Katie Lam MP: speeches

Speeches

• 3 Jul 2025 · Phone Theft · Hansard source

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  It should go without saying that law and order is the bedrock of a healthy society, but laws that we make in this House are only worth anything if they are enforced. In Britain today, this is all too often the story: a widening gulf between our laws and how they are actually applied. I can think of few better examples than mobile phone theft. There is a temptation to think of phone theft as an example of petty crime, but it sounds as though we in this House all agree that there is nothing petty about it. Mobile phones are a link to our friends and family, and for many people they are a necessary tool for work, study and day-to-day life. They often hold sensitive information, both personal and financial, to say nothing of the intimidation and violence experienced by victims, and the corrosive impact that rampant phone theft has on our public realm. So when we think about phone theft, we should not just be thinking about the inconvenience of a missing phone; we should be thinking about the distress to victims and the creeping sense that, increasingly, we are no longer safe in public. To capture the scale of the problem, it is useful to reflect on the data. According to last year’s crime survey for England and Wales, snatch thefts of mobile phones and bags rose by 70% last year, reaching a 20-year high. Overall, theft stands at the highest rate for a decade, according to the Office for National Statistics. At the epicentre of this crime wave is London, where thefts have more than doubled over the past five years. Three quarters of phone thefts take place there, with 116,656 phones stolen last year alone. Those devices have a street value of more than £20 million. Phone theft often contributes to other forms of crime. According to Commander James Conway of the Metropolitan Police, about 70% of London’s knife crime is linked to theft, meaning that the increase in phone theft is likely to be contributing to the city’s rampant knife crime epidemic. Cyber-security experts have also warned that phones stolen in London are being shipped off to countries like China, where they are often used in international organised crime. Perhaps that should not come as a surprise given the approach taken by Sadiq Khan, London’s Labour Mayor. He is focused on cracking down on stop and search, which is clearly proven to cut crime, while his police and crime plan barely mentions phone theft, focusing on introducing new regulations for phone companies, instead of stopping actual crimes. Of course, technology companies should do their bit where they reasonably can, but our focus should be on catching and imprisoning criminals. In the vast majority of the 116,656 cases, the reported crime is not solved, the phone is not retrieved and the offender is not arrested, leaving them to walk free to commit more crime. That is simply not acceptable and we should not accept it. All the while, police forces across the country spend an estimated 60,000 hours per year on non-crime hate incidents, collecting and storing data on speech that might be perceived to be offensive. Is it any wonder that many people are beginning to describe the state of modern Britain as anarcho-tyranny? More rules, applied more strictly for the law-abiding majority, while actual criminals walk free. While many police officers work hard and genuinely wish to make our country a safer place, the systems and incentives that govern their activities are totally broken. It is simply wrong that resources are spent on policing speech, while prolific thieves run rampant through our streets. Phone theft is not the only crime like that. For too many people in Britain, particularly in our larger cities, low-level disorder is now the unpleasant mood music of their day-to-day lives. We all feel the decline in our public realm, and it makes our country a worse place to live. Speak to any member of the British public, and they will be able to tell us exactly what to do: spend less time on policing speech and more time on catching thieves; give police forces the tools they need to tackle these crimes; and when we catch a career criminal, ensure they serve a proper prison sentence. In short, enforce the law.

