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.”
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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 45 of 162.
“Labour has set out a mission on crime to halve serious violence including knife crime and violence against women and girls, to reverse the catastrophic collapse in the proportion of crimes solved, and to rebuild confidence in the police and criminal justice system by getting 13,000 more neighbourhood police on the streets and tackling town centre crime. However, what do we have in the King’s Speech? The Criminal Justice Bill includes measures that Labour called for long ago, but it does not tackle enough of the serious problems that our country faces or make up for the damage that has been done. We support making sure that the most serious and dangerous criminals properly serve their time, but, frankly, too few criminals are actually caught or charged in the first place. Under this Government, more than 90% of crimes go unsolved.”
“The Government want to tell us that all is fine on the number of police and the level of crime, but they are badly out of touch, because that is not what it feels like across the country, and nothing in the King’s Speech will touch the sides. We have 10,000 fewer neighbourhood police on our streets. Half the country say they never see a bobby on the beat. Knife crime is up by 70%, devastating young lives. We have persistent violence against women and girls across our country. That is the Conservatives’ abysmal legacy on law and order.”
“While the Tories fight culture wars with each other, the rest of us are worried about security on our streets. The new Home Secretary has briefed that he did not want to take over the job, but he has agreed to take one for the team. Let me just say to him and to all Government Front Benchers: if they do not want to run the Home Office or the Ministry of Justice and cannot see how to do the job, they should get out the way for those of us who can. Our country is crying out for a Government who care about tackling crime, restoring security to our streets and restoring confidence in the police, rather than a Tory Government chasing headlines and fighting among themselves.”
“It has measures that Labour called for to tackle antisocial behaviour, and I was going to make the point that the Government have no ideas of their own and are just following Labour’s lead, but I have to concede that they and the Tory party in general are definitely the experts on antisocial behaviour. The former Home Secretary is throwing rocks and stones. The New Conservative group is making dark threats, going round the parliamentary Tory party nuisance-begging for no-confidence letters in the Prime Minister. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) is so desperate to find out how many letters have gone in to the chair of the 1922 committee, the right hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) that he is now camped outside his office, but I guess they told us it was a lifestyle choice.”
“It shows how little this Prime Minister cares about our security that he was prepared to reappoint her, to defend her and to follow her wherever she led, and now we know why. The dodgy deal that the Prime Minister denied last year is now laid bare in the former Home Secretary’s letter. She says: “Despite you having been rejected by a majority of Party members…and thus having no personal mandate to be Prime Minister”. Fair point there. She goes on: “This was a document with clear terms to which you agreed in October 2022 during your second leadership campaign. I trusted you.” Obviously that is another sign of her poor judgment. The deal made him Prime Minister and made him make her the most unsuitable Home Secretary this country has had. The Conservatives published their latest Criminal Justice Bill yesterday.”
“Eight Justice Secretaries—it has been a struggle to keep count of their changing. We have had eight Home Secretaries in less than eight years and, even worse, two of them were the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman). She was so unsuited for the job of Home Secretary that she was sacked twice: once for breaching security rules in government, and the second time for undermining security on our streets, attacking the police, undermining respect for the decisions they took in the run-up to a difficult weekend, ramping up division around remembrance and making it harder for the police to do their job. No other Home Secretary would ever have done those things.”
“Let me correct the Secretary of State. He may not recall, but I tabled one of the first amendments on reform to introduce a stalking law. That same amendment was eventually taken up in the other place by the Labour lords, and the Conservative Government agreed to it. I am very glad that they did, but he should not take credit for agreeing to a Labour proposal that I and others put forward.”
“Cabinet colleagues refuse to agree with her and former police chiefs are lining up to condemn her, so I have two questions: does this Government still believe in the operational independence of the police and how can they do so while this Home Secretary is in post? And did the Prime Minister and No. 10 agree to the content of the article? Either the Prime Minister has endorsed this or he is too weak to sack her. If he cannot get a grip on her conduct, it means he has given up on serious government, and he and the Home Secretary should both let someone else do the job.”
