Yvette Cooper
MP for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley · Labour · United Kingdom
“NATO has been the cornerstone of Euro-Atlantic security for over 75 years, protecting more than a billion people, but to ensure it remains as strong for the next 75 years, it needs to respond to changing threats.”
“He may have seen that the Prime Minister and the Canadian Prime Minister put out a joint statement over the last couple of days to set out how we seek to work together to ensure that those initiatives, which do slightly different things, can combine and collaborate to ensure that we get the best possible impact.”
“The world must not fail the people of Sudan again. Last week, the UK convened an urgent debate at the United Nations Human Rights Council. A UK-penned resolution condemned atrocities, called for an urgent UN fact finding inquiry and urged the RSF to comply with international law and halt this attack, urging both the RSF and the Sudanese A…”
“We agree about the nature of the increasingly dangerous world we live in and the importance of us being able to defend ourselves and maintain our security. We have committed to reaching the 3.5% commitment on defence, but that is part of a 5% commitment that was made to cover broader defence and security intelligence.”
“I did take the opportunity to discuss the situation in both the west bank and Gaza with some of our allies and partners. I am deeply worried that last year’s 20-point plan for Gaza—which was hugely important and which we supported, as did the whole world—is at risk of running into the ground.”
“As I have said, our security since the second world war has very much depended on the NATO alliance, which has always been a defensive alliance that has built its strength through deterrence. Deterrence is immensely important. When we reached the end of the cold war in 1990, there was at that point a substantial peace dividend.”
The complete record
Every one of 8,060 lines we hold for Yvette Cooper, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 44 of 162.
“Labour has called for an end to the 20% unfair discount, for increased salary thresholds to prevent exploitation and for the inclusion of advice from a strengthened Migration Advisory Committee. Most of all, we have called for a proper plan, with clear links between the immigration system, training and the economy, and workforce plans, none of which are in the statement, because the Government have no grip and no proper plan. This is a chaotic approach. Immigration is important for Britain, and we have rightly helped Ukraine and Hong Kong. We benefit from international talent and students. That is why the immigration system needs to be controlled and managed, so that it is fair and effective, and why net migration should come down from record levels. But there needs to be a proper plan.”
“I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of the statement. Today’s statement is an admission of years of total failure by this Conservative Government—failure on the immigration system and failure on the economy. It is another example of the total chaos at the heart of this Government. Net migration has trebled since the last election, when the Conservatives promised to reduce it, as a result of their policies on the economy and on immigration, including the Prime Minister’s policy decisions. In a chaotic panic, the Prime Minister now opposes the policies that he introduced and thinks that the Government’s own decisions are a problem. Who does the Home Secretary think has been in charge for the past 13 years? More chaos, more veering all over the place. Net migration should come down.”
“Will the Government immediately agree to Labour’s plan to get rid of the unfair wage discount that means employers can pay overseas recruits 20% less than the going rate, and which prevents training and fair pay in the UK? Will the Government immediately ask the Migration Advisory Committee to review salary thresholds for skilled workers in shortage occupations, which have not kept up, and where the MAC has warned repeatedly about low-paid exploitation? Will the Minister link the points-based system to training and employment standards in the UK and have a proper plan for the economy and the immigration system? The Government have no serious plan; they are just ramping up the rhetoric. They have no plan for the economy, no plan for the immigration system and no plan for the country. Britain deserves better than this.”
“Immigration is important for Britain and always will be, but the system needs to be properly controlled and managed so that it is fair, effective and properly linked to the economy. Net migration for work has trebled since 2019 because of the Government’s failure on skills and training, their failure to tackle record levels of long-term sickness and people on waiting lists, and their failure to make the system work. Social care visas have gone from 3,000 a year to more than 100,000 a year, yet this spring Ministers halved the programme for recruiting care workers here. Health visas are up, yet Ministers cut training places last autumn. Visas for engineers are up while engineering apprenticeship completions in the UK have halved.”
