Sarah Jones MP: speeches

Speeches

• 8 Sept 2026 · Safety of the Jewish Community · Hansard source

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  I completely agree that the solution is not just to build higher walls. If our Jewish friends and colleagues are retreating from the public space for fear of their own safety, we have to loudly make sure that that public space is full enough with the call against antisemitism, so that we can rebuild a society where people feel comfortable speaking openly about their religion and their faith, proud of being Jews in Britain and being able to exercise their religious rights freely. I will respond to the points made as fully as I can. Many Members talked about the Protecting What Matters commitments. We are keen for the work to expand and be done as quickly as possible, and a whole cohort of work under that banner is being done as we speak. The disruptions team, which horizon scans for extremist influence and events, is being expanded with additional resources. Efforts to stop hate preachers and extremists entering the UK are increasing as part of an expanded global visa taskforce, which is important. Work is going on to ensure that we report back to Parliament on our work. An annual “State of extremism” report is being developed, and the first iteration of that will be published this year. Embedding the 2024 definition of extremism and the engagement principles across Government means clearer guidance and improved training. Updating and embedding the 2024 engagement principles helps public bodies not to confer legitimacy, funding—crucially—or influence on extremist groups. A whole body of work is therefore being undertaken, and the annual “State of extremism” report will be published. Several Members talked about universities, which are incredibly important, and referred to a powerful report that I have also read. Members quoted some absolutely shocking statistics. I was privileged to be at a roundtable with members of various universities, the Office for Students, Lord Mann and several representatives from the Jewish community talking about antisemitism in our universities. I know that there is a big programme of work under way to look at training, to make sure that there is funding to support new guidance from the Office for Students, to invest in the University Jewish Chaplaincy services and to make sure we work across different Departments, which was also mentioned, to tackle this issue. From a policing point of view, my engagement on this issue is largely on some of the smaller unplanned protests that happen in Jewish spaces and trying to work with local police in those situations as to being clear who is responsible and how those issues are going to be tackled.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Safety of the Jewish Community · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that praise. I am sure that it will be well appreciated and I absolutely endorse what she has said. Members asked about the IRGC and the extra work being done beyond its sanctioning. We have sanctioned the IRGC in its entirety, as well as 550 Iranian individuals. Iran has been placed on the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme, and we are going after the criminal networks, proxies, enablers and illicit finance networks used by the IRGC, including with sanctions against criminal proxies. A lot of work is being done. Members also asked when the David Bell report will be published. That will be this autumn, and it is important work about tackling antisemitism in schools. I should touch on the funding that we have put in place following the awful attacks that we have seen in recent times and an absolutely dismal story of antisemitism and violence to which we as a Government have had to respond. Last April we provided an additional £25 million, initially to fund increased officer patrols and disruption deployments. We spent time just before the summer recess having a series of meetings with Jewish community colleagues, Jewish leaders and others, including a summit in Downing Street, talking about what extra was required. Just before the summer, we announced over £250 million of additional funding for the police to tackle antisemitism over the next three years. That includes training for police officers, which the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin), asked about. Antisemitism training will be rolled out across policing as part of that work. That work is being largely done in our big cities where our Jewish communities mostly live and £85.8 million will be allocated to the Metropolitan Police Service. It will deliver 300 dedicated personnel to support the work that the Metropolitan police have already been doing. Other areas—Hertfordshire, Essex, Northumbria, Sussex, Thames Valley, West Midlands and West Yorkshire—will also be funded. I am aware that I have not even really begun my speech, but that I now need to end it. I will do so where I started: by thanking all Members for their contributions. This is a journey, and we are absolutely committed to ensuring that our Jewish communities feel safe where they live and proud of their religion. We will do whatever we need to do to make sure that that can be delivered.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Safety of the Jewish Community · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to close this debate, which I think has been very useful and moving. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) on initiating it. Before I respond to Members’ questions and to the debate itself, I have two reflections. One is to reiterate the commitment from this Government that we recognise we are on a journey to tackle antisemitism. Although I appreciate that many Members welcomed the funding that we have put in place and the changes that we are making, this will not be the end of the journey. We are on that journey to tackle antisemitism and we will do whatever is necessary for it. We have taken measures that many Members have talked about today, but that will not be the sum of everything we intend to do. We certainly do not intend to shy away from the huge challenge that we all face. My second reflection, from listening to the MPs in this place who made such powerful speeches, is that as Members of Parliament we are all leaders of this country, and we should all ensure that we are well educated, trained and equipped to answer the call to tackle antisemitism. Whether that means going on the training days provided to Members of Parliament by the Antisemitism Policy Trust, or reading, or talking to and listening to our Jewish friends in our communities, it is incumbent on every single one of us to play a role in this debate and to be the leaders that people elect us to be. I was very struck by what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) said about how people are retreating from the public space because of their fear.