to the rather extraordinary judgment of the High Court, which overturned 25 years of practice and legal understanding.

The Government are grateful to all parties for the support expressed, particularly the official Opposition for their support in enabling this emergency legislation to go forward, and I am also grateful for the support of Liberal Democrat Members. There is unanimity on the need to deal with this situation as swiftly as possible.

I begin by clearing up one or two of the more technical issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) asked a specific question about when the Bill could be expected to receive Royal Assent. Subject to the Bill being approved by both Houses, we aim to secure Royal Assent before the other place rises on Tuesday 12 July. The legal change will then come into effect immediately. I hope that that answers the point.

For the record, I would like to clear up issues raised by the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), and by the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), about the role of the Law Officers in this matter. Although the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford said—I hope I quote her accurately—that it is common for Ministers to say whether they have had advice from Law Officers, page 447 of “Erskine May” states:

“By longstanding convention observed by successive Governments, the fact of, and substance of advice from, the law officers of the Crown is not disclosed outside Government”.

I hope that that helps to clarify the matter.

It is nevertheless important to reassure the House that the Crown Prosecution Service was involved in discussions with ACPO and officials soon after the written judgment was received. I hope that the Chairman of the Select Committee—he is not in his place at the moment—will be reassured when he reads what I had to say. The CPS has certainly been involved in trying to assess the legal implications at the same time as ACPO was trying to assess the practical implications.

[Yvette Cooper]

The issue of the involvement of the Attorney-General is important. It is not simply about whether the Government might be prejudicing their case in a trial, which has been the traditional reason why the content of legal advice is not disclosed; it is about whether the Government did the right thing in response to a very pressing situation. The Minister really needs to confirm whether the Attorney-General intervened in the case in the hearing before the Supreme Court, which the Supreme Court gave him the opportunity to do. Did he do that earlier this week or not? Given that, according to Lord Goldsmith in his evidence to the Constitutional Affairs Committee, the Attorney-General has the power to bring or intervene in other legal proceedings in the public interest, did the Attorney-General consider whether he could intervene in the public interest by a request for a stay of judgment?

[Nick Herbert]

The right hon. Lady continues to seek to make what appears to me to be political hay out of this situation when the Government are doing everything they can to redress it. I noted yesterday that she made the absurd suggestion that somehow there had been a delay regarding the Supreme Court’s refusal to grant a stay of execution, which might have explained why it refused the stay. On her own analysis, the Supreme Court would have granted a stay of execution—or might have done so—when the implications of this judgment were not clear, yet for some reason it decided not to grant the stay of execution when the implications were made clear. The right hon. Lady takes a whole set of completely inconsistent positions simply because she wants to make political points that are inappropriate when we are seeking to address a serious political matter.

Let me return to the impact on the police and to specific questions—

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[Nick Herbert]

I want to make some progress, if the right hon. Lady will forgive me, as I have only five minutes left.

Specific questions were raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) and for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). The police have assured us that they are doing all they can to ensure that public safety is not compromised, and are taking interim steps to manage the situation in its current form given the current state of the law as expressed by the High Court. However, they are anxious for the law to be restated in the future.

My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon rightly raised the issue of the protection of victims and witnesses, which is at the centre of our approach. The police service shares our concern about the issue. The chief constable of Essex, Jim Barker-McCardle, has written to all chief police officers repeating his assurance that the service remains completely focused on doing all it can to protect the public, who, of course, include victims and witnesses.

Three substantive issues were raised by Members in all parts of the House. First, it was asked whether we should take the opportunity provided by the Bill to engage in what the shadow Home Secretary called a wider debate about, for instance, whether time limits on the use of police bail would be necessary. The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras raised the issue of protracted bail periods, and my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) said that we should not give the green light to the keeping of suspects on bail, by which I assume he meant inappropriately.

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary responded on that issue, but let me add that I do not think it appropriate to amend emergency legislation that seeks simply to restore the status quo ante by introducing limits on the use of police bail that have not applied for 25 years without proper consideration. As I said last Thursday, as far as I am aware no representations have been made to the Government about the inadequacy of police bail. Although in recent days some have suggested that it has been a cause of growing concern, I believe that they should set out that concern in a proper manner and on the basis of evidence. We need to have a proper debate about the issue, and were the Government to conclude that changes were needed, there would have to be proper consultation. Such provisions cannot be introduced in the emergency legislation.

