Kit Malthouse
MP for North West Hampshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“We have heard time and time again that the situation that thousands of our constituents live with every single day is so horrific and appalling that even the best palliative care cannot alleviate their pain. I urge colleagues to consider what their vote may mean today.”
“I will not. Some of those Members had just a few months before been specifically rejected by the electorate and replaced in this House by others, and I am afraid that they cannot be trusted not to do the same thing again. I grant my right hon.”
“The Health and Social Care Committee of the House of Lords found that in territories that have assisted dying, palliative care generally improves, because people become less afraid of talking about death.”
“One of the most affecting people I have met over the last 11 years of campaigning on this issue is Warwick Jackson, who came to our party conference a couple of years ago. Warwick’s wife, Ann, was diagnosed with terminal peritoneal cancer. She basically knew that she was going to die a slow, suffocating death at the end.”
“I respect my right hon. and learned Friend’s expertise in this matter, but, as he has already heard on the Floor of the House, it is perfectly possible for this House to suggest amendments, negotiate them with the promoters of the Bill, place them against the legislation in the House of Lords and then have them come back to this House for…”
“As co-sponsor of the Bill once again, I am acutely conscious that there is more at stake today than merely the fate of those who are facing their end, because the conduct of the other place means that our democracy is also on trial today.”
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“We have a duty in this House to try to get to the bottom of what happened and to make changes to ensure that it does not happen again, but that will not be a silver-bullet revelation; it will be a building picture, and this report is part of that. The report informs our work for now, and we will look to the future to see where we go next.”
“As I say, HMI is looking at these issues more widely across the whole of UK policing, and we will learn some lessons from that report. But we should not forget that the Commissioner of the Met herself has commissioned Dame Louise Casey to look at the internal culture of the Met, and that will give us some indications of where we should go next, if at all. Beyond that, similarly, stage 2 of the Angiolini review, which will look at this issue more widely, will be able to give us some information as to where we should go next, if at all. This is a building picture. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that this is a very distressing, alarming and scandalous story that has run for far too many years.”
“Gentleman describes—one that is deeply respected across the world, not just for its ability to catch every murderer or to stop knife crime in London or to put more rapists behind bars, but for its internal conduct and culture of ethics and integrity—that that is what we have to be about.”
“The hon. Gentleman asks his question very eloquently, and I completely agree with him. My primary concern in this affair is to get justice for the family of Daniel Morgan, who have campaigned for many years on this issue—a truly scandalous story that has involved many of us on both sides of the House. My second concern is to ensure that the Metropolitan police is fit to serve Londoners and that they can have trust in it. As somebody who, I must confess, has great affection for the Met, having worked for it in the past and seen the incredible things of which it is capable, I say to the officers of the Metropolitan police who want to know that they are working for exactly the organisation that the hon.”
“The Government will deliver a presumption in favour of offering offenders the chance to work in prison, on release on temporary licence, and on release.”
“My hon. Friend, in his usual manner, has put his finger on the button of part of the solution to the reoffending cycle. We firmly believe that there are three pillars for success in rehabilitating offenders: the first is a home, the second is a job, and the third is a friend. We are committing to providing all three to those who leave the secure estate. With all other Departments, we will publish our outcome delivery plan in the new financial year. I can reassure my hon. Friend that our right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister is setting extremely challenging and ambitious targets for the Department, particularly in regard to housing and employment.”
“I am pleased that my hon. Friend recognises that dozens of teams of offenders are fanning out across England and Wales and doing fantastic work, paying back into their community by improving the environment. My hon. Friend has been a persistent campaigner on the antisocial behaviour that quad bikes bring to his constituency and I know he will have conversations with his local police and crime commissioner about what the police can do to catch the individuals responsible. When they do catch them, it is absolutely appropriate that they pay back into the community through the kind of work that we now see on a daily basis. It might also be appropriate to GPS tag offenders so that we know where they are moving at speed off-road.”
“I had a useful and informative meeting with my hon. Friend and his constituent. As he knows, we have in place an action plan for IPP sentences that we are prosecuting with, I hope, some verve and energy to drive down the numbers. My hon. Friend will know that the Justice Committee held an inquiry into IPP sentences; we await its conclusions before we look at the next steps.”
