Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Mark Tami(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Yvette Cooper
I want to make some progress, because I have not yet reached the main substance of my speech, but I will briefly give way to the hon. Gentleman and then my hon. Friend.
Yvette Cooper
I am afraid the hon. Gentleman is simply wrong, and he knows he is wrong because he asked exactly that question of David Anderson, the independent terrorism reviewer, in the Select Committee on Home Affairs. The reply from David Anderson was clear. He said that control orders had not been undermined by the courts and had in fact been upheld by them—that the principle had been upheld and individual control orders had been upheld. Of course it is right for control orders to be scrutinised in the courts, as it is right for TPIMs to be scrutinised. However, the independent reviewer was absolutely clear: it was not the courts undermining control orders, nor was it the courts that decided to replace them with the weaker TPIMs; it was the Government.
Yvette Cooper
The concern for us is that the weakening of the terror powers has led to additional costs. We simply do not know what additional costs there might be now as a result of ending control orders for up to six people this month.
The Prime Minister told the House earlier this month that TPIMs “are working”, but the verdict on TPIMs, two years on, is very different. According to the independent reviewer, there have been no successful prosecutions, despite all the Home Secretary’s promises. The removal of relocation powers has badly backfired. No one relocated as part of their control order ever absconded, yet the Home Secretary removed relocation powers and lost two out of 10 suspects in 12 months. Ibrahim Magag ran off in a black cab; Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed ran off in a burqa. They have not been seen since, and the Home Secretary and Prime Minister have no idea where they are. The Prime Minister calls this a successful policy, yet 20% of the terror suspects on TPIMs have disappeared within a year.
We want to concentrate on the six men expected to be released from TPIMs this month. The House warned the Home Secretary of the risks that she was taking by restricting TPIMs to two years regardless of the security assessment unless fresh terrorist activity had occurred. Here is what Mr Justice Collins said about her legislation:
“if a TPIM has achieved its purpose and the Home Secretary has no reason to believe that any terrorist related activity has occurred, there will be no power to impose a fresh TPIM whether or not…the Secretary of State has reason to believe the subject will involve himself in terrorist related activity.”
In other words, if the TPIM works to prevent terrorist activity, there is no possibility of the Home Secretary extending it, even if she has good reason to believe that that terror suspect remains a serious risk and will return to terrorist activity straight away.
If that is the case, Parliament needs to know the extent of the risk that these men pose now, and the Home Secretary needs to give us this simple piece of information: does she believe that these six men are still likely to pursue terror-related activity: yes or no? The courts said they were likely to do that 12 months ago. Does she believe they are now? Are these men still a risk: yes or no? She cannot claim that she does not comment on individual cases, because she has already done so. Public statements have been made about these men and the risks they pose.
Let us take the person known as CD—one of the men whose TPIM expires this month. The Security Service said he was trying to procure firearms for a terrorist attack in the UK. Just over a year ago, the judge agreed he was too dangerous to remove the TPIM controls. The judge said at that point that
“the evidence that CD has been involved in terrorist activity is overall stronger now than it was”.
He also said that the
“control order and now TPIM are having something of their intended effect, but that is very different from saying that the TPIM should be ended…there remains a network, his views and determination are unchanged, he has training”.
What has changed since then? Have CD’s views and determination changed? Has his network changed? Or is there still a significant risk that he will try to get firearms or other weapons again to pursue a UK attack? The Security Service and the judge told us a year ago that this man was a serious risk; now the Home Secretary is removing all his restrictions. We have a right to know whether she still thinks he is a risk or whether that risk has gone. I will give way to the Home Secretary if she will tell us now whether CD is still a risk. [Interruption.] The Home Secretary has chosen not to intervene to answer the specific question about whether CD remains a risk.
Policing and Crime
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Mark Tami(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Yvette Cooper
It is right to keep working hard to cut bureaucracy, but the hon. Gentleman is out of touch with the reality of what is happening across the country. In west Yorkshire, for example, the police are now having to go back to their offices between incidents to deal with the bureaucracy themselves because of the scale of the cuts, whereas previously they could ring in with the details of an offence or incident that they had attended. In the west midlands and Warwickshire, time and again police officers are having to do more paperwork and bureaucracy because of the scale of the Government’s cuts.
It is not just the cuts that are causing the problems: the Government are also making it harder for the police and communities to fight crime. As a result of the DNA restrictions, the police estimate that there are 1,000 fewer criminal matches every year, including for serious offenders. It means not holding DNA at all in up to three quarters of rape cases, where charges are ultimately not brought, and we know the difficulties in rape cases.
