Sarah Jones MP: speeches

Speeches

• 18 Jun 2026 · Grooming Gangs: Independent Inquiry · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for her question. Tuesday marked one year since the publication of Baroness Casey’s national audit on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse. The House will recall that the Government accepted all 12 recommendations of what was a landmark report, exposing more than a decade of failure and inaction on the part of the state. Scandalously, the most vulnerable in society were let down by the very institutions that should have protected them. As the Home Secretary made clear in her written statement to the House earlier this week, this Government are determined to directly and decisively confront the failings that occurred. We have made good progress against the mandate for change set out by Baroness Casey, with action taken or ongoing in relation to all 12 of her recommendations. We have changed the law on rape to remove any ambiguity about the ability of 13 to 16-year-olds to consent to sex; established a new national police operation, Operation Beaconport, overseen by the National Crime Agency and backed by £38 million of funding this year; legislated to disregard any convictions for so-called child prostitution; and commissioned new research into the drivers of these heinous crimes, including ethnicity, religion, cultural factors, group dynamics and the role of online technologies. Central to our response is the statutory independent inquiry into grooming gangs. Having been formally established in April, the work of the inquiry is under way and it will shortly announce the first local areas that will face investigation. The terms of reference have been shaped by the testimony, priorities and lived experience of victims and survivors. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to them, and to all who have campaigned to get us to this point. The inquiry will have a laser focus on grooming gangs, including the role that ethnicity, religion and culture played in these terrible crimes. Our message is clear: we will do whatever it takes to secure justice for those who were so badly let down—pursuing the evidence wherever it may lead, exposing failings and taking every necessary step to protect the most vulnerable in our society. For too long, questions about what was and will forever be one of the darkest moments in this country’s history have gone unanswered. That must change, which is why the Government have established a full independent inquiry to shine a light on past horrors. That is happening alongside our wider work to tackle exploitation and abuse, backed by a record £100 million in Home Office funding this year, in an unrelenting effort to keep our children safe from harm.

• 18 Jun 2026 · Grooming Gangs: Independent Inquiry · Hansard source

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  I am happy to facilitate conversations, but it sounds like my hon. Friend is already having them. As she will know, we are working on police culture. The Hillsborough law and some of the wider work we are doing across Government aim to ensure that we have the right openness, transparency and culture of being professionally curious and seeking out solutions. That is very important. All forces across the country have had a funding increase this year, and Operation Beaconport has its own fund of £38 million. The funding should be there, but I am happy to have further conversations with her about that.

• 18 Jun 2026 · Grooming Gangs: Independent Inquiry · Hansard source

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  The terms of reference are very wide and very clear. They will look at culture, ethnicity, race and any kind of bias that was in the system. There is a wider question that Louise Casey has talked about many times, and which I am trying to drive through in policing, and others are trying to drive through in other areas of work, which is about professional curiosity: keeping an open mind; problem solving; looking and finding; being curious to get to the bottom of what is happening; and finding those connections. There is also a big piece of work around information sharing across different organisations, because there is a blindness that comes from all the different institutions not talking to each other in the way that they should and not picking up vulnerability where we should. We saw that with Southport and Nottingham, and we see it here. There is a big job to be done there, too.

• 17 Jun 2026 · Abuse of Customer-facing Workers · Hansard source

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  There is a wider question about social media and how it sometimes drives these kinds of behaviours. People are almost goading each other to do more extreme activities—I have heard about that in a number of areas. This week, I was told about a new trend that I find utterly extraordinary: people are breaking into houses, filming someone asleep, and then leaving and putting that on social media. That is horrific. They do not take anything or do anything, but they are basically competing with each other to do that. Clearly, we are having a national debate, and the Government have taken action, about the issue of under-16s, but there is a much bigger debate still to have about social media and how it is driving these kinds of behaviours. Having said that I would be brief, I seem not to have been as brief as I expected. I thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly on his powerful speech and on securing this really good debate. He should be assured that the Government are on the side of people who just want to do their job, and who should not be abused while they are doing that job. That is not acceptable, and we will keep doing what we can.