• 30 Jun 2025 · Deprivation of Citizenship Orders (Effect during Appeal) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his work and approach, today and every day. It is a pleasure to work across from him, against our enemies and in defence of our great country and its people. Sometimes, fulfilling our duty to keep our country safe means taking action that we might otherwise wish to avoid, but it is completely right that depriving people of their citizenship under certain circumstances is a tool available to the Home Secretary. Those who hate our country and what it stands for, and work against our interests, should not be able to hide behind a British passport. Membership of a nation does not just imply rights; it also confers responsibilities. When British citizens engage in terrorism, support for terrorism or serious organised crime, they clearly disregard those responsibilities. It is clearly true that we cannot deprive such people of citizenship in all cases, particularly given that a worrying number of extremists are now homegrown, but where we can, we should. If we accept that the deprivation of citizenship is an important tool in keeping our country safe, we should also accept that this power should be exercised pragmatically, with the safety of the British people coming first. Allowing potentially dangerous individuals to retain their citizenship while appeals are ongoing is absurd. This is not a power exercised lightly by any Government, and the idea that dangerous people might escape accountability by exploiting procedure is frightening. The current system also opens up the worrying possibility of dual citizens renouncing their non-UK citizenship during the appeal process, making it subsequently impossible to remove their British citizenship without rendering them stateless, so, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross) said earlier, we support the Bill, which will ensure that deprivation of citizenship orders will continue to have effect until the entire appeal process is complete. The hon. Member for Makerfield (Josh Simons) rightly placed the Bill in its wider context, both historically and politically, and I agree with him on the desperate need to restore our broken border and make British citizenship extremely precious. He spoke of the citizenship ceremony. My grandmother swore allegiance to the King when she became a citizen, and talked of it often. I know that it was one of the proudest moments of her life. The hon. Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) said that she considers citizenship a right rather than a privilege. On that, I am afraid that she and I disagree. As my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) rightly said immediately afterwards, citizenship is to be prized, not abused. My right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) was right to point out that there is a balance to be struck. Deprivation has a cost to those who are deprived. I say that the cost in the scenarios in which the Home Secretary may exercise deprivation powers is more than worth paying to protect this country and her people. Similarly, and more specifically to the Bill, the cost of maintaining a deprivation until the conclusion of the process is also a price well worth paying. I say that as a British citizen who, unlike my right hon. Friend, is entitled to several other citizenships. Finally, the Bill is not just a good example of decisive action taken in the interest of national security; it is also a good example of Parliament’s role in our political system. In this country, the main job of the judiciary is to interpret and apply Parliament’s will. Unlike in other countries, judges are not the highest safeguards of our constitution. In Britain, that task is given to, and must remain with, the British people themselves. When the judiciary makes a decision that runs contrary to the will of Parliament, either as it was or as it is today, Parliament is perfectly entitled to overturn that decision; in fact, it must do so if our political system is to work as it should. In, say, the United States, the Supreme Court’s job involves working out the intention of long-dead statesmen. That is not the case here in the United Kingdom, where Parliament is a living, breathing institution, embodying the sovereignty of the British people. It can clarify its will or issue new guidance. That kind of institutional dialogue is healthy; indeed, it is the lifeblood of our politics. We therefore welcome not only the specific measures before us today but the approach taken by the Government on this matter. We have seen Ministers and Government Members behave as if the law is an entity unto itself—an authority above all others, entirely separate from the political process. That could not be further from the truth. We must never forget that the supreme authority in this country is Parliament, and that the job of Parliament is to legislate in the interests of the British people. When the legal process produces a result that is not in the interests of the British people, not only is this House well within its rights to overturn it; it must do so.

• 26 Jun 2025 · Local Bus Services · Hansard source

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  As I mentioned to the Minister when he appeared before the Transport Committee, I sent a transport survey to every household in Weald of Kent and received hundreds of comments about our buses. Many are dismayed that villages such as Smarden, Egerton, Frittenden and Pluckley now have no bus service at all, while others observe that small villages are served by massive buses carrying one or two passengers. What further assessment has the Minister made of the role of demand-responsive services in rural areas such as mine?

• 25 Jun 2025 · English Wine Production · Hansard source

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  That is a similar point to the one made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox). It is not uncommon for vineyards and wineries to produce both types of drinks, and so have to operate under two different duty systems, which is also additional bureaucracy. I think that change would make a substantial difference. Our producers represent the future of winemaking. They certainly should not be hindered by rising costs. We need long-term policies that will support their continued growth. WineGB estimates that there are 16 million potential visitors to the UK wine tourism sector: a huge untapped market. In my constituency, the excellent Chapel Down welcomes over 60,000 visitors a year for winery tours. It continues to be a major contributor to our local economy, and that is just the beginning. Producers such as Gusbourne, Westwell, Biddenden, Balfour, Dingleden, Ham Street, Warehorne, Woodchurch, and Domaine Evremond all play a part. We are so fortunate in the Weald that I could not even attempt to name them all in the time I have in this debate. It is, of course, a tremendous chore to visit them all, but my commitment to public service remains unwavering. Many vineyards now make up to 50% of their sales directly to consumers, in so-called “cellar door sales”. That is often the only way for small producers to avoid the razor-thin margins created by intermediaries, excise duties and distributor fees. The potential is enormous. Wine tourism helps to create skilled jobs in rural constituencies like mine. It supports regional identity and allows producers to build a direct relationship with their customers. A targeted duty relief on direct-to-consumer or tourist cellar door sales would help wine producers, in the way that beer and cider receive help from draught relief and small producer relief, as we have heard from hon. Members in this debate. Will the Government consider implementing a wine tourism relief, to recognise this youthful industry’s potential and give small producers the boost they need to truly thrive? More broadly, visits to UK vineyards and wineries were up more than half in just two years. That is extraordinary growth by any measure. What plans does the Minister have to support one of the few industries in the UK that is demonstrably expanding, creating rural jobs, driving tourism and building our export potential from the ground up? If we are serious about backing British agriculture and business, this is exactly the kind of sector that deserves targeted support. Yet, as is too often the case in the UK today, the more businesses grow, the more they seem to be penalised by heavy-handed regulation. Take the extended producer responsibility—EPR—scheme, which affects businesses, including winemakers with a turnover of £1 million or more—a threshold that many of our leading vineyards are proudly surpassing. That success comes at a cost. EPR imposes disproportionately high fees on glass packaging, but glass is the only viable material for sparkling wine. On top of all that, winemakers now face hours of additional paperwork collecting data on the type and weight of materials used, simply to remain compliant with opaque packaging rules. That is not the only example of over-regulation choking the industry. The previously flat wine duty has now been replaced by 30 different rates based on tiny, 0.1% increments of alcohol content. In the context of wine, that makes no practical sense. As has already been pointed out in the House by the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler), ABV varies naturally by vintage and by vat. It is hugely difficult to predict and the system causes confusion, not clarity. Although I accept that the Minister did not create that system, will he take the opportunity to outline what steps the Government might take to ensure that our wine producers can spend more of their time tending their vines, rather than filling out forms? While the previous Government may have implemented some regulations that caused challenges to wine producers, they recognised the need for active investment in the UK wine industry. I was pleased to see them establish the future winemakers’ scheme, with £1.5 million set aside for training opportunities for the next generation of viticulturists. Will the Minister recommit to the scheme today, ensuring that the UK wine industry secures the future talent it needs to reach its full potential? Though welcome, deregulation and training schemes alone are not enough. If we allow the definition of English wine to be blurred or co-opted, the industry risks dying on the vine. There is serious concern among winemakers that third-country producers could ship foreign-made still wine in bulk to the UK, carbonate or transform the product here, and market it in a way that implies it was locally made. That would be misleading to consumers, would undermine the integrity of the English wine label, and would make a mockery of the investment our producers have made in their land, climate and local communities. I want to press the Minister on a simple point: will he commit to ensuring, particularly as the Government restart their third round of post-Brexit wine industry reforms, that wines sold as British or English must be made exclusively from British-grown grapes? He knows as well as I do that the majority of UK wine is sparkling. I am sure he would agree that English wine deserves the same protected designation of origin—PDO status—that champagne and prosecco receive in their respective markets. There are few products that bring together so many public goods: rural jobs, tourism, export potential, environmental stewardship and national pride. English wine is not a nostalgia project or a romantic curiosity; it is a viable, growing industry—one that sits at the intersection of agriculture, manufacturing, hospitality and culture. To support this fantastic product is to invest in our countryside and our brand as a country. We have the chance, as English Wine Week says, to “Create new traditions.” I ask the Minister to seize that opportunity: let us support wine tourism and, above all, ensure that the label “English wine” means what it says—wine made from English grapes on English soil.

