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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“I welcome what I think the Minister was saying about wanting to continue the resettlement programmes. The Home Office is right to want to prevent dangerous journeys across the channel, where lives can be at risk. The Home Office made a big announcement about the deployment of HMS Mersey and HMS Enterprise to the channel, but can the Minister confirm that neither of those vessels was involved in leading any interceptions while they were deployed? Is it correct that the deployment cost the Home Office nearly £1 million? Does she agree that it is important that these measures should be evidence-based and not simply about being able to make big announcements?”
“Given the awful news about British Steel, it is crucial that the Government stand up for British manufacturing. The Prime Minister will know that a customs union is immensely important to manufacturing across the north and the midlands and that industry needs a long-term deal to support investment. Given the reports coming out of Cabinet yesterday, can she tell us: has the Cabinet ruled out a long-term customs union being part of the future partnership with the EU that they are supposedly going to negotiate after this withdrawal agreement? Have they ruled out a long-term customs union—yes or no?”
“Has the Leader of the House actually done any assessment of the costs of relocating entire Government Departments out of London? Wanting to relocate civil service jobs to other parts of the country has always been the Government policy, and surely that would be a good thing to do. Frankly, this entire country ends up with all its politics being far too London-focused, when we should be having far more of those jobs in other parts of the country. We would certainly love a lot of them in Yorkshire. I am concerned that she seems to be dismissing the idea of moving Government Departments to other parts of the country without actually have done any proper assessment of that.”
“An analysis of the Government’s funding programmes, produced for the Home Affairs Committee, points out that the programmes for youth investment are spread over 10 years. If the Home Secretary looks at the annual funding and adds together the early intervention fund, the trusted relationships fund, the youth endowment fund and the communities and local government fund, he will see that—according to my calculation—the total is only £35 million a year, and that is set against a £760 million cut in youth services. Can he tell me whether those figures are correct?”
“I appreciate what the Home Secretary has said about certainty. However, I included many of those other cross-Government programmes in my calculation, and I came up with the figure of £35 million a year—and that is only 5% of the scale of the cuts in youth services. Can the Home Secretary tell me how many young people will be reached by the programmes that he has announced, and how many placements have been lost as a result of the cuts in the youth service? Knowing those basic facts about how many young people we are reaching and how many we are not reaching is crucial to our ability to assess whether his strategy will work.”
“I may have missed it, but I do not think I have heard the Home Secretary refer to the public health approach. Will he confirm whether that is still the approach of the Home Office, because it is welcome? The definition of a public health approach states that it should be focused on a “defined population”. He will be aware that when the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), was before the Select Committee she was not able to tell us what the Home Office’s assessment was of the number of young people at risk of being drawn into crime. Does he now have that assessment, and can he tell us how many people live in the high-risk areas—the hotspots—he has identified?”
“In the end, we will save lives only if organisations work together, but for them, working together, to have an impact there also needs to be strong leadership from the Government and the Home Office. I hope we will see that leadership over the next few months. The Select Committee looks forward to scrutinising this work further as part of its work.”
“The Government have some very good intentions on this—they have set out a strong sense of concern and commitment to tackling knife crime—but the challenge for the Home Office is to make sure it has enough urgency, that its sense of determination matches the scale of the problem and that the partnership between all Departments is tight enough and strong enough and has enough follow-up to deliver action on, for example, the number of young people being excluded from school—some of whom are very vulnerable—and to take action in hospitals. The Redthread programme is extremely good, but are enough hospitals involved in such early intervention programmes? We need partnership working in communities and investment in wider universal youth services, as well as some of the targeted work.”
“Sara Thornton said: “I think that where we have so many young people dying in our streets, we need a much more concerted response from Government.” Sir Denis O’Connor, who is a former chief inspector of constabulary and was involved in previous programmes to tackle knife crime and street crime, thought that the strategy was “much more concerned with its narrative and less with action”. The Met Commissioner told us that “we are not yet seeing real cross-Government action being delivered in a meaningful way on the ground and in our communities.” Dame Louise Casey, who was also involved in previous Government programmes, described the Government’s strategy as “woefully inadequate”.”
