YouSaid · the spoken record
Diane Abbott
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On the record 2001–2026
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“The women of colour who are reluctant to approach— [ In audible ] —so Government and local authorities need to recognise the importance of providing support for refugees and of services that provide specialist services to black women and migrants. I pay tribute to Ngozi Fulani and her project Sistah Space in Hackney, which has helped so many black women who are victims of domestic violence. We know that “no recourse to public funds” regulations stop many women of colour who are the victims of domestic violence from accessing support at all. For this and many other reasons, “no recourse to public funds” should be scrapped, but I have a practical proposal in relation to all victims. Labour’s new Front-Bench team is dealing very ably with the Bill and they will make the case for their amendments— [ In audible ] — for extra funds.”
House of Commons28 April 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There are no more frightened and desperate victims than women of colour, whether they are refugees, asylum seekers, migrants or— [ In audible. ] Women of colour are fearful of approaching the authorities, because of their immigration status or general fear of the police. I have had to support— [ In audible ] — who were too frightened to report abuse, because they were worried that their partner might report them to immigration. I think it is important for the House to say that all women have the right to be protected from domestic abuse, regardless of their immigration status. To achieve that, this Government need to move away from the hostile war between immigration control and public services, including services for women who are victims of domestic violence.”
House of Commons28 April 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We live in extraordinary times. Unfortunately, there is nothing extraordinary about domestic violence. It affects women of all classes and in all walks of life, and the figures show that it has got considerably worse in the course of the coronavirus lockdown. I welcome this important Bill. There are ways in which it could be improved, but in principle it represents a real step forward. First, however, I want to honour the campaigners. It was they who moved domestic abuse from something that the police and politicians did not necessarily take seriously to the very seriously regarded crime it is today. Without those campaigners, this Bill, although it is by no means perfect, would not have been brought forward. Domestic abuse and domestic violence are often hidden. The victims are frightened and even too ashamed to speak out.”
House of Commons28 April 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does my right hon. Friend share my concern for that particular group of victims who are people with no recourse to public funds? They cannot work in a situation where so much of the economy has been closed down, and they have no legal rights to benefits of any kind—even the paltry level of benefits that the Government are talking about. They are not the only group, but these people face destitution. I raised that with the Home Secretary on Monday. We have still not heard anything about what the Government are going to do to protect people and their children who have no recourse to public funds”
House of Commons25 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There were women there who were married to British men and had British children but who, because they were caught up in the Windrush scandal, found themselves quite unfairly, having committed no crime, in a detention centre, and there were very many such cases. We will be supporting the compensation scheme, because we think it is important that the money gets to the victims as soon as possible. The Opposition are happy to help in any way with outreach to encourage people to claim. Clearly, with the current public health situation, we cannot have meetings about it and so on, but there are other means—provided, possibly, by new media—by which more could be done on outreach.”
House of Commons24 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We also think it is important to stress that it applies not just to persons from the Caribbean but to people who came from other Commonwealth countries before January ’73 and people who had a right of abode or settled status and arrived to live in the UK before 31 December 1988. We also think it is important that, in moving forward on the compensation scheme, which is so important to the people who have suffered, we look at all the important aspects of family life that were severed by the Windrush scandal, whether that was people being deported, people’s children not being able to establish their right to be here or the misery of people seeing their parents thousands of miles away, having been consigned to deportation by what seemed to them a very cruel state. I remember visiting Yarl’s Wood detention centre last year.”
House of Commons24 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is a generation—I know something of it as my own parents were part of it—who came here with their UK and Colonies passports and believed that they were British. I will argue that it is the humiliation that cut to the quick. I have had various meetings in this House with members of the Windrush cohort, and that is the thing I come up against time and time again: how humiliated and hurt they felt to be, as it were, rejected by what they had always regarded as the mother country—a country they came to after the war to help to rebuild. It is important to stress how poor the take-up has been and to say that Ministers must do more to encourage better take-up. We think that Ministers should consider putting the compensation scheme on a statutory basis.”