• 25 Jun 2025 · English Wine Production · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is a fantastic champion of our Unionist and one nation principles. The best thing that our friends, brothers and sisters in Northern Ireland can do is to purchase English wine and drink it. That is a win for all concerned. British wines are now exported to 45 different countries. There are healthy markets in Norway, Japan, America, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and South Korea, to name but a few. We now have over 1,100 registered vineyards and more than 240 wineries.

• 25 Jun 2025 · English Wine Production · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered English wine production. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain. I am grateful for the opportunity to bring forward this debate at a timely moment: the middle of English Wine Week. The theme this year is creating new traditions, and I cannot think of a more fitting description for the English wine industry as it stands today. It is a sector that combines modern ambition with rural heritage, and world-class expertise with local entrepreneurial spirit. It is a sector that is growing, not only in economic potential but in the public imagination. As one of my local winemakers puts it, English wines tend to have a steely, citrus backbone. I like to think that this is an apt description of our nation’s character too: resilient, bright and quietly distinctive. English wine is increasingly a source of national pride, and we should be doing everything we can to support and protect it. The industry is growing fast, and the Government should be helping rather than hindering. In 2023, UK vineyards produced over 21 million bottles of wine—a new record—and it is exciting that sales of English wine continue to buck wider market trends. Domestic wine sales were up 10% in 2023. Sales of UK sparkling wine have nearly trebled since 2018, from roughly 2 million bottles to over 6 million. Similarly, sales of still wine have more than doubled over the same period. We should all be toasting that success.

• 25 Jun 2025 · English Wine Production · Hansard source

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  I will discuss later in my speech what support I think would be appropriate, so my hon. Friend will hear my thoughts on that in due course. I am incredibly proud that the Weald of Kent boasts some of the best vineyards and wineries in the country. Across the nation, 4,200 hectares of land are under vine—more than double the area just a decade ago. It is no coincidence that even French producers are quickly buying up land in southern England. They recognise the opportunity here, and so should we. Our English vineyards are not centuries-old family estates, handed down through the generations, like on the continent. They are new businesses, built on entrepreneurial risk, with eyewatering start-up costs, and land that is among the most expensive in Europe. The vineyards springing up in Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire and beyond are often founded by families who have risked everything: buying land at a premium, planting vines in an uncertain climate—that we all experience—and investing in years of training, equipment and marketing before even a single bottle is sold. Many vineyards are warning that rising national insurance contributions, and the recent increase to minimum wage payments, have left them unable to reinvest in their businesses.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T3. The UK is desperately short of doctors, but thousands of applicants will be turned away due to a lack of training places. This is not a situation of the Minister’s making, but he has now been in post for a year. Can he assure us that nobody—no union, no Treasury Minister—will prevent him from doing what needs to be done and lifting the training cap?