• 8 Jun 2026 · Unite the Kingdom Rally: Policing · Hansard source

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  The Metropolitan Police Service maintained public order and kept Londoners safe on a day when there was an unprecedented number of large-scale events. Some 43 arrests were made at the Unite the Kingdom rally and the Nakba 78: March for Palestine. In advance, 11 foreign nationals were prevented from entering the UK to speak at the event and were prevented by the Met from broadcasting to the event. Of course I understand the concerns that my hon. Friend’s constituent raises, but the Metropolitan police, with their 4,000 officers on that day, did a very good job.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for welcoming the strategy and for the work he has done. He is absolutely right: people commit knife crime offences with all different kinds of knives. Some of the knives that have been banned have a particularly pernicious impact, given the damage they do to people’s bodies. We are putting in place a whole raft of interventions to ensure there is more control over the sale of all types of knives. These includes the age verification checks in the Crime and Policing Bill, and interventions on the sale of knives generally: making sure that young people are not buying knives, and putting in place a duty on companies to report if people buy in bulk. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) also mentioned the work that campaigners are doing on the design of knives to stop them being so impactful. The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) is absolutely right about social media. In the Bill, we are putting more onus on social media companies to do more, with a duty to report the sale of knives that are illegal. There is a lot more to be done with regard to very serious violent content online. This Government—including the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones)—have done a lot of work on this issue and are doing a huge amount to address porn, child sexual exploitation and violence against women and girls, but there is another piece of work to be done with the companies to ensure that all violent content is removed.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  We are working with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on where the Young Futures hubs will be, but they will be in the areas most affected by knife crime. There is a whole range of other interventions, which I hope will support my hon. Friend’s community to bring down knife crime overall. It will not just be the Young Futures hubs; many more interventions in our strategy are also designed to support. Greater Manchester has a big investment in addressing county lines, with which he will probably be very familiar. That has been incredibly successful and has got more successful every year that it has been in play. We are funding that this year. Hundreds of knives are being taken off our streets, and thousands of young children are being safeguarded as a result.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  I appreciate the Liberal Democrats welcoming the plan. I join the hon. Gentleman in praising the Ben Kinsella Trust and Patrick Green. Patrick has been brilliant throughout the development of the strategy, as have the members of the coalition that brought together a group of people, many of whom have lost loved ones in very difficult circumstances, to push for action to stop other people losing their loved ones. I pay tribute to all of them. The funding for the plan will come from across Government, not just the Home Office. Home Office funding amounts to about £130 million—a substantial sum—but the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is leading on the Young Futures hubs, the Department for Education is leading on interventions in schools, and the Ministry of Justice is making a huge investment in the youth justice system, so there is a big cross-Government approach. I have done a lot of work over the years on the public health approach. It is quite simple; it basically says that violence is catching. If people have violence in their life, they are more likely to be violent. Someone who was in a domestic abuse situation as a child is more likely to be violent; people who join a gang are more likely to become violent—it is relatively straightforward. The interventions that we are putting in place are designed to prevent those crimes and stop that violence spreading. That is why the figures on violence are coming down, and we are seeing the first shoots of success. On the numbers, there has been a 0.6% drop overall in the number of police officers from March 2025 to September 2025—that is a very small drop. The key question is: what are our police officers doing? Having 12,000 officers behind desks is not right; they should be out in our communities. Obviously, some of them need to do jobs that do not involve being out on our streets, but we want our officers out on our streets. We have always said—we said it in our manifesto—that the 13,000 will be a mix of new officers, police community support officers and redeployed officers. We are introducing new technology, so that we can free up the equivalent of 3,000 officers’ time. It is much better for that 13,000 to be a mix of officers; it means that we have already been able to deliver 3,000, some of whom are already trained officers, so they know what they are doing. If we were just recruiting new people, there would be the challenge of new officers not having the experience that others have. We have always said that we would be taking a mixed approach. The point is that we are putting 13,000 police officers into our communities and neighbourhoods, which is what the public want. Those officers will help to tackle the epidemic of everyday crime, and knife crime too.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her question, and I agree with her. This is the culmination of a lot of good work in the Lords and the Commons, from Members of all parties. MPs have pushed as hard as we can on this emerging technology, which is so dangerous and so high risk, and we have a Government who are committed to acting and doing the right thing. Everybody has worked really hard, together, to get us to a much stronger place. The power allowing courts to require the deletion of intimate images will also be available for the offence of breastfeeding voyeurism recording, and the new offence of sharing semen-defaced images. Online platforms need to do more to ensure that non-consensual intimate images are removed quickly, as my hon. Friend said, and not after the 24-hour timeframe envisioned by Lords amendment 256. To that end, amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendments 256 and 257 strengthens platform and senior executive accountability by making it a criminal offence for a service to breach an enforcement decision by Ofcom on duties to deal with and remove reported non-consensual intimate images. That means that senior executives of the service could be criminally liable for the breach. As well as taking this enforcement approach, the Government are also strengthening safeguards against malicious reporting. We will also bring forward regulations under existing powers in the Online Safety Act to amend schedule 8, so that Ofcom can require providers to be fully transparent about both the speed of intimate image removals, and how clearly and effectively platforms enable users to report such content.