House of Commons24 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have said to the Minister and officials that I am happy to help with that outreach work—not as an apologist for the Government, but as someone who is very anxious that people should get what they are entitled to. The reason I think it is so important that people get what they are entitled to is not the money. As I have said before in the House, in the end, the cruellest thing for the Windrush cohort was not the problems, the difficulties, the possibility of deportation and all those practical things. The cruellest thing for the Windrush generation was the humiliation of being told by the British state that somehow they were not British or were trying to mislead the state in that matter.”
House of Commons24 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Some of them may be frightened that they could end up in a detention centre or worse. We in the Opposition believe that the Windrush compensation scheme needs a proper national campaign to encourage engagement among possible Commonwealth claimants. After all, I think £4 billion was spent on the EU settlement scheme. We need to spend comparable sums on outreach for the Windrush compensation, because this is a cohort of persons who came to this country quite a few years ago, and unless we do the outreach—positively, and with more resources behind it—and encourage them to claim, the danger is that they may never get the compensation to which they are entitled. Although of course their heirs and estates may get some of it, that is not the same as people getting an apology in their lifetimes, but also compensation.”
House of Commons24 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Windrush compensation scheme is to be applauded in principle, but its record in practice, I am afraid, is lamentable. The scheme was unveiled in April 2019. By most estimates there is £200 million in the scheme and no upper limit on claims. That is to be welcomed, but since it was unveiled in 2019, only 1,108 claims have been made and only 36 people have received money. I could probably find 36 members of the Windrush cohort in my own borough of Hackney, let alone the country as a whole. Only £62,198 has been paid out. Those are shameful figures, and in their response to the new clauses, I want to hear from Ministers what they intend to do about the shamefully low pay-out. As was said earlier, it is not surprising that people are reluctant to come forward, because their experience of the Home Office has been a punitive one.”
House of Commons24 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I begin by making the point that it is important in going forward with Windrush compensation that we look beyond the Caribbean. In the lessons learned review, Wendy Williams pointed out that the Department’s historical cases review focused solely on people from the Caribbean and excluded anybody with a criminal conviction and a sentence of more than 12 months. We have seen that the legislative changes that apply to the Windrush generation also apply to other nationalities from the new Commonwealth. While the Windrush scheme is open to all Commonwealth nationalities, the narrow focus of the historical cases review means that the taskforce did not proactively contact non-Caribbean nationals in the same way that it did Caribbean nationals. I will return to the question of the Windrush compensation scheme and its outreach in a few minutes.”
House of Commons24 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We are debating this important Bill in the shadow of the terrible existential crisis of coronavirus. However, it would be wrong to let the debate go past without sharing the perspectives of large numbers of the Windrush cohort on the arrangements for compensation. As was said in the Windrush lessons learned review: “Members of the Windrush generation and their children have been poorly served by this country. They had every right to be here and should never have been caught in the immigration net.” When we talk about compensation for the Windrush cohort, it is important to note that we are not talking about an act of charity; we are talking about people who were always entitled to be here and are owed an apology, as Wendy Williams said, as well as compensation.”
House of Commons24 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does the Minister not accept, though, that because the scheme is called the Windrush compensation scheme, some people might assume that it is only for people from the West Indies?”
House of Commons24 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I just want to confirm that it is not our intention to vote against the Bill, and it is our intention to not press our amendments. Just before the debate comes to a close, I would like to express, on his behalf, the regret of my colleague and right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) for not being here. He is in self-isolation due to the current public health problems. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill. The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair. Bill reported, without amendment. Third reading Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time. —(Kevin Foster .)”
House of Commons24 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Finally, I want to talk about the people in the community who campaigned long and hard on this issue, notably Patrick Vernon, a Hackney resident who is well known to me. All sorts of people in the community understood there was a scandal, even before Amelia Gentleman’s articles, and they continue to campaign. The compensation Bill means nothing unless there is delivery as well as intent.”