• 17 Jun 2025 · Draft Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) (Threshold Amount) (Amendment) Order 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair this morning, Mr Twigg. One of the most basic principles of law enforcement is that no one should escape the consequences of committing a crime, but it is right that we target the most serious offenders first so that enforcement efforts have maximum impact. It is also right that when we ask businesses to take steps to prevent crime from taking place, those steps are proportionate. We therefore support the measures in the draft order. Raising the transaction threshold below which businesses are exempted from money laundering offences will mean that more resources can be spent on tackling the most serious examples of money laundering. Given that, as the Minister said, only 0.1% of all transactions between £1,000 and £3,000 were refused in 2024, it is right that we reduce the burden on enforcement agencies at that level. It is also important, though, that we continue to monitor money laundering at every level. With that in mind, will the Minister please tell us what steps his Department is taking to monitor the impact of these changes on money laundering on transactions below £3,000, and when, if at all, the Government intend to review the threshold again?

• 3 Jun 2025 · Draft Investigatory Powers (Codes of Practice, Review of Notices and Technical Advisory Board) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McVey. At a time when more of our lives are spent online, the job of keeping our country safe brings law enforcement increasingly into the digital space. Many of the most serious crimes, including terrorist attacks, are now planned, prepared and facilitated online. In order to intercept those crimes before they happen, police officers and intelligence agents need to take action, often at short notice. That can lead them to co-operate with and require co-operation from tech companies, often based thousands of miles away, which have their own data privacy policies and operate across hundreds of different legal environments. Often, those companies are extremely reluctant to provide the kind of data that is needed, but access to that information can be the difference between an attack happening or being stopped in the nick of time. It is absolutely right that we give law enforcement and our intelligence agencies the powers that they need to navigate these situations. That is why the previous Government passed the IPA, which was introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings, and the 2024 Act. The measures before us today will give effect to some of the enhanced powers passed by the previous Government in 2024, and we gladly support them. We should welcome and celebrate the strides being made by tech companies. These platforms are something to be embraced, not feared. We must also be cautious about measures that could infringe on individual privacy, which is a long-held and important principle in this country. I think we are all agreed that our age of constant connection must not become an age of constant surveillance. The need to keep the public safe must always be balanced against the importance of privacy and individual liberty. Powers must be accompanied by appropriate guardrails and parameters, as I believe they are. As such, does the Minister believe that the mechanisms for parliamentary oversight strike the right balance? How will the Government review the efficacy of these regulations so that we can remain at the forefront of a fast and ever-changing technological environment?

• 2 Jun 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  On 28 April, the Minister was clear with this House that the framework for local grooming gang inquiries and Baroness Casey’s audit would both be published in May. It is now June. Presumably there is a new timeline for publishing them, so will the Minister share it with us, please?

