Chris Philp
MP for Croydon South · Conservative · United Kingdom
“The Minister mentioned return numbers, but what she did not mention is that the return of 6,000 small-boat migrants in the past two and a bit years amounts to only 8% of illegal immigrants crossing the channel. That is to say, 92% of illegal immigrants crossing get to stay. There is no deterrent whatsoever in that.”
“I cannot give all the many examples, in the interests of time, but they cited one example in which apparently hundreds of Pakistani men claimed to be gay, based on a letter from an individual claiming to be the sexual partner of all of them. That is quite clearly fabricated with the assistance of immigration lawyers.”
“I was on the beaches of northern France just a few weeks ago, waist deep in water as one such dinghy embarked with about 100 illegal immigrants on it, while 10 members of the French gendarmerie nationale, who we pay for—who the Home Secretary pays for—with £660 million of our money, almost all of it unconditional, stood by and did nothing…”
“Numerous rapes have been committed by small-boat illegal immigrants, including the rape of a girl in Nuneaton aged just 12. The Government are using sleight of hand. They are moving illegal immigrants from hotels into apartments, then granting them asylum on an industrial scale.”
“I thank my constituency neighbour, the Minister for Policing and Crime, for advance sight of her statement. I am sure that we all agree that the right to protest is a fundamental part of our democracy, but the right to protest should never be violently exercised or cause serious disruption to other people.”
“Since the general election, over 80,000 illegal immigrants have crossed the channel, all illegally and all unnecessarily, because France is a safe country—nobody is fleeing persecution in France. Almost 20,000 have crossed this year alone, and 625 crossed yesterday, with more coming in the early hours.”
The complete record
Every one of 6,642 lines we hold for Chris Philp, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 28 of 133.
“I beg to move amendment 33, in clause 21, page 17, line 33, after “subsection” insert “, and may make consequential amendments of this section”. This amendment will ensure that, in the event that the list of bodies to which the new provisions apply is amended by the regulations, any necessary consequential amendments may also be made by the regulations.”
“Government amendment 33 ensures that if regulations amend the list of law enforcement bodies in subsection (4) of proposed new section 71 of the 2000 Act, such regulations may make consequential amendments to section 71—for example, to the definition of “chief officer”. Amendments 34 and 35 clarify the meaning of the term “chief officer” for each of the listed law enforcement agencies. With your permission, Ms Bardell, I will speak to amendment 60 once I have heard the shadow Minister’s comments so I can respond to them. I hope I have set out why it is important that we put on a sounder and clearer footing the organisations and individuals who can access this data, and lay the groundwork to make automatic access possible for law enforcement purposes. I am sure we can all get behind that.”
“That is why the clause will bolster the governance arrangements in this area by making them more transparent and straightforward, in preparation for the regulations that will broaden the access regime. In particular, the clause makes it clear which bodies can access DVLA driver data, which is necessary as the current legislation could be improved upon. There is a mechanism to amend the list of organisations that have access, while requiring the chief officer to be responsible for ensuring that appropriate training and oversight is provided by their organisation. That obviously includes the delivery of their data governance obligations.”
“The clause allows all police and law enforcement organisations listed in proposed new section 71(4) of the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 to access DVLA driver information. It also changes the current legislative quirk whereby police staff are defined by law as police constables solely for the purpose of DVLA driver data, which is rather anomalous. It will define those permitted to access DVLA driver data as “authorised persons”, and regulations will set out the process for those individuals to become authorised. We are conscious that police access to such personal data needs to be reasonable and proportionate, as set out in existing data protection legislation.”
“At the moment, the automatic access applies only to road traffic matters. Given that we hold this data, I am sure that members of the Committee would expect the police to be able to access it in pursuit of criminals. Through the clause, we are delivering on our commitment to support the police by providing them with the tools they need. Members will recall that in the oral evidence sessions back in December, we heard support for the provisions from the National Crime Agency, the College of Policing and His Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary and fire and rescue services, Andy Cooke. We are also taking the opportunity to make the legislation simpler and more transparent. Under the current system, some law enforcement staff have access to the DVLA driving licence database and others do not.”
