Police, Crime, Sentencing and Court Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Jonathan Djanogly

Report stage
Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

I thank my hon. Friend, because had I had five minutes in which to speak and that was exactly the case I was going to make. What he says was proven in our inquiry. Sadly, the time allowed today permits me to give only one example of concern on these new public order powers. Clause 55 provides powers to deal with non-violent serious disruption. First, that should be stated in the Bill, not in secondary legislation. Furthermore, I am concerned that it will provide excessive powers to prevent non-violent disruption to business, in circumstances where the business concerned may not be the focus of the protest. Again, this shifts the ground towards making a presumption of illegality. In practice, working out to what extent a business can be disrupted will only make the job of the police tougher, not easier, and it will certainly make it more political in nature.

For instance, if protest that has until now been kept away from residential areas will also be removed from business areas, where does it go? Presumably, it will go to a place where it cannot be heard, but, as has been said, noise and disruption are integral to protest. As many commentators have pointed out, in practice, the police will increasingly be put under pressure from businesses to impose conditions, and they will be put under pressure from demonstrators, who will then go ahead in any case, as they did at Clapham common and in Bristol.

This clause could well undermine public confidence in the police and reduce public safety. That is why our inquiry recommended the production of guidance to help both police and organisers to understand their respective powers and obligations—that is what is in new clause 85. More fundamentally, we also need to question whether it is still appropriate that police both condition protest and enforce their own conditions. To that end, I am drawn to having something like the Northern Ireland Parades Commission, which has power to place conditions on public processions, thus leaving the police with the enforcement role that they know how to do so well.

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

The Home Affairs Committee has considered many different aspects of this Bill and these amendments at different times and in different ways, but given the time I will focus on just a small number of areas.

I particularly want to address new clause 69, in my name. Its purpose is to get justice for victims of domestic abuse who are being timed out and take action against perpetrators who are being let off the hook. Many domestic abuse cases are prosecuted as common assault in a magistrates court where police and prosecutors may say that the threshold for the Crown court is not met. In these cases, there is a time limit on justice—most victims are not aware of this—of six months from the offence, even though in domestic abuse cases it may take many months, for good reason, for victims to feel able to go to the police. They may still be in an abusive relationship. They may be afraid. They may not be safe. They may have children and be worried about how to leave or where they will go. It may take them time to get the support that they feel they need to be able to talk to the police. There are so many reasons that are, in themselves, the essence of continuing crimes of domestic abuse. That is why the new clause increases the time limit so that there can be six months for the police to deal with the case from the point of reporting, rather than from the point of the offence itself.

Somebody I have talked to told me her story. She was assaulted while she was pregnant. She went to A&E but did not, at that stage, want to talk about what had happened. However, when the abuse continued after the baby was born, she left and gathered her courage to talk to the police, who started an investigation but before long told her that she had passed a time limit she never even knew existed and her ex would not be charged. There are many more such victims of domestic abuse who, for serious and obvious reasons, do not report it immediately, and the perpetrators go on to be free to commit more crimes.

UNHCR Syrian Refugees Programme

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Jonathan Djanogly

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

As I have just said, the three party leaders jointly called on countries across the world to do more on aid, and it is right that we should continue to do so. France has signed up to the UN programme to take around 500 refugees and provide assistance for the most vulnerable people in the region, which is also right. We want countries across the world to work with the UN and international organisations to provide assistance to those who are most desperate.

As the UN has made clear, some of the most vulnerable refugees are struggling to cope and survive in the camps. It told us about women who have been badly raped and abused, and who are at risk of further abuse in the camps. There are children with no one to look after them whose parents have been killed and relatives lost, and those who have been tortured and are still enduring terrible mental and physical distress. We need to provide help now for those people as a matter of our common humanity.

[Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Lady appreciate that in Turkey, for instance, the significant majority of refugees do not live in the camps? Of 700,000 refugees, only 200,000 are in the camps, and children who are outside the camps are the ones not getting the education.

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and that is also the case in Lebanon where refugees living in towns and villages now make up a sizeable proportion of the Lebanese population. Some of the vulnerable refugees that the UN has identified are within the camps, but he is right to say that there will be people in other circumstances who are also experiencing great distress. I know he will agree that many of those refugees want to return to their homes and stay in the region, but it is right that we provide additional assistance to those who are most vulnerable.

Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Jonathan Djanogly

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. Evidence given to his Home Affairs Committee by the new head of the National Crime Agency suggested that it did not necessarily expect to increase the amount that it seized, so we shall want to monitor its work closely. As my right hon. Friend says, it is likely that more action will be expected. We think that more can be done overall by all police forces, particularly in regard to matters such as the proceeds of crime and child exploitation. The recent Savile case shows quite how much needs to done throughout society to increase protection and prevention.