It appears to me that opportunities are being taken to make statements that are not necessarily correct. For example, I noticed that the press release that accompanied this morning’s call by members of the legal profession for a delay in the legislation included the following statement by a spokesman from Mary Monson Solicitors, a firm that was involved in the original case:

“The legislation is being rushed through now without proper debate to widen police powers”.

It does not “widen police powers”; it restores to the police powers that they have had for 25 years. That is a serious misrepresentation of what the Bill seeks to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I say to the right hon. Gentleman, with all respect, that he will well know that the use of individual cases cannot be undertaken lightly, given that they rely on all sorts of other issues such as consent and on other identification evidence. We have taken a very measured approach by making sure that those who are guilty are retained on the DNA database, and that there are matches to ensure that the cold-case database is used effectively. That way more crimes are detected.

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

For the second time in five days, the Home Secretary has declined to answer questions on DNA, even though she knows that it is a growing concern, and that I and the Leader of the Opposition raised it last week. There are about 5,000 rape cases each year where the police think that they have enough information to pass a case on to the Crown Prosecution Service but the CPS decides that it cannot charge. In those cases, the Government’s plans mean that DNA will not be held even though rape has a notoriously low charge rate and we know that some people go on to offend again.

On Thursday the Minister with responsibility for women, the Minister for Equalities, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), suggested that the police would be able to apply to retain DNA in cases where they thought that the public were at risk. That is very different from what the Home Secretary told me on Second Reading of the Protection of Freedoms Bill, when she did not include cases where the public were thought to be at risk.

So, will the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) now explain how the police and the DNA commissioner are supposed to assess who poses a risk; and in how many of those 5,000 cases does the hon. Gentleman expect the police to apply and for DNA to be held?

[James Brokenshire]

The right hon. Lady is wrong on a number of counts, because the Home Secretary was absolutely clear on Second Reading about the approach that would be taken. The Government have said that, when an individual is arrested for a sexual offence such as rape but not subsequently charged, the police will be able to apply to the new biometrics commissioner for the DNA profile’s retention. If the commissioner agrees, the profile will be retained for three years. The right hon. Lady seems to ignore the facts and the way in which the issue has been presented, but there is the clarity on what is to happen.

[Yvette Cooper]

The Minister has not answered the question. He may want to look back at the words that the Home Secretary used on Second Reading, which were rather different. Does he really think it is practical for the police separately to assess, fill in forms and apply to hold DNA on 5,000 new rape cases each year, as well as countless other serious crimes? Ministers have just spent 20 minutes telling the House that they want to cut police bureaucracy; now they are increasing it. The West Midlands police chief said to the Bill Committee:

“We have always argued that it is impossible to create a regime of individual intervention for a database of 6 million. We have to make decisions based on automation.”––[Official Report, Protection of Freedoms Public Bill Committee, 22 March 2011; c. 9, Q4.]

The Home Secretary is making it impossible for the police—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. That is the last sentence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

The new border police command within the national crime agency will play a very important role in ensuring that we can protect our borders. What is crucial about its role within the agency is that we will be able to bring together a number of bodies that deal with crimes and activity across our borders. That will enable us to get much greater effectiveness in dealing with such problems.

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

In January the Government let lapse provision for pre-charge detention for 28 days. The Home Secretary said that she needed a fast way to restore it if needed, but her counter-terror review stated that the current order-making power was too slow. We warned her then that her new proposal for emergency primary legislation was not workable, and the senior Joint Committee has now concluded that it is “totally unsatisfactory and ineffective”. It is now six months since she changed the limit, and there is still no satisfactory emergency back-up plan in place. When will she get this sorted out?

[Mrs May]

We remain of the view that it is important to have that legislation available for Parliament to enact, and that in the vast majority of circumstances it is appropriate that that is done after Parliament has had the opportunity to consider the matter. There is a question about what happens when Parliament is dissolved. We have considered that and will bring forward proposals for an order-making power to cover the dissolution of Parliament.

Women (Government Policies)

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House regrets that the Government’s policies are hitting women and families hardest, including direct tax and benefit changes, cuts to childcare support and Sure Start which are making it harder for women to work, reductions in domestic and sexual violence specialist support, and their impact on the provision of social care; opposes plans that will make 300,000 women born between December 1953 and October 1954 wait an additional 18 months or longer to receive their state pension; calls on the Government to maintain the commitment given in the Coalition Agreement that the state pension age for women will not start to rise to 66 sooner than 2020; believes that promoting equality for women is vital to building a fairer society; and calls on the Government to commission independent, robust assessments of the impact of its policies on women and to prevent the implementation of policies that could widen inequality between women and men.

