Sarah Jones
MP for Croydon West · Labour · United Kingdom
“It might go to a port or pass through three or four different forces, but because of the nature of the 43 police forces, the system is not joined up. Our reform programme will help with those kinds of serious, specialist crime.”
“I should touch on the funding that we have put in place following the awful attacks that we have seen in recent times and an absolutely dismal story of antisemitism and violence to which we as a Government have had to respond.”
“For example, if a car enters Russia there are no checks on who owns it and whether it is stolen or not, so basically as soon as that car gets to Russia, off it goes. Some vehicles are sent into warzones, such as Ukraine, via nearby countries, and the more high-end vehicles are sold on to be used in other countries in the normal way.”
“A whole body of work is therefore being undertaken, and the annual “State of extremism” report will be published. Several Members talked about universities, which are incredibly important, and referred to a powerful report that I have also read. Members quoted some absolutely shocking statistics.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) for securing the debate. I start by thanking the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead in this area, Assistant Chief Constable Sarah Grahame, and her colleague Oli Fisher, who lead the work nationally on our response to vehi…”
“Neighbourhood policing is an important part of the picture, but we need to address large criminal gangs nationally. Some bodies are doing really good work in this area.”
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“The National Knife Crime Centre, which was launched a couple of weeks ago and has £1.7 million in Government funding, has a team of police officers who will investigate the sale of knives online. We are introducing legislation about buying knives in bulk; sadly, people buy, for example, 300 knives, and then sell them in their communities. Retailers will have an obligation to tell the police if people buy in bulk. We will be able to see the patterns and intervene at the right time.”
“Yes, the right hon. Gentleman is right that a very high proportion of people who commit knife offences are detected and charged. How we influence people who may want to pick up a knife is an interesting and difficult question. We are investing a small amount of money in trialling some communication techniques. A lot of money has been spent on the violence against women and girls campaign, which many people will have seen; it tries to educate men on violence and how to behave. We are going to do some testing on which messages might work, and which might not, to try to target people who might pick up a knife. The right hon. Gentleman’s first question was about the sale of knives online, and whether retailers can detect issues that should be raised.”
“The hubs will bring together lots of different services for young people in one place so that they can be supported. We are also doing more on interventions for young people if they are found to be in possession of a knife. We are backing the violence reduction units with £66 million, and they are doing a range of evidenced interventions to try to make sure that young people step away from crime. There is a whole plan of activities to get them out of crime and to prevent crime from happening in the first place, and I hope that my hon. Friend’s community will see the effects.”
“All our condolences go to Jamie’s family at this incredibly difficult time. I know that the community in Filton will be reeling, and that my hon. Friend will play her role in bringing people together to come to terms with what has happened. It is catastrophic when someone loses their life at such a young age. Through the action plan, which I commend— [ Interruption. ] I am not supposed to hold things up, am I? My point, in holding up the document, was to show that the action plan is substantial; it has a lot in it to ensure that young people do not get involved in crime in the first place and to tackle the challenge if they do. DCMS is leading on our Young Futures hubs: 50 youth centres across areas that are impacted particularly by knife crime.”
“We are already putting in place a range of interventions through the Crime and Policing Bill—which is going through Parliament and which we are debating this afternoon—to strengthen age verification for knives, and to ensure that online companies have a duty to remove violent content and knife sale content, and are doing more to do so. As the hon. Lady says, we have also consulted on whether we should have a licensing scheme. We are looking through that at the moment and deciding where we go. The campaign has been led by Pooja Kanda, the mother of Ronan Kanda, who died; she has been campaigning on this issue ever since. We are certainly very sympathetic, but we are the stage of looking at the consultation and seeing what a workable licensing scheme would look like.”
“We are working with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on where the Young Futures hubs will be, but they will be in the areas most affected by knife crime. There is a whole range of other interventions, which I hope will support my hon. Friend’s community to bring down knife crime overall. It will not just be the Young Futures hubs; many more interventions in our strategy are also designed to support. Greater Manchester has a big investment in addressing county lines, with which he will probably be very familiar. That has been incredibly successful and has got more successful every year that it has been in play. We are funding that this year. Hundreds of knives are being taken off our streets, and thousands of young children are being safeguarded as a result.”
“Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones)—have done a lot of work on this issue and are doing a huge amount to address porn, child sexual exploitation and violence against women and girls, but there is another piece of work to be done with the companies to ensure that all violent content is removed.”
“Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) also mentioned the work that campaigners are doing on the design of knives to stop them being so impactful. The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) is absolutely right about social media. In the Bill, we are putting more onus on social media companies to do more, with a duty to report the sale of knives that are illegal. There is a lot more to be done with regard to very serious violent content online. This Government—including the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for welcoming the strategy and for the work he has done. He is absolutely right: people commit knife crime offences with all different kinds of knives. Some of the knives that have been banned have a particularly pernicious impact, given the damage they do to people’s bodies. We are putting in place a whole raft of interventions to ensure there is more control over the sale of all types of knives. These includes the age verification checks in the Crime and Policing Bill, and interventions on the sale of knives generally: making sure that young people are not buying knives, and putting in place a duty on companies to report if people buy in bulk. My hon.”
“May I say how sorry I am to hear about the death of my hon. Friend’s relative? What a tragedy that is, not just for the immediate family, but for the wider communities in which people live. Education is key, and I have worked very hard on this raft of measures with the Department for Education. As my hon. Friend says, there is new guidance to schools on violence prevention, which will help to educate young people. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was with a bereaved parent who is going into schools and helping to teach young people about the reality of knife crime and what happens. That is a very important part of the picture. We are targeting in particular 250 schools in areas where there are very high concentrations of knife crime; we will be giving them more support so that they can access the services they need.”
“It is better to use effective stop and search, which is what we are doing—it is an important tool. Only last week, the Mayor of London announced that he is going to be opening a youth club in every single London borough, which will help to make sure that young people have somewhere to go and something to do. I hope the hon. Lady welcomes that.”
“Can I start by saying that I am very sorry that somebody from the Tea Room was attacked last week? I had not been aware of that, and I will find out more about it. I am also very sorry to hear about the hon. Lady’s husband. The growing narrative around London is just wrong. It has been debunked by lots of sensible people in lots of ways, so I will not go into all the details, but we know that the Mayor of London has invested more in policing than at any time before. Stop and search is an important tool, and the Mayor of London and the police in London use it; across the country, there are about 14,000 searches per year where a weapon is found, which is a high number. Stop and search is used effectively, and its use actually went down every year when Boris Johnson was Mayor of London.”
“I assure my hon. Friend that every part of the country, including Bournemouth, will be part of our action plan. We are making interventions across the whole country, as well as very targeted interventions where knife crime is particularly acute. I have already outlined our interventions in schools, whether that is support for the schools where the problem is most acute, or the overall interventions to make sure schools are fulfilling new guidance on violence prevention. Lots of brilliant people—my hon. Friend spoke about Tracy—are going into our schools and sending really powerful messages to our young people. I absolutely support that work, and a lot of our violence reduction units provide funding for those kinds of interventions.”
“Doing one intervention without all the rest is not going to work, which is why our action plan involves multiple Government Departments, lots of funding, and lots of support from the Prime Minister down.”
“I welcome the hon. Lady’s welcoming of the statement—it is appreciated. Stop and search is a really important tool. I am not entirely sure what “saturation stop and search” is, but if we stopped and searched everybody, all our police would spend all their time stopping and searching people to no particular end. Stop and search has to be evidence-based and targeted, and that is what the police are doing. We support that. We want more intelligence-led stop and search. It is a good thing, but anyone who thinks that it is the only answer misunderstands the problem. We have to prevent crime from happening in the first place, as well as to tackle the perpetrators who are already involved and make sure we address reoffending.”