“Where is the Home Secretary, and what on earth is going on? The media were briefed that he was going to make a statement on net migration yesterday or today, but we have had nothing, and he is nowhere. The Immigration Minister has been everywhere, madly briefing all his ideas, but who speaks for the Government? Net migration figures are now three times their level at the 2019 general election, when the Conservatives promised to reduce them. That includes a 65% increase in work migration this year, which reflects a complete failure by the Conservatives on both the economy and immigration. The Immigration Minister is complaining today—he will be furious when he discovers who has been in charge of the immigration system for the last 13 years. Net migration should come down.”
“I thank the Home Secretary for giving way. It is so good to see him in the Chamber now. Could he tell us what the percentage increase has been in knife crime since 2015?”
“When the Home Secretary talks about police numbers, we remember the 20,000 police officers that his party cut, for which we are still paying the price across the country. The lack of police on the street means that half the country never see them. That is the result of 10,000 fewer police and PCSOs on our streets, and that is the backdrop to this Bill. Quite simply, it is not enough to tackle the serious problems that the country and the criminal justice system face.”
“The Home Secretary did not have the figures to hand on knife crime, but knife crime is up by 70%, and the number of young victims of violence is at its highest in a decade. I have spoken to mums who have lost their children through knife crime; they feel as if they have lost their future, but they want us to act to save other children’s lives. Crime at the heart of our communities and town centres is also on the rise. We have seen shoplifting surge to record levels—up 25% in the past year alone—but town centre policing has dropped. Many towns have seen a huge drop in neighbourhood police on the beat and half the country say that they do not see police on the streets. There are now 10,000 fewer police and police community support officers in neighbourhood teams.”
“The Prime Minister has an excuse when he says that things are great: he only sees things from a helicopter, but the rest of them have no such excuse and they are out of touch. If a person commits a crime today, they are less than half as likely to be caught as they were under the previous Labour Government. That is the collapse of law and order under this Conservative Government, who have been in power for 13 years. In the past eight years, we have had eight Home Secretaries and 10 Justice Secretaries. We have huge court backlogs and delays, record numbers of crimes being dropped with no suspect identified, and record numbers of victims dropping out of the criminal justice process due to lack of support and unacceptable delays. New technology has helped to prevent some volume crimes, but serious violence is up by 60% on 2015.”
“Certainly, yesterday, he had half his party standing up to complain about his policies. The problem seems to be that he thinks his Rwanda policy is batshit, that has driven his Back Benchers apeshit, and now his whole party is in deep sh-ambles. The Home Secretary told us yesterday that he does not really know yet what is going on in the immigration system, so I assume from today’s speech that he is still getting the hang of what is going on in the criminal justice system. His claims about how well things are going are incredibly out of touch. Let me sum it up for him. After 13 years of Conservative Government, things are pretty dire: 90% of crimes now go unsolved; the charge rate has dropped by two thirds; more criminals are getting off; and more victims are being let down.”
“It is good to see the Home Secretary in his place. He was not here for the urgent question earlier, but he has been having a bit of a week of it. He had to pseudo-apologise yesterday to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) for his language. He has been rude about northern towns and rude about northern MPs. Although he may be all over the place on home affairs, we should perhaps be relieved that he is no longer in charge of diplomacy for the nation—although, to be fair, given the treatment of the Greek Prime Minister in the past 24 hours, things may have got even worse since he left. As I said, the Home Secretary did not come to the Chamber earlier to answer the urgent question, but I gather from reports that he was meeting Back-Bench Conservative MPs.”
“My hon. Friend is right that huge damage has been done to policing and the criminal justice system. In addition, because police are often the public face of the criminal justice system, the fact that confidence in policing has been heavily knocked has an impact on confidence in and respect for the rule of law in our country. That is why it is so serious and why there ought to be cross-party support for restoring confidence in policing and the criminal justice system.”