I got an e-mail from a woman called Michelle, who lives in my constituency. Michelle is a single mother with a toddler; she works part-time in a bank to support her family; and she studies part-time at the Open university, because she wants to get on and build a better future for herself and her child. Right now, she is very worried. Her train fares are going up and she is afraid that her course fees will go up, but the really big blow for her is that her child tax credit is being cut from 80% to 70%.

Michelle wrote:

“This is really devastating for me. My nursery fees are £530 a month, and my salary is £600 a month. This is an extra £50 each month out of my already very tight budget. This sadly is going to force me out of work and onto benefits, which I desperately don’t want to do. It is so unfair and I am very angry. I want David Cameron, George Osborne and the rest of the coalition to acknowledge this is happening to myself and thousands of other single parents, but that will never happen.”

It is because of Michelle and the stories that we have heard from so many women throughout the country that we have called this debate today. We are deeply worried about women who are struggling to work because of the changes that the Government have made; women who are finding it harder to make ends meet; women who are losing their own income and some of the independence that they value; women who are losing thousands of pounds of their pensions; and women such as Michelle who are finding it more difficult to work because of the sheer scale of the assault on families throughout the country—20% cuts to the Sure Start budget, cuts to child care tax credit and cuts to child tax credit.

The Government are taking more money from support for children than they are from the banks as part of their deficit reduction plan, and mothers throughout the country are taking the strain. Time and again, the Government hit women and families hardest, and I fear that for the first time in many generations equality and progress for women is being rolled back.

All Members know and will celebrate the major advances that we have seen in women’s equality over the past century. When we celebrated the centenary of international women’s day, I met a woman called Hetty Bower, who is already more than 100 years old and has received her telegram from the Queen. When Hetty was born, however, women did not have the vote, and when she had her first child there was no maternity care on the NHS—indeed, there was no NHS. She worked, but she certainly did not get maternity pay, family allowance or child benefit. By the time her daughter started work, it was still legal to pay women less than men to do the same job, and even when her granddaughter started work there was still little child care and little help for women wanting to work part-time or to care for their elderly parents.

When the Secretary of State and I were elected to Parliament, maternity leave was just 14 weeks, compared with 52 weeks today, and there were child care places for only one in eight children, rather than the one in four today. Of course, here in Westminster itself we had no nursery, but we still had a shooting range.

All the progress that we have seen for women over those years has been hard-won, and we should not take it for granted. From the suffragettes to the Dagenham strikers, women have campaigned and worked hard for those changes.

We know that there is still a long way to go, and if we look at the facts we find that, even some 40 years after passing the Equal Pay Act 1970, the pay gap remains at 15%. Women still make up only 12.5% of the boards of the UK’s top 100 companies. One in four women is a victim of domestic violence in their lifetime. Women here still represent only 22% of our Parliament. Some 30,000 women lose their jobs every year because of pregnancy. So yes, we have come a long way, but we have further to travel yet.

I think that the Minister for Women and Equalities and the Minister for Equalities support progress for women and agree that it should go further and faster. The trouble is that their Government are not delivering; instead, they are turning back the clock.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Would the right hon. Lady like to take this opportunity officially to dissociate herself from her previous Government’s disastrous 10p tax policy, which did so much to hit the lowest paid, especially women across the country?

[Yvette Cooper]

I think that it was right to change the policy on the 10p tax rate, which did cause problems for a lot of women—the hon. Lady is right. However, often the very same women for whom we had to make changes to ensure that they got help because they were being affected by the 10p tax rate are now being affected by what her Government are doing to change the pension age and equalise pensions so quickly. The 10p tax rate did affect women, but not on the scale under this Government of hitting them with more than £10,000 of losses. Yes, she is right to point out the problems with the 10p rate, but she also needs to point out to her Government the serious damage that they are doing not only to women approaching pension age but to many other women across the board.

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

I will make progress and then take an intervention from the hon. Lady.

In area after area, whether it is income, employment, child care, public services or action on violence against women, we are seeing the clock turned back. Today we want to concentrate on the Government’s reforms to the pension age and what is happening to women as a result. We understand the Government’s concern about rising longevity; of course we are all living longer and that has consequences. However, the nature and timing of the changes they have chosen is hitting women much harder than men. Bringing equalisation down to 2016 from 2018, combined with increasing the age again straight after that, means that women currently in their late 50s are getting a very bad deal. No men will see their state pension age increase by more than a year, but half a million women will do so. Those women, who are already in their mid to late 50s, are suddenly seeing their retirement plans ripped up. A third of a million women will have to wait an extra 18 months, and 33,000 women will have to wait an extra two years.