“Remembrance events are really important to all of us. Those events need to be protected. That is the job of the police: to enforce and respect the law, while maintaining public safety, tackling hate crime and extremism and respecting rights in law to peaceful protest. They have to follow the law and the evidence, whatever politicians think, not be the operational arm of the Home Secretary, because whether she likes it or not, that is the British tradition of policing and I, for one, am proud of it. We know what she is up to—claiming homelessness is a lifestyle choice, picking fights with the police to get headlines—but the job of the Home Secretary is to keep the public safe, not run an endless Tory leadership campaign.”
“Where is the Home Secretary? She has sent the Policing Minister here to refuse to repeat her words. We have seen her words this morning; she has been attempting to rip up the operational independence of the police, attacking their impartiality in the crudest and most partisan of ways, deliberately undermining respect for the police at a sensitive time, when they have an important job to do, and deliberately seeking to create division around remembrance, which the Policing Minister rightly said should be a time for communities to come together and to pay our respects. She is deliberately inflaming community tensions in the most dangerous of ways. She is encouraging extremists on all sides, attacking the police when she should be backing them. It is highly irresponsible and dangerous, and no other Home Secretary would ever have done this.”
“On 7 March, the Home Secretary emailed Conservative supporters saying “today we’re changing our laws—and bringing the small boat crossings to an end.” Since then, 20,000 more people have arrived. She is not applying her own law, because it does not work. The use of asylum hotels is up, with no date to end their use, and foreign criminal returns are down. The independent chief inspector of borders and immigration has said: “This is no way to run a government department.” He is right, isn’t he? Is that why the Home Secretary is getting rid of him?”
“What the Home Secretary said is total waffle. She has no answer on the inspector because she is afraid of scrutiny. There was no answer on her failure, just invented garbage about Labour. The Home Office’s immigration director, asylum director, borders director and accommodation director are all going or gone because the only people she removes are the people she needs to do the job. There has been a 40% increase in the use of asylum hotels since she became Home Secretary. When will she end the use of asylum hotels? When will she deal with this shambles, stop the gimmicks and get a grip?”
“The then Labour Government worked on a major counter-terror strategy—the Contest strategy—involving everyone across Government, the police, the intelligence agencies, local government and the private sector. The Contest strategy has endured and has strong cross-party support, but the Government have been warned for years about rising state challenges, so where is the Contest strategy for state threats? We will support the Government in producing one, and a Labour Government would work cross-party to produce one, but where is it? We need a Contest strategy on state risks, state challenges and state threats to protect our national security. National security is too important to ignore warnings; we need urgent action to defend our national security.”
“Nor does the statement say anything about the comprehensive approach we need to the risks to our critical national infrastructure, even though the head of MI5 has given a series of warnings and the Intelligence and Security Committee was extremely critical in its report in July, warning of the lack of a proper strategy on China and of short-termism. We need to engage with China on climate change and global issues, but we also need to be robust about defending our national security. That is why the shadow Foreign Secretary has called for a full audit of China’s relationship and why we have supported the National Security Act 2023 but also raised concerns about Iran pursuing kidnap and murder threats and Russia pursuing cyber-attacks. We recognise that after 9/11 and the appalling terror attacks on 7/7, the country came together.”
“Can he also confirm reports that in 2019 another prisoner was able to escape from Wandsworth prison, also by hiding underneath a van? Has the review been completed of all national security prisoners—those on remand and those convicted —to see what level of prison security is in place? If not, why not? I want to ask the Minister about the wider issue of the risks to our national security from other states. He has rightly taken action on sensitive surveillance equipment and I am glad that Ministers have accepted Labour’s proposals on procurement. In his statement, he rightly talked of the systemic challenge that China poses, including on human rights, but the statement says nothing about the work of the investment security unit. What is it doing?”
“Is the Minister on it? Has it produced a report for the National Security Council as was promised? Has it looked at vetting levels and delays? The Government opposed the Lords amendment to the National Security Bill that was put forward to introduce stronger checks on donations to political parties, to ensure no foreign influence, and they opposed Labour’s proposal to close the loophole on shell companies. Has the taskforce looked at those measures? Why is it not acting in that area? What is being done about national security prisoners? It beggars belief that Daniel Khalife was charged with national security offences but was able to escape under a van. Can the Minister confirm that even though this individual had already evaded arrest for three weeks when the police first tried to apprehend him, he still ended up in a category B prison?”