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  We already have committed to that and will continue to do so. It is a clear amendment both to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill and to the deportation Bill in the name of my right hon. Friend, the shadow Home Secretary. Unless and until politicians of all stripes can deliver the migration system that the British people have voted for time and again, there will be no reason for them to trust in our political system, and they will be right not to. We have seen no indication from this Government since they came to power last year that they are willing to do what needs to be done to give the British people the immigration system that they want and deserve. The debate today, I am afraid, has been no different. The Minister clearly wished only to speak about the record of the previous Government. But they are in charge now—and what do we see? My right hon. Friend, the shadow Home Secretary, points out the facts. He says that Afghans are 20 times more likely to be sex offenders, and Government Members say, “Outrageous!”. Well, it is outrageous; saying so is not. He points out that over 70% of Somalis live in social housing, and they call it race-baiting. That is exactly the attitude that has allowed our political class to ignore the reality of the world that we live in. No party and no Government who continue to treat the British public’s very legitimate concerns with such scorn will ever rise to meet the challenge of securing our border. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) called for more safe and legal routes, but demand to come to Britain will always dramatically outstrip our supply. There is no number of safe and legal routes that will ever stop people making the dangerous channel crossing. The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) called for this House—not foreign courts—to decide who can stay in this country. I admire his stance, and I look forward to the launch of his campaign to leave the ECHR. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) made a characteristically insightful speech about the substantial challenges of integration, and rightly connected that to the volume of immigration. No country of our size could ever hope to integrate that many people each year, and he is right to say so.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  I can only recommend that my hon. Friend does not hold his breath. I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr Snowden) for mentioning what needs to be done on age assessments. The amendments we have tabled to the border security Bill would make much progress on that. Last week the Prime Minister said that mass migration risked turning us into an “island of strangers”. He was absolutely right. He recognised, as we do, that fixing migration is the single most important thing that his Government could do to restore public trust in our politics, yet the plan that he presented—the Government’s migration White Paper—is not a plan to end mass migration or control our borders. It is a plan for more of the same. Instead of a detailed programme, the Government’s White Paper offers more delays, more reviews, more consultations and more half-measures. Their plan to deport foreign criminals is subject to a consultation later this year. Their plan to reform the rules on settlement is subject to another consultation. When given the chance, they have voted against a hard cap on visas, against our plan to disapply the Human Rights Act 1998 from immigration cases, and against our plan to restrict long-term settlement to those who contribute enough to cover their costs. They are just not serious. The Home Secretary estimates that their plan will cut migration by 50,000 people. In the context of hundreds of thousands a year, that is just not enough. The Government have no plan to remove the 1.2 million people here illegally and no real plan to restrict study or family visas, which made up 40% of all migration last year. If we thought that the Government’s plans would genuinely end mass migration and control our borders, we would support them in a heartbeat. The need to do what is right for our country is bigger than any single party, politician or Prime Minister. Unfortunately, this Government have no plan, and they will go down as the latest Government who failed to fix mass migration. This is the most shameful betrayal of public trust in British politics, and it must end, but the Labour Government show no sign that they will do what needs to be done.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for his clarification. I hate to break it to him, but article 8 will not do what he thinks it will, and tightening it will not solve the problem. The article that presents the biggest problems, actually, is article 3, which does not have caveats and cannot be tightened in the way that he suggests. The hon. Member for Doncaster Central (Sally Jameson) spoke of border security as national security. She was correct to do so, but just last week when told in this Chamber that terrorists come across the channel in small boats, her colleagues on the Government Benches laughed and jeered. My hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk made, as ever, a compelling economic and cultural case for control. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Jo White), who is not in her place, set out some of the worst problems with the current immigration system, but she was perhaps not entirely forthcoming in the way she shared the statistics. Far from Labour closing asylum hotels, there are 8,000 more people in asylum hotels than when Labour came to power. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) and I have aired our differing views on this topic over many weeks in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill Committee. I am not sure either of us has done much to persuade the other, but I always enjoy his company.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  As my right hon. Friend, the shadow Home Secretary, rightly said earlier, migration has been too high for decades and remains so. In every year since 1997, with the unsurprising exception of 2020, net migration was over 100,000 people. Every election-winning manifesto since 1974 has promised to reduce migration. Successive Governments of both parties have promised to end the era of mass migration and control the borders, and successive Governments have failed. In the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), the previous Government, like the Governments before them, also promised to do exactly this, but, again, like the Governments before them, they did not deliver. I am afraid that this Government are just the latest addition to this rogues’ gallery of broken promises. Worse than disregarding the public’s wishes, public servants have told the British people to ignore what they can see and feel around them. The public was told that migration would deliver growth. It has not. Instead, people can feel their wages stagnating because they are being undercut. They can see the pressure of mass migration in their soaring rents, in how hard it is for their children to get on the housing ladder, in the lack of cohesion in their communities, and in the pressure on their GPs, dentists and schools. In the words of my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), immigration is the biggest broken promise in British politics, and probably the biggest single reason that British politics is so broken.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  I wish to make a little progress. Fixing this broken system is the single biggest thing that we can do to restore trust in our politics. That means control of the borders and an end to mass migration; we need a system that works in the interests of this country and its people. Those who have come here legally and not contributed enough should be made to leave. Those who are here illegally, either by crossing the channel or from overstaying their visas, must be removed. The era of taxpayers funding accommodation, education, healthcare and legal challenges against their own Government for those who have no right to be here must end forever.

• 20 May 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill · Hansard source

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  I am coming to the end of my speech. I am sure that the Lord Chancellor and the Minister want fairness for victims, so will they please amend the Bill, first, to offer the independent national inquiry into grooming and rape gangs that the country and victims need; secondly, to ensure that all such transcripts, appropriately redacted, be made available to the public; and, thirdly, to allow victims greater ability to appeal against the shockingly short sentences that we see all too often?

• 20 May 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. There are several points that I would like to make in response. First, five local inquiries is nothing like enough. These events took place in 50 towns and all the victims deserve justice. Secondly, there are trends across the country and only a national inquiry can get to the bottom of those. Thirdly, she mentions the Jay inquiry. Inquiries are very often specific. The Hillsborough inquiry did not investigate every football match. The infected blood inquiry did not look at the whole of the NHS. The Manchester Arena inquiry did not address every terrorist attack. There has been an inquiry into child sex abuse, but that is not a specific inquiry into the specific phenomenon of groups of mostly Asian Muslim men grooming and sexually torturing mainly white children, facilitated and covered up by those in the British state whose job it was to look after them. That is a specific phenomenon, a particular stain on our country, and it deserves a dedicated inquiry.

• 20 May 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill · Hansard source

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  It is a privilege, as a Member of Parliament, to support our constituents in their hour of greatest need. All too often, that is when they are a victim of an appalling crime. Many of the constituents I speak to are at their wits’ end; they are desperate to be heard, helped and protected. They rightly want their tormentors to be made to stop, and they want justice. Many of the steps taken in the Bill will be welcomed on both sides of the House and by victims across our country. It is right, for example, that we restrict convicted sex offenders’ access to their children, and it is right that we give victims more information about their offenders’ release. However, the calls for justice for the victims of grooming and rape gangs grow only louder. Across this country, people are rightly horrified by these crimes and the subsequent cover-up, which represents the biggest national scandal in our history, yet the Government have failed to use this opportunity to deliver real justice for those victims and survivors. Last month, I spoke in this place of the details of just some of these disgusting crimes. I was able to so because of the organisation Open Justice for All, which has purchased, redacted and published transcripts from some of these court cases. However, it has been refused permission to do that in several instances, because a judge has claimed that there “no public interest” in doing so. This is wrong. Of course we must make sure that the anonymity of victims is protected, but nobody is suggesting doing anything to compromise that. These were public trials held in open court, and at the moment the transcripts represent the only way to get to the truth of these revolting crimes that have been carried out across Britain for far too long.