Let us think about what that really means. These women are already around 57 years old. They have been expecting to get their retirement pension in about seven years’ time. They will already have made financial plans; many will already have made retirement plans. These women are often the rock of their families. They are the ones who stopped work to look after their grandchildren so that their daughters could work, or they are working part-time and looking after elderly relatives. They have worked out how they can manage it, and how they can stretch their savings until the pension kicks in, and suddenly the Government are ripping all that up.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

The group of women who, when they started work, would have expected to retire at 60, had already accepted that because of the equalisation of the state pension age they would have to work until they were 64, but it is the two years on top of that which is very difficult for them to swallow.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Those women have already made changes to their retirement plans, but these further changes are very late in the day, when it is extremely difficult for them to rearrange their plans. The consequence is that the equivalent of about £5,000 is being taken from half a million women, £10,000 is being taken from thousands of women, and £15,000 is being taken from those who are hardest hit—and they have less than seven years to work out how to cope. For most of those women it is too late to make changes to their financial plans and their career plans.

Let us take the case of Christine. She was born in July 1954. She is still working as a self-employed bookkeeper, and works about 25 hours a week. Like a lot of women her age, Christine says that she put her career on hold to bring up her children, so she does not have much of a private pension. She does not have extra savings to help her to cope and to make good the gap. Women in their late 50s have average pension savings of £9,100 compared with an average of £52,000 for men of the same age. These are women who took time out to look after their families, who worked part-time, and who started work in the ’70s when the pay gap was bigger. The pension system never properly recognised the contributions that they made to their families and to society, and now, as a result of what the Government are doing, it is kicking them in the teeth again.

The Government cannot tell us that this is being done to cut the deficit, because in 2016, when these changes come in, their structural deficit is supposed to have been eliminated. The best that the coalition has been able to come up with in its defence is to say that some of the poorest male pensioners who get pension credit will be quite hard hit too. I do not think that people such as Christine will consider that much consolation. Today, the Prime Minister tried to claim, “Well, it’s all right, it means that pensioners will be £15,000 better off because this is restoring the link with earnings,” but the link with earnings had already been restored as part of the Turner review. Making such a change now does not provide any benefits for women for many years to come. Instead, in the next few years, it hits extremely hard women who have worked hard for their families and for society.

Women on the Government Front Bench and Back Benches ought to do something about this. They should stand up and be counted; otherwise they are letting down women in their constituencies.

[Dame Anne Begg]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it was not good enough for the Minister responsible for pensions to say to my Select Committee that it is all right because these women can get jobseeker’s allowance or employment and support allowance instead?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. It is appalling to suggest that these women can get jobseeker’s allowance, because many of them have claimed very little throughout their lives. They have believed in working hard, doing their bit, and making their contributions to their family and their society, and the state pension was what they had earned—what they had saved for and contributed towards. Saying to them that they should claim jobseeker’s allowance, which is set at a much lower level, or that, having perhaps taken early retirement to look after the grandchildren only now to find that they cannot do so because they cannot make their savings stretch, they must suddenly try to find work after so long out of the labour market, misunderstands the reality of their lives and the pressures they are under. Something needs to change. The Government have done U-turns on issues such as forests; they have paused on the NHS; and they should make a massive change on this policy.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that not only is this change coming in very quickly but thousands of women out there are not aware of it, despite the excellent campaign, because the Government have provided very inadequate information?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. To the extent that women can plan for such change, they need to know what is going on. At the moment, a lot of women do not know what is happening and are worried. They are starting to hear about the change, but do not know what it is going to mean for them and for their personal circumstances.

Unfortunately, I heard one of the men on the Conservative Benches mutter “Deluded” in response to my call for the Government to U-turn. I have to say to him that he is deluded if he thinks that women across the country will not feel extremely angry. The more that they realise what the Government are doing, the more they will be knocking on the doors of their constituency MPs and asking why their MP is allowing them to lose up to £10,000 as a result of deeply unfair changes.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I give way to the hon. Gentleman; I hope that he can defend the proposals.