“It is essential that the police, the intelligence agencies and the justice system are able to do their jobs, and we must support them as they do so. However, we need to know more about what action the Government are taking against attempts by other states to interfere in our democracy and undermine our security. MI5 issued an interference alert about the Chinese Communist party attempting to influence Parliament 20 months ago. The Security Service and others have also raised wider concerns. The Minister referred to the Prime Minister raising strong concerns with China about unacceptable interference. Did the Prime Minister do so at the time of those arrests, or has he only done so now, since they have been made public? The Government set up the defending democracy taskforce to look at foreign interference, but what has it actually done?”
“I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for his statement, and for advance sight of it. Maintaining national security in the face of threats to our values and our democracy is the first duty of any Government, in respect of which Labour stands ready always to work on a cross-party basis to keep our country safe. I pay tribute to all those in our intelligence and security services and police, and those across Government and beyond, who work to protect our national security on the anniversary of the awful attacks of 9/11. As we remember those lost, we are in no doubt about the seriousness of the work that they do. We recognise, too, the seriousness of the allegations involving espionage on behalf of China at the heart of our democracy.”
“Prevent is not a whole countering extremism strategy. We need broader action if we are to keep our democratic values safe.”
“I welcome the emphasis on antisemitism, but the agencies, the police and the Prevent programme need to follow the threats of violence and hateful extremism wherever the evidence goes, rather than having to follow any political hierarchies that have been set. Neil Basu, the former counter-terror chief, has said that we also need to make sure there is earlier intervention and prevention. He said: “If we set the bar for Prevent so high that it can deal only with those who are already radicalised, we will have more terrorists, not fewer.” Finally, what action is being taken in response to the former countering extremism commissioner’s report on hateful extremism, published some years ago? Are the Government ever going to respond to that or update the countering extremism strategy, which is now eight years out of date? We need that action.”
“Online radicalisation was raised by the independent review, and we know that generative AI raises further challenges and questions. We have identified potentially serious legal loopholes in our ability to take action against those who choose to use generative AI to try to radicalise people. What action is being taken on that? We have asked the Home Secretary about this before. Will she agree to Labour’s proposal to tighten the law? The majority of the extremist threats our security agencies deal with are Islamist extremism, followed by far-right extremism. Other warped ideologies have also driven violent threats, but the main focus must continue to be on Islamist extremist threats.”
“What deradicalisation and Prevent work have those 120 prisoners undergone in prison, and what provisions are in place in the community to ensure that there is no risk to the public? We cannot afford any suggestion of failure by the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to take national security treats in prison seriously. Today’s report from the borders inspectorate is highly critical of Border Force’s failures on insider threats, saying that organisational structures for addressing “insider threat were found to be confused, with complex inter-relationships and unclear lines of accountability”. What action is the Home Secretary taking to deal with insider threats? There is also no mention of any action on online radicalisation or the use of artificial intelligence.”
“The Government have been warned repeatedly about this, and I am concerned about the complete lack of reference to it in the Home Secretary’s statement. Will she please tell us what action is being taken, and also what action is being taken for those due to be released from prison—those who are due to be deliberately released, that is, as opposed to those who escape? Contest has warned that “four of the nine declared terrorist attacks since 2018 were perpetrated by serving or recently released prisoners.” The joint inspectorate warned just a few months ago that there were not enough senior officials in place to oversee the 120 prisoners with terror-related convictions who are due to be released by next March.”
“Those staffing issues are a matter for Prevent as well. The independent review highlighted an issue about which countless other reports have warned: the lack of sufficient action on deradicalisation and Prevent in our prisons. Prisoners are actually leaving prison more radicalised than they were when they went in. Referring to extremism-related training for staff, Sir William said: “it became clear during the review that this training was frequently cancelled due to staff and resource shortages…I was further told that there have been delays to staff beginning Prevent training and to extremist prisoners beginning rehabilitative programmes. These delays are attributed to staffing and resourcing issues”.”