• 20 May 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill · Hansard source

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  I can only agree with my right hon. Friend. It is appalling that such transcripts are currently the only way to understand what has happened in these cases. Relatedly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) has previously said: “These aren’t just legal documents, they’re historical documents that tell the story in detail of some of the worst crimes in our recent history”. This Bill acknowledges that transparent information about our justice system is in the interests of victims, but it does nothing to address the problem. What is more, due to the current limits on appeals against unduly lenient sentences, many victims of these horrific grooming and rape gangs will be denied a vital opportunity to seek real justice. In far too many of these cases, we have seen courts hand down lenient sentences. For far too many victims, there will be no redress and their abusers will walk free. Often after just a few short years, these monsters are back in the communities they came from, walking among us and walking among their victims. Just last week, the Court of Appeal revisited the case of three men who were convicted of raping a teenage girl in Yorkshire. Ibrar Hussain and brothers Imtiaz and Fayaz Ahmed were convicted in January for committing unspeakably evil crimes against a 13-year-old girl. In the first instance, they each received sentences of less than 10 years. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark mentioned, he and my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) referred this case to the Attorney General. In this instance, the court rightly ruled that these sentences were far too short. This Bill should have made it easier for victims to seek such redress. It does not.

• 13 May 2025 · Draft National Security Act 2023 (Foreign Activities and Foreign Influence Registration Scheme: Exemptions for Certain Foreign Power Investment Funds, Education, Government Administration and Public Bodies) Regulations 2025 Draft National Security Act 2023 (Foreign Activities and Foreign Influence Registration Scheme: Publication) Regulations 2025 Draft National Security Act 2023 (Foreign Activities and Foreign Influence Registration Scheme: Specified Persons) (Iran) Regulations 2025 Draft National Security Act 2023 (Foreign Activities and Foreign Influence Registration Scheme: Specified Persons) (Russia) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Stringer. It is a basic moral requirement of Governments to act in their country’s interest. They do that at home and abroad, overtly and covertly. Unsurprisingly, the interests of different countries are not always the same, so to protect our national security, we must take decisive action against those who engage in covert lobbying on behalf of hostile foreign powers, whether they are acting directly or indirectly, including through other foreign entities. These efforts seek to disrupt our democracy, undermine our national sovereignty and erode the precious freedoms that we have built in this country over so many centuries. Part 4 of the National Security Act was a necessary step towards tackling this malign foreign influence. We welcome the Government’s draft regulations, which build on the previous Government’s work. It is right that by using the enhanced tier to apply additional scrutiny, we recognise the threat posed by particular foreign states. Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, which has rightly horrified millions of people across this country, underscores the threat that it poses to our way of life. In recent years, Russia and its agents have sought to disrupt our economy and political system; in 2018, for example, they attempted to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury. The Government’s efforts to step up our efforts to target Russian influence in the UK are welcome. Likewise, Iran rightly belongs on the enhanced tier. The UK security services have responded to more than 20 Iran-backed plots since 2022. The Minister has made multiple statements to the House regarding malign Iranian activity in the UK, including cases that have involved the arrest of Iranian nationals. I know that he is very familiar with the threat; I thank him and our security services for everything that they do to protect us. However, the Government’s guidance on the Act points to one glaring omission in the draft regulations before the Committee. It states: “The heads of MI5 and SIS have spoken about the growing threat from states, with the Director General of MI5 previously confirming that the threat predominantly comes from Russia, Iran and China.” Notwithstanding representations from the Opposition, the Government have chosen not to include China in the enhanced tier, despite having created bespoke regulations for the two other countries identified. Do the Government really believe that the threat posed by China is less severe than that posed by Russia or by Iran? The Chinese Government continue to impose sanctions on Members of this House. In 2021, Chinese state-affiliated actors targeted the private emails of British MPs. In the same year, agents of the Chinese Government targeted the computer systems of our Electoral Commission. In recent months, we have heard about bounties of up to £100,000 for “information leading to the arrest” of advocates of democracy in Hong Kong who live here in Britain. This is an appalling attempt to extend the jurisdiction of China’s authoritarian national security law to the streets of the UK, violating the most basic principles of national sovereignty. The charge sheet goes on and on. The Chinese Government are actively involved in interfering with our political system and have not been shy about their intent to target people they consider a threat, even when they are living in this country. Regardless of the UK Government’s efforts to maintain constructive relations with China, we must be absolutely clear that there can be no compromise when it comes to our fundamental national security. Does the Minister agree with the director general of MI5 about the threat that China poses to our national security? If so, does he feel that China should be included in the enhanced tier? If not, why not?