[Mr Gray]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. As one of the two Conservative men who signed the early-day motion on this subject, the other being my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), I very much sympathise with the point that she is making on behalf of women born in 1953 and 1954—like me; 1954 was a vintage year. Does she not regret that in the motion she has chosen to make a broad sideswipe at the Government that is much less well thought through than her point about that particular cohort of women? Had she focused her attention on that, she might well have found one or two of us joining her in the Lobby.

[Yvette Cooper]

I apologise for my slightly aggressive reaction to the hon. Gentleman when he stood up; I should have checked the EDM beforehand. I commend him for his defence of his vintage, of all sexes. He is right that this issue is of extreme concern, and I hope that we will have further opportunities to vote on it.

I will turn to the wider points in the motion that the hon. Gentleman criticised, but which I think are important. It is women rather than men who are taking the biggest burden in the Government’s deficit reduction plans. The Government know of our deep concern that they are cutting too far and too fast, and that they are hitting growth and pushing up unemployment, which will cost us more. However, even those who support the scale and pace of the Government’s plans should be worried about the way in which they are carrying them out.

The House of Commons Library has produced detailed analysis of the direct tax and benefit changes in the Government’s emergency Budget and the spending review. A net total of £16 billion is being raised. That takes account of the increase in tax allowances and the cuts to tax credits. It looks at the extra money as well as the cuts. The conclusion is that £5 billion is coming from men and £11 billion is coming from women. Women are paying more than twice as much as men to get the deficit down, yet women still earn less and own less than men. How can that be fair?

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady confirm that the numbers she is citing include the £3.75 billion from the child benefit cuts for higher rate taxpayers such as me, who obviously are predominantly women?

[Yvette Cooper]

The figures include everything, so they do include the child benefit changes, as well as the change in tax allowances, the cuts to housing benefit, the cuts to public sector pensions and a series of other things. The point is that the cumulative impact will hit women much harder than men. Women who are on higher incomes will be hit much harder than men who are on higher incomes. Women who are on lower incomes in households where the man is on a higher income will also be hard hit, even though they may only be on part-time or low earnings. The hon. Lady is right that the analysis does not separate women on the basis of different levels of earnings, but it does show that at every level of earnings, in every sector of the economy and in every sector of society, women are being hit harder than men.

[Harriett Baldwin]

rose—

[Mary Macleod]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I give way to the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) first.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Is the right hon. Lady saying that she would like my child benefit of £81.20 every four weeks to be reinstated, despite the fact that I make more than £65,000 a year as an MP?

[Yvette Cooper]

We have said that we think there is a serious advantage in some universal benefits. I do not think that the hon. Lady should be paid child tax credit, and she is not, because it is right that some things depend on people’s incomes. However, it is important that some things are universal. That is why we have said that there are serious problems with what the Government are doing on child benefit. She needs to take seriously the point that at every level of income and in every sector of society, women rather than men are the hardest hit.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

As someone who has staunchly defended universal child benefit precisely because of the reach that it secures for the poorest families—better than the means-tested benefits that are designed to reach them—I am pleased to tell the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) that I will certainly campaign for the reinstatement of child benefit for all parents. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one reason why it is so important to have benefits that are predominantly directed at women is that even in the best-off households, the way in which income is divided between a couple often favours the man? It is important to give women some independent income to protect their financial independence within the household.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right, because who gets the income in the household matters for a lot of women. Child benefit was about giving women an independent income, and it has given women a greater ability to make choices about their own lives.

The Government have dismissed the figures about the impact on women and men. They say that those figures cannot be calculated, but they have calculated no figures of their own. They claim that it cannot be done. That is rubbish, because the House of Commons Library did it, and pretty quickly. They also claim that it is not possible for the Government to come up with such figures, but the Treasury has done it before. When the Minister for Women and Equalities and I were new Back Benchers, I asked Treasury Ministers a written question on exactly the same thing. I asked what was the impact on women compared with men of the 1997, 1998 and 1999 Budgets. Treasury Ministers were able to calculate it then and they can calculate it now. The answer was that men benefited by £2.30 per week and that women benefited by £5.30 per week from the changes brought in by the Labour Government. This is the contrast: the Labour Government’s first Budget helped women twice as much as men; the Tory-led Government’s first Budget hit women twice as hard as men.

The Government say that one cannot look at men and women separately, but that one must look at households. That is the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) made. The Government’s plans for universal credit have the same kind of flaw. They are talking about a single payment being paid to a single household member, with the risk that it will go predominantly to the man. What the Government say is just not true. Of course people choose to share their money in the household and in the family, but that is the point—they choose to share their money. Who gets the money in the first place matters. Beveridge understood that 60 years ago. That is why he introduced the family allowance, which led to child benefit. I do not understand why Government Members and the Government are so blind to this issue. Women on the Government Benches would be horrified if suddenly their salaries were paid to their husbands on the basis that it does not really matter because they are in the same household. That is the logical consequence of the Government’s arguments about households and for not being able to do such analysis.