“It is the role of the independent police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, to investigate serious matters involving the police, and the IOPC says it has been investigating the actions of the Metropolitan police in this case. We must let the IOPC conclude its work. We will of course expect any findings to be acted on swiftly, but it is vital that we do not prejudge the IOPC’s investigations or prejudice due process, so it would be wrong of me to make any further comment on the case in question at this time.”
“Members of the public must be treated fairly and without prejudice, no matter what their race, age or background. Strip-search is one of the most intrusive powers available to the police. The law is very clear that the use of police powers to search must be fair, respectful and without unlawful discrimination. Any use of strip-search should be carried out in accordance with the law and with full regard to the welfare and dignity of the individual being searched, particularly if that individual is a child. If police judge it operationally necessary to strip-search a child, they must do so in the presence of the child’s appropriate adult.”
“The City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership report on the strip-search of a 15-year-old schoolgirl while at school by police officers in 2020 is both troubling and deeply concerning. This experience will have been traumatic for the child involved; the impact on her welfare should not be underestimated. The Government and the public rightly expect the highest standards from our police officers. The ability of the police to perform their core functions is dependent on their capacity to secure and maintain public confidence and support for their actions. While the Metropolitan police have apologised for their actions and recognised that this incident should never have happened, the force’s culture has again come under scrutiny.”
“As I said earlier, we await the outcome of the investigation, and we will learn whatever lessons need to be learnt from it. While my hon. Friend the Minister for Equalities said that we cannot prevent all bad things from happening, we can try. What is clear from this case is that the complaint mechanism and the safeguarding practices involved did surface the issue and bring it to light, and have allowed us to examine this appalling— [ Interruption. ] Hold on. They have allowed us to examine this appalling incident in more detail and to try to learn the lessons, so that as—I assume from what the hon. Lady said—Child Q hopes, we are able to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.”
“Her work will dovetail neatly with the work of the Angiolini review, which is looking, in its first stage, at the circumstances surrounding the employment of Wayne Couzens. Following that, stage 2 will look more widely at culture and policing. There is no doubt that there is work to be done here, and we are determined to do that work.”
“The revulsion is not confined to women. There are many men, including me, who obviously find it a distressing incident to contemplate. I very often find it helpful in these circumstances to put one of my own relatives in a similar situation to bring home the impact. I am not at all denying the fact that it was distressing and appalling and that it should not have happened, as the Metropolitan police have said themselves. The hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) referred to a number of incidents that have prompted concerns about the culture in the Met, and she, I hope, will be pleased to know that I had a meeting last week with Dame Louise Casey who has obviously been detailed by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to look at the culture across the whole of the Metropolitan police.”
“We obviously take this matter extremely seriously. The hon. Lady is right that the report made recommendations to the Government, not least on strengthening and revising code C of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. We will have to consider our response to that in the light of this report, taking into account the outcomes of the IOPC review. We need to understand whether we have a specific problem or a systemic one. The report indicates that we may have systemic problems, and if we do then obviously we will seek to address them. We also need to work out from the IOPC report whether the same is true; if so, of course we will act.”
“It is worth saying, however, that it would be helpful to me if London Members such as the right hon. Lady recognised that the Mayor of London has a role to play in this, as the primary accountability body for the Metropolitan police, and that the Government and the Mayor must work together to solve these problems with the police.”
“Of course I understand the anger and concern across the country, and I share it. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), it could have been any one of our relatives. As the right hon. Lady knows, I spent a long time in London government and I understand the impact that these events can have on trust between the police and London’s various communities. It is extremely important that people feel confident that, when such appalling incidents happen, action is taken to try to prevent them in the future. I am trying to stress to the House that, while we have the report of the safeguarding board, we want to ensure that we also have the IOPC report so that we can see the full picture in the round and act accordingly to reassure her constituents and many other Londoners.”
“As I have already said, there is a process under way through the IOPC. That process will, I hope, conclude shortly and the IOPC will bring us the evidence of the report. It is an independent organisation— [ Interruption. ] The right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) is barracking me from a seated position, but I do not think she is participating in the urgent question. The point is that the IOPC is an independent organisation, and she will know that it would be completely incorrect for me to put any kind of pressure on its investigation. That process must complete. When it does, we will have the full picture and, if we are required to act, have no doubt that we will act swiftly.”