• 8 May 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Many members of the grooming and rape gangs that systematically abused white working class girls have never faced justice, and neither have the councillors, officials and police officers suspected of collusion and cover-up. Can we have a debate on the need for a national inquiry into these disgusting crimes? Will the Leader of the House tell us please who exactly it is she believes is using these horrors as a “dog whistle”?

• 8 May 2025 · Small Abattoirs · Hansard source

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  Over the past 50 years, abattoirs have rapidly vanished. More than 90% of them have closed. Across the country, family farms that once relied on local slaughterhouses now face round trips of over 100 miles just to kill a handful of animals to provide the meat for our tables. That drives up costs and, ironically, increases the stress on livestock that our welfare laws seek to mitigate. Alongside Labour’s family farm tax, the closure of the sustainable farming incentive and the end of the fruit and vegetables aid scheme, this additional burden is pushing many of our farmers to the financial and mental brink. Small abattoirs are essential to our regional supply chain. They enable the sale of high-welfare local meat. They underpin farmers’ ability to add value and differentiate themselves in the market. They are also vital to preserving native rare breeds, small-scale mixed farming and the rural way of life that defines my constituency, Weald of Kent. Let us consider for a moment what a small farmer in the Weald—someone rearing Romney sheep, say—actually has to do simply to sell meat from the animals they breed and raise. First, they must register their land with the Rural Payments Agency for a county parish holding number, and then register their animals with the Animal and Plant Health Agency. Every animal must be marked with official identification tags, and all livestock movements must be recorded and reported using approved forms. If animals are moved for sale or slaughter, or even between farms, it triggers further paperwork. Transporting them over 65 km, as many farms must as more abattoirs close, is another special authorisation and haulier certification. If the animal is to be slaughtered for sale, the rules multiply. The farmer must log all medicine use and vaccines as per the Veterinary Medicines Directorate standards, complete food chain information forms for the Food Standards Agency, and potentially have the animal inspected in advance by an authorised vet. Slaughter itself can be carried out only by someone holding a certificate of competence under the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (England) Regulations 2015, and the carcase must then be health-marked after inspection by an FSA official vet, for which the processor is charged by the hour. Even after all that, offal, hides and other by-products are regulated separately under animal by-product rules, often with disposal costs that exceed their market value. That is the regulatory burden on a small-scale producer: multiple agencies, overlapping rules and no distinction between a local farm shop and a multinational meat processor. This is not proportionate regulation; it is bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake. It is not only putting small farmers and small abattoirs out of business, but putting our rural culture and heritage at risk of extinction. Small abattoirs do not need favours; they need fairness. Given all the pain that the Government have inflicted upon the agricultural community, it is time our farmers were finally given a chance to succeed. I beg the Minister to ease these regulations before the final small abattoirs close and it is too late.

• 30 Apr 2025 · Draft Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) (Amendment, Surrender and Compensation) (England and Wales) Order 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. In 2024 alone, across England and Wales, more than 50,000 recorded crimes involved a knife or a sharp instrument, and more than 200 of those crimes resulted in a death, representing more than half of homicides over the same period. Such crimes are devastating: they steal the lives of friends, family and people we love, leaving grief and loss in their wake. They also frighten and distress the general public, contributing to a sense that our streets are unsafe. It is therefore right that we take appropriate, proportionate action to reduce knife crime and crime more broadly. That is why, when the Conservatives were in government, they passed legislation to ban zombie knives and machetes—dangerous weapons that are often used to carry out deplorable acts. The Minister at the time committed to keeping that legislation under review and to considering further action if police evidence showed that swords were increasingly being used in crime. Figures from 2024 show four homicides in which the weapon was a sword. I join the Minister in paying tribute to Ronan Kanda, who was so appallingly murdered so young, and his loving family. It is right that we take further action to define these weapons precisely and to restrict their use. Let me set the draft order in the broader context. The rate of knife crime continues to grow. Restricting this category of weapon may be a worthwhile step, but we should be honest about the fact that it will not address the root causes of knife crime. Criminals will always find other weapons to use. While we support order before us, we must acknowledge that to truly tackle knife crime at all levels, we must take far more ambitious steps. We must give police forces the powers and resources they need to combat criminality of all kinds. The Government have spoken repeatedly about the need to restore public trust in our institutions. That must involve funding the police properly and giving them the powers they need to tackle these offences. Blanket bans alone will make no difference if they cannot be enforced before it is too late. However, we have received, at best, mixed messages from the Government and the Labour party in London on whether they intend to give police those powers and that support. On stop and search, for example, the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), has previously said that police forces cannot afford to “tiptoe around using these powers in an aim to appease.” By contrast, before becoming Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan promised to do everything in his power to cut the use of stop and search in the capital, where knife crime is most prevalent. A recent study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology analysed London-wide stop and search patterns and concluded that, if searches had been maintained at the 2008 to 2011 level, about 30 fewer knife murders might have occurred each year. That is 30 lives cut short each year, unnecessarily, because the Metropolitan police are restricted from using the powers they need to tackle knife crime. The current Home Secretary previously called for stricter rules around when stop and search can be authorised, suggesting in 2021 that its use was often “disproportionate”. Without clear backing from the Government, police forces will be reluctant to use these powers—powers that are genuinely necessary to reduce knife crime and save lives. Stop and search is just one example of the powers that police forces need, but it tells a broader story about our approach to crime. We should not allow ourselves to think that banning particular categories of weapon is enough to tackle knife crime. We must think about this problem holistically and give police the powers and resources they need to intervene before it is too late. Blanket weapon bans are also not without complications. Can the Minister confirm that she—or perhaps her ministerial colleague, the Minister for Policing and Crime Prevention—is confident that the definition in the draft order is sufficiently precise to avoid inadvertently banning sentimental or historical items, such as ceremonial swords used by former military personnel? Can the Minister outline what other steps the Government are taking to tackle knife crime at its root, and whether the Government will commit to backing police forces in their use of stop and search powers?