“There is a growing problem in your part of the country. What are you doing to sort it out?” The Minister needs to be able to ring someone up, ask what is happening, get the feedback and make sure action is being taken to protect young people. I know the Minister was going to a meeting after the evidence session, so she may well have made further progress. I hope so. If the violence reduction units—in those areas where they are to be introduced—are not to be in place for another six months, I would like to know who will be leading the work in the next six months to make sure young people are protected and that action is being taken in a co-ordinated way between the police and other organisations to tackle some of these awful crimes? Let me quote some of the witness evidence to the inquiry.”
“Who in the west midlands, in West Yorkshire, in Bedfordshire will be driving the action to tackle serious and violent crime in their area? Will it be the police and crime commissioner? The chief constable? The Mayor? The leader of the local council? The chair of the safeguarding board? There is a clear need for co-ordination in every area if we are to bring all these different organisations together. I welcome the Government’s talk about a duty on public sector institutions to have regard to the risk of serious violence and the impact of knife crime, but simply having a duty when there is no framework to co-operate and co-ordinate is not enough; there mustbe practical mechanisms to make sure things change. There has to be someone the Minister can ring up to say, “We’ve seen your figures are going in the wrong direction.”
“I therefore welcome the points the Home Secretary made about increasing the level of evidence and data we have, but I was concerned that, in that evidence session, neither the Minister nor the officials gave us a clear sense of how many young people the Home Office is trying to reach with its strategy and what scale of intervention we should expect to see over the next three months, the next six months and the next 12 months. This problem is acute—lives are at risk—so we need clear objectives, a clear sense of progress, a clear sense of direction, and action to make sure things are happening and being delivered. We were concerned to discover that there was no clear sense of who would be responsible in each area.”
“I want to talk in particular about co-ordination and leadership concerns. Whatever the level of resources, there are key challenges around co-ordination, drive, urgency and leadership. We heard considerable evidence from a range of witnesses who believed that the Home Office should do more. When the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), gave evidence, I asked questions about how many young people the Government were trying to reach. The Government have rightly talked about a public health strategy, and the definition of such a strategy is that there is a defined population and an intelligence and data-based approach.”
“In the west midlands, they told us that they did not have any police officers based in schools and had no prospect of being able to provide them. There is undoubtedly an issue about whether the resources going into tackling serious violence match the scale and urgency of the problem, and whether the scale and pace of the early interventions the Government have talked about match in any way the scale of the violence and the number of lives being lost. We have seen many worthwhile targeted projects, but they have simply too narrow a reach; they do not reach enough young people or communities, so they cannot tackle enough of the problem. Equally, although the police do some excellent work in tackling some county lines networks and drug networks, that is not able to match the scale of the problem.”
“They can operate targeted, intelligence-led policing, but they find it much harder to provide and resource the neighbourhood police officers or school-based officers who might help to prevent some of the violence in the first place. Having seen their work over the years, I find it particularly troubling that we have lost so many school-based police officers, because they can often build up trust and relationships, gather intelligence, and simply work on prevention and practical messages for young people about how they can stay safe and build their confidence in their lives and not fall into patterns of violence or become vulnerable. I was struck, too, that although the Met has had big reductions in its number of school-based officers, it is now trying to increase the number of officers based in schools because it sees their value.”
“I start with evidence from young people and youth workers, who told us how many young people do not feel safe on the streets after school and think the only way to feel safe is to carry a knife. They do not see the police as people they can turn to. They do not have police officers that they know in schools. They do not have outreach workers, youth services or safe spaces to go to. The greater risks are for those young people who have been excluded or who might be vulnerable in different ways; those who get caught up in drug networks, county lines or gangs. We were struck by the evidence from the police, who evidently are working immensely hard to tackle the problem but are undoubtedly overstretched.”
“The most disturbing figures are those showing that since 2012 the number of children and young people under 16 admitted to hospital for knife wounds has doubled. One of the NHS consultants we heard from said that the peak time was between 4 and 6 in the afternoon—after school, when children have just finished a French, history or maths lesson and should just be going home, but find themselves caught up in violence instead, and do not make it home. The Home Affairs Committee launched its inquiry into serious violence before Christmas. We will draw our conclusions together shortly. I will not pre-empt the conclusions, but I will reflect on some of the evidence we have heard.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross), a fellow member of the Home Affairs Committee. I apologise to the House that he and I will probably have to leave shortly, as we have an evidence session with young people this afternoon. He rightly says that we should do more to make sure young people’s voices are heard, not just in our Committee but in all Committee inquiries and in all the work we do across the House. This is a deeply serious issue. Lives are being lost and families devastated. Too often, parents end up fearful and children at risk. In West Yorkshire, knife crime has doubled since 2010. It has gone up by 20% in the past year alone. Across the country, we see a similar picture. It is not just in our biggest cities but in our towns, often spread by county lines.”