“Increasingly, we are seeing young people in the grey market buying knives in bulk and selling them to each other. We are going to make that very difficult for people to do, but where it does happen—where knives are coming in from countries that they should not be coming from, where age verification checks are not being done, and where companies are making money in a way that is not legal—we will come down on them like a ton of bricks.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his question and pay tribute to the police in Bedfordshire, who I know are doing a really good job. Among all the agencies he talked about, the NHS has a really important role to play. Of course, we put youth workers into most of our A&Es, so that if a young person who has been stabbed comes in, we have some chance of intervening with them to get them out of the cycle of violence they are involved in. The brilliant investigative police officers at the new National Knife Crime Centre will be investigating the sale of knives online. That will be a focused piece of policing work, and the Government are providing £1.7 million for it. Those officers will look at the sale of knives online and go after the people who are selling them illegally.”
“I want to reassure the hon. Member’s constituents in Yeovil that I understand their concern. Neighbourhood policing has been decimated over recent years, which has had a real impact. It is why we have seen shocking rises in things like shop theft and antisocial behaviour—the things that have not been tackled because the police were not physically present on our streets. We are putting that right. We have already put 3,000 more police on our streets in our neighbourhoods—an 18% rise from what we inherited when we entered government—and we will continue to do so. We believe that the right place for our police officers and PCSOs is out on our streets, making sure they are tackling the epidemic of everyday crime, and that is what we will be doing.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for her question—how sorry I am that a 25-year-old lost their life recently. My constituency and that of my hon. Friend are not too far away from each other, and we have faced similar challenges. Of course, I am very happy to fulfil any commitment that my predecessor made, and I would very much like to see what is happening in my hon. Friend’s constituency.”
“We are making sure that we are targeting all parts of the country while also using the bulk of our resources where the highest numbers of crimes happen.”
“Our knife crime concentrations fund of £26 million will be targeted at areas where there is a high concentration of knife crime. It is quite extraordinary: from the state-of-the-art mapping on police-recorded knife crime that we have done, we can see that all of our knife crime happens in less than 2.5% of England and Wales, so targeting resources at those areas is obviously the right thing to do. That does not mean that we do not also have to worry about other areas outside that 2.5%, which is why we are investing in neighbourhood policing and supporting our children across the country through interventions in schools. It is why we are funding things like efforts to tackle county lines, which impact the whole of the country even if they start in cities.”
“My hon. Friend and I take the same approach, and knife crime is such an important issue in our constituencies. It is front and centre of everything that we do and think about. She is right to say that from tragedies come exceptional people doing exceptional things, and those people need support. She is also right to ask the question about long-term sustainable funding. The funding on youth justice interventions is long-term, and our local authorities have now got long-term funding, too. The funding for our violence reduction units has been for just this year, but I very much hear the call that long-term funding helps those organisations to plan much better for the future.”
“I express my condolences over the death of the man in the hon. Member’s constituency. Grassroots organisations are incredibly important and we have done a lot of work, as have the violence reduction units, in making sure that things are evidence-based, so that we know they are having an impact and are working. The Youth Endowment Fund has done a whole raft of work looking at what does and does not work, so that we know that and fund it appropriately. I hope that he can be reassured that we will continue to support, through violence reduction units and other vehicles, those local grassroots organisations to make sure that they are having the impact we need them to have.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The decimation of our youth services that we saw over the past 15 or so years, because they are not a statutory function for local authorities, has been catastrophic. We all know the impact of that. We are rebuilding infrastructure that has been torn away, and that is a challenge. As she says, we are introducing 50 youth hubs. The Mayor of London announced a youth centre for every borough in London, and other mayors across the country are doing what they can with their funding to make sure we are putting these services back. There is a huge push in the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care to make sure that we have got people supporting our kids’ mental health in schools.”
“I am interested in what the Luton Youth Partnership Service is doing, and perhaps my hon. Friend and I can have a chat about that at some point. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel, but rather support the organisations that already exist. There are some gaps that we are trying to fill. For example, we are running a whole range of pilots across the country where we are intervening with young people who have been arrested but not charged; a lot of those people slipped through the net. We are doing a lot of work in that space, but we do not want to reinvent what is already working. I am happy to talk to my hon. Friend more about her partnership.”