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Vehicle Theft · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) for securing the debate. I start by thanking the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead in this area, Assistant Chief Constable Sarah Grahame, and her colleague Oli Fisher, who lead the work nationally on our response to vehicle crime. Vehicle crime soared in the 1970s and 1980s, but there was then a big fall as new technology designed out vehicle theft and vehicle crime. As the hon. Member suggested, it then increased over about the last 10 years, although it has dropped over the last two. That is partly because of some of the disruption the police have been able to do. Ridiculously, issues such as the strait of Hormuz also make a difference, because vehicles are often shipped abroad when they are stolen. Just as global trade is interrupted, global criminals are interrupted when there are big global shifts such as those in Iran. There are multiple reasons, but numbers have gone down over the past two years. At the moment, several bodies are looking at how to solve the problem. There are local police forces; the hon. Member pointed to numbers of police officers, and we are committed to putting 13,000 more police in our neighbourhoods. In her area, there are 88 more full-time neighbourhood officers than when we came to power, on the streets and policing our neighbourhoods in the way she would expect. Large criminal gangs are driving the changing nature of vehicle crime. Cars are stolen, using the technology in the way she explained, and then shipped abroad and sold on. Neighbourhood policing is an important part of the picture, but we need to address large criminal gangs nationally. Some bodies are doing really good work in this area. The National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service, which is financed by the private sector, does some of the work opening containers at ports, and there is more we can do in that space if cars are stolen and taken abroad. The hon. Member referred to Opal, which is the NPCC intelligence unit, and the National Vehicle Crime Reduction Partnership has been in place for about two years. We in the Home Office give it £1 million, but is funded by the private sector. The fundamental problem with serious organised crime that is not drugs, guns or very high-harm crime is that quite often a car will be stolen in one place and taken somewhere else. It might go to a port or pass through three or four different forces, but because of the nature of the 43 police forces, the system is not joined up. Our reform programme will help with those kinds of serious, specialist crime. When we have a national police service responsible for serious organised crime, which brings together the different national agencies and oversees a more regional structure of policing, with local policing units that are responsible to their local communities at the bottom, that will enable the forces to flex those specialisms more where they need to be. Our organised crime strategy needs to look at drugs and guns and at very high-harm crimes such as people-smuggling, but while car theft is less high harm it has a huge cost. This is a very lucrative business for the criminals, and an expensive business for us. Assistant Chief Constable Sarah Grahame will be able to tell us the annual cost, but it is something in the order of £1.7 billion. We need to look at this centrally, and the reform programme will help to tackle that challenge. At an Interpol conference last year or earlier this year—forgive me, I cannot recall—lots of countries came together to talk about this challenge. Lots of countries have the same problem: Canada, the Netherlands and Japan are net exporters of stolen vehicles. Those vehicles are taken to certain ports in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or the United Arab Emirates, for example, and then sold on to other parts of the world. There are lots of problems with that network. For example, if a car enters Russia there are no checks on who owns it and whether it is stolen or not, so basically as soon as that car gets to Russia, off it goes. Some vehicles are sent into warzones, such as Ukraine, via nearby countries, and the more high-end vehicles are sold on to be used in other countries in the normal way. There is a pattern that we are increasingly understanding, but the question is how we disrupt it. Part of the answer is through the legislation we have introduced, which is a good first step. Some of the kit that criminals use, such as a device that logs into a vehicle, can cost £30,000 to £50,000; these are obviously serious organised criminals who have the money to buy such kit. We now have the legislation, although it has not been enacted yet; we have passed the law, but it has not commenced. Nevertheless, it will make a difference. I noted the hon. Lady’s point about online platforms and the videos on them, and I will take that away. It was not something that I was well aware of, but I will definitely take it away as something to raise with the tech companies, alongside the very long list that we are raising with them of other dangerous things online that should be taken down. How do we work with manufacturers to design out vehicle crime and how do we ensure that the legislation is in place to disrupt vehicle crime as much as possible? In addition, there is a question about ports and how easy it is to get vehicles out of the country, which we need to look at. There is also the international picture and ensuring that we share information with police forces around the world, where we can. There is the central capability that