“Currently, automatic access to the DVLA driving licence data is limited to matters concerned with enforcing road traffic offences and Road Traffic Act 1988 purposes, which means that the police do not have automatic access to driving licence data for other purposes, such as investigating wider types of crime. They do have manual access to the data, but that is quite laborious and takes a long time. The clause builds on an existing regulation-making power and requires the Secretary of State to make regulations specifying the purposes for which, and the circumstances in which, the police can automatically access the driving licence database, so that all policing and law enforcement purposes are included. The clause essentially expands an existing manual process and makes it automatic.”
“Clause 21 will facilitate the ability of police and other law enforcement officers to access driver information from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency automatically at the point of need for all policing and law enforcement purposes. The clause contains provisions for regulations and a code of practice to enable changes to be made for the purposes of access to driver data. Police and other law enforcement officers frequently need to deal with unpredictable circumstances while operating under time pressure, and the police have provided compelling operational examples in which they could deal better with threats and harms faced by the public if they had direct and automatic access to DVLA driving licence data. That is why the Bill contains this clause.”
“It simply makes automatic what is currently manual and it is circumscribed in the way that I described.”
“First, for clarity, I should say that the purpose for which the information might be made automatically accessible is circumscribed by the words at the very end of the newly created section 71(2), which says the that Secretary of State “may prescribe only such purposes and circumstances as are related to policing or law enforcement.” It is not for any purpose; it has to be related to policing and law enforcement. Secondly, I pointed out that the police already have the ability to access the data manually for police and law enforcement purposes. The clause simply paves the way for them to do what they currently do manually and instead do it automatically, provided that it is for a police or law enforcement purpose. I hope those two points give some reassurance that the clause is not some gigantic land grab.”
“I pose a brief example: if somebody was wanted for an offence such as rape, and the police could not track them down and they were not on the custody image database—let us say that they had never been into custody—would the Committee want the database to be searched to see whether a recognition match could be obtained to find that person? That can happen at the moment, and I think that is right. I would like to check whether the shadow Minister agrees.”
“Existing DVLA data, including photographs —I have a driving licence; I am sure that the hon. Member has one and everybody on the Committee probably does as well—can already be searched by the police; or rather they can request information on a manual basis. That can happen already, to each and every one of those 40-odd million records, for law enforcement purposes. That has a statutory basis, via schedule 2 to the Data Protection Act 2018, which allows access to that kind of data for police and law enforcement purposes. The principle of police access to that data for law enforcement purposes is already there.”
“I hope that illustrates to the Committee how live facial recognition is useful. It comes under the auspices of the Supreme Court judgment in the Bridges case, and authorised professional practice is published by the College of Policing. I think the Information Commissioner’s Office has also looked at it. Live facial recognition, which does not need DVLA data anyway, has a good basis, and it is catching people who would otherwise not get caught.”
“So that is live facial recognition. The police do not need access to a DVLA database or password database, or even the custody database; they just need a list of people who are wanted. In the examples in Chelmsford, Southend and Croydon, they caught people who were wanted for offences or who had absconded from court, who would otherwise still be wandering around. It was used at the coronation. Three camera points were set up and, similarly to the Welsh example, the watch list included known terrorists, fixated people—people who are obsessed by the monarchy—and also wanted offenders. I think three wanted people were caught on the coronation day, including a wanted sex offender who happened to wander past the camera. The technology has also been used in Soho to try and catch robbers who were stealing mobile phones and so on.”
“The algorithm was improved and tested by the National Physical Laboratory at 0.6, which is the setting that the police use. At that setting, it found that the false positive rate was, I think—I am speaking from memory—one in 6,000, which is six times more accurate than the court specified, and that there was no disproportionality based on either gender or ethnicity. For the one-in-6,000 false positive, what would happen—this has not happened in Croydon, because only 17 people were stopped—is that the police would say, “Excuse me, sir or madam, can you just identify yourself?” If they turn out not to be the person the police think they are, obviously the police will say, “Sorry to disturb you—off you go.” But that is one in 6,000, and it did not happen in Croydon, because the police did not stop 6,000 people.”