“We are also working to ensure that they are not abstracted, which is the other challenge that we have, particularly in large cities. When we have our proper cohort of neighbourhood officers, those people can be involved in their local schools, as we would expect them to be.”
“I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that she does in her constituency, and I send my condolences to Josh’s family, who will still be reeling after their loss. I agree with her that organisations such as Break Tha Cycle and Street Fathers do incredibly important work that we need to support. The target from this Government is that we should have a massive increase in our neighbourhood police officers, and we expect those officers to have a role going into schools and building relationships. We know that those relationships can be powerful. With those neighbourhood officers, we are trying to have consistency and to professionalise the neighbourhood route, so that people want to stay in it, rather than moving on up through the ranks and moving away from it. We want to have some continuity.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for her kind words, and I know that we tackle this issue together in Croydon. The point of this package of interventions is not just to stop kids getting involved in crime, but to make sure that we have got the right justice system and the right policing system, while stopping repeat offenders. A whole raft of interventions will directly impact on Croydon, which has a really good violence reduction unit that is working hard, and we want to support all the local organisations there. Our increase in neighbourhood policing will also significantly help. In Croydon, we also have live facial recognition, too, which is an interesting and powerful intervention in tackling crime. We are consulting at the moment on its legal basis.”
“What a horrific thing it is that has happened in my hon. Friend’s community—the murder of a child by a 13-year-old child. Of course we need to understand what has happened. I completely agree with my hon. Friend about the need to ensure that we always learn the lessons and that proper reviews are in place, and the framework is there to do that. While responsibility sits with the Scottish Government and local partners in this case, I cannot but agree wholeheartedly with what my hon. Friend has said.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for the work that she is doing in bringing together local organisations to help ensure that we are tackling these issues. A raft of interventions in the plan will help local organisations to do the work that needs to be done, and we are introducing the biggest police reform in 200 years, which involves work relating to prevention and how community safety partnerships work locally. We have committed ourselves to reviewing that whole landscape to ensure that rather than people duplicating work, sitting in different meetings and doing different things, everyone is coming together with a single plan to tackle violence.”
“I never cease to be amazed by how incredibly resilient people are in their ability to suffer such loss and then come forward and campaign to ensure that it does not happen again. There are a number of different ways in which people can get involved—for instance, through the work of violence reduction units and local violence reduction plans. I am sure I can give my hon. Friend a list of organisations with which her constituent could potentially get involved. We need as many people as possible to help in this regard, because what is needed is a community-led and community-driven response.”
“Cleveland police is one of the forces that we talk to regularly, because, as my hon. Friend says, the current police funding formula is not fit for purpose. It is very old, and it needs reform. We are reforming the whole structure of policing, and as part of that we will review the formula to bring it up to date and make it fit for purpose. Although I have no answer for my hon. Friend now, the question of the formula bears heavily on my mind, and we are doing a great deal of work on it in the Department.”
“I have spoken to forces in areas across the country where the distance that has to be travelled just to get to a custody suite is a disincentive to arrests, which is absolutely not the approach that we want to see. The challenges that we face are great, but we are reviewing the funding formula and will be establishing a fairer formula. The police estate has not received the investment that it should have received for a very long time. Our priority is to get police out into our communities, but we need to look at the estate as well.”
“Knife crime is horrific in all its forms, but there is something uniquely horrific about young people picking up knives and using them against other young people. There is a raft of interventions that we need to make and we are doing that through our action plan, but while the progress that we have seen so far is to be welcomed, it is not enough. Only when we reach our target and fulfil our ambition of halving knife crime will we know that we are actually making a difference and giving a future to those young people.”
“These tools use artificial intelligence to create deepfake, non-consensual intimate images, many of women. While creating, sharing and threatening to share non-consensual intimate images is already illegal, this amendment goes further, and criminalises the developers making and supplying these tools. As well as the criminal duties, once this new offence is in force the requirements of the Online Safety Act 2023 will kick in. This means that social media services will be required to take down content that supplies nudification tools, and search engines will have to reduce the visibility of search results linked to these tools.”