I think we need as part of the national police service to ensure that we treat this crime with the seriousness it deserves. The hon. Lady talked about the impact that vehicle theft has on individuals and communities, and she is right. There are some similarities with the theft of mobile phones and how the police respond to that, which is evolving. For an extended period, more and more people had their phones stolen, with each theft being dealt with by a local police force individually as an individual crime. The Metropolitan police in particular put some of this information together and realised that organised criminal networks were taking these phones, wrapping them in silver foil, putting them on a plane, sending them to China and selling them on from there. We understood the criminal network involved, and the police are now targeting and trying to disrupt them in various ways. There is a similar picture with vehicle theft, and we need to respond to it in a similar way. As I have said, I think the reform programme will help with that. Of course we need to keep looking at new technology, new legislation and other things that we can do. I am very grateful to the police, who are already tackling this challenge, and I am particularly grateful to ACC Sarah Grahame, who is leading this work and pushing us in the Home Office to go further and do more. With the reform programme, we in the Home Office are trying to design a structure that not only enables the police to do their job but enables us to step back and not have to provide small bits of funding for each individual crime type, and instead give the police the resources in the right place to tackle the problem. There is some evidence—not lots, but some—that the criminals stealing cars and sending them abroad also take part in other organised criminality of a more dangerous kind, involving guns and drugs. We need to gather more intelligence on that, but it is often the case that criminals do not stick to one type of crime; they do lots of things all at the same time. There is probably a network of organised criminals we should target who are not only stealing cars and moving them abroad but doing other things that are more high harm. This debate has been a timely conversation on an issue that we in the Home Office are very alive to. We want to enable the police to respond to it. It is part of the changing nature of crime. People see a spate of car thefts in one area because the cars are stolen to order by serious and organised criminals who know what they are doing. They come into an area, they steal the cars there and they move on somewhere else, in part because they know that different police forces will not be joining up with each other, in the way that I described. I thank the hon. Member for Eastleigh again for securing this debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Sureena Brackenridge) for raising the issues that her constituents are facing. Hopefully, what I have said today will reassure the hon. Lady that we are taking this issue very seriously, and I appreciate all suggestions and ideas as to what more we can do. Question put and agreed to.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  As I have said, any lessons we need to learn from these cases will be learned. However, I know from conversations I have had that the police were dealing with an emerging problem in quite a difficult geographical area, particularly in Portsmouth, with one road going in and out. The police had a lot of vulnerable people—I am speculating about their physical health, because I have not yet had a full briefing, but I suspect they were having to deal with hypothermia and all kinds of issues—and they were having to deal with an increasing number of about 200 people protesting. They definitely had to use batons and other interventions, so that may not have been the right point at which to arrest those people, but there will be investigations, with CCTV. So I genuinely ask the hon. Member not to draw any conclusion from the fact that no arrests were made at that point, because there may well be arrests. The police have to do the right things at the right time and in the right order, and in that emerging difficult situation, they may have taken a decision to do those things for the safety of everyone there and to turn to investigations afterwards.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  We are keeping all these things under review. There is no intelligence to suggest that people who leave France from further west want to land anywhere other than where they normally do, but we keep all these things under control. Today I have spoken to multiple people at the National Police Co-ordination Centre and in Border Force, and to the police more widely, and these things are kept under review. There is no evidence of what the hon. Gentleman suggests, but the criminals are being disrupted over here, and we know that they will try to change tactics. However, there is no evidence at the moment about where they are trying to land.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  I appreciate that the hon. Lady will have been concerned over the weekend, as a local member of Parliament. I am always there, if she wants to contact me, and if she is struggling to get through to anyone, I am happy to give her my number and to have another chat about this. Obviously, this was a moving picture, and it is not always possible for the police dealing with an incident to respond in a way that one might want. The hon. Lady asked whether attempts to land further down the coast were an emerging problem. We are aware that, partly because we are making it harder for people to launch boats from “traditional” places, they are starting to launch them further west along the French coast. There is no evidence to suggest that they particularly want to land anywhere that would not enable them to get to Manston, which is where they would normally go, but we will of course totally keep all this under review. The force was given the mutual aid that it asked for. There were several forces around, and in the end, the people causing the problem were dispersed. It is not uncommon for forces to offer mutual aid. For instance, when problems arose in Cleveland in recent weeks, 600 officers went in, through mutual aid. If I may make a slightly wider point, I think that makes the case for reform—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Not that Reform; reform of policing. If there was a national police service, which we are introducing, agencies would be working together much more closely, because they would be part of the same organisation. Rather than relying on mutual aid from other forces, everyone would be joined up and sharing intelligence, which I think would be a better system.