House of Commons24 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As I said in Committee, the Opposition support the Bill in principle, but it is unfortunate that we have had to discuss it before we have had a proper debate about the lessons learned review. One thing that that review said was that this was not a mistake: there were problems in the whole culture and leadership of the Home Office. I understand why, given the public health tragedy in which we are engulfed, it has not proved possible at this point to have a serious debate on the lessons learned review, but until we have done that and absorbed some of the lessons that Wendy Williams was at such pains to set out in her review, we cannot have complete confidence that the compensation scheme will, even with all the best intentions of Ministers, go ahead at pace and that people will get what they are entitled to.”
House of Commons24 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On behalf of Opposition Members, I offer my profound sympathy to the families of the 289 persons who have died in this unheard-of pandemic. On the settlement scheme, we obviously welcome the fact that 3 million persons have been successfully processed, but Ministers will be aware that the number of rejections is on a rising curve, with 300 last month. That is increasingly because of problems with documentation. Last week, the House debated the Windrush lessons-learned review and one of the problems at that time was documentation. Is it not time that the Government ended the uncertainty hanging over the heads of EU citizens and guaranteed the rights of EU citizens in the UK?”
House of Commons23 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“No one on the Opposition Benches wants to see police officers in supermarkets, but if the situation remains unmanageable, will the Minister consider talking to the shops, the supermarket owners and their security officers to see whether patrols by police community support officers in the vicinity of some of the larger supermarkets might play a role?”
House of Commons23 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On the question of protecting shop workers and owners, as was referred to earlier, we have all seen the unfortunate recent scenes of disorder in supermarkets when persons attempt to stockpile in response to the coronavirus. We have seen shelves swept clean just hours after the shops open, the apparent shortages of very basic products such as paracetamol, and the elderly being unable to purchase their basic needs. A number of measures are being taken to deal with the situation, but we note that even when supermarkets tried to set aside hours at the beginning of the day for the frail, elderly and NHS workers, others just barged them aside.”
House of Commons23 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I wish to return to the subject of that category of person under immigration legislation who has no recourse to public funds. Because of the coronavirus epidemic and the consequent shutdown of large parts of the economy, these persons will not be able to work. We welcome the help for workers through bank loans and the benefit system that the Government have brought in, but the category of person to which I refer is not entitled legally to benefits of any kind. I note that the Home Secretary is talking to the Department for Work and Pensions about this matter, but when can she give some assurance to people who are literally facing destitution that this matter will be resolved and that there will be a way of offering them some measure of financial support?”
House of Commons23 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Home Secretary should be assured that we will return to these issues until the Windrush generation gets the justice to which it is entitled.”
House of Commons19 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My mother was a member of the Windrush generation, so I know that one of the aspects of the Windrush generation was that they really believed they were British. They had no reason not to believe that they were British when they came here with their passports, UK and Colonies. Let me assure the Home Secretary that, for the Windrush generation, it is not necessarily the money, or the loss, or the inconvenience, or even the tragedy of being deported. It is the insult to people who always believed that they were British, and who came here to rebuild this country, but who, because of the insensitivity and the structural issues in the Home Office, were treated in an utterly disgraceful and humiliating way.”
House of Commons19 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is coming forward at a very difficult time for the nation as a whole, but the Opposition will be coming back to the issues raised in the report, because the Windrush scandal was not just a mistake; it was not just something that happened because people did not read the rules properly. As Wendy Williams points out, it was rooted in the systemic culture of the Home Office and the failure of Ministers to listen to the warnings they were given about what the effects of the hostile environment could be on people perfectly legally entitled to be here. I have heard the Home Secretary’s apology, but people will believe her apology when they see her genuinely seek to implement the recommendations in this review.”
House of Commons19 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Sadly, the Home Secretary did not feel able to share a copy of the review with the Opposition Front-Bench team. I have never before been in the situation in which a Home Secretary brought forward a major report of this kind and did not want to share it with the Opposition Front-Bench team—obviously that would have been under complete discretion. As it happens, I had to go into the Home Secretary’s office in Parliament to obtain the copy I have. It is almost as if the Home Secretary did not want full parliamentary scrutiny. This is a detailed report that deserves detailed scrutiny.”