“We also welcome plans to tackle revenge porn and image-based abuse. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) makes a very important point on that, which we are keen to discuss further and support in Committee. We also welcome tougher sentences for those who commit murder at the end of a relationship. It is welcome that the Government have ditched the plan to make cancelling tents their entire policy on homelessness, but we will need to pursue the detail of the measures in the Bill, because they do not address the root causes of homelessness. The last Labour Government cut rough sleeping by two thirds, but under the Conservatives that progress has been reversed and it is now up by 75%.”
“In 2013, the then Conservative Home Secretary removed the power of arrest when antisocial behaviour injunctions were introduced, and we warned that they would not be strong enough. It has taken the Government 10 years to restore the power of arrest, but we welcome it. On fraud, we called for the introduction of corporate criminal liability during the passage of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, so we are pleased to see it in this Bill now. We have also supported stronger sentences on sexual offences. We support the increase in sentencing for the most serious offences and the power to compel perpetrators to attend sentencing in person. Justice must be seen to be done and the victims of the most heinous crimes need to see justice done and sentence given with the perpetrator standing before the court.”
“It is certainly the case that far too many victims are not getting justice, because they are either dropping out of the system or being let down. The Opposition support the Bill before us and we will support its Second Reading. Of course there will be individual measures that we need to pursue, but there are many measures in it that were Labour policies or that Labour has called for. However, the Bill simply does not go far enough to address the challenges that we face. We welcome the fact that the Government have now agreed to Labour’s calls to crack down on antisocial behaviour by going after drug dealers with stronger closure orders and the introduction of the power of arrest for breaches of antisocial behaviour injunctions.”
“A law brought in by the Conservative Government, again around 10 years ago, means that shop thefts under £200 often are not investigated, even if the same gang comes back time and again. We should end that £200 rule to tackle the shoplifting gangs. We also have shop staff who are petrified to go to work when there are 850 incidents a day of violence and abuse against shop workers.”
“There is nothing in the Bill to turn around the shocking collapse in charge rates. For example, there is no plan to tackle the problem of redaction—a problem I know the Policing Minister recognises—where officers effectively spend hours and the equivalent of a bottle of Tipp-Ex having to redact a whole series of things before files are even passed to the Crown Prosecution Service. Many have argued that legislation needs to be changed to tackle that. Doing so could save police officers hours and hours of time, and I think it is included in the police productivity review. Surely we ought to be able to tackle that, but it is currently not in the Bill. The Bill is also not strong enough in its measures to tackle town centre crime.”
“My hon. Friend makes an important point about the detail and I hope that, in the evidence-gathering sessions in Committee, evidence is properly taken on that. It is an area where the legislation needs to be got right and concerns have been raised. There is also the wider problem of a toxic mix of rents and the failure to end no-fault evictions, which is hitting vulnerable people hard, and the Conservatives still have not kept their promises to act on that. There is still a series of substantial omissions from the Bill that we would like to see added to it. There is nothing to ensure that neighbourhood policing is properly restored. We have set out proposals for 13,000 more neighbourhood police and police community support officers, and we want to see that underpinned in legislation.”
“The Government did finally agree, as a result of his campaigning, to an aggravated sentence for assaulting shop workers, but that is not enough. The whole point is to make it simpler for the police to take action and to send a clear message from Parliament to police that this is an offence we take immensely seriously. That is why Labour will be tabling amendments that reflect the campaigns by USDAW, the Co-op, Tesco, the British Retail Consortium and small convenience stores for a new law and tougher sentences for attacks on our shop workers. Everyone should have the right to work in safety and to live free from fear.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the impact of shoplifting. If town centres do not feel safe, it is local businesses that are hit and can end up going under as a result, undermining local economies and putting off local residents who want to go shopping. Sometimes elderly residents, in particular, will simply not go into town anymore if they do not feel safe, and if they feel that laws are just not being enforced when they watch people leaving the shops with a big bag of goods stolen from the shelves and see nothing being done. It is just not good enough. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) rightly called for stronger measures to tackle assaults on shop workers.”
“It does not matter what the Policing Minister says or what figures he plucks from thin air: people know. They can see it. We all see it in our own towns in our own constituencies, and half the country now say they never see the police on the beat.”