“In Croydon, the scheme was run in the first couple of weeks of December. Concerns have been raised previously about accuracy and disproportionality: does the technology pick on members of certain ethnic communities, as it were? There was litigation that preceded South Wales using it, back in about 2020. I join the shadow Minister in commending Alun Michael for his work on live facial recognition, where he has shown real leadership, and for his long career in public life—in Parliament as a Secretary of State, as Welsh First Minister, and as a police and crime commissioner for the last 12 years or so. The litigation happened, and the court set out certain conditions that had to be met, one of which was around accuracy—I think the false positive rate had to be one in 1,000—and disproportionality.”
“Over a couple of afternoons in Croydon, several thousand people walked past the cameras, despite the fact that there was a sign up saying, “The police are using live facial recognition” and in the course of those two afternoons, there were 17 alerts and all were accurate. The police would stop each person, have a conversation, ask for ID and so on, and all 17 had been accurately identified. Those 17 people were all arrested because they were wanted for offences. One of them was a wanted rapist who would otherwise not have been caught. It was just good fortune that that wanted rapist had to walk past the camera and was apprehended. Were it not for that, that wanted rapist would still be wandering around. There was another person who had been wanted for grievous bodily harm since 2015—for eight years—and they were arrested as well.”
“Let me start with the one that would not be relevant here: live facial recognition. Live facial recognition would never need to use images from the DVLA database, the passport database or anything else. Live facial recognition takes a watch list of people wanted for criminal offences or wanted by the court. Such technology was run recently in Croydon—my borough—where I think there are about 12,000 people wanted for criminal offences. The camera was set up, as it was in Southend and Chelmsford, in Wales, for the coronation and at the Silverstone Grand Prix. Everyone who walked past those cameras in Croydon town centre got scanned. There were public signs up; the authorised professional practice says that public signs have to be put up, which I would have thought would mean criminals would not walk past the cameras—but they do.”
“Secondly, we are not passing clause 21 expressly to authorise the use of DVLA data for facial recognition or indeed for any particular law enforcement purpose; we are simply creating a regulation-making power. Regulations might be brought forward using this power to do any number of law enforcement activities, including facial recognition, but that would, of course, have to be debated at the time and subject to the affirmative procedure. This is enabling legislation; we are not actually passing the substance of any particular power today. Since members of the Committee have raised questions about facial recognition, I would like to address them. There are essentially two different kinds of facial recognition—separate concepts—one of which is relevant and one of which is not.”
“I would like to speak to a couple of matters concerning the clause, and then talk about the read-across into facial recognition. I think there is some conflation of two different kinds of facial recognition—live and retrospective—only one of which is relevant here. I will explain how that works and how it might be relevant. Let me speak first to the to the substance of the clause. First, just to be precise, this is not a Henry VIII power, which is a piece of secondary legislation that can amend primary legislation. This does not create a regulation-making power to amend primary legislation; it simply creates a list. It is not technically a Henry VIII power, but it does specify the circumstances, or the policing and enforcement purposes, for which data can be used.”
“Gentleman is making a reasonable point about something that I had in mind to do in the relatively near future. That is something that I am working on in the Home Office, and his suggestion has spurred me on to expedite that. We want to have this set out transparently and comprehensively so that everybody can look at it and know where they stand. It has actually been done in relation to live facial recognition, but it would be helpful to set it out in a broader context.”
“The hon. Gentleman is making a very reasonable point. In fact, I was going to come on to it later, but I will address it now. As for the current deployments of live facial recognition in places such as Wales, Croydon, Southend, Chelmsford, Soho and elsewhere, a framework was set out by the case of Bridges v. South Wales Police. There is authorised professional practice from the College, but that framework is there. The hon. Gentleman is, however, making the valid point that it would be useful to set out—outside of this Committee, as he said—a broader strategy, framework or explanation of how the technology can be used. That is not just the case for live facial recognition, but also for the retrospective recognition, which I will come on to in a minute. It is all set out, and we could perhaps debate and discuss it in the round. The hon.”
