Dame Diana Johnson
MP for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham · Labour · United Kingdom
“Longer-term funding is subject to future spending reviews. The Department and NHS England are committed to prioritising funding for sepsis in future spending bids. The framework is a 10-year plan. I do not pretend that we will deliver everything overnight, but it sets clear targets to reduce deaths by a quarter over the next 10 years.”
“It is not acceptable that when someone has been through the worst experience of their life, they are just left to get on with it. That is why we are committed to improving access to post-discharge support and rehabilitation, with priority actions set out in the framework.”
“I encourage everyone who has not yet come forward to do so, and to ensure that they obtain both doses of the vaccine for proper protection. The framework commits to improving vaccine access. The shadow Minister put a number of questions to me. I will respond in writing, as I am conscious of the time.”
“No one knows a child better than his or her parents or carers, which is why listening to patients, carers and families is vital to supporting sepsis recognition and escalation. Too many cases have shown the devastating consequences when deterioration concerns are not heard.”
“During Sepsis Awareness Month, I pay tribute to the charities, such as the UK Sepsis Trust and Sepsis Research FEAT, that do so much to support families, raise awareness and fund research.”
“That will include research calls that cover sepsis improvement priorities, whether it is vaccination and screening, faster and more accurate diagnosis or innovative treatments. It is true that the most recent data from the Office for National Statistics suggests that sepsis deaths went down in 2024.”
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“I think that this is the first opportunity I have had to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his new role. We shall miss scrutinising him on the Home Affairs Committee. Can I also add my thanks to the emergency services for everything they did yesterday to save property and lives? As the Minister has said, there is a White Paper out about the fire and rescue services, and its consultation has a deadline of 26 July, which I think is Sunday. In the light of the fact that the Home Affairs Committee will be looking at this in the autumn, I wonder whether it would be sensible to extend that deadline. The events of this week show that there is clear evidence of climate change-driven volatility, which will have serious implications for the fire and rescue services.”
“I welcome the appointment of the women’s health ambassador, Dame Lesley Regan. It is an excellent appointment to that role. The 2020 report on access to contraception by the all-party parliamentary group on sexual and reproductive health found that the current fragmented commissioning arrangements have a severe impact on women’s access to contraception due to a lack of joined-up services. With 45% of pregnancies in England being unplanned, what specific plans does the Secretary of State have to remove the barriers to co-commissioning of reproductive healthcare to require different parts of the system to work together to meet women’s healthcare needs?”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if he will make it statement on the Government’s policy on interim payments for victims of the contaminated blood scandal.”
“Will the Paymaster General tell me when we will see the Government’s submission, which I am sure his officials are preparing, to the independent inquiry on interim payments that Sir Brian has set up?”
“Given the undoubted urgency, on 15 July Sir Brian Langstaff QC started a 10-day consultation on using his own powers to recommend interim payments ahead of his final report to which the Government will need to respond. Its 25 July deadline comes after the House enters the summer recess. As Mr Speaker has repeatedly said, this House should hear announcements first. After decades of cover-up and appalling treatment, what exactly is preventing the Minister from announcing today, before the summer recess, that the interim payments recommended by the Government’s own independent reviewer will be paid? If not now, when? What is the timetable for the announcement on interim payments and on a response to the wider review?”
“Ministers have had these recommendations since March but they refused to publish them, saying that they wanted to publish their response at the same time. We waited and waited, then the review was leaked to The Sunday Times newspaper and the Government finally published in early June but not with their promised Government response. Last week, as the Paymaster General said, Sir Robert gave oral evidence at the public inquiry on 11 and 12 July, making the case again for interim payments. The Government have already, rightly, granted £30 million of interim compensation for the Post Office Horizon IT scandal long before its public inquiry concludes, as well as interim payments for the Windrush scandal, but not for infected blood.”
“Thank you for granting this urgent question today, Mr Speaker. The response from the Paymaster General is yet again wholly inadequate and insulting to those who have suffered so much over so many years. With over 3,000 people dead and over 419 of them dying in the five years since the public inquiry was called, and with one person dying every four days on average, people cannot wait a day longer than necessary. As the Paymaster General set out at length, to avoid further delays the Government asked Sir Robert Francis QC in May 2021to undertake a parallel in-depth review of financial compensation ahead of the overall public inquiry concluding. Sir Robert found a “compelling case” for interim payments of at least £100,000 to those affected.”