“I strongly welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement. A statutory duty on local authorities was a specific recommendation of the Home Affairs Committee’s report last year on domestic abuse. As part of the report, we raised the need for local areas to work together, given that people sometimes need to move to a different area because of the risks they face or to ensure they are safe. Will the Secretary of State make sure that his review recognises the need for areas to work together? Will he also consider our specific recommendation of a ring-fenced fund to ensure that the capacity gap is met and that nobody ends up unable to find a safe place?”
“Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness has done.”
“I rise to speak because one of the motions before the House affects the Select Committee on Home Affairs. Our Committee has discussed the proposal that my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) be removed; I put on record the strong support expressed by all Committee members for his work, particularly on county lines and counter-terrorism. I must express our disappointment in the motion. I do not want to get into a wider debate about the way in which places for Select Committee members are allocated, which our Committee has not discussed. Nor do I want to raise any questions about the hon. Members who have been put forward to serve on the Committee, both of whom are excellent Members of this House. I simply want to record, on behalf of the Committee, its concern and its recognition of the important work that my hon.”
“I will not discuss on the Floor of the House the private discussions that I have had. I am simply expressing the views of our cross-party Committee on its behalf.”
“In particular, what action is he aware of to tackle the closed Facebook groups that still have huge numbers of members and about which there are real concerns that religious hate crimes are being pursued?”
“I thank the Home Secretary for his statement and for his reassurance at the time of Ramadan and at a time when we have seen such awful attacks on churches, mosques and synagogues around the world. He is right to be very clear that no one should ever be in fear as a result of following their faith. Will the Home Secretary clarify whether the funding that he announced today is a further development from the announcements in March? Will he say what is being done to address online radicalisation and online religious hate crimes? The Select Committee on Home Affairs has heard some very concerning evidence about those matters, both in our private session this afternoon and in public sessions over previous weeks.”
“I welcome the publication of this report, but I am really worried by the number of families coming to me because of real problems with their children not getting special educational needs support in schools. The parents end up having to try to home school their children instead, without the crucial support that they need. There has been a 40% increase in the number of permanent exclusions in my area in just a small number of years, and I cannot see in the Secretary of State’s statement the reassurance for those families that they will get that SEN support by this time next year. What will have changed in the next 12 months to bring the number of exclusions down?”
“I welcome the NAO investigation into this issue. I sense from the Minister’s tone that, while she obviously cannot anticipate the NAO’s report, she is expecting it to raise questions about decision making in individual cases. In that light, may I ask whether she and the Home Office are now looking much more widely at some of the issues that have been persistently raised about the inaccuracy of Home Office decision making in very important immigration cases? What is being done to address some of the cultural problems that have been raised time and again about these decisions, which have such a huge impact on people’s lives and have to be got right?”
“Surely it is time for much greater transparency and accountability on the entire business model and the way that it promotes all sorts of problems?”
“I welcome the work that the Secretary of State is doing. However, following the question of the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), a fellow member of the Home Affairs Committee, surely it is time to do much more on these algorithms, which push people into more and more extreme behaviour? I heard from a mum whose daughter had suffered from an eating disorder who was still being targeted with dieting videos on Instagram. That material was not too extreme to remove, but it certainly should not have been targeted at her daughter. The mum could get nothing done about it. Our Select Committee staff set up a new YouTube account and were searching for news or politics, but they were increasingly targeted by extreme far-right material promoted by YouTube. Those algorithms push people to extremes—for profit.”
“It is pretty obvious that the form will deter people from coming forward and pursuing cases concerning these awful crimes with the police. Surely, in the interests of justice for women who are victims of awful crimes, the Minister should pull this document back and get the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to rewrite it.”
“Of course the police must have an effective disclosure regime. The Minister just referred to there being checks and balances in the system to prevent inquiries being inappropriate, but he will know that those checks and balances are already not working, and that they are not even embedded in this document. This document goes in the opposite direction. I urge him to read the form from the point of view of a rape victim who has just been through an awful ordeal. From their point of view, it looks as though they will have their phone taken away, potentially for several months; as though the police will be able to look into all corners of it and into every aspect of their life; as though any of that information could be given to the person who raped them; and as though there are no safeguards in place at all.”