House of Commons19 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In fact, persons from the Caribbean are as anxious as anybody that persons from other parts of the Commonwealth—Africa, south Asia—also get the fairness and justice that they deserve. Is the Home Secretary willing to commit to reviewing data on other Commonwealth cases, as well as those from the Caribbean nations? Is the Home Secretary willing to commit commission officials to undertake a full review and evaluation of the hostile or compliant environment policy and its measures individually and serially? Such a full review should assess whether they were effective and proportionate. Given the risks inherent in the policy that are set out in the report, the review must be carried out scrupulously, designed in partnership with external experts and published in a timely way.”
House of Commons19 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I cannot touch on them all, but I wish to draw the Home Secretary’s attention to a few. The review wants the Department to publish a comprehensive improvement plan within six months. Is the Home Secretary willing to assure the House that there will be such a plan? The review asks that the Home Office run a programme of reconciliation events with members of the Windrush generation. Does the Home Secretary commit to that? Very importantly, the review says that the Home Office must look beyond the Caribbean, because persons from all over the Commonwealth who came to this country at that time would have been caught up in the same issues that the Windrush generation were caught up in.”
House of Commons19 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Home Secretary will be aware that the review points out: “Some ministers and senior officials spoken to in the course of this review do not appear to accept the full extent of the injustice done to the Windrush generation”, and that they say “the situation was unforeseen, unforeseeable and therefore unavoidable.” More than one Member of this House foresaw the consequences of the hostile environment legislation years ago. The review goes on to say that other Ministers and senior officials “have expressed the view that the responsibility really lay with the Windrush generation themselves to sort out their status.” Will the Home Secretary agree that, whichever politicians or officials said those things—Wendy Williams quotes them in the review—they were disgraceful things to say? The review has many important and detailed recommendations.”
House of Commons19 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We meet as a House of Commons at a time of unprecedented national crisis—a national crisis that none of us has seen before in our lifetime—but I am sure the Home Secretary will agree that we should not allow the fact that the review has been published at a time of national crisis to mean that the review and its recommendations are buried. The Windrush generation deserve better than that. As the Home Secretary will know, the recommendations in this review have three main elements: that the Home Office must acknowledge the wrong that has been done; that it must open itself up to external scrutiny; and that it must change its culture, to recognise that migration and wider Home Office policy is about people, and whatever the objective, it should always be rooted in humanity.”
House of Commons19 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Secondly, I want to turn to an issue with the funding settlement, which is inadequate even in its own terms. When the Minister announced the funding settlement, the Home Office claimed that it was the biggest for a decade, but that was a decade of cuts in police funding—cuts made by Ministers now on the Government Front Bench. It is not much of a boast when the settlement represents an uplift only when compared with the cuts made in previous years.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I see Government Members who are new to the House looking shocked, but I remind them of this Prime Minister’s track record on policing and police recruitment. When the current Prime Minister was Mayor of London in 2012—those of us who are London MPs remember that well—he sent a list of nine promises to every household in London. His political marketing claimed that it was his “nine-point plan for Greater London”. No. 4 on the list was: “Making our streets and homes safer with 1,000 more police on the beat”. I have to tell the House that this pledge was never met, even though it was signed by the current Prime Minister himself, so I do not think that his record on policing provides much confidence that he will meet his manifesto commitment to recruit 20,000 extra police.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Perhaps they can make greater haste in something that is so key to the effective fighting of crime in all parts of our country. Although we are far from satisfied with the Government’s plans for policing overall, the Opposition believe that this is the first time since the Labour Government that there has been a funding settlement for the police that does not in real terms undermine them further, so in the circumstances it would be wrong to oppose this particular funding settlement. Let me be equally clear, though: I do not want to be cruel, but the Opposition have no confidence in this Government to restore policing to its proper strength or to tackle serious crime. I strongly doubt—I shall explain why—that the Government will even meet their own pledge to recruit an extra 20,000 police officers.