“While this was drafted in line with other possession offences, the Government accept that the intent element of this new offence justifies a higher maximum penalty. Our amendment in lieu therefore provides for a seven-year maximum rather than the 10 years provided for in the Lords amendment, which we believe is disproportionate given that this remains a possession offence. Lords amendments 255, 256, 258 to 260 and 505, introduced by the Government and by Baroness Owen and Baroness Bertin, all seek to further tackle the proliferation of demeaning and degrading intimate images online. The Government share these aims, and we are clear that intimate image abuse is completely unacceptable. Lords amendment 255, brought forward by the Government, will criminalise the making, adapting and supplying of nudification tools.”
“On Lords amendments 6 and 10 to 12, I fully appreciate and understand the damage that fly-tipping can do to our communities. The Government’s waste crime action plan, published on 20 March, sets out proposals to radically improve enforcement in this area, including by granting courts the power to impose between three and nine penalty points on the driving licence of those convicted of fly-tipping where driving a vehicle was used in or for the purposes of the offence. Our amendment in lieu implements this commitment. Turning to Lords amendment 15, on its introduction the Bill provided for a maximum four-year prison term for those convicted of a new offence of possession of a weapon with intent to cause unlawful violence.”
“I will now turn to the 19 non-Government amendments added in the other place. First, Lords amendment 2 seeks to bar the issuing of fixed penalty notices by enforcement companies and contractors for profit. The Government do understand the concern about enforcement agencies issuing fixed penalty notices where there may be a financial incentive to do so. To be clear, local agencies are expected to issue fixed penalty notices only when it is appropriate and proportionate to do so. However, Lords amendment 2 risks weakening crucial enforcement action to tackle antisocial behaviour. Our amendments in lieu instead provide that statutory guidance will address the need to ensure that the issuing of fixed penalty notices by authorised persons is proportionate.”
“Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor) rightly pressed the Government on when we would deliver our manifesto commitment to make all existing strands of hate crime an aggravated offence. I am pleased to commend Lords amendment 301, which extends the existing racially and religiously aggravated offences to cover hostility based on sex, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity. Thirdly, my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) pointed to the long-term impact, including on employment opportunities, for those convicted of the offences of loitering and soliciting while under 18. Lords amendments 270 and 271 therefore introduce a new disregards and pardons scheme for anyone convicted or cautioned as a child for those offences.”
“Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson)—she was sitting on the Front Bench earlier—before outlining the Government’s response to the 19 non-Government amendments added in the other place. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) rightly raised concerns about the depiction of strangulation and suffocation in pornography, an issue which was also highlighted by Baroness Bertin’s independent pornography review. As set out in our violence against women and girls strategy last December, the Government have announced our intention to criminalise the possession and publication of pornographic images that depict strangulation and suffocation, and Lords amendments 261 and 262 give effect to that commitment. Secondly, my hon.”
“I am delighted to see the return of this Bill—the largest criminal justice Bill in a generation—to this House. The Bill will support the Government’s mission to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls in a decade, and give our police and law enforcement agencies the tools they need to tackle antisocial behaviour, sexual violence, terrorism and online harms. The amendments made in the House of Lords support these aims. Given the number of Lords amendments, I will focus my remarks on the Government amendments made in response to commitments given on Report in the Commons last June by my predecessor as Policing Minister, my right hon.”
“This approach gives courts the required flexibility to consider the details of each case when applying their powers, while ensuring that the offenders are held accountable for compliance with the order.”
“Given that, we do not believe that a separate possession offence, as provided for in Lords amendment 505, would make a meaningful difference, not least as many such tools are accessed online, rather than possessed. Where a person is convicted of an intimate image offence, we agree that it is vital that those images are deleted from the perpetrator’s devices. Amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 258 enables the courts to make an image deletion order following a conviction for an offence related to intimate image abuse. Breach of the order will be a criminal offence. The amendment also enables the courts to require the deletion of other intimate images of the same victim.”