“Does the Minister understand that there is real frustration in towns across the country that the Government are putting billions of pounds into an ever-escalating budget for a rail project to connect cities, while at the same time huge numbers of towns, including in my constituency, have rubbish train connections and cannot even get investment for the additional carriages we need, never mind rail route upgrades? Will she undertake to provide a breakdown from her Department of the amount of capital rail funding going into projects for cities and the amount of money going into projects for towns?”
“I thank the Foreign Secretary and shadow Foreign Secretary for their moving words, because the events and stories coming out of Sri Lanka are truly heartbreaking. To attack churches on Easter Sunday in this way, and the streets and hotels, is vile. They are right that the extremists and terrorists are seeking to divide us and that it is important to bring people together. Does this not show the importance of our international intelligence and security partnerships and our ability to use them in support of Sri Lanka and other countries in the international fight against ISIS and extremism? Does it not also show that this work is about supporting peace and saving lives?”
“We are in this difficult situation because the Government’s approach has not worked, and simply going round in the same circles or doing the same things will not solve the problem either. It would be helpful to understand how far the Prime Minister is actually prepared to reconsider her red lines. Is she now willing to consider a common external tariff with the EU—which is a key part of any customs union—or does she still rule that out?”
“I also think it would be really bad for West Yorkshire police to suddenly lose, overnight, the policing and security co-operation on which they, and other countries, depend in order to be able to investigate the most serious criminals.”
“The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and I were elected at the same time and sit together on the Home Affairs Committee, and we agree on many things, but it will not surprise him to hear that we strongly disagree on this Act and the risks of no deal. Let me gently say to him, and to other Members, that I think it would be really bad for manufacturers in my constituency to suddenly face customs checks, tariffs and delays if we end up with no deal, and I think it would be really bad for overstretched families in my constituency to suddenly face food tariffs and an increase in food prices.”
“The problem is that there are different views about different kinds of Brexit, and about different ways of reaching public consensus and consent. We have to be honest about those different views, tease them out and debate them, rather than thinking that the ticking clock will provide all the solutions.”
“I just think that approach, like a continuing game of chicken, is a really bad way to make decisions. We have heard different concerns from different perspectives on the Prime Minister’s deal, but none of the assurances get any better simply because it is 10 minutes to midnight. Running down the clock was the wrong way to address those concerns. It would have been far better to have the kinds of debates and conversations that have now started in order to try to find a way forward. This is incredibly frustrating for people across the country, who are tearing their hair out about the way this has all happened. We should be honest about that. That is why we all have a responsibility to come together and try to find a way forward.”
“That is why we have reached this point, and it is why we should now support an extension. The purpose of the motion is to provide that parliamentary safeguard and a legal underpinning for the Prime Minister’s negotiations, so that she is not under pressure to slip backwards from the course she has decided upon. We are here because the Prime Minister ran down the clock. She put forward a motion in December, although it was clear even then that her deal would be rejected, and then pulled the vote the first time. Instead of reaching out at that point, she simply ran down the clock, using the threat of an imminent deadline to try to force decisions. She has tried that process of brinkmanship in decision making repeatedly, but it simply has not worked.”
“I think that that advice was very important. The job of the civil service is to attempt to do everything it can and strain every sinew to deliver the will of the Government of the day. The fact that Sir Mark Sedwill has given such advice shows quite how seriously that is taken. It is particularly significant that Sir Mark is also the Government’s national security adviser and the former permanent secretary at the Home Office: he will be well aware of the security and policing issues that we face. I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister has tabled this motion as a result of the Bill that we passed, which is now an Act. I think it shows that the Cabinet has taken that advice seriously, but also that Parliament as a whole has consistently opposed the damage and the chaos that no deal would cause.”
“If everyone thinks only about winning in the short term and getting what they want straightaway, rather than about how we can build consensus for what is effectively a constitutional change, even if they win in the short term it will not last and whatever we get will end up unravelling.”
“I think that there is a problem with the way in which everyone has been approaching the debate. Like my hon. Friend, I think that a no-deal Brexit would be deeply damaging to our constituents, but I also think that the continual attempts to suggest that there are betrayals and conspiracies make it harder for people to come together and reach a sensible and sustainable outcome. One of the reasons we are in this situation is that there has been no attempt to build a consensus since the referendum. That is why I argued for a cross-party commission at the very beginning of this process, and for a process that would bring together leave and remain voters to try to work out the best way forward. Frankly, if we do not do that, nothing lasts.”