“For the vast majority, there is no match, and the scan is instantaneously, immediately and automatically deleted. There is no need for any manual intervention; it gets deleted straight away, like this—although I am not sure how my clicking my fingers will be rendered in Hansard . If the hon. Lady or I had walked past, we would be scanned and, one hopes, there would not be a match. Then there would be instant, automatic deletion. If someone is scanned and their photograph is one of the 12,000 on the list, however, there is a flash—that was a double click, for the benefit of Hansard —and an alert is sounded. The officer will then go over and say, “Excuse me, sir”—all of the 17 who were stopped were men, by the way.”
“I thank the hon. Lady. On the first question, which was about how live facial recognition works, we first of all need a watchlist—the list of wanted people—and then the photographs. Maybe there will be someone who is wanted for rape, and we have that person’s photograph. Maybe it is someone the police have encountered before, but they just cannot find them. Maybe the police have gone to what they think is the person’s home address, and the person is not there, but they have their photograph. They have that data. Then, in the case of the Croydon deployment in early December, there were 12,000 photographs of people who were wanted for different offences—the police had those photographs. Then, the faces of people walking down the road are scanned. Each time someone walks past, their face is scanned to see whether it matches.”
“I will now come on to retrospective facial recognition. I repeat that we are not authorising this today by passing this clause; we are simply creating a power to make regulations in the future to do so. I just thought I would be clear about that. We are not creating this power; we are simply creating a legislative framework through which future regulations might be brought forward.”
“The officer will go over and say, “Excuse me, sir, what is your name?” When he has established that the match is accurate and that they are who the system thinks they are, it is a case of, “You are under arrest for X, Y or Z”. That is how the live system works. There is no need to access any standing database such as that of DVLA; we just need the pictures of the 12,000 wanted persons. Depending on the deployment, we can choose who goes on that list. In the South Wales deployment, they were particularly concerned about terrorists who might try to cause an explosion in the arena or paedophiles who might seek to prey on the young girls going to the Beyoncé concert. The list can be varied depending on the location. I would hope, though, that any watchlist would always include people who are wanted for offences.”
“That is a really good question and I do not know the answer to it. However, I can certainly find out and come back to the Committee. I know that this technology can be used to find missing persons. If someone has gone missing, the police can do a search and see if they pop up somewhere. As for finding witnesses, of course the witness has not committed a crime, so one would have to be a little bit careful about infringing on their rights. However, I will take that question away and get an answer, and I will write to the hon. Lady and the shadow Minister, and indeed the rest of the Committee, because it is a very good question. I am afraid that, as I stand here today, I do not know the answer, but that could help to find witnesses.”
“I hope I have given the Committee a bit of a flavour of how these regulation powers—”
“Member for Birmingham, Yardley asked a question about her son. There is a question of proportionality here. For example, regarding this database, in these regulations one could—this is not for the Committee today, but I am just saying it—specify a threshold, and say that this would only be used for crimes over a certain level of seriousness. Obviously, rape and murder would meet that. GBH, drug supply, firearms, knives and so on, might also be specified, but a parking ticket would probably not be. In these regulations—this is one of the reasons why the wording is flexible—one could specify that threshold, and we would obviously then debate where that balance should lie. One does have to be cognisant of proportionality and privacy considerations, as indeed data protection law in any case requires us to do.”
“It could be; that is certainly a possibility that I have in mind. If those regulations were brought forward, and maybe there would be some further clarifying codes of practice and so on that will be needed as well, it would in theory be possible to bring forward regulations such that, if the person or the suspect—it might be the murderer in that Coventry nightclub, or the sex offender on that bus. Imagine if their image was not on the custody database; imagine that they had never been arrested, or convicted, or anything. The police did not have their picture; they would not have found them. It would obviously be useful, particularly for more serious offences, to be able automatically to search other facial image databases besides the custody one, in order to catch the rapist, the serious sex offender and so on. The hon.”