“T10. After all the decades of cover-up and the appalling treatment of those who were infected by receiving contaminated blood, will the Minister now say that interim payments will be made to those people, as recommended by his adviser Sir Robert Francis in his recent review, where he said there was a “compelling case” for them to be paid? Four hundred and nineteen people have died since the announcement of the inquiry. Time is pressing.”
“It is 52 years since the contaminated blood scandal started. Since the former Prime Minister announced the public inquiry—five years ago this week—419 people have died. On average, a person dies every four days. The Government’s independent reviewer of compensation said there is a “compelling case” for interim compensation payments to be made now. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate? I had a wholly unsatisfactory answer from the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General this morning as to when the Government will make an announcement about the payment of compensation. The Government have rightly found time to make interim compensation payments in relation to the Post Office’s Horizon scandal and the Windrush scandal. Why has the infected blood community again been left with nothing when people are dying?”
“With the greatest of respect to the Minister, I cannot fathom why the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care is not at the Dispatch Box when we are facing such a perfect storm. Given that the Home Secretary failed to turn up to the Select Committee on Home Affairs this morning, may I ask the Minister whether this is the Government’s new approach: that members of the Cabinet no longer turn up to be accountable and so that scrutiny can happen in this House?”
“The Home Secretary told us that she could not come because of changes in her ministerial team and other “wider unprecedented changes” that had occurred since she had agreed to give evidence. I think that that is a very weak excuse to avoid scrutiny of the Home Office at this time. It was only ever the Home Secretary and the permanent secretary who were to appear before the Committee. In fact, the Home Secretary issued a statement last week in which she said that she had not resigned because the role of Home Secretary demanded that the holder of the office should be “focused on the business of government and our national security.” What steps can a Committee of this House take, Madam Deputy Speaker, when a Minister refuses to be scrutinised, and demonstrates such discourtesy to this House?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Home Secretary was due to meet the Home Affairs Committee this morning—we arranged this in April—for an evidence session on, among other things, the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, problems at the Passport Office, small boat crossings in the channel and the Government’s Rwanda policy, and the lack of progress in prosecuting and convicting those who commit rape and other sexual violence against women and girls. Shortly before 5 pm yesterday, the Home Secretary wrote to me to say that she was withdrawing from the evidence session. That is tantamount to providing no notice at all, and it deprives the Committee of the chance to scrutinise the conduct of her Department before the summer recess. We have requested her presence next Wednesday, but as yet have received no response.”
“Legislation requiring online platforms to verify the age and consent of all individuals featured in pornographic content on their sites is backed by leading anti-sexual exploitation organisations including CEASE—the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation—UK Feminista and the Traffickinghub movement, which has driven the global campaign to expose the abuses committed by, in particular, Pornhub. New clause 7 and amendments 33 and 34 are minimum safety measures that would stop the well-documented practice of pornography websites hosting and profiting from videos of rape, trafficking and child sexual abuse. I urge the Government to reconsider their position, and I will seek to test the will of the House on new clause 7 later this evening.”
“The OSCE told me: “These sites routinely feature sexual violence, exploitation and abuse, and trafficking victims. Repeatedly these sites have chosen profits over reasonable prevention and protection measures. At the most basic level, these sites should be required to ensure that each person depicted is a consenting adult, with robust age verification and the right to withdraw consent at any time. Since self- regulation hasn’t worked, this will only work through strong, state-led regulation”. Who else supports that?”
“ln keeping with that, my amendments would place a legal duty on online platforms hosting pornographic content to combat and remove illegal content through the specific and targeted measure of verifying the age and consent of every individual featured in pornographic content on their sites. The owners and operators of pornography websites are getting very rich from hosting footage of rape, trafficking and child sexual abuse, and they must be held to account under the law and required to take preventive action. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which leads action to combat human trafficking across 57 member states, recommends that Governments require age and consent verification on pornography websites in order to combat exploitation.”