“We now have a process of indicative votes and cross-party talks—which, to be honest, should have started some time ago—but we also have to recognise that we do not have the same consensual political and parliamentary traditions that other European countries have been able to draw upon. I understand that, from the other member states’ point of view, we can look very adversarial. We are having to do something that we have no tradition of doing in this House, but I hope that our attempts to do it now will be effective and will lead to a conclusion. I certainly hope that the cross-party working that we have managed to achieve to get this Bill in place and to get this motion to go forward will be an indicator that it is possible for us to draw on more consensual traditions when it comes to this kind of constitutional change.”
“However, that focus on the target ended up creating more anger, more confusion and a greater sense of betrayal. It is my fear now that again, in suggesting that it will be a betrayal if everything is not solved by a particular date, the Government and particularly the Prime Minister have made it harder for us to reach consensus. They have created more alarm and anger across the country instead of adopting a practical focus on the way forward. The proof of that is the fact that we are here again without having reached agreement. The Prime Minister has tried to focus minds by using brinkmanship and creating dates and deadlines, but it simply has not worked. That is why we have to try to do this in a different way. We have to try to bring people together.”
“The idea of a flextension is a very interesting proposal. As I understand it, it would allow us to conclude the article 50 process at any point, if agreement is reached but, equally, we could take longer if we needed to. I hope that the Prime Minister will seriously consider that approach, because one of the reasons we are now in this situation is the focus on the date, whether 29 March or 12 April, and it is a situation of her making. None of those dates was in the original referendum in 2016; they are dates that she created. It reminds me of the debate we had on the Government’s net migration target. The Prime Minister chose to make the net migration target a big focus, even though everybody knew that she had no plan to deliver it.”
“I ought to finish, because other Members want to speak. I shall conclude where I started by saying that, when we have constitutional change such as this, we need people to try to come together and reach agreement. No matter how we have voted over the past few months—and certainly the past few weeks—we have all had threats and abuse, including to our constituency offices. That is damaging to our democracy and to our debates, so I hope that we will be able to come together and find a way forward, and to support the Prime Minister’s motion today.”
“I should be clear at the beginning that I support all five amendments from the Lords, but I oppose the further Commons amendments that have been tabled. I thank the Lords for proceeding so swiftly in these unprecedented circumstances, with only four days to go until the country could end up leaving without a deal—with all the serious implications for manufacturing, small businesses, medicine supplies, food prices, farming and transport—and with only two days before the important European Council, which needs to consider an extension to article 50.”
“I welcome the work that has been done together to ensure that that clarity applies and that the Prime Minister can take those discussions forward.”
“I particularly thank Lord Robertson and Lord Rooker, who sponsored the Bill in the Lords, the Government and Opposition Front Benchers and Cross Benchers, who engaged in thoughtful discussion about these amendments, and the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), who did considerable work to ensure that the amendments would be effective. I said to the Minister, when we were discussing this in Committee, that we were keen to ensure that there was legal clarity for the Prime Minister as she went into the negotiations in the EU Council, and that she would be able to take sensible decisions in the national interest without having to come back to this House in the middle of negotiations—clearly, that would not be in the national interest.”
“Some people criticised the Bill, but the vast majority of the Lords supported the Bill, which is why we have it back before us now. Parliament has shown in both the Commons and the Lords that it is capable of responding to the gravity and the urgency of the challenge that our country faces and the very immediate risks to jobs, public services and families across the country if we drift. None of us could have imagined that we would be in this situation in the first place. These are unprecedented circumstances, but they should also serve as no precedent for the future when, as we all hope, normality might be restored.”
“The Bill makes it clear that the Prime Minister will be mandated to seek the extension in accordance with the motion that we hope will be tabled tomorrow. As a result of the amendment that has been tabled, it also allows the Prime Minister to seek further extensions and to accept extensions, subject to their not ending earlier than 22 May. Lords amendments 1 and 2 ensure that a delay past midnight tonight will not prevent debate on the motion tomorrow. Lords amendment 3 allows Ministers other than the Prime Minister to table the motion. I think it sensible to ensure that the debate does not disrupt any negotiations with other Governments in which the Prime Minister will need to engage tomorrow. Lords amendments 4 and 5 ensure that the Prime Minister has that flexibility in the negotiations.”