On CCTV, the new code of practice means a bubble wrap of bureaucracy, with more checks and balances on a single camera than the Government are introducing for police and crime commissioners, yet the Home Secretary knows the benefits that CCTV can bring. They have just installed CCTV at Twyford train station in her constituency. Did she complain then that they had not done an impact assessment on the environment, privacy or disproportionality or introduce safeguards, as her code of practice required? No. She congratulated the station manager, saying that people needed the
“added reassurance that they can travel in safety”.
Too right they do, and they do not want too much bureaucracy to prevent them from getting the reassurance they need.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Before my right hon. Friend moves on from CCTV, I wonder how many Members of this House have had constituents come to them demanding that CCTV be removed? I am sure that every Member has had large numbers of people come to them asking for more CCTV, rather than less.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. CCTV can make a difference for communities that are struggling, such as the community in Blackpool that I talked with a few weeks ago, who told me about the difference that having CCTV installed has made on their estate, where they had had persistent problems. CCTV was helping them to turn it around.
Government Reductions in Policing
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Mark Tami(13 years ago)
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Yvette Cooper
As the Home Secretary will know, chief constables have been put in an impossible position. They are rightly trying to do everything they can to deliver strong policing within the budgets they have been given and to reassure the communities for which they have to provide services, but the rug is being pulled from underneath them. If the Home Secretary now believes that police numbers are artificially too high and higher than they ought to be, she is the first Conservative Home Secretary in history to say that the problem with the police force is that police numbers are too high.
The right hon. Lady referred to chief constables. Chief Constable Steve Finnigan of the Lancashire constabulary, who is the ACPO lead on police performance management, was asked whether he would have to reduce front-line policing in order to meet the Government’s budget cuts. He replied: “I absolutely am.” He has also said:
“Let me be really clear. With the scale of the cuts that we are experiencing…we can do an awful lot of work around the back office…but we cannot leave the front line untouched.”
That is because of the scale of the cuts and it is what chief constables are saying across the country.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Is my right hon. Friend not amazed that at a time when we are cutting front-line policing, the Government intend to spend more than £40 million electing police commissioners that nobody wants? The Government have failed to put forward an argument as to why they are required.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point, because that money could be spent on keeping some of the 2,000 police officers who have been told that they will be forced to take early retirement as a result of the scale of the cuts. Electing 43 police and crime commissioners seems to be the only crime policy that the Government have. They are electing 43 new politicians in place of the thousands of police officers across the country who are to go.
Police
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Mark Tami(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Yvette Cooper
Staffordshire police, like other police forces across the country, are having to work immensely hard to keep the police working to do everything they possibly can to fight crime while they are faced with massive cuts. Staffordshire police are faced with a 7.5% cut in their budget next year alone, followed by an 8.7% cut the following year. Those steep cuts in the first year will have consequences in relation to the 70 police officers being lost, specialist teams and the work being done across the police force.
The Government are cutting more from police budgets in two years than the former Home Secretary proposed over a Parliament. If the Home Secretary and the Minister think that can all be done through efficiency savings, what do they have to say to the chief constables across the country who are cutting officers? Are they all wrong? Are they all profligate? Are they all inadequate in meeting efficiency challenges? Or is the truth that they are doing their best to manage in the face of very difficult cuts? Is not the truth that the Home Secretary and the Minister have broken with more than a century of Tory tradition? They are not looking for efficiency savings as an alternative to police officer cuts—they think that efficiency savings are the police officer cuts. They think that the best way to improve police productivity is to cut the number of police working across Britain.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right about the huge difference between the claims that those on the Government side made before the election and the reality of what they are doing now.
We now have the first Home Secretary and Policing Minister in Tory party history to want fewer police working to fight crime across Britain. The Minister is the first Policing Minister in Tory party history to believe there is no link between the number of police and the level of crime, ignoring the evidence of recent history—the 43% drop in crime in the Labour years alongside the 17,000 extra police and the 16,000 police community support officers.
Yvette Cooper
My right hon. Friend is exactly right. She worked to tackle antisocial behaviour over many years and initiated some extremely important work. She is right that all the powers in the world will make no difference if we do not have the police in place to work closely with communities in local areas to implement those powers in practice.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. If four people ring up and then one rings a second time, does that person count as a fifth person? Presumably the Home Office will set out guidance and red tape for local communities and police to follow.
Where is the Home Secretary today? That is an important question, because I understand that she has been sighted in the building. I know that such debates are normally attended by Ministers of State, but normally Home Secretaries do not cut the police grant by 20%. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is coming here to defend his cuts, so why will she not defend hers? Could it be because she knows that she got stitched up in the spending review and so will not defend it? She left the Minister out on his own—a very thin blue line—and will not join the police cuts front line.
The Government are taking a gamble with crime and policing, just as they are taking a gamble with the economy.