“It is a plan; it is not even an announcement of something that is going to happen. It is an announcement that there is a plan for the police to check CCTV when a theft has taken place. That just shows how bad things have got over the past 13 years. We welcome any work that is being done, including by the British Retail Consortium with the National Police Chiefs’ Council. However, the Government are not taking the action that they should be taking to underpin this. In particular, they are not changing the law either on assaults against shop workers or on the £200 limit, and neither are they supporting the neighbourhood police we need to do the work to deliver the plan. There are 10,000 fewer neighbourhood police and PCSOs on our streets and in our communities, and communities know that.”
“There has been a big shift away from neighbourhood policing and into response policing because the police are being reactive, dealing with crises that this Conservative Government have totally failed to prevent for 13 years. The Government have demolished a lot of the prevention work and teamworking between neighbourhood officers and other agencies in local areas, and as a result the other response officers are having to pick up the pieces instead. The Policing Minister’s approach just shows why the Tories are failing after 13 years. It is not the answer.”
“This is the problem with the Policing Minister: he just thinks that the country has never had it so good on crime and policing. As far as the country is concerned, he is incredibly out of touch. That is not what is happening in towns and cities across the country. The idea that we can just merge neighbourhood policing and response teams, which are different things, shows that he simply does not understand the importance of neighbourhood policing or what it actually does. Neighbourhood police are the teams who are located locally. They will not just be called off for a crisis at the other end of the borough, district or force area; they are the police officers who can deal with local crimes. They are not the officers who have to deal with rising levels of mental health crisis, which we know so many of the response units have to deal with.”
“Security is the bedrock of opportunity. If people do not feel safe—if they do not believe that anyone will come or anything will be done when things go wrong—that undermines confidence in their community, in their way of life and in the rule of law in our country. That is what is at stake here, that is why incremental measures are not enough, and that is why we need to tackle the crisis of confidence and halve serious violence. Labour has committed to halving serious violence, including violence against women and girls, and to increasing policing confidence, the number of criminals who are charged, and the number of victims who get justice. Those ought to be shared objectives, but for too long the Conservatives have undermined them. That is why we need change.”
“The Bill also does not go far enough on violence against women and girls. We still need rape investigation units in every police force, we need all 999 control rooms to have domestic abuse experts, and we need stronger requirements on police forces to use the tactics and tools normally reserved for organised crime and terrorist organisations to identify and go after the most dangerous repeat abusers and rapists and get them off our streets. Too many things are not in the Bill. Overall, there is still no proper plan to raise confidence in policing and the criminal justice system. That confidence has plummeted, putting respect for law and order in our country at risk. We support the Bill and will work across parties to strengthen the measures in it, but it will not tackle the serious problems that we face.”
“My hon. Friend makes an important point— [ Interruption. ] I do not think the claims made from a sedentary position by the Policing Minister help him in the slightest, given the challenges involving the current police and crime commissioner. We ought to have a consensus on tackling knife crime. There are some measures in the Bill, but they do not go anywhere near far enough. I urge the Home Secretary to consider a proper offence of child criminal exploitation to prevent people drawing children into criminal activity in the first place, as well as stronger action on the loopholes that still allow online marketplaces to sell knives. We have had multiple announcements over the years about taking action against zombie knives, but it is groundhog day, because far too many are still being sold easily and not enough is being done about it.”
“I know that the former Home Secretary takes the police covenant very seriously. Does she agree that, as well as the police covenant, we should have a police bravery award for those who lose their lives in the line of duty?”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Minister will know that the time is not limited. We do have time and she has named me. I do understand that she has the right not to take an intervention but she will also know that, having named me, as a courtesy to the House, she would normally do so.”
“The Home Secretary has been in post for two weeks, during which time he has used the same language to pick a fight with Stockton and show what he thinks of his own Rwanda policy, he has been attacked by his Back Benchers, and Downing Street has already been forced to confirm it still has full confidence in him. Twelve days ago he said the number of asylum hotel bed spaces are down, but four days ago Home Office figures showed they are up to a record 56,000—10,000 more than at the beginning of the year. Does he even know what is going on?”