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  There are of course very difficult issues of people who are fleeing war and conflict, and I say to the shadow Home Secretary and everyone else here that we in this country have an honourable tradition of being a place of safety, which must continue. The issue we have seen in recent years is that, when the Conservatives were in power, anybody who came in was not dealt with, was not turned around and was not returned. So the criminal gangs understood that when people come to this country, nothing happens and they get to stay here forever, regardless, and they make money from that vulnerability. So we are trying to improve the system, and improving the system is not a lack of compassion; it is exactly the opposite.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I was pleased to be able to talk to him earlier today, and we were in touch over the weekend as well, as the House would expect. As the Member of Parliament for that area, it is absolutely right and proper that my hon. Friend should lead the way in asking for the right lessons to be learned from what happened. I spoke to Deputy Chief Constable Peter Ayling and Assistant Chief Constable Nicola Faulconbridge today, and they took me through the order of what happened and how it happened. It was a no-notice protest—with a lot of a protests in this country, the police are told in advance, and can then think about whether they want to impose conditions and what those conditions should be. This was a no-notice protest, in the sense that the police were not told about it. Clearly it was planned, and clearly it was people from outside the area coming in and causing chaos. Of course, we need to learn whatever lessons we need to learn when it comes to intelligence. Since the 2024 riots, we have beefed up the structures around the national co-ordination of protests and intelligence sharing, giving us a stronger capability to look across the internet and see what we can find out there. There is more co-ordination, and the offer of mutual aid worked very well this weekend, as it always does. However, I will of course listen to any intelligence that my hon. Friend has, and we will make sure we learn the lessons.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  We keep all legislation under review when it comes to public order, and there is a big piece of work that Ken Macdonald—Lord Macdonald—has done for us, which we are considering. There are other powers on face coverings in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, but we will always look at these things.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  Anyone who is whipping up this kind of activity and breeding racism is to be condemned. I notice that other Reform MPs are bobbing to ask their questions, so perhaps one of them could address the issue of the Reform member who wants—I am sorry, but I hate even to repeat the words—to see Nigerians melted down. Perhaps one of the hon. Members would like to respond.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  Of course disruption was caused well beyond the immediate protest, because of the nature of the roads and the protest on the A20 and the surrounding roundabouts. That had a huge impact; a great many people wanting to go about their business were unable to do so. The police response, however, was good. The protest started at 7.30 am, and well before midday the protesters had been dispersed. The police established a gold command structure, as they do in such cases, declaring a major incident and ensuring that the protest was stopped. However, this behaviour is very disruptive, and the wearing of masks is clearly intimidatory. We will do everything to ensure that the police have the powers that they need to stop such protests.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for the question, but I just disagree with her analysis. I think I have been very clear in calling out the racism we have seen. I have been very clear and straightforward in saying that, where criminal activity has occurred, the police should use the full force of the law. We have named far-right actors in this place today. If others do not do so, that is a matter for them, but thank goodness they are not in government currently. We will do everything we can. We can call out racism and call out the thuggery we have seen, while also accepting the anger that individuals feel about our borders, and the two are not incompatible.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  As I have said, Labour is doing the hard work of restoring the control at our borders that was lost under the last Government. We have made progress, and we will continue to do everything we can to ensure that we have that control and have a fair system, and to ensure that those who are genuinely claiming asylum are given a safe haven on our shores, as we have done for many years. However, we will also reduce the incentives for people to claim asylum here, rather than in other places, and we will make sure that we regain that control.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  On the one hand there is selective outrage, whataboutery, “let this sink in” and all the nonsense that people put on social media all the time. At the same time, there is a significant problem that we have to deal with. The two are true. We have to deal with the control at our borders, and we will bear down on that control to make sure we have what we need. At the same time, where there are malicious actors stirring up hatred and division, we have to—I would hope this House would—come together to promote the unity, solidarity and the compassion of which he speaks.