“A strong and determined response to extremism and terror threats and threats to our national security, wherever they come from, is immensely important to our safety. The Contest strategy rightly includes “prevent”, “pursue”, “prepare” and “protect”, and it was right for the Home Secretary to update the House on the approach to extremism and to the Prevent programme. However, on a day when there are grave unanswered questions about how a terror suspect could possibly have escaped from prison, before trial, hidden on the bottom of a food van, I am astonished that she said nothing about Prevent and prisons. We have unanswered questions about how on earth the escape could have happened, and also about staffing levels. There have been repeated warnings of 30% staff absences and shifts not being covered.”
“I thank the Home Secretary for her statement. I join the Government in paying tribute to the work of our security services, our counter-terrorism police, the myriad different agencies—local communities, councils and education bodies—that work on the Prevent programme, and all those who work so hard to keep us safe. Extremists try to divide us and to undermine our democratic values and our respect for one another. Extremist ideologies are a stain on our society: they feed on fear and vulnerabilities to promote hatred and violence. We have seen appalling terror attacks, from the attack on children in Manchester and the attack in Fishmongers’ Hall to the attacks on our own Jo Cox and David Amess.”
“The Minister is being pressed on the nature of accommodation or detention that children and young people will be held in. The spirit behind the Minister’s intention matters. Therefore, will he tell us if is it true that he gave orders to the asylum reception centre to paint over children’s cartoons? If so, why? Nobody believes that Mickey Mouse cartoons encourage or deter boats from arriving; they simply think that the Minister is not showing common decency towards vulnerable children.”
“Will the Home Secretary wish the deputy chairman of the Conservative party, the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), a speedy recovery from the terrible bug that I understand has, this morning, prevented him from launching an entirely different Conservative immigration policy from the policy of the Conservative Home Secretary? Does she agree with him that social care visas should be cancelled—yes or no?”
“We have a Rwanda policy that is not removing anyone; an impact assessment that says her policies will not work and will cost much more; a 50% drop in removals of foreign criminals—the inspector says this is because the Home Office cannot even identify who can be removed; a record number of people in hotels; a record high asylum backlog; and Back Benchers writing the Home Secretary’s immigration policy because they do not think she is up to the job. It has been a humiliating few weeks for the Home Secretary—”
“The Home Secretary could not answer the question: does she support her own social care visas or not? She spent all weekend briefing that she agrees with her Back Benchers, but today she cannot even answer the basic question. Making up stuff about the Labour party will not help her when her party has been in power for 13 years and when work visas have doubled, exactly because the Government have failed to tackle skills shortages or issues in the labour market. This is total chaos.”
“The Home Secretary will be aware of the documentary last week on the relationship between Boris Johnson and others, and former KGB officer Alexander Lebedev, and about the meeting in an Italian villa, the ignoring of security advice on Lords appointments, and the decision not to sanction Alexander Lebedev. Given the importance of national security, will she tell the House whether she has any concerns about those reports? Will she set up an independent investigation into what happened, into who knew what, and into how far the security risk spreads?”
“She is running this chaos, failing to sort out the boats chaos, failing to clear the backlog or mend the broken asylum system, failing to get a grip. I do not doubt that she will now stand up and read from her pre-prepared script, blaming everyone else and making up stuff all about the Labour party rather than answering the two questions that she has been asked, rather than answering anybody’s questions about the decisions that she has made. [ Interruption. ] She is in charge. The Tories have been in charge for 13 years. This is their chaos—their Tory chaos, their boats chaos and their broken asylum system. We do not need more slogans; we need solutions. We do not need more gimmicks; we need a Government with a grip. She is clearly not capable of it, so why does she not move over and give way to someone else?”
“Does she agree with the Lord Chief Justice that “thousands” is “political hyperbole” and that, even if she succeeds, it will just be a few hundred instead? And how long is she going to keep wasting all of this taxpayers’ money on a failing policy and wasting everybody’s time on ramping up the rhetoric rather than coming up with a serious plan? This afternoon, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration set out a damning indictment of the Tory Home Office and its ability to pursue casework or have accurate data. It says that in the Home Office, “there is no single version of the truth” and concludes that “This is no way to run a government department.” But this Home Secretary is running it.”