“Those are conclusions, I am afraid, for the IOPC. Much as I know the House would love me to do so, I cannot circumvent that quasi-judicial process. The IOPC is independent for a reason; the office of constable is dealt with in a different way from other matters of employment. Once the process concludes, we will be able to draw conclusions ourselves.”
“Obviously I have not spoken to every other police chief in the country, since the report came out just a few days ago. As I say, we will eagerly await the IOPC report to establish whether we have a specific problem or a systemic problem. The initial reports of the local child safeguarding practice review are telling us that we may have a systemic problem. If we do, then we will act on it accordingly. Please believe me when I say that the impact of this on any family would be profound. Some of us have children too. Those children may, in time, be subject to something like this, and I hope we are able to prevent that from happening.”
“If a strip-search is deemed necessary to be undertaken on a child, then an appropriate adult, whether a parent or otherwise, has to be present. [ Interruption. ] Indeed, they were not in this case, and the question we have to ask ourselves is why—what went wrong? Why did the officers do what they did? Why did they decide to have two present? What were they doing? We will know that from the IOPC report. Once we have that, as I say, we will have the full picture and we will be able to look at it accordingly.”
“As for police officers’ involvement in schools, it is, I am afraid, a source of great sadness that it is necessary for police officers to be involved in and around schools, but we have found over the years that such is the problem with youth violence and youth crime, particularly in the capital, that creating a good relationship with young people through the police’s involvement in schools is critical to success, and where it works, it can be of enormous benefit to their safety.”
“I did not blame the Mayor of London—I just pointed out that he has as much influence, if not more, over the Metropolitan police as we do. I was the deputy Mayor for policing. If this had happened under me, I would have taken responsibility for it and tried to sort it out myself. I am just saying that the Government and City Hall will have a duty to work together on this issue.”
“I reject the hon. Lady’s claim that the Metropolitan police victimises young black people on a daily basis. I have spent many hours with it over the years watching men and women of all types and races in uniform doing their best to save young people’s lives. Although I am often challenged about the disproportionality of things such as stop and search, in two and a bit years of doing this job, I have never been challenged in this Chamber on the disproportionality of victimhood and the sadly far too great number of young black people who die on the streets of London. As I said, we need to understand from each of these instances whether we have a systemic or a specific problem. I understand the House’s impatience, but we will know once the IOPC concludes.”
“As I said, we do take the issue extremely seriously. The matter of strip-search in particular, and the disparity in strip-search, has been of concern for some time. That is why we have an initiative on in Norfolk and Suffolk police where we have a strip-search scrutiny panel to look at the disparity there. Similarly, in Thames Valley police, we have put agencies together to examine police custody and strip-search disparities there. There is work under way—the hon. Lady should be reassured by that—but we will know more once the reports have concluded.”
“This area has been a challenge for policing in London—certainly throughout the right hon. Gentleman’s political career, as it has throughout mine—and it is one that requires constant attention from all of us, driven by the thematic problems we see, but also by some of these specific incidents. Where we do have these specific incidents, it is incumbent on us to make sure we have the knowledge and the detail, so that we can make the right decisions to make a big difference for London’s communities.”
“In my view, the vast majority of interactions between the Metropolitan police and members of the black community go well and are of benefit. There are, however, many—too many—that do not, and that is an area of work that requires constant attention. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, the Metropolitan police is subject to the Casey review of its culture at the moment. It is working hard, again, as part of the police uplift to change the look and feel of the workforce, with ambitious targets to recruit people of different genders and different ethnicities into the force so that it better reflects the people of London and can better serve them as a result. On a national level, the National Police Chiefs’ Council is similarly in the process of developing a race action plan to do the same and to deal with some of these issues.”
“I completely agree with the hon. Lady that there are implications for safeguarding, and I know but will reassure myself that my ministerial colleagues at the Department for Education are taking it as seriously as we are. As I say, from a policing point of view we have to wait for the IOPC to come to a conclusion, but on the overall safeguarding, the panel obviously did its work, the review has produced a report and I will make sure that Ministers at the appropriate Department are taking action as well.”
“As I outlined earlier, there are already two inquiries into the culture of the Metropolitan police in all its aspects—by Dame Louise Casey, who I know will do a thorough job, and following that, part 2 of the Angiolini review—but I would ask the hon. Gentleman to take care. There are 30,000-odd police officers in the Metropolitan police, the vast majority of whom are doing an extraordinary job and doing amazing things on a daily basis to keep us all safe from harm, and they deserve our thanks for doing that. They will be as outraged as we are at this event, and we need to learn the lessons on their behalf as well as on behalf of the Londoners we serve.”