“I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She is, of course, right about the growing concern around chatbots and the need for safety by design. I will come on to Baroness Kidron’s amendment and the Government’s response to it later on in my speech. Furthermore, the Government have brought forward Lords amendment 367 to take a power to extend the scope of the Online Safety Act 2023 to cover unregulated AI chatbots. It means that general-purpose AI chatbots, such as Grok, which allow the creation and sharing of non-consensual intimate images, will have to proactively remove that illegal content from their services or face enforcement from Ofcom. Taken together, the measures will deliver an effective ban on nudification tools.”
“To that end, amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendments 256 and 257 strengthens platform and senior executive accountability by making it a criminal offence for a service to breach an enforcement decision by Ofcom on duties to deal with and remove reported non-consensual intimate images. That means that senior executives of the service could be criminally liable for the breach. As well as taking this enforcement approach, the Government are also strengthening safeguards against malicious reporting. We will also bring forward regulations under existing powers in the Online Safety Act to amend schedule 8, so that Ofcom can require providers to be fully transparent about both the speed of intimate image removals, and how clearly and effectively platforms enable users to report such content.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for her question, and I agree with her. This is the culmination of a lot of good work in the Lords and the Commons, from Members of all parties. MPs have pushed as hard as we can on this emerging technology, which is so dangerous and so high risk, and we have a Government who are committed to acting and doing the right thing. Everybody has worked really hard, together, to get us to a much stronger place. The power allowing courts to require the deletion of intimate images will also be available for the offence of breastfeeding voyeurism recording, and the new offence of sharing semen-defaced images. Online platforms need to do more to ensure that non-consensual intimate images are removed quickly, as my hon. Friend said, and not after the 24-hour timeframe envisioned by Lords amendment 256.”
“We agree with the principle and the need to address this issue, but further work is required across Government on considering what the most effective approach would be to strengthening arrangements to ensure that persons appearing in pornographic material are aged 18 and over, and consent to the material being shared online. Government amendments (a) to (f) in lieu of Lords amendment 264 place a duty on the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the outcome of this work within 12 months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent, and introduce a power to make regulations giving effect to that outcome.”
“Additionally, amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 265 addresses the concerns raised by Lords amendment 265 by criminalising the possession or publication of pornography that depicts an adult credibly role-playing as a child. That makes it clear that content that mimics and risks normalising child sexual abuse will not be tolerated. But we will not stop there. As well as introducing those offences, the Government have committed to producing a delivery plan for how we can close the gap between the regulation of online and offline pornographic content. What is illegal offline should be illegal online. Lords amendment 264 rightly raises concerns about how we best strengthen safeguards against the sexual exploitation of persons appearing on pornographic websites, an issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft on Report.”
“As Lords amendment 260 recognised, proceeding by regulations will enable us to properly evaluate the requirements necessary to ensure that the register operates as effectively as possible. Turning to two more amendments from Baroness Bertin, Lords amendments 263 and 265, I think we in this place all share her determination to stop the spread of dangerous, demeaning and illegal pornographic content online. On Lords amendment 263, I completely agree that there is a need to curtail the depiction of step-incest pornography, in cases where what it portrays is illegal. The Government’s amendment in lieu will extend the new offence of possession and publication of incest porn to include depictions of step-incest where one of the persons is portrayed as being under 18.”
“That will give Government backing to a trusted source of NCII content that can be used by platforms and internet service providers to identify those images. The amendments will also enable the Government to make further provisions, by regulations, on the operation of the register, following a scoping exercise. Those provisions include provision for the Secretary of State to impose requirements on providers to share hashes, and other information deemed necessary, with the register. Hashes, for the benefit of the House, are unique codes used to mark non-consensual intimate images. The scoping exercise will allow us to evaluate the technical requirements, so that we can ensure that the register can be used by victims, platforms and internet service providers to remove or block NCII content.”