Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Baroness Primarolo

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. This is an intervention. A large number of people want to speak. Interventions are getting a little too long and I would be grateful if they could be shortened.

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that it is always possible for there to be court challenges and legal challenges to our legislation and to individual decisions. The Government have gone to some lengths to ensure that the legislation before us is compliant with the European Court judgment, with European law and with our own legal framework.

Passport Applications

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Baroness Primarolo

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has sat down. He has run out of time. I am reducing the time limit to five minutes in order to ensure that all Members can speak in the debate. I hope that it will not be necessary to reduce it further, but this is a time-limited debate. I call Mr Geoffrey Robinson.

Home Affairs and Justice

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Baroness Primarolo

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

The right hon. Lady has conceded that the Labour party would be cutting £1 billion a year from the police budget—I doubt she told police officers that when she saw them earlier. Will she also concede that she has said that there should be a two-year pay freeze, which saves another half a billion, and that her right hon. Friend the shadow Policing Minister has said that there should be changes to overtime and shift patterns that would save another £600 million—those were his words—which means that they are committed to exactly the same savings as the Government? Does she therefore understand that police officers will not believe her when she makes the claims that she does?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Minister, you should know better. Interventions are to be brief; they are not an opportunity to make a speech. That applies to Ministers as well as to Back Benchers.

[Yvette Cooper]

The Policing Minister can try this as often as he likes; it does not matter how many times he says it, he knows that it is not true. We have made it very clear that we think that this figure of £1 billion would be sustainable and, yes, it would include pay measures, changes and other ways of making efficiency savings. His figures may not include that, but we have made it very clear that to deliver the number of police officers—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Minister, you should not shout across the Chamber. You made an intervention. You are not required to like the answer, but you are required to listen to it and not heckle.

[Yvette Cooper]

Government Members need to recognise that their decisions are cutting 16,000 police officers. Our approach is to say that we do not believe that 16,000 police officers should be cut. We believe that the police should have enough money to support those 16,000 officers. We should not have had to cut 5,000 police officers already from 999 units, from neighbourhood response units and from the urgent response units that we need to keep us safe and to arrive in an emergency.

Policing and Crime

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Baroness Primarolo

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. It is one thing to make an intervention; it is quite another for Members to carry on shouting once an hon. Member has resumed her seat. There will be plenty of opportunity for Members to take part in the debate if we can make progress.

[Yvette Cooper]

The noise on the Government Benches conveys Members’ desperation about the cuts being made to police officer numbers in their constituencies right across the country. The difference is that we said yes, cuts of about £1 billion would need to be made over the course of the Parliament; their Front-Bench team is making cuts of £2 billion, with the steepest cuts in the first few years. That is why we are seeing 12,000 officers go and front-line services being hit.

The storm will not go away. It will keep building. The Prime Minister may think he can make it go away by finally making a speech on crime in the next few weeks—his first since the Government began—just to show that he is taking the grip that he clearly thinks the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary lack. But it is too late for tough rhetoric, because communities across the country are already facing a tough reality—12,000 police officers to go.

How can the Government have got so out of touch on law on order? Many people have claimed that the Prime Minister just doesn’t get it—that he is out of touch and does not understand the fear of crime in communities across the country. It is true that crime is lower in Witney than in Wakefield, but one would have thought that the Prime Minister had plenty of experience of antisocial behaviour in his street. Surely the Defence Secretary must be the first candidate for an ASBO after throwing brickbats at the International Development Secretary and the Chancellor. The Business Secretary may need an injunction for throwing brickbats at himself.

The Justice Secretary has clearly been causing carnage wandering unmonitored through the TV studios. The Prime Minister should tag him at least, although Downing street probably thinks he is rather better locked up. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs should serve a community sentence, replanting trees, and the Deputy Prime Minister is clearly regarded now as a nuisance neighbour. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is the only one the Government can count on to be supportive—he is only person rather pleased to see the cuts to the traffic cops. The entire Cabinet is in desperate need of a family intervention project. What a shame the Government have cut those!

Time and again we have warned in the House of the serious consequences of cutting 12,000 officers. Let us look at the evidence: domestic violence units cut in Hampshire, officers in sexual offences teams forced out in London, traffic cops cut in Manchester, fire arms officers cut in Nottingham, CCTV officers cut in Merseyside, neighbourhood police cut in Birmingham and—get this—in Kent the police have told us that surveillance officers have been called off their targets after six-hour shifts because of overtime cuts. I presume that as part of the big society the Home Secretary has kindly asked criminals to keep their misdemeanours to office hours.