“Perhaps that mean an end to the magical thinking that the right hon. Gentleman’s predecessor called for. We still have 10,000 more bed spaces than when the Prime Minister promised to end hotel use. The Home Secretary owes the House the facts. There is still no sign of anything on the failed Rwanda plan, because he knows it will not work, and nothing on the trebling of net migration to tackle the skills gaps that are driving work visas. The Government have been in power for 13 years and all we have is chaos and briefing wars. His Back Benchers are already calling him “Colonel Calamity”, and he has Corporal Chaos next to him on the Front Bench. Given the mess he has inherited and his penchant for profanity, does he accept that he is now up a certain kind of creek without a paddle?”
“That should be common ground, so I suggest that he stops wasting taxpayers’ money on more failing schemes, that he ditches the magical thinking and the culture wars of his predecessors and that he ditches the gimmicks and finally gets a grip.”
“But he and I agree that we need action to stop the boat crossings that are undermining border security and putting lives at risk. We need a properly controlled and managed system for asylum and refugees. Let us concentrate instead on the things that can work. We support the work with France along the northern coast; we want it to go further. We support the work with Albania and with other countries across Europe to tackle the gangs, but it is far, far too weak. We need a proper, comprehensive and massively scaled-up plan to go after the criminal gangs, a proper system to clear the backlog, and a proper returns unit in place so that we can end hotel use. Instead of that cost going up from £6 million to £8 million a day on his watch, let us end hotel use and save the taxpayer £2 billion.”
“He boasted about passing it only yesterday, but the Government have not actually commenced the central clauses of the law, because without Rwanda—and, frankly, even with Rwanda—the policy does not work and will just lead to an endless, ever-increasing permanent backlog. Will the Secretary of State confirm now that he will not be implementing the central tenets of that law this year? Will he also confirm that this means that the Prime Minister’s pledges to introduce the new law to stop the boats and end hotel use will all be broken this year? Why will the Home Secretary not put that money into a proper plan to tackle the boats? I do not believe that he ever believed in the Rwanda plan. He distanced himself from it and his predecessor’s language on it. He may even, on occasion, have privately called it batshit.”
“They let asylum decisions collapse, so the backlog soared and there are now 20% more people in asylum hotels than there were when the Prime Minister promised to end that. Will the Home Secretary tell us how much in total the Government have spent on the failed Rwanda plan so far? The House has a right to know. He says he wants a new treaty. How much more will that cost? Despite his optimism, the Supreme Court judgment says “the Rwandan government indicated that the contemplated arrangements might not be straightforward to implement in practice…the provision of resources does not mean that the problems which we have described can be resolved in the short term.” Again, we have more of the magical thinking. What does this mean for the Prime Minister’s flagship legislation?”
“When it was first announced 18 months ago, I raised in the House the problems with the Israel-Rwanda deal. Ministers were warned many times about failures and weaknesses in the Rwanda asylum system, but they just pressed on. Even if the plan had been found lawful today, they have admitted it would have covered only a few hundred people anyway—at a time when 100,000 people applied for asylum in the UK last year, on the Conservative watch—and that it would have cost about twice as much per person as deciding cases in the UK. The truth is the Government have wasted not just one but five years by failing to deal with the situation. Five years ago there were just a few hundred people crossing in boats, but they let criminal gangs take hold along the channel.”
“There was a readiness to spend more than £140 million of taxpayers’ money on this plan—money we cannot get back now that the policy has totally failed. That adds to the Prime Minister’s disastrous judgment in appointing and backing the previous Home Secretary, who was unfit for the job. I do not agree with pretty much anything the Home Secretary’s predecessor ever said, but she was right in this message to the Prime Minister: “If we lose in the Supreme Court…you will have wasted a year and an Act of Parliament, only to arrive back at square one…your magical thinking…has meant you have failed to prepare any sort of credible ‘Plan B’.” Wasting time, wasting money and letting the country down: that is the Conservatives’ record. The Supreme Court judgment outlines a catalogue of problems with the policy, but Ministers knew all about them.”