We agree that more action is needed in each of those areas, and the Bill provides an opportunity to ensure that more action is taken, but if we look at each area in turn it is not clear to us that the Home Secretary’s proposed measures will be sufficient. She has said, for example, that the National Crime Agency will be able to do more to deal with international crime, but in fact its hands will be tied. She wants to pull out of European co-operation on justice and home affairs. She is keen to opt out of the European arrest warrant, and wants to ditch the sharing of data with other European police officers on sex offenders who travel across borders. The arrest warrant has been used to bring back 39 people suspected of serious child sex offences, 65 people suspected of drug trafficking and money laundering, and 10 people suspected of human trafficking. Those are the very criminals whom the National Crime Agency is supposed to pursue.

It would be helpful if the Home Secretary, or the Minister who responds to the debate, told us how many of the police officers and crime experts who are currently working on international and cross-border crime support the plans to opt out of European co-operation, and how many of them think that the work of the National Crime Agency will be easier or harder if the Government opt out.

[Mr Djanogly]

On the basis of the right hon. Lady’s rationale, I assume that she will be very pleased by the introduction of the single family court. There will be a single point of entry between the courts, and judges will work together in those courts so that the child cases to which she has referred can be dealt with better and faster.

[Yvette Cooper]

I think that the reforms of family courts will have a great many benefits. They are the result of independent reviews, and a considerable amount of work over some time, to establish how those courts can be improved, particularly from the point of view of the children involved. We certainly support measures in the family courts that can improve support for children, including child protection.

There are clearly problems on the international front in regard to the work that the NCA will do. Let me now deal with some of the issues on the domestic front. The Home Secretary has said that she wants to strengthen national action against serious crimes, but, as was pointed out by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the new National Crime Agency faces increased responsibilities with a budget 20% lower than that of the Serious Organised Crime Agency. It will supposedly do everything that SOCA did while picking up new responsibilities from the National Policing Improvement Agency, doing extra work at Britain’s borders, and expanding work on tackling cybercrime and on tackling economic and financial crime. It is going to do this with, by my assessment, a cut in the budget of at least £80 million—as the Home Affairs Committee Chair has suggested, the budget cut could be considerably more.

The detail of how the NCA will work remains confused. We still do not know how it will relate to the new police and crime commissioners, who will not be consulted on the NCA’s strategic priorities but whose forces will have to respond and do what the NCA says. Legally, the Bill provides for the NCA to direct chief constables over resources and priorities in their areas, but can a police and crime commissioner who disagrees sack the chief constable? How will this be resolved? What will the relationship be between the NCA, the UK Border Force and the UK Border Agency? Will the NCA be able to task border officials in the way that it will be able to task chief constables, or is the border command to be simply a co-ordinating committee? Questions are also unanswered in relation to the economic command. What will the relationship be with the Serious Fraud Office and with the City of London police on economic crime? Will the NCA be able to set tasks for the SFO, or is the economic command just another co-ordinating committee?

None of those things is clear. The Home Office has promised that many of the questions would be answered by the framework document, yet it still has not been published. Under pressure from their lordships, the Home Secretary has finally published an outline framework document, but it is hardly illuminating; all it gives is a list of bullet points. For example, it contains the heading:

“Accountability to the Home Secretary”.

Under that heading the bullet point simply reads:

“How that accountability relationship will be supported by Home Office officials”.

That is all it says, so this is not a framework document; it is simply a Home Secretary to-do list.

Again, we are being given a lack of detail, even though we know that detail matters. The Home Office’s failure to provide the detail in debates in this House on previous legislation has caused considerable problems; one such example was the failure on detail that meant that £350,000 had to be spent reprinting the ballots for the Welsh police and crime commissioner elections.

Big policy areas are also not being addressed here. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre is being absorbed into the NCA, despite the reservations of many experts. More importantly, the Home Secretary is missing the opportunity to strengthen the work on child protection and tackling sexual exploitation at a vital time, and to set up an overarching review, led by child protection experts, into how Jimmy Savile was able to get away with terrible abuse of children over many years.

The Home Secretary also referred to the counter-terror measures raised in the House of Lords, where her proposal to transfer counter-terror from the Met to the NCA has raised considerable alarm. I welcome her saying that she will consider the points raised on whether that should be done in primary legislation rather than in secondary legislation. The former Met commissioner Lord Blair said:

“in my lifetime no change more significant than this in the policing arrangements to protect our nation has ever been contemplated…Such a decision deserves primary legislation”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 November 2012; Vol. 741, c. 115.]

Former Met commissioner Lord Condon has said:

“This is a hugely important matter that deserves primary legislation rather than an affirmative order…History tells us that more than 80% of terrorist incidents in this country happen in London.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 November 2012; Vol. 741, c. 116.]

Of course, even more of the counter-terror problems will lie with the Met now that the Home Secretary has removed relocation from control orders.