[Mrs Louise Mensch (Corby) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady is pretending that child benefit is an income for women that is paid to women, but it is a benefit that is paid for the benefit of the child. It is not and never has been income for women.

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Lady does not seem to understand that most women do the spending for the children. That is why, originally, Beveridge wanted to ensure that women got some money. Right now—[Interruption.] Government Members obviously do not talk to women in their constituencies about the way in which child benefit money matters massively as part of their income. Of course a lot of that money is spent on children, but however women spend it, the fact that it is they who get the income gives them choices about how it is spent.

I suggest that the hon. Member for Corby (Mrs Mensch) listens to the recording of “Woman’s Hour” from soon after the Government’s announcement of their plan to take child benefit from those on the highest earnings. A lot of women called in to describe how they were on a low income, even though their husbands were on a higher income. They spoke about the difference that it made to have some money that came to them and over which they made the decisions, even if it was then spent on the children and their future.

[Mrs Mensch]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for being generous and giving way to me again. My constituency of Corby in east Northamptonshire has a large proportion of lower-income women. The women who come to my surgeries are delighted that higher-income women and families will not be paid this benefit, because they regard it as fundamentally unfair that rich people receive benefits. They cannot understand why it is the Labour party that is protecting benefits that are paid to the rich.

[Yvette Cooper]

Are those constituents equally delighted by the cuts to child tax credit, the cuts to the baby tax credit that is paid in the first year, the cuts to the Sure Start allowance, the cuts to their Sure Start centres, and the huge cuts that are hitting low-income women across the country? I bet they are not. I bet the hon. Lady did not ask them about those things when they came in and she started talking to them just about child benefit for higher earners.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

Those same women—we are talking about these abstract women—are also extremely unhappy about the massive deficit left behind by the previous Government. Whether someone is a mother or a father, their children are facing an enormous debt. This Government are tackling the debt that the right hon. Lady’s Government left behind.

[Yvette Cooper]

If we had not had the increase in the deficit during the global financial crisis, we would have seen recession turn into slump. We would have seen huge numbers of women lose their jobs and be stuck in long-term unemployment. We would have seen women and their families lose their homes and savings, so it was right to support the economy during the recession. As a result of our decisions, the economy grew and the deficit came down. Unfortunately, the Minister’s Government have decided to put a political timetable for deficit reduction into place far ahead of the interests of the economy. They are hitting public services far faster than they needed to, but they are also hitting jobs and pushing far more women out of work and on to benefits and the dole, so that they cannot support their families.

Even if the Minister for Women and Equalities believes that the Government should cut the deficit this far and this fast, how can she possibly think it is fair for women to be paying £11 billion of the £16 billion reduction that is coming from tax and benefits, while men pay £5 billion? How can it be fair for women to pay twice as much as men, despite the fact that they still earn less and own less?

Sometimes I think that the Prime Minister has a blind spot about women, but most of the time I think the truth is probably far worse. This is an ideological problem for the Tories and Liberal Democrats. Despite the fact that there are many women in both parties who strongly want to see greater progress for women, the overall ideology of both parties at the moment is that the public sector should not worry about supporting families, about who gets the money within families or about what happens to families, because that is a private matter that the public sector should not engage in. They believe that such things as tax credits are bad, because they breed dependency. The truth is that for millions of women, pension payments or tax credits create not dependence but independence. They give women greater choice about how to balance work and family life, and about whether they can afford to stay at home while the kids are young or cover their child care payments so that they can go out to work.

I know that this is not easy for the Minister, because she does not control what happens in other Departments. She did the right thing at the very beginning of the Government’s time in office when she warned Ministers of their obligations to consider equality and the impact of policies on women. Unfortunately, few of those Ministers seem to have been listening. Several may indeed have told her to calm down.

Even if the right hon. Lady is not fully aware of what is happening across the Government, she does have responsibility in her own Department, the Home Office, and there are serious grounds for concern there. The committee on women in policing, for example, did not meet for more than a year. It would be helpful if she told the House whether it has yet met, and whether it is now doing any work to support more women to get into the police.