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I listened with interest to the Minister’s presentation. In particular, I listened when he described the Conservative party as the natural party of law and order. Not all of our constituents would agree with that, having seen the relative cuts in funding and the spike in violent crime. I shall return to that later. I wish to say at the outset that the Opposition will not be opposing the police funding settlement, but we remind the Minister that it is not just about the total settlement but about the police funding formula. For five years Ministers have been promising to revise the police funding formula, and I argue that that is a concern not just for Opposition Members but for Members of all parties. Ministers have had five years.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I hope that Government Members are taking due note. Thirdly, I want to question the Government’s entire approach to this matter, because although police numbers are a key factor, they are only one aspect of combating serious and violent crime. The Government’s goal must be to keep our citizens safe, but their track record is abysmal. I know that this set of Ministers like to pretend that the record of the past 10 years has nothing to do with them, but most of the Ministers now in office voted for the police cuts that have been made. This is continuity Toryism, and they are continuity Tories.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing some reality to the discussion. The Opposition have learnt that police chiefs have also recently been told to find another £165 million in 2019-20 and up to £417 million in 2020-21 as a result of the overhaul of pension schemes recently announced by the Treasury. We of course support better police pensions, and indeed better public sector pensions in general, but we do so by arguing that they should be properly funded, whereas Ministers want the money to support them to come out of the extra moneys that they are announcing today. The amount provided in the funding settlement to cover the pension changes is nowhere near the amount it will cost the police. There is a real risk that, with this poor beginning, the Government will fail to meet their total recruitment target.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Offences involving firearms hit a low in March 2015 but have risen since. Robbery offences are at a 10-year high. Fraud incidents are up sharply and now there are almost 4 million fraud crimes a year, often impacting on some of the most vulnerable members of our communities. Over the long term, the trend in total crime had been downwards, but under successive Tory-led Governments since 2010 that overall progress has stalled. A key part of this is the fact that central Government funding for police and crime commissioners has fallen by 30% in real terms since 2010-11.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As we know, the Labour Mayor is ultimately dependent on funding from the Government. Given the funding available, I am confident that Sadiq Khan has done the very best he can. The issue comes back to the totality of funding and the police funding formula. The Tories cut the police and they should own it—cuts have consequences. But they also did much worse: they presided over soaring serious and violent crime, and an abysmally low detection and sanction rate—cautions or charges—even for some of the most serious crimes. The latest crime data for the year ending September 2019 was recently published. It shows a 7% rise in offences involving knives or sharp instruments recorded by the police. That is 46% higher than when comparable recording began—in the year ending March 2011—and the highest on record. That is the Government’s record.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My right hon. Friend raises a key point about the precept. Ministers like to claim that by generously allowing PCCs to raise a greater precept, they are somehow doing them a favour. The truth is that reliance on money raised by the precept hits poorer communities that have lower house prices harder. It is not equitable to be endlessly praying in aid the precept, rather than providing proper funding from the centre.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The precept is a regressive tax, and the Government should think twice before making out that their increasing reliance on precept-raised funds is some sort of progressive move.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is truly shocking that the very lowest prosecution or summons rate was in cases of rape, with just one in 70 cases leading to charges. In all cases of violence against the person, just one in 13 cases led to charges or summonses. As we have argued consistently, cuts have consequences.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Secondly, the cuts to admin staff, often dismissively called “backroom staff” on the Government Benches, have meant that police officers have had to do more of their own admin work, so less time is available for police work as such. The consequences have been terrible, as most of our constituents know. Compared with the previous year, the proportion of crimes resulting in a charge or summons fell by one percentage point, from 8.7% to 7.4%—the lowest ever recorded. That continues a downward trend since March 2015, when 15% of crimes were resolved with a charge or summons. No category of crime registered a majority of prosecutions. The sad fact is that too much crime goes undetected, largely because of a shortage of police officers, and therefore unpunished, and the public are all too well aware of that.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What can I say—nice try? The National Audit Office recently said that the Home Office “does not know if the police system is financially sustainable.” That is the National Audit Office talking about Home Office Ministers. However, the Government did not confine austerity to police officer numbers; they also cut thousands of police community support officers and thousands of police support and administrative staff. That has had two consequences. First, there has been a huge detriment to community policing, which is often the first eyes and ears on everything from vandalism and petty crime all the way through to terrorist threats.