“Of course we are concerned about the time it takes for complaints to be dealt with, which is why we changed the IOPC regulations at the end of 2019 to compel speedy investigations. It is the case now that if any investigation is going to take longer than 12 months, the IOPC must write to the appropriate authority—me or, for example, the Mayor of London—to explain why. The director general of the IOPC has done an outstanding job in driving the workload down and bringing more investigations in under 12 months, but there is obviously still a lot more work to do.”
“That is one of the questions the investigations will answer. It is my understanding that this issue was referred to the IOPC by the Metropolitan police from a policing point of view, but I agree that it would be of interest to know why it took so long to appear through the local safeguarding structure and I undertake to find out for the hon. Gentleman.”
“I think that is grossly unfair when the hon. Lady knows that I am bound by due process not to comment on an ongoing investigation by the IOPC. When that investigation is concluded we will have plenty to say, fear not. I have spent lots of time dealing with crime and social policy issues in the capital so I am sensitised to the issues the hon. Lady raises; I do recognise them and have done, I like to think, quite a lot of work on them in the past.”
“I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answers I gave earlier, and we will know these things when the IOPC concludes, which I hope it will shortly.”
“We obviously accept that there is an issue to be addressed, which is why we commissioned the Angiolini review and why we are supporting Dame Louise Casey.”
“I understand the hon. Lady’s anger at this incident; I really do. It is a dreadful incident, and I would much rather not be standing here having to answer these kinds of questions, because I would rather these incidents did not occur in the first place. I will say to her what I have said to everybody else: we will know more when the IOPC concludes. While I understand the House’s impatience and anger, the police officers concerned have a right to due process and we have a duty to wait for the report so that we can see properly the evidence of what happened and then take action accordingly.”
“I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. He is quite right that we should expect and work for the highest possible standards. This young person, Child Q, has been through a dreadful, traumatic episode, which I am sure will live with her, sadly, for many years. We need to do our best to make sure that these kinds of incidents do not reoccur, and that is the best we can do. The hon. Gentleman has my undertaking that as soon as we have the full picture, that is exactly what we will do.”
“It is important that the services that the police provide, whether digitally or face to face, are all accessible, so that everyone can come forward to report crime and interact with police officers in any way that suits their requirements. We are committed to giving the police the resources they need to fight crime and keep the public safe. That is why policing will receive up to £16,900 million in the coming financial year.”
“As I understand it, there is a consultation ongoing about how the Cheshire police should interact with the public they serve. I would hate to jump to any conclusion about what may or may not be decided, but, Mr Speaker, you will be aware that all police and crime commissioners should be reviewing their property strategy in the light of the massive expansion in police officer numbers that they are seeing at the moment, to the extent that, in the next 12 months or so, we expect to see the highest number of police officers that the country has ever seen.”
“My hon. Friend, with his usual acuity, has put his finger on the button of this issue. It is cause for significant concern in parts of the country, and he is right that it is a product of prices in the metal market. He will be pleased to hear that just this month the British Transport Police co-ordinated a national week of intensification on acquisitive crime, looking particularly at catalytic converters, and that the work we have done on scrap metal dealers will go some way to dealing with the problem. However, we need to work much more closely with manufacturers to ensure that they do as much as they can to design out the theft of converters. Let us hope that in the years to come, as we all convert to electric vehicles, it will become a problem of the past.”
“I am more than happy to lavish praise on North Wales police, which does a fantastic job along the coast there, as do all our police officers up and down the country. I am pleased to say that we are making enormous progress on our recruitment programme. As I hope my hon. Friend knows, we are well over 11,000 now, and I expect to hit the 20,000 target shortly.”
“I have committed before, and I am happy to do so again, that before the end of the Parliament we will produce a new funding formula to ensure that my hon. Friend’s constituency gets exactly what he deserves, as indeed he should.”
“My hon. Friend is right, and I am very sorry to hear of the crime that took place in his constituency. As he will know, the fight against knife crime is at the forefront of the Government’s priorities, and as he said, alongside deterrent sentencing and assertive and extensive policing, we need to work on long-term solutions to turn young people’s lives away from crime. I am pleased that I was able to visit the Thames Valley violence reduction unit last year to look at the extensive work it is doing to put in place exactly those kind of programmes.”