“The fact that you can publish videos that have neither party’s consent is something that has to be changed by law, for sure.” Leigh Nicol is spot on. Unfortunately, when this subject was debated in Committee, the previous Minister, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), argued that the content I have described—including child sexual abuse images and videos—was already illegal, and there was therefore no need for the Government to introduce further measures. However, that misses the point: the Minister was arguing against the very basis of his own Government’s Bill. At the core of the Bill, as I understand it, is a legal duty placed on online platforms to combat and remove content that is already illegal, such as material relating to terrorism.”
“But some of the videos identified by this newspaper’s investigation had 350,000 views and had been on the platform for more than three years.” One of the women who is now being forced to take legal action against Pornhub’s parent company, MindGeek, is Crystal Palace footballer Leigh Nicol. Leigh’s phone was hacked and private content was uploaded to Pornhub without her knowledge. She said in an interview: “The damage is done for me so this is about the next generation. I feel like prevention is better than someone having to react to this. I cannot change it alone but if I can raise awareness to stop it happening to others then that is what I want to do…The more that you dig into this, the more traumatising it is because there are 14-year-old kids on these websites and they don’t even know about it.”
“It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags.” Even before that, in 2019, PayPal took the decision to stop processing payments for Pornhub after an investigation by The Sunday Times revealed that the site contained child abuse videos and other illegal content. The newspaper reported: “Pornhub is awash with secretly filmed ‘creepshots’ of schoolgirls and clips of men performing sex acts in front of teenagers on buses. It has also hosted indecent images of children as young as three. The website says it bans content showing under-18s and removes it swiftly.”
“Some of the world’s biggest pornography websites allow members of the public to upload videos without verifying that everyone in the film is an adult or that everyone in the film gave their permission for it to be uploaded. As a result, leading pornography websites have been found to be hosting and profiting from filmed footage of rape, sex trafficking, image-based sexual abuse and child sexual abuse. In 2020, The New York Times documented the presence of child abuse videos on Pornhub, one of the most popular pornography websites in the world, prompting Mastercard, Visa and Discover to block the use of their cards for purchases on the site. The New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof wrote about Pornhub: “Its site is infested with rape videos.”
“May I welcome the Minister to his place, as I did not get an opportunity to speak on the previous group of amendments? New clause 7 and amendments 33 and 34 would require online platforms to verify the age and consent of all individuals featured in pornographic videos uploaded to their site, as well as enabling individuals to withdraw their consent to the footage remaining on the website. Why are the amendments necessary? Let me read a quotation from a young woman: “I sent Pornhub begging emails. I pleaded with them. I wrote, ‘Please, I’m a minor, this was assault, please take it down.’” She received no reply and the videos remained live. That is from a BBC article entitled “I was raped at 14, and the video ended up on a porn site”. This was no one-off.”
“While we have been having this debate, Iain Corby, executive director at the Age Verification Providers Association, has sent me an email in which he said that the House may be interested to know that one of the members of that organisation offers adult sites a service that facilitates age verification and the obtaining and maintaining of records of consent. So it is possible to do this if the will is there.”
“I am a little taken aback that the Minister believes that the legislation will be sufficient. I do not understand why he has not responded to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) was making that we could make this happen by putting the proposal in the Bill and saying, “This is a requirement.” I am not sure why he thinks that is not the best way forward.”
“While that is the case, trust between the police service and black and minority ethnic communities will remain low, and the long-standing Peel principles of fairness in policing and policing by consent will continue to be undermined. The commitments made over the past year by the NPCC, individual forces, and senior police officers to a step change in addressing race equality in policing are important and welcome, but commitments have been made in the past that were not then delivered on. This time needs to be different, or confidence may be permanently undermined.”
“Unfortunately, I have only been able to touch on the surface of the myriad issues we raised in our report, but I hope I have been able to give an overview of what is a very comprehensive report and the issues it raises—some of which, sadly, have not been satisfactorily answered in the Government’s response. Our inquiry has found that the Macpherson report’s overall aim of the “elimination of racist prejudice and disadvantage and the demonstration of fairness in all aspects of policing” has still not been met. We have identified persistent, deep-rooted problems where too little progress has been made because of a lack of focus and accountability on issues of race.”