• 8 Apr 2025 · Tackling Child Sexual Abuse · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. In January, the Home Secretary said that the Government would conduct five local inquiries into the rape gangs who have terrorised so many innocent children. More than three months since the Government announced those local inquiries, Tom Crowther KC, a barrister invited by the Home Office to help establish them, knows almost nothing about their progress, and neither do we. Why is the framework for local inquiries now being led by Ministers, rather than by independent voices such as Tom Crowther? Why is the £5 million set aside for inquiries no longer being allocated, but instead delivered on an “opt-in” basis? What do the Government intend to do about local leaders who say there is no need for an independent inquiry, as they do in Bradford and in Wales? The girls we are talking about are predominantly white. The men who preyed on them were predominantly Muslim, generally either from Pakistan or of Pakistani heritage. One of the victims from Dewsbury was told by her rapist: “We’re here to fuck all the white girls and fuck the Government.” Does the Minister accept that in many cases these crimes were racially and religiously aggravated? How, without a national inquiry, can we understand what part those factors played? There is no question but that the state has failed these children time and again. Take the case of “Anna” from Bradford. Vulnerable and in residential care, at the age of 14 she made repeated reports of rape and abuse to social workers who were responsible for her. Just the following year, aged 15, she “married” her abuser in a traditional Islamic wedding ceremony. Far from stepping in to stop it, her social worker was a guest. The authorities then arranged for her to be fostered by her abuser’s parents. The ringleader of the Rochdale rape gang, Shabir Ahmed, was employed as a welfare rights officer by Oldham council. Yet not one person—not one—has been convicted for covering up these institutionalised rapes. Why have Ministers refused to establish a dedicated unit in the National Crime Agency to investigate councillors and officials accused of collusion and corruption? I am sorry to say that that unit must also investigate police officers. In one case, the father of an abuse victim in Rotherham was arrested by South Yorkshire police when he attempted to rescue his daughter from her abusers. He was detained twice in one night, while on the very same evening, his daughter was repeatedly assaulted and abused by a gang of men. It is clear that these criminals were unafraid of law enforcement. In Kirklees, Judge Marson said: “You were seen with your victim on at least three occasions by the police…none of that deterred you, and you continued to rape her.” How, without a national inquiry, can we know how and why these monsters enjoyed effective immunity for so long, and how can we be sure that it will not happen again? Conservative Members have voted for a national inquiry, and tabled amendments that would guarantee the publication of ethnicity data on a quarterly basis, terminate the parental rights of convicted sex offenders, and make membership of a grooming gang an aggravating factor during sentencing, so that offenders get the longer, harsher sentences that they deserve. Will the Minister commit to accepting those amendments to protect our children? Finally, I would like to read to the House one particular ordeal—just one example of what these children have suffered. I must warn colleagues, and especially those in the Gallery, that this is extremely graphic, but we must not look away or sanitise this evil. Sentencing Mohammed Karrar of Oxford to life in prison, Judge Peter Rook said: “You prepared her”—that is his victim, a 13-year-old girl— “for gang anal rape by using a pump to expand her anal passage. You subjected her to gang rape by five or six men. At one point she had four men inside her. A red ball was placed in her mouth to keep her quiet… When she was 12, after raping her, she threatened you with your lock knife. Your reaction was to pick up a baseball bat with a silver metal handle, strike her on the head with it, and then insert the baseball bat inside her vagina.” This is not about me, the Minister, the Home Secretary or any hon. Members in the Chamber; it is about the little girls, up and down our country, whose brutal and repeated rapes were permitted and hidden by those in the British state whose jobs were to protect them. They deserve justice. In five towns, those children and their families may get partial answers, but I have mentioned five towns in the past few minutes alone, and there are at least 45 more. In those places, children and their families will get no answers at all, so what does the Minister have to say to them? The British people deserve to know the truth. What darker truths does the suffering of those girls reveal about this country—and why will the Government not find out?