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government do not intend to do that, and we on this side of the House believe that without a proper level of funding for the police force, for schools, for youth services and for the NHS, we will continue to see the negative consequences. There will be a spiral of violent crime, which causes so much fear in all our communities.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Our prisons have become places where a person is more likely to become a hardened criminal, a drug user, or radicalised. It is an abysmal record of failure. Ministers cannot expect their claims of being the natural party of law and order to be taken seriously when they have allowed the criminal justice system to fall into this state. It is no use these Ministers simply partially making good some of the police cuts that this Tory Government have made—that is all that has been claimed of this policy. They are not even restoring all the cuts that they have made since 2010. Effectively tackling crime is not just about funding the police properly, but about funding all those services, such as the youth service, education and the NHS, which help to bear down on crime.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I entirely share my hon. Friend’s concern that the people of Teesside do not appear to be treated fairly. Cuts have consequences—in Cleveland as well as everywhere else. Over the past 10 years, almost every conceivable social factor has contributed to rising crime. Ministers did not mention these things, but let me remind the House that youth services have been slashed, schools have been encouraged to exclude pupils, inequality and poverty have been made worse, some of our young people have become resigned to a life of zero-hours contracts, and drug and alcohol rehabilitation funding has been slashed. Mental health funding has been decimated, as, too, has the probation service, which we have seen in the probation activities in relation to recent terrorist activity. The criminal justice system is in crisis.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Unless and until that Act is repealed and the Government end their hostile environment, this scandal will grow.”
House of Commons10 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Home Secretary will be aware of the conditions that many refugee children endure in refugee camps all over Europe. She will also be aware that the public do not want us to let these children down. Will she confirm that unless law and practice are changed, we run the risk of breaking up families and leaving children abandoned with no relative to care for them?”
House of Commons10 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does the Home Secretary appreciate the widespread concern about the Jamaican deportation flight due tomorrow? Is she aware that Stephen Shaw, in his review of detention, suggested that we should not be deporting people who came here as children, but that many of the proposed deportees came here as children and have no memory of Jamaica? Does she accept that these deportations constitute double jeopardy, because the persons have already served an appropriate sentence for their crime? Is she aware that more than 170 Members of Parliament from all political parties have written to the Prime Minister calling for the deportation flight to be halted?”
House of Commons10 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Clearly, none of them is of the Windrush cohort, but some of them may be the children and grandchildren of the Windrush cohort, which would have made it difficult for them to establish their nationality. Is the Minister aware of the very real concern in the community about this mass deportation flight? His dismissive attitude suggests an altogether dismissive attitude to the concerns of the community and what is problematic about this mass deportation flight.”
House of Commons10 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The public will note the very dismissive attitude that the Minister has taken to the serious urgent question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). One problem with this deportation flight is that it is not clear how many people on it came to this country as children. The Minister said he will not comment on leaks from the Windrush lessons learned review. Will he accept that the Stephen Shaw review of detention suggests we should not deport people who came here as children? Is the Minister aware that some of the proposed deportees have, in effect, been held incommunicado because of problems with the mobile signal in their detention centre? Is he aware that one thing the Windrush scandal teaches us is that, when we deport people in this way, we need to be absolutely certain about their immigration status?”
House of Commons10 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In fact, there are very few of us still remaining as Members of Parliament who voted against that piece of legislation. The 2014 Act encouraged the presumption of illegality directed at migrants and, just as some of us warned at the time, that presumption was very frequently and incorrectly directed against those with black and brown skins. It also obliged doctors, nurses, teachers, bank clerks and employers to act as internal border guards—to inform the authorities if they believed that someone was in this country illegally. Ministers knew that that would lead to a huge wave of false allegations because we told them so at the time, but they pressed ahead regardless. The Government have signalled no intention of repealing the 2014 Act, so it gives me no pleasure to predict that this scandal will not go away.”
House of Commons10 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