“I am encouraged by the fact that the Home Office’s response confirms that the NPCC has undertaken an initial review of forces’ implementation of recommendations made by HMICFRS in its 2021 report on the disproportionate use of police powers, which the Home Office said “showed that the majority of forces have already implemented the recommendations or have plans in place to do so.” I hope the Minister can tell us how many of the 43 forces in England and Wales have implemented those recommendations on the disproportionate use of police powers. Can he also confirm whether that review is in the public domain?”
“Indeed, in its February 2021 spotlight report on the disproportionate use of stop and search and the use of force, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services found that “Drug enforcement, mainly through stop and search, contributes to ethnic disproportionality despite evidence that there is no correlation between ethnicity and rates of drug use.” Our report also recognises the importance of the police being able to take action against knife crime, including through stop and search, but highlights that only 16% of reasonable grounds searches in 2019-20 were conducted to find offensive weapons.”
“However, no evidence to our inquiry has adequately explained or justified the nature and scale of the ethnic disproportionality in the use of stop-and-search powers, particularly in possession of drugs searches. At the time of our report’s publication, evidence showed that black people were less likely than white people to have used drugs in the past year, but they were 2.4 times more likely to be stopped and searched for drug possession.”
“One such participant, Witness M, who reported that he was first arrested at the age of 13, told us that he was “nearly stabbed” in 2018 but did not want to speak to the police when they asked if he was involved, due to his negative experiences with the police from such a young age. At the time the Committee’s report was published, Home Office data showed that black people were over nine and a half times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched. The latest Home Office data—to 31 March 2021—show that black people are seven times more likely than white people to be stopped. Our report acknowledged that stop and search is an important police power, and the Macpherson report’s conclusion that it has a useful role to play in the prevention and detection of crime still applies.”
“The Government response said that the NPCC is working across policing to ensure appropriate representation and involvement of minority ethnic officers in decision-making processes in professional standards departments, so can the Minister update us on the progress, and provide details of both the Government’s work and that of the NPCC to address ethnic diversity in PSDs? Finally, I want to discuss the use of stop and search. We heard troubling examples of stop and searches being conducted in a manner that was deeply alienating and uncomfortable. Many of the young BME participants that the Committee heard from in a private roundtable session felt that they were unjustly targeted by the police from a young age, which led to mistrust.”
“More positively, we welcomed the work done by some forces to draw on BME advisers and seek to address the lack of BME representation in PSDs, as reported in the NPCC’s recent review. However, we urged all forces to address the problem and demonstrate progress by the end of 2021. Additionally, we recommended that the NPCC conducts a review on this issue and reports within a year. I am pleased that, in their response, the Government recognise the risk posed by a lack of appropriate BME representation on a number of PSDs. It is also encouraging that ethnic minority representation on PSDs has risen by 2% since 2020, but clearly there is a lot more to do.”
“It is extremely troubling that the disparity has been allowed to continue for so long without serious action being taken by police forces to investigate or address the problem, so we welcomed the work by the NPCC to instigate reforms, including improvements to training, misconduct guidance, welfare support and addressing the lack of BME officers in professional standards departments. We also noted the NPCC’s 2019 report on disproportionality in police complaints and misconduct cases for BME officers and staff, which identified that 63% of Home Office police force professional standards departments had no BME police officers or staff. That is deeply troubling and totally unacceptable. Our recommendation is that forces must address unacceptable racial disproportionality in their PSD composition.”
“On police misconduct and discipline, during our assessment of the progress police forces have made on the Macpherson report’s recommendations about diversity in the police workforce, we repeatedly heard concerns about the higher likelihood of BME officers resigning voluntarily or being dismissed from their force. There is a clear racial disparity in the number of officers being dismissed from police forces—BME officers are more than twice as likely as white officers to be dismissed—and in the number of BME officers subjected to internal disciplinary processes.”
“Instead the Government response suggests that “forces should be striving to become more representative of the communities they serve”. That is not good enough. I would therefore be grateful if the Minister outlined what work the Home Office is doing to monitor how all 43 forces in England and Wales are working to reflect the composition of their local populations. Could he tell us what proportion of police forces are currently representative of the communities they serve? Also, what work has the Home Office planned to improve BME recruitment in policing when the uplift programme ends in 2023?”