“So on the idea that the Government are going to be able to deliver on their pledges, even the Lord Chief Justice, who finds that the scheme could be lawful, has said that it is only on the basis that the scheme is small—just 100 people. The Home Secretary talks again today about thousands of people being sent. The Lord Chief Justice says that “the talk of Rwanda, within a few years, being a destination for thousands of asylum seekers” is “political hyperbole”. A hundred people is less than 0.5% of those who arrived in the UK, so no wonder the Home Office admits there is no evidence that it will act as a deterrent. It is a total con on the British people. There are two questions for the Home Secretary.”
“The Government are expecting Rwanda to take asylum decisions under a memorandum of understanding, but the judgment reveals that the Rwandan asylum system takes only about 100 decisions a year at the moment, and has a 100% rejection rate for Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen. Under the Israel Rwanda deal, the Government breached the memorandum of understanding. People were routinely targeted by agents and gangs and moved clandestinely to Uganda, which has made trafficking worse. The judgment also says that Rwanda has only one committee that takes all the asylum decisions and only one eligibility officer preparing cases.”
“This Rwanda scheme is unworkable, unethical, extortionately expensive, and a costly and damaging distraction from the urgent practical action that we should be taking—from the plan that Labour has set out to stop wasting all this money on a failing Rwanda scheme and instead to go after the criminal gangs, and to secure a stronger agreement with France and sort out the massive backlog that is costing a fortune: action to stop the dangerous boat crossings that are undermining our border security and putting lives at risk. The Home Secretary has defended her Rwanda plan, but this is what the judgment reveals. Not only will it cost £169,000 for each person, as well as the £140 million cheques that have been sent; according to the Lord Chief Justice, there will be substantial sums of future aid support. How much?”
“They promised four years ago that they would end boat crossings in six months, but the number has increased more than twentyfold since then. Convictions for people smuggling have dropped, asylum decision making has collapsed—down by a third—but the costs of the asylum system have soared. A fivefold increase in the cost for just one person in the asylum system is no one else's fault; it is just Tory mismanagement and chaos, resulting in a backlog that has soared to a record high of 175,000. The projection of the Home Office itself is that those Tory failures will rise to a cost of £11 billion. That is the cost of the Government’s failure—and instead of getting a grip on any of that, all they can come up with are gimmicks to make things worse.”
“Today’s judgment shows that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have no plan to fix the Tories’ small boats chaos. Their only policy, to send everyone to Rwanda, is now completely unravelling. Ministers have admitted that it will cost £169,000 to send each person to Rwanda—on top of the £140 million cheques that they have already written, with more costs to come —but now the court has found that they did not even do the basic work to make sure that the Rwanda scheme was legal or safe. Over four years, this Tory boats crisis has grown and grown, and the Government have completely broken the asylum system. They have failed to stop criminal gangs taking hold along our borders—gangs that have seen their profits soar from £3 million four years ago to more than £180 million today.”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on the publication of the impact assessment on the Illegal Migration Bill.”
“We have an impact assessment that shows the Home Office does not have a clue and the Treasury does not have a grip, and the Prime Minister who claims to be Mr Fix-It is instead Mr Muck-It-Up. The country deserves better than this.”
“That is more than double the current average cost of keeping people elsewhere in the asylum system, so where are the hundreds of millions of pounds for the detention plan going to come from, and where are these detention facilities going to come from? The Minister has not attempted to cost speeding up the system and he has not attempted to cost what we really think will happen, which is that tens of thousands more people will be in indefinite detention or indefinite asylum accommodation. The Treasury bailed out the Home Office by £2.4 billion last year. How much is it going to be this year? The Government have crashed the economy, and now they have crashed the asylum system too.”