The right hon. Lady has followed the previous Government’s example of announcing a cross-Government strategy to tackle violence against women, which we welcome. We also welcome her support for rape crisis centres, but she does not seem to be reflecting what is actually happening on the ground, with one in five domestic violence courts closing; specialist domestic violence officers in police forces up and down the country being cut as a result of her 20% cuts to the police; refuges having to close their doors; DNA not being held in rape cases in which charges are not brought; and sentences for rapists potentially being halved if they plead guilty. We have seen her refusal and reluctance to sign the trafficking directive until pressure mounted in the House, a U-turn on anonymity for rape defendants only after pressure from the House, and her resistance, still, of the Council of Europe’s convention on violence against women.

Those matters have deep consequences in practice. The POPPY project has told me of the story of Lucy, who was heavily pregnant and being treated for a life-threatening disease, and who had been severely beaten by her father. Lucy’s doctor was trying to find accommodation for her. Due to the squeeze on local government budgets, the homeless persons unit said that it could not treat Lucy as being in priority need, and social services wrongly said that they did not need to help her because the baby had not yet been born.

Lucy was getting ready to sleep on the street for the weekend. The doctor could find only one refuge space, but it was too far away. The worker explained to the doctor that Lucy needed a legal letter telling social services and the homeless persons unit that they had a duty of care to her. Experience showed that only that legal threat would make the services act. Unfortunately, as hon. Members know, legal aid cuts are now biting, and solicitors were scarce and none had the space to take Lucy’s case. In the end, her doctor persuaded the hospital contract doctor to write a letter. It was not his responsibility, but he did so, and Lucy was given temporary accommodation. It came in the nick of time, because the refuge workers said that on that day, five other women fleeing domestic violence came in and asked for help, and were not as lucky as Lucy. They tell me that some ended up sleeping on the street. That is the reality of what is happening to vulnerable women at the sharp end of the cuts.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My right hon. Friend mentioned in passing the fact that 65% of public sector workers are women, so they will be hit disproportionately. In my constituency, some 40% of workers are in the public sector. Does she accept, given what she has just said, that further cuts will tend to generate more domestic violence because of the economic pressure put on family life? There is a disproportionate impact on women not just economically but through domestic violence and the lack of funding to support increasing demand for services at a time when there are also cuts to the police budget. That is terrible for communities such as the one I represent.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. There are increased pressures on services, as well as cuts to many resources. Women workers in public services are feeling the strain, too.

The Minister for Women and Equalities will doubtless tell us about the good work that she and the Minister for Equalities are doing to improve women’s lives, which we welcome, but we believe that we need to go further and do more. We want to support them in their work, but we need them to do much more than they are doing now. We need them to start standing up for women in the Government. We will back them if they do, and we will support them even if their colleagues do not. However, they must act. They cannot just stand on the sidelines. They have a duty to stand up for women in this country, and to get in there and fight. They need to undertake some proper, independent research on the impact of the cuts and their reforms on women. They should use the work that has been done by women’s organisations in Coventry with the university of Warwick, because if they do not, we will. We will work with local groups and institutions to monitor what is happening to women across the country.

The truth is that equality for women is not just about women, it is about everyone. A fairer society for women and an economy that uses women’s talents is better not just for families but for everybody. I have always believed that every generation of women would do better than the last, have more opportunities and choices, break through more glass ceilings and challenge more conventions. However, I fear for our daughters and granddaughters as a result of what the Government are doing. We owe it to them to further the march for women’s equality and not to be the generation of women who turn back the clock.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department and Minister for Women and Equalities (Mrs Theresa May)]

Yet again, we have heard a speech from the Opposition Benches that included no recognition of the economic mess that the last Government left us, no constructive suggestions and no positive policy proposals for the future of this country. That is not constructive opposition, it is shameless opportunism.

Let me remind the Opposition once more why we are having to take action to restore sanity to our public finances. They left us with the largest budget deficit in our peacetime history, and they left us spending £120 million every single day just on paying the interest on the debt that they racked up. That is more than we spend each day on policing, schools or child benefit. They left us with a deficit higher than that of Portugal or Greece, which have had to go cap in hand to the EU for a bail out. The experience of those countries shows that the risks of not dealing with Labour’s deficit are not imaginary but very real.

[Yvette Cooper]

Does the right hon. Lady think that the Labour Government should have cut public spending in the middle of a recession, and not allowed additional support for those who were unemployed and for businesses? If so, does she think the economy would have been growing at the time of the election if that had been done?