“More positively, we found that some forces—notably Nottinghamshire and Greater Manchester—are making significant progress in increasing BME recruits by taking positive action such as having targeted recruitment campaigns, working on youth engagement and outreach, and working with local community and faith leaders. However, the vast majority of forces are still failing to recruit enough BME officers to ensure that the proportion of BME people in the force is the same as the proportion in the local population. I am therefore disappointed that the Government have rejected our recommendation to agree minimum targets for the recruitment of BME officers, so that constabularies reflect the composition of their local populations and we achieve at least 14% BME representation of officers nationally by 2030.”
“Concerningly, under-representation is most marked in senior ranks. Only 4% of officers at or above the rank of chief inspector were from BME backgrounds; that figure is now 5%. We found that police forces across the country have failed to do enough to increase BME recruitment, retention and promotion for decades; there has been a lack of focus, consistency and leadership on driving that recruitment and promotion for far too long. Shockingly, our analysis suggests that, at the current rate of progress, we will not have a properly representative police force in England and Wales for another 20 years. Just think for a moment: that would be four decades after the Macpherson report raised the seriousness of this issue, and nearly half a century after the murder of Stephen Lawrence.”
“Communities’ concerns about the racial disparities that we identified are exacerbated by the lack of BME police officers and staff at all levels of the police force. The Macpherson report recommended that police forces be representative of the communities that they serve, and that targets be set for recruitment, progression and retention of minority ethnic police officers. However, the 10-year target set by the then-Home Secretary included a target for overall minority ethnic representation of 7% in the service by 2009. That was not met. Our report highlighted that even by 2020, BME officers represented just 7.3% of the police service across England and Wales. That figure is now 7.6%, but that is still far below 14%, which is the percentage of the population in England and Wales who identify as BME.”
“I am pleased that the Government have agreed on the need to monitor trust and confidence in policing, both nationally and locally, and that they have improved the way in which they collect and use data, including on stop and search and community confidence. However, their response did not say how the Home Office is monitoring confidence among black and minority ethnic communities in policing locally. I hope the Minister can provide us with an update on progress, specifically on how his Department is working with police forces to collect data on confidence in policing. I turn to the issue of recruitment and progression of BME officers and staff. Throughout our inquiry, we heard concerns about community confidence in the police, the use of certain police powers, and wider racism in policing.”
“By contrast, a young participant at our roundtable told us that the Metropolitan police’s stop and search procedure was “more hostile than professional”. He said it was difficult for young people to trust the police due to their stereotyping of BME communities as likely criminals. Our inquiry also found a lack of data on confidence by ethnicity at a local force level. That makes it much harder to hold local forces to account for concerns about BME communities’ confidence in the police. Concerningly, we found that increasing trust and confidence in policing is not being treated as a policing priority, or a ministerial policing priority.”
“In May 2019, we held a private roundtable with a group of young BME people from London aged 17 to 30 on their experiences, their views of their relationship with the police, and the use of stop and search. This was not universal, but the majority of participants told us that their experiences with the police had been negative, and that they did not feel confident in approaching the police for protection. The former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick, told us that, “in London, following police encounters with young people, she often saw officers sending the young person off with a smile on their face.” Indeed, our report added that “She said that it was the police’s responsibility to ensure that ‘each interaction’ with a young person was as positive as possible”.”
“The report noted: “Adults from Black and mixed ethnic backgrounds are less likely to have confidence in the police than adults from White or Asian backgrounds and the confidence gap has widened over the last few years.” Our report also noted that 67% of white adults said they believed the police would treat them fairly “compared to 56% of Black adults. All victims of crime should feel confident in turning to the police for help.” It is of deep and serious concern that black people have much lower expectations than white people of being treated fairly and with respect by the police. Data for England and Wales also suggest that the confidence gap between black people and white people in their local police is even greater among young people.”
“I thank our specialist adviser, Dr Nicola Rollock, and our specialist adviser on policing and the former chief constable of Greater Manchester police, Sir Peter Fahy, for their valuable input. Although the report was extensive and we covered many issues, I will focus my contribution on four key areas that the Committee considered. First, I want to focus attention on confidence in policing among BME communities. The Macpherson report called for it to be a ministerial priority that all police services should “increase trust and confidence in policing amongst minority ethnic communities.” However, all these years on, evidence to our inquiry showed that there is a significant problem in black communities with confidence in the police, particularly among young people.”