“Clause 21, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 22 Powers to compel attendance at sentencing hearing Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.”
“Amendments made: 34, in clause 21, page 18, line 19, leave out “police force listed in subsection (4)” and insert “body”. This amendment and amendment 35 specify in more detail the relevant chief officers of bodies to which the provisions will apply. Amendment 35, in clause 21, page 18, line 20, at end insert— “(aa) in relation to a police force listed in subsection (4)(b) to (d), the chief constable of that police force; (ab) in relation to a service police force listed in subsection (4)(p) to (r), the Provost Marshal of that service police force; (ac) in relation to the tri-service serious crime unit, the Provost Marshal for serious crime; (ad) in relation to the Service Police Complaints Commissioner, the Service Police Complaints Commissioner;”— (Chris Philp.) See the statement for amendment 34.”
“I will finish by saying that I spoke to my local police commanders, Superintendent Mitch Carr and Chief Superintendent Andy Brittain, encouraging the deployment of live facial recognition in Croydon. I know 17 people got arrested. We have heard how it was done in Essex: in Southend and in Chelmsford. I encourage members of this Committee to talk to their local police and say, “Try it out in your area,” and see who gets caught. At the moment, South Wales police and the Met have the necessary vans, but they will lend them. I think South Wales police lent the vans to Essex. If anyone wants to suggest it, they could ask their chief constable to borrow the van from South Wales police or the Met, try out in their constituency, and see who gets caught. Amendment 33 agreed to.”
“It is not often that someone says that after I have been speaking. I hope I have given a bit of a flavour of how this could help catch serious criminals who might otherwise not be caught. We would debate the specifics when the time came. There would, of course, be a code of practice and everything else to set out those guard rails. I have already indicated in response to, I think, the hon. Member for Bootle, that there is a case for a wider policy statement setting out the strategy in this area, which we can discuss and debate. I appreciate that we have strayed a little beyond the strict confines of this clause, Ms Bardell, but the Opposition raised some reasonable questions that I really wanted to try hard to answer.”
“The Government take domestic burglary very seriously, which is why, just over a year ago, we obtained a commitment from the police to attend every residential burglary. That is delivering results and, according to the crime survey, residential burglary has fallen by 8% year on year.”
“I agree that combating rural crime is extremely important, and the national rural crime unit is designed to do exactly that. We have also legislated, of course, and we will implement that legislation to ensure that things like all-terrain vehicles and agricultural equipment have to be marked or fitted with an immobiliser. Overall domestic burglary has fallen by 57% since 2010.”
“The commitments in the drugs strategy are being delivered, including investing more than £300 million in additional treatment capacity to create over 50,000 extra treatment places. We are also enforcing hard, such as by closing down more than 2,000 county lines since 2019.”
“Enforcement is important. Besides closing down those 2,000 county lines, Border Force seized about 19 tonnes of cocaine in the year ending March 2022—the largest amount seized in a single year on record. I have already mentioned treatment. The most important thing is to get people out of their addiction entirely, which is why we are investing so much extra money in treatment. There are no plans to change the legal framework. Drugs are illegal for a reason. They are highly addictive and harmful, and the out-of-control public drug consumption in those jurisdictions that have liberalised significantly, such as California, San Francisco and so on, is not something we want to see in this country.”
“The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. Of course, one feature of the island of Ireland is that there is essentially no border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and he has alluded to the various challenges that poses. I would be happy to take up that issue and to see what more we can do to disrupt the supply of drugs north-south and east-west. I thank him for raising the issue.”
“Work to update the funding formula is continuing, and I will update the House as soon as I can. The House should be aware that next year, 2024-25, police and crime commissioners funding frontline police will see their budgets increase by up to £922 million, which is an increase of about 6%.”
“What I will commit to, as far as the people of Bedfordshire are concerned, is an increase in funding of £10.2 million for next year, 2024-25. That is an extra 6.5% compared with this year. They will also have 1,455 police officers. That is about 200 more than Bedfordshire’s police force has ever had at any time in its history.”