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  With the greatest respect, I do not know if the right hon. Member was saying, “Frankly, we are being invaded” when his Government were in charge, when the number of people coming into this country was at an all-time high. When the shadow Home Secretary, my neighbour from Croydon, was in the Home Office, net migration was at an all-time high. The boats are down by 43% from last year to this year. [ Interruption. ] The Father of the House shakes his head, but that is just a fact.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  The proportion of people being granted asylum has shrunk massively in the last few years, and we have removed more than 80,000 illegal migrants and foreign criminals from this country. We are improving the system and making the changes we need to make, and we will continue to do so.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  No one voted for it multiple times, when they elected a Conservative Government promising to stop the boats, which did not happen. The number of people coming over this year is down 43% on last year so far. That is real progress. Is it enough? No. Will we go further? Yes.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  I agree that we should not give them political legitimacy. Of course, there are well-known connections between violent men and the types of violence they inflict, and it is not always in one area; it can be across lots of different behaviours—sexual violence, domestic abuse and the rest. We have no truck with these awful groups, and the gentleman to whom my hon. Friend refers seems particularly awful. Of course, the police will do what they need to do. They need to disrupt and remove the protesters so that people can go about their business, and in both cases that is what they did. We will ensure that we learn lessons and that arrests are made where they need to be. From the conversations that I have had today with the police about their response, it is clear that they were proportionate and managed to get the result that we wanted, which was the removal of the protesters and enabling people to go about their business.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  They are still coming, but they are coming at a 43% lower rate than they were, and the action we are taking is ensuring that we will keep going and keep building on the success we have had. We have the increased police resource in France, the changes to the asylum system and the way we are getting through the case backlog so that we can remove people from this country who have no right to be here or are foreign national offenders. All those things add up so that when the criminal gangs are looking at where they can make the most money, they think, “No, the UK is not somewhere where we can easily make money. We will not do this crime, and we will move on to something else, somewhere else.” We are pulling every single lever that we can. With the greatest respect, we are having a lot more success than the right hon. Gentleman’s Government.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  I suspect the right hon. Gentleman has already had conversations with immigration Ministers about this particular case, and I suspect he is making the same arguments to them. I would not want to get in the way of that, and I am sure the relevant Minister would be happy to have those conversations. We need to bear down on the overall number of arrivals, which is what we are trying to do. We are not just closing the hotels, but reducing the number of arrivals and reducing the incentives for people to come in, which is why we are introducing the raft of policy interventions that I spoke about earlier.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  We are not pandering to the right-wing agenda at all. The police will come down hard on criminality, as we would expect. No one was arrested in Dover on Saturday, or in Portsmouth, but as I just said, the police will review all the evidence from the weekend. Where crimes have occurred, they will make the appropriate arrests.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  As I said earlier, I cannot comment on the intelligence situation of what happened with these two incidents, but we will of course learn lessons. What we knew in advance, and what was or was not done about that, will be a very important lesson for us to learn. As well as the intelligence that the local police are able to gather, we now have the national co-ordination of the NPCC, which has extra resources for things such as internet intelligence investigations. We can reach further and co-ordinate better than we could before, but I am sure there will be lessons to learn. I will take away my hon. Friend’s question about the uniform of political parties.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  It is not appropriate for me to comment on the intelligence and the situation, and who is or who is not going to be charged with these two incidents. We do not know enough at this point. The police are operationally independent for good reason and politicians should not be involved in that day-to-day process. Are we looking at the threats that we face in this country, of which there are many? Of course. Is the Home Secretary alive to all of those threats and doing everything she can with all the levers at her disposal? Absolutely.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  First, just to clarify, I do not think I said there was a lack of intelligence; I said I did not want to comment on the intelligence—there is a difference. In the case of Dover, the police had not been informed of the protest. That is not to say there was not intelligence that I cannot comment on or would not know about. I just want to be clear about that, as that is different. Of course, all crimes need to be punished. We need to ensure that people who commit vile sexual and violent offences go to prison or, if they are not from this country, are deported, and that is what we are doing. The number of foreign national offenders being sent home and the number of people who have been turned down for asylum and are being sent home are significantly up on when the Conservatives—the hon. Member’s previous party—were in power. We will continue to do that, but of course that is not to say that we are not intensely sympathetic and sorry for people who have been victims of awful crimes.