“However, it should not have required video footage of the murder of a black man by a police officer and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests to concentrate the minds of the Government and the police on the imperative of race equality. We are extremely grateful to everyone who contributed to our inquiry. We recognise that, for some, that involved retelling difficult and painful events. We would particularly like to thank Baroness Lawrence, Dr Neville Lawrence and Duwayne Brooks for their time and contributions. I also particularly thank the young people who shared their experience of the police with the Committee and who, along with the many other contributors to our inquiry, provided invaluable evidence that underpins our recommendations and conclusions.”
“Having said all that, I want to be clear that our inquiry also identified persistent, deep-rooted and unjustified racial disparities in key areas, including a decline in confidence and trust in the police among some BME communities, lack of progress on BME recruitment, problems in misconduct proceedings, and unjustified racial disparities in stop and search. In those areas, we proposed urgent action. We found that there had been an increased focus in policing on race inequality since the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in the United States of America in 2020, which again shone a spotlight on race injustice across the world. Reforms announced by individual forces, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services and the IOPC are, of course, welcome.”
“Since the Macpherson report was published, there have been important improvements in policing, including significant improvements in the policing of racist crimes, commitments made to promoting equality and diversity, and good examples of local community policing. At this point, I ought to acknowledge the work of our police officers and staff. Across the country, police forces work hard each day to tackle crime and keep all our communities safe. Police officers and staff work immensely hard to deliver fairness in policing, to support black and minority ethnic victims of crime, to tackle racist hate crimes and to support community cohesion. The important role the police play in our communities is the reason the Home Affairs Committee produced the report.”
“The Committee’s inquiry was prompted by concern that in some areas, in the words of Baroness Lawrence, “things have become stagnant and nothing seems to have moved.” Our inquiry sought to assess progress against some of the most important Macpherson report recommendations on: community confidence; tackling racist crimes; recruitment and retention of black and other ethnic minority officers and staff; race disparities in the use of stop and search and other powers; and the late Sir William Macpherson’s overall aim of “the elimination of racist prejudice and disadvantage and the demonstration of fairness in all aspects of policing.” The Committee found that policing today is very different from 23 years ago.”
“Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager, was murdered on 22 April 1993 in an unprovoked racist knife attack in Eltham, south London. The inquiry into his murder, led by the late Sir William Macpherson, uncovered major failings in the police investigation and in the way Stephen Lawrence’s family and his friend Duwayne Brooks were treated. Many of the findings and the subsequent 70 recommendations made by the Stephen Lawrence inquiry focused on long-standing issues that remain relevant today.”
“We subsequently got a response, and we are disappointed, shall we say, that the clear calls that we made on the Government in our very detailed and evidence-based report were not always heeded. We are pleased to have this opportunity to discuss some of the shortcomings of the response with the Minister. This debate is particularly timely in the light of recent events, including the report on Charing Cross police station by the Independent Office for Police Conduct. I thank the former Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, now the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), for leading the Committee during this inquiry. I want to set the report and this debate in the proper context.”
“Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), had been promoted to the position of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. I send my congratulations to him. I am very pleased to have the Minister here, and I am sure he is fully apprised of all the issues that I will raise. I am sorry that the Home Affairs Committee felt the need to hold this debate. When we produce a report, it is normal to get a response from the Government within eight weeks. In this case, it took eight months. The Committee applied to the Liaison Committee for a debate in which to discuss the report, because we were concerned to ensure that the important issues we highlighted were raised in this place, and had not yet had a response from the Government.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the Third Report of the Home Affairs Committee, Session 2021-22, The Macpherson Report: twenty-two years on, HC 139, and the Government Response, HC 274. It is an enormous pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Ms McDonagh. I am grateful to the Liaison Committee for allocating time for this debate, although I am well aware that events outside this place may be occupying hon. Members’ time this afternoon, so we do not have many Members present. I am very pleased to see that we have a Home Office Minister with us, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove); I was worried when I heard that the former Policing Minister, the right hon.”
“I hear the Minister’s point, but I wonder whether he might be able to help me further. A Home Office response is also outstanding to another of our reports on rape investigations and prosecutions. We had expected a response within eight weeks, but we are now well past that. When he goes back to the Department, will he chivvy it along and see whether we can get a response to that report as well?”