“As such, the amendment seeks to exclude certain offences where the risks to their prosecution are acute. The Law Commission looked at every possible model and unfortunately also found the one proposed in the amendment unsatisfactory. Time is short and I do not want to dwell on all its problems, but the review identified that to reflect sex and gender in some offences but not others would make the law very complex and imply that very harmful excluded offences such as rape are less serious, would result in tokenistic coverage of many misogynistic crimes, and would create new inequalities in how different groups are protected by hate crime laws.”
“This approach addresses the concerns that prompted the Lords amendment but in a way that enables the Government to consider the issue in the round. Lords amendment 72 seeks, in common parlance, to make misogyny a hate crime. Hon. Members may be aware that in December last year, at the Government’s request, the Law Commission provided recommendations on the reform of hate crime laws. Looking very carefully at this issue, it found that adding sex or gender to hate crime laws may prove “more harmful than helpful”, as well as “counterproductive”. The principal reason is that it could make it more difficult to prosecute the most serious crimes that harm women and girls, including rape and domestic abuse. Obviously such an awful unintended consequence is not the intention of those who tabled the amendment in the other place.”
“We have therefore tabled our amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 70, which is drafted more broadly than the Lords amendment and is not linked to any specific offence. It will require the Home Secretary to prepare a report on the nature and prevalence of spiking and to set out the steps that the Government have taken or intend to take to address it. In this context we are also exploring the need for a specific criminal offence to target spiking directly, as my hon. Friend recommended in his ten-minute rule Bill. The Home Secretary will be required to publish this report and lay it before Parliament within 12 months of Royal Assent. In preparing the report we will want to take into account the findings of the current inquiry by the Home Affairs Committee.”
“The Government share widespread concern about the offence that has prompted this amendment, whether spiking of drinks or spiking by needles, and we are taking the issue extremely seriously. I particularly commend my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) for bringing forward his recent ten-minute rule Bill on this issue. Everyone should be able to enjoy a night out without fearing that they will be a victim of this dreadful crime. In September 2021, the Home Secretary asked the National Police Chiefs Council to review urgently the extent and scale of needle spiking. It is clear from what the police have told us that this behaviour is not exclusively linked to sexual activity and that it demands a response that goes beyond the criminal justice system.”
“When drafting the code, the Government will work closely with policing partners, including the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council, to make sure that it will respect the operational importance of recording non-crime hate incidents to help to keep vulnerable people and communities safe while balancing the need to protect freedom of expression. Let me turn to the Lords amendments that the Government cannot support—at least, not in their current form. Lords amendment 70 would require the Secretary of State to establish a review of the prevalence of, and the response of the criminal justice system to, the offence of administering a substance with intent under section 61 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003—commonly known as spiking.”
“The amendments will address concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), also sadly not in his place, in this House and by Lord Moylan and others in the other place by bringing parliamentary oversight to this process. The College of Policing is currently responsible for producing non-statutory hate crime operational guidance. The Government’s statutory code of practice, once in effect, will replace the relevant section of this guidance on non-crime hate incidents. The college’s guidance will remain in place until the new code enters into effect.”
“To address this issue, Lords amendment 57 will extend the time limit for commencing a prosecution for common assault or battery involving domestic abuse so that the six months runs not from the date when the offence occurred but from when it is formally reported to the police through either a witness statement or a video recording made with a view to use as evidence. A prosecution must be commenced within an overall limit of two years of the offence. This amendment will make a real difference to victims of domestic abuse and stop perpetrators hiding behind an unfair limitation on victims’ ability to seek justice. Lords amendments 59 and 60 will ensure that the police’s processing of personal data in non-crime hate incident records is made subject to a code of practice issued by the Home Secretary.”
“Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who is sadly not in his place, to address concerns that the time limit for bringing prosecutions for common assault or battery involving domestic abuse is unfairly short. Currently a prosecution for common assault or battery must be brought within six months of an offence occurring. However, victims of domestic abuse may often, understandably, take some time to report an offence, leaving the police and the Crown Prosecution Service with little time to conduct an investigation and prosecute the offender. In some instances, the time limit has expired before the victim even approaches the police.”