“I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss these issues. As I say, Bedfordshire Police will receive an extra £10.2 million next year—an increase of about 6.5%—which I am sure will be welcome up and down the county, but I am of course happy to meet my hon. Friend whenever he would like.”
“Theft offences are down by 47% since 2010, of course—those are the crime survey figures—but we have recently launched a retail crime action plan, where police are committing to prioritising attendance at incidents of retail crime and always following reasonable lines of inquiry in relation to shoplifting, assaults against shop workers and other forms of offending. In addition, we legislated in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022—”
“I join my hon. Friend in commending Humberside police force on the progress it has made, particularly under recent chief constable Lee Freeman. In terms of improving leadership, of course, Lee Freeman is now one of His Majesty’s inspectors, and he can apply what he learned and put into practice in Humberside across the whole country.”
“It is a huge pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Dame Angela, as it will be in the Committee’s sittings in coming days. I will not try to respond to the shadow Minister’s opening remarks in any detail, as we debated the wider issues on Second Reading, but I will observe in passing that we have record numbers of police officers, and overall crime, measured by the crime survey on a like-for-like basis, is 56% lower today than it was in 2010.”
“I hope that that gives the shadow Minister the assurance that he wanted. Dame Angela, shall I save my wider remarks about the clauses for the stand part debate in the second group, or would you rather I addressed them now?”
“I will take the give example of shared accommodation, where people share a flat or a house. Clearly, if someone’s flatmate possessed one of these illegal articles and the flatmate did not know about it, or even if they knew about it but did not have control over it—it can be one or the other; it does not have to be both—that would then be a defence available to them. I can certainly give the assurance that he requested. At the bottom of page 1, the clause provides that where flatmates are sharing accommodation, if one of the flatmates possessed the articles, and another flatmate had nothing to do with any offending and either did not know about the articles—or, even if they knew about them, had no control over them—that second flatmate would not be guilty of an offence, because the defence set out would be available to them.”
“Amendments 51 and 52 would remove the ability for the defendant to expressly advance as a defence that they did not know about the purpose of the article, and did not know they were possessing it and so on. If the amendments were agreed to, those defences would not be available and the clause, as amended, would make these strict liability offences, with no defence that could be offered. The effect of the amendments would actually be to make the clause less favourable to the defendant. Amendment 55 addresses items found on a premises. As the shadow Minister pointed out, at the end of clause 1(4), there is a defence that the person did not know about the item’s presence on the premises or they had no control over it; it can be one or the other, and does not have to be both.”
“I have mentioned a couple of those articles; there are very few, if any, legitimate uses for them. The shadow Minister posed a reasonable question, asking why we have constructed the burden of proof in the way we have. Why say it is for the defendant to demonstrate that they had a legitimate purpose, rather than the other way round? The reason is because these articles have pretty much no legitimate uses other than for criminal purposes. Why would someone have a template to construct a 3D firearm other than for criminal purposes? There is no innocent use for that article that I can think of. The situation is similar for pill presses, unless it were a pharmaceutical company. To answer the shadow Minister’s fundamental and foundational question, that is why the burden of proof has been constructed as it has.”
“The fine city of Stockton. I thank the shadow Minister for the thoughtful, reasonable tone that he adopted in discussing the amendments and in his opening remarks. I am sure that tone will characterise the exchanges throughout the Committee’s proceedings. As the shadow Minister mentioned, clauses 1 to 4 criminalise the possession, importation, making, adaptation or supply of certain specified articles, where they can be used for serious criminal purposes, including items such as pill presses used to manufacture illegal pills and the templates for producing 3D firearms, about which the National Crime Agency and others are increasingly concerned. As with strict liability offences, these offences entitle a prosecution to start with the assumption that the accused would have known what the articles were concerned with.”
“I beg to move amendment 14, in clause 1, page 2, line 1, after “means” insert “— (a) in England and Wales,”. This amendment and amendments 15 to 18 extend the offence under this clause to Scotland and Northern Ireland.”