[Mrs May]

The Labour party, and the right hon. Lady as a former Treasury Minister, knows full well the risks of failing to deal with the deficit today. That is shown not just by what we are doing, but by what the Labour party itself said it would do if it was in government. I am talking about the position that we are in today, which was left us by the Labour Government, and the actions that we are having to take to deal with it. She must recognise that if the Labour party were in government today, it would be cutting £7 for every £8 that the current Government are cutting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

I shall make some progress.

Yes, the Government have taken the difficult decision to remove tax credits from higher earning families, but that has meant that we can increase child tax credits for the poorest families, protecting against increases in child poverty. In fact, that decision has meant that we can increase child tax credits by £180 and then £110 a year over and above the level promised by Labour. Those policies are not just about helping women, but about protecting the most vulnerable.

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Lady said that the increase in tax allowances helps women. In fact, the figures produced by the House of Commons Library show that the increase in the tax allowance benefited 13,500 women and 16,800 men. Even what she did to benefit households benefited more men than women. In addition, her cuts—in child tax credits, child benefit and so on—all came from women. That is the point. She is taking far more from women, but when she gives some back, she gives more back to men.

[Mrs May]

It is absolutely clear that the majority of the lowest-paid workers are women, as are the majority of workers who were taken out of tax. The right hon. Lady refers again to the House of Commons Library figures—she keeps quoting them—but they were produced on a remit that she gave to the Library. Interestingly, she earlier spoke of the distribution and sharing of incomes within households. However, the assumptions on benefits made in the figures that she quotes go against what she was saying about what happens within families.

For the first time, people will have the information to judge for themselves whether they think the Government’s decisions are fair. We have been making some difficult decisions, but for the first time the Government published an overview of the impact of the spending review on groups that are protected by equalities legislation, including women. The analysis demonstrated that our decisions mean that services used by women are protected. With our Budgets in 2010 and this year, and with the spending review, we published unprecedented distributional analysis of our proposals, as the IFS has acknowledged. Such analyses were never published by the previous Government. Perhaps if they had thought to publish such information, they would have avoided policies that hit some of the poorest the hardest, such as scrapping the 10p tax rate, which my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) mentioned.

I reject the Opposition notion that we can judge the value of a policy simply by looking at the number of men or women who are affected by it. We should not reduce the amount that we invest in tackling youth unemployment just because more young men than young women are unemployed, but that is exactly what the Opposition’s analysis suggests we should do. They say that spending on tackling youth unemployment would be unfair on women.

We should not stop investment in policies that will return Britain to growth, such as cutting corporation tax, because more men run companies than women. However, again that is exactly what the Opposition’s analysis suggests we should do. I reject that argument. We need to ensure that more women can start businesses as we invest in getting Britain’s economy going. In fact, one symptom of the inequality between men and women is that more women than men rely on state spending.

We need to continue to support all women who need it, which is why we have ensured that we have protected child benefit and tax credits for women on low incomes, and why we will increase the value of the state pension, and protect benefits such as the winter fuel allowance and free bus passes for older women. However, if the previous Government taught us one thing, it is that more state spending might help to deal with the symptoms of inequality, but it does not address the causes. This Government are determined to get to grips with the causes of inequality between men and women, from job opportunities to the number of women in top, senior positions, to tackling the shameful levels of violence against women, and working to reverse the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

Does the Minister think that public spending should have been cut in the middle of a recession—and if it had been, will she tell us whether she thinks that we would have had growth by the time of the election?

[Lynne Featherstone]

The point is that we are dealing with the structural deficit. If we do not get our house in order now we never will, and it will be future generations who suffer because of Labour’s failure to address it—[Interruption.] Chuntering away at me will not help the right hon. Lady.

Fairness is the reason why in April we lifted 880,000 of the lowest-paid workers out of income tax—and it does not stop there, because more will be added to their number every year of this Parliament. It is why we are protecting the lowest-paid public sector workers—the majority of whom are women—from the public sector pay freeze, and they will get pay rises. It is why we are increasing child tax credits for the poorest families by more than the level promised by the last Government. And it is precisely why we are getting to grips with the deficit so that we do not fritter away more and more on debt interest, and destroy the crucial public services that so many women need and depend on.

Cuts—and the impact that Opposition Members say they have—are not all that we care about for women. We care about being ambitious and about taking them out of poverty. We care about giving them the tools to lift themselves out, not just continuing what went on before. If fairness were simply a matter of benefits, taxes and snapshot comparisons of income, it would be easy to achieve—