“It shows the shocking fact that people are now staying in the asylum system for four years, and there is no alternative to try to speed up the system or to look at that. The Government do say that it will cost £169,000 per person to pay another country to take asylum decisions for us. So far, the Government have sent more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers to Rwanda, but how many people are they actually budgeting for? The Prime Minister says he wants to send everyone, so can the Minister tell us where the billions of pounds it would cost to send everyone to Rwanda this year will come from, and if not, can he tell us how many he is really budgeting for and what in fact is going to happen to everyone else instead? The impact assessment says it costs £7,000 per person to keep someone in detention for 40 days.”
“Instead, it says that this impact assessment “does not attempt to estimate any costs of implementing the Bill…or estimate the volumes of individuals that will be impacted by the Bill.” Really, what is the point of it, given that the document itself admits that people “may not be deterred” by any of this, and it cannot answer the most basic questions? I have never seen anything more clueless and chaotic. The impact assessment does provide evidence of the scale of Conservative failure. The cost for one person in the asylum system for just one night has gone up fivefold in four years. That is just the cost of Tory mismanagement. It has gone up faster than mortgages or energy bills, and it has even gone up faster than the price of cheese. It is all Tory Home Office mismanagement.”
“I was going to ask if the Immigration Minister had seriously signed off this garbage of an impact assessment, which no self-respecting Minister could possibly think was serious, but actually the nonsense he has just said is even worse and even less coherent. This is not an impact assessment. According to the Government’s own guidance, it is supposed to include the “costs, benefits and risks...and a consideration of a range of options.” However, we have something that does not even include some of the most basic options to assess, such as speeding up the asylum system and making savings that way.”
“Why is there still no action to bring in a new law on the criminal exploitation of young people, which we have called for? Why is there still no comprehensive action on youth mentors and support for early intervention? We need a serious approach to tackling knife crime and supporting the police to use their tools in an effective and fair way so that they can save lives. Too many young lives are at stake. We need more than this from the Home Secretary.”
“Where is the action that has been repeatedly recommended: training on the use of force; training on de-escalation and communications skills; and proper data collection on traffic stops. None of those has been referred to in her statement. How many of the 18 recommendations by the Independent Office for Police Conduct last year have been fully implemented? How many recommendations from the inspectorate have been fully implemented? Stop and search is a vital tool as part of a proper strategy, but we need the wider strategy, too. Why is the violence reduction unit approach being used by the Home Secretary in only 18 areas when knife crime is rising in communities across the country? Why has there been no new serious violence strategy for five years? Many people now fear a long, hot summer without swift action.”
“The inspectorate said that “35 years since the introduction of stop and search, the police still cannot explain why these powers are used disproportionately.” It points out that that is partly because the majority of searches are for drug possession, not for knife crime, and yet figures show that drug use is lower among black people than among white people. The Home Secretary has not addressed that at all in her statement. Will she address the issue of disproportionate drug possession searches? I welcome the references to the introduction of stronger community scrutiny and better data collection. Those are vital, but they should have been mandatory for many years—they were recommended many years ago.”
“That will affect the number of searches for weapons among young black men, but the chief inspector has said that the presence of disproportionality in crime victimisation rates does not adequately explain why there is disproportionality in stop and search rates. In her statement, the Home Secretary seems to be focusing only on young black men. I think she refers to them around six times, with only one reference to people who are white, even though her own statement recognises that young black men are still the minority of knife crime victims. Does she recognise the importance of following the evidence wherever it takes the police?”
“It may also make people unwilling to report when they are the victim of crime or come forward as witnesses.” That is why it is important that the recommendations that the inspectorate and the police watchdog have made are taken seriously and implemented, and why best practice from forces who are doing a good job is spread across the country. There have been reports from the inspectorate in 2015, 2017, 2021 and from the police watchdog, little of which the Home Secretary has even acknowledged. She has dismissed concerns about disproportionality. Of course, stop and search for knife crime and for dangerous weapons will likely be used most in the areas and communities where attacks have been the highest.”
“As stop and search is an important tool, it also needs to be used in an effective and fair way. His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary said that “well-targeted stop and search is a valuable tool”, but how the police do it is as important as the act itself, and communities have clear concerns about the fair use of stop and search. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services had previously said: “Unfair use of powers can be counterproductive if it leads people to think it is acceptable to not comply with the law.”