“I welcome the new Home Secretary to his post. He is the eighth Conservative Home Secretary in eight years—and what a mess he has inherited. The Supreme Court’s conclusion today is damning. It exposes the complete failure of the Prime Minister’s flagship Rwanda policy, of his judgment in making it the central part of his policy and of the Conservatives in getting the most basic grip on the boats and asylum chaos. There is no serious plan on the dangerous boat crossings that are undermining our border security and putting lives at risk, the end of which we all want to see. There is no serious plan to sort out the chaos in the asylum system, including ending placing people in costly asylum hotels because of the soaring backlog.”
“Instead of a Government focused on the problems facing the country, whether the cost of living crisis, record NHS waiting lists or rising town centre crime and serious violence, what we have got is just more of the same Tory psychodrama and chaos. In the past seven and a half years, we have had five Prime Ministers, six Chancellors, seven Health Secretaries, seven Foreign Secretaries, eight Home Secretaries and 11—I think I counted right—Justice Secretaries.”
“So much of a flop was it, that having made promises just eight days ago about the changes his Government would deliver, now he is talking about the changes to his Government instead. We have another reshuffle and another Rishi reset—not change, just more of the same chaos. We remember his conference claim that he was rejecting decades of failure, including the last 13 years of Tory Government. Just a month later, he has brought back one of the main Tory architects in the former Prime Minister, who cut 20,000 police officers, brought in the bedroom tax and austerity, and pushed working families and children into poverty. It is a sign of the state of the Tory party that the Prime Minister who did all that is now suddenly seen as a moderate.”
“I beg to move amendment (r), at the end of the Question to add: “and submit to Your Majesty that this House wishes to see an end to the violence in Israel and Palestine; unequivocally condemn the horrific terrorist attack and murder of civilians by Hamas, call for the immediate release of all hostages and reaffirm Israel’s right to defend its citizens from terrorism; believe all human life is equal and that there has been too much suffering, including far too many deaths of innocent civilians and children, over the past month in Gaza; reaffirm the UK’s commitment to the rules-based international order, international humanitarian law and the jurisdiction of the ICC to address the conduct of all parties in Gaza and Hamas’s attacks in Israel; call on Israel to protect hospitals and lift the siege conditions allowing food, water, electricity, medicine and fuel into Gaza; request the Government continue to work with the international community to prevent a wider escalation of the conflict in the region, guarantee that people in Gaza who are forced to flee during this conflict can return to their homes and seek an end to the expansion of illegal settlements and settler violence in the West Bank; and, while acknowledging the daily humanitarian pauses to allow in aid and the movement of civilians, believe they must be longer to deliver humanitarian assistance on a scale that begins to meet the desperate needs of the people of Gaza, which is a necessary step to an enduring cessation of fighting as soon as possible and a credible, diplomatic and political process to deliver the lasting peace of a two-state solution.” When the Prime Minister opened the King’s Speech debate just eight days ago, we had all this briefing about how it was a “Rishi reset” moment.”
“Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary was right to say yesterday that “neither the long-term security of Israel nor long-term justice for Palestine can be delivered by bombs and bullets.” —[ Official Report , 14 November 2023; Vol. 740, c. 510.] That is why there is a responsibility on all of us to urge the UK Government to do what they can—to strain every sinew—in the pursuit of peace.”
“We have words on a page that we will talk about voting on today, but we all know that it is not through words on a page that this will be achieved; it will be achieved through step-by-step intense diplomacy and pressure that recognises how difficult it is when Hamas refuse to agree to stop rocket attacks and pledge again to repeat the attacks of 7 October. We recognise, too, that hostages are still being held, but we still have to make urgent diplomatic progress. We still have to do what we can right now to save lives and make progress in getting hostilities suspended, especially so that humanitarian action can be taken. We recognise, too, that the only way forward is a two-state solution with a secure and safe Israel alongside a secure and sovereign Palestine. My right hon.”
“That is why we must commit to recognising the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court to address the conduct of all parties in the conflict. But it is also why we need an urgent suspension of hostilities: not just a short pause, but, as my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary has set out, the time and space to get in fuel, food and water, to rebuild vital humanitarian infrastructure, to protect aid workers, who are losing their lives on a scale we have never seen before in conflict, to put in place protection for civilians and negotiate hostage releases, and to work towards a full cessation of violence and enduring peace so that lives can be saved and the intolerable suffering can end. We know that that requires immense and complex diplomatic work. It is not easy.”
“Israeli families are still experiencing the horror and the trauma as the remains of their loved ones are still being identified. Families and communities are still reeling from the events. We all condemn the truly barbaric attack by Hamas terrorists on 7 October. Under international law, we respect countries’ right to defend their citizens from terrorist attacks and also countries’ obligations to abide by international law. The conduct of war matters. As Antony Blinken said at the very start of the conflict, “how Israel does this matters. We democracies distinguish ourselves from terrorists by striving for a different standard, even when it is difficult…Our humanity—the value that we place on human life and human dignity—that’s what makes us who we are.” The rules-based order must not be abandoned.”
“Again, we stand ready to work with the Government and see what we can do to come together to address these serious issues, because there is a responsibility on all of us to bring our communities together. The shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), will speak later about Labour's amendment in more detail, but every one of us will have been deeply disturbed by the terrible events in the middle east. We want an end to the devastating violence and suffering. We have seen 11,000 Palestinians killed; two thirds of them women and children. Thousands of innocent children are dead. Families are bereaved and parents grieving. It is intolerable. Hundreds of hostages are still being held following the gravest attack on Jewish people on any day since the holocaust.”
“We have also seen an awful increase in Islamophobia and the rise of organised far-right thuggery about which the police raised concerns this weekend. Every one of us in this House must be clear that violence and hate crime have no place on Britain’s streets and must face the full force of the law. We must all back the police in taking the action that is needed. I thank the police for the reassurance work they are doing with synagogues, Jewish schools and mosques as well as their action against the hate crimes that devastate lives and corrode communities. I say to the Justice Secretary and the new Home Secretary that Labour has called for stronger action to tackle both antisemitism and Islamophobia and hateful extremism.”
“Labour will always stand ready to do so. Security Ministers and shadow Security Ministers have done so before, and that is the spirit in which we will work on the national security Bill. That is also the spirit in which we would always have expected to approach the operational independence and impartiality of British policing. The last Home Secretary undermined that; I hope that the new Home Secretary will be able to restore it, because this is too important for us to disagree on. It is likewise for the safety and cohesion of our communities. We have seen tensions increase as a result of the truly awful events in the middle east. There has been an appalling rise in antisemitism, including some disgraceful incidents this weekend, with Jewish communities feeling enormous anguish and distress.”
“This is Freedom From Fear Week, and I thank the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and the British Retail Consortium for the work they are doing to stand up for staff safety and shine a light on the disgraceful way in which people are being treated just for doing their jobs. But why are the Government not listening to them? Labour is, and we will change the law. We will table amendments to the crime and justice Bill to ditch the ridiculous £200 rule that stops action from being taken against repeat shoplifting gangs and to bring in a proper new offence of assaulting shop workers, because everyone has the right to feel safe at work. On national security and some of the core issues that affect the safety of our nation, in the past we had broad cross-party consensus and worked together in that spirit.”
“For those who commit a crime, the chances of being caught and punished are less than half what they were under the last Labour Government. That is the scale of collapse in law and order under the Tories. On knife crime, the measures go nowhere near far enough. On violence against women and girls, I am really concerned because there is nothing on spiking, nothing serious on stalking and nothing to turn around the woeful fact that 98% of rapists avoid charge. The Government’s sentencing proposals may mean that thousands of domestic abusers whose violence is escalating will be let off jail. There is nothing at all on town centre crime. Shoplifting is up a shocking 25% in a year. Assaults on shop workers tripled during the pandemic and have not gone down again.”