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I appreciate the challenge that the right hon. Gentleman is raising, and I know that DUP Members of Parliament in particular have raised these concerns before. The challenge here is that Lords amendment 357 would remove the historical safeguard for statements that glorify acts of terrorism committed by proscribed organisations. Our view is that these statements may not necessarily create terrorist risk and may result in the offence capturing legitimate political and social discourse and debate. I will say two other things to the right hon. Gentleman. First, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, strongly advised against the removal of the historical safeguard in his review of terrorism legislation following the 7 October attacks in 2023. Secondly, in the light of the concerns that have been raised in the Lords and by Members in this place, the Government will ask the independent reviewer to conduct a more detailed review of the encouragement offence within six months of Royal Assent. Let me turn to Lords amendment 359. It is a long-standing principle that has been adopted by successive Administrations that the Government do not comment on which organisations are being considered for proscription. Mandating that the Government review whether to proscribe Iranian Government-related organisations would violate this principle and tie the Government’s hands unnecessarily. The Government are already taking decisive action to deter threats from Iran, and we have committed to introducing a new state threats-based proscription tool. I turn now to Lords amendments 360 and 368 to 372 tabled by Baroness Kidron, which concern chatbots. The Government are clear that we need to act quickly to bring all unregulated AI chatbots within the scope of the Online Safety Act’s requirements on illegal activity. As I mentioned earlier, the Government are seeking to take a regulation-making power to do this, under Lords amendment 367. By taking this power, the Government will be able to remove any ambiguity over whether services like Grok are subject to the Online Safety Act’s provisions to tackle illegal content. This approach also allows us to design regulations that are effective, targeted and informed by necessary consultation with subject matter experts. Amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 372 commits the Government to reporting to Parliament by the end of the year on our progress to develop regulations.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She is, of course, right about the growing concern around chatbots and the need for safety by design. I will come on to Baroness Kidron’s amendment and the Government’s response to it later on in my speech. Furthermore, the Government have brought forward Lords amendment 367 to take a power to extend the scope of the Online Safety Act 2023 to cover unregulated AI chatbots. It means that general-purpose AI chatbots, such as Grok, which allow the creation and sharing of non-consensual intimate images, will have to proactively remove that illegal content from their services or face enforcement from Ofcom. Taken together, the measures will deliver an effective ban on nudification tools. Given that, we do not believe that a separate possession offence, as provided for in Lords amendment 505, would make a meaningful difference, not least as many such tools are accessed online, rather than possessed. Where a person is convicted of an intimate image offence, we agree that it is vital that those images are deleted from the perpetrator’s devices. Amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 258 enables the courts to make an image deletion order following a conviction for an offence related to intimate image abuse. Breach of the order will be a criminal offence. The amendment also enables the courts to require the deletion of other intimate images of the same victim. This approach gives courts the required flexibility to consider the details of each case when applying their powers, while ensuring that the offenders are held accountable for compliance with the order.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I am delighted to see the return of this Bill—the largest criminal justice Bill in a generation—to this House. The Bill will support the Government’s mission to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls in a decade, and give our police and law enforcement agencies the tools they need to tackle antisocial behaviour, sexual violence, terrorism and online harms. The amendments made in the House of Lords support these aims. Given the number of Lords amendments, I will focus my remarks on the Government amendments made in response to commitments given on Report in the Commons last June by my predecessor as Policing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson)—she was sitting on the Front Bench earlier—before outlining the Government’s response to the 19 non-Government amendments added in the other place. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) rightly raised concerns about the depiction of strangulation and suffocation in pornography, an issue which was also highlighted by Baroness Bertin’s independent pornography review. As set out in our violence against women and girls strategy last December, the Government have announced our intention to criminalise the possession and publication of pornographic images that depict strangulation and suffocation, and Lords amendments 261 and 262 give effect to that commitment. Secondly, my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor) rightly pressed the Government on when we would deliver our manifesto commitment to make all existing strands of hate crime an aggravated offence. I am pleased to commend Lords amendment 301, which extends the existing racially and religiously aggravated offences to cover hostility based on sex, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity. Thirdly, my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) pointed to the long-term impact, including on employment opportunities, for those convicted of the offences of loitering and soliciting while under 18. Lords amendments 270 and 271 therefore introduce a new disregards and pardons scheme for anyone convicted or cautioned as a child for those offences. I will now turn to the 19 non-Government amendments added in the other place. First, Lords amendment 2 seeks to bar the issuing of fixed penalty notices by enforcement companies and contractors for profit. The Government do understand the concern about enforcement agencies issuing fixed penalty notices where there may be a financial incentive to do so. To be clear, local agencies are expected to issue fixed penalty notices only when it is appropriate and proportionate to do so. However, Lords amendment 2 risks weakening crucial enforcement action to tackle antisocial behaviour. Our amendments in lieu instead provide that statutory guidance will address the need to ensure that the issuing of fixed penalty notices by authorised persons is proportionate. On Lords amendments 6 and 10 to 12, I fully appreciate and understand the damage that fly-tipping can do to our communities. The Government’s waste crime action plan, published on 20 March, sets out proposals to radically improve enforcement in this area, including by granting courts the power to impose between three and nine penalty points on the driving licence of those convicted of fly-tipping where driving a vehicle was used in or for the purposes of the offence. Our amendment in lieu implements this commitment. Turning to Lords amendment 15, on its introduction the Bill provided for a maximum four-year prison term for those convicted of a new offence of possession of a weapon with intent to cause unlawful violence. While this was drafted in line with other possession offences, the Government accept that the intent element of this new offence justifies a higher maximum penalty. Our amendment in lieu therefore provides for a seven-year maximum rather than the 10 years provided for in the Lords amendment, which we believe is disproportionate given that this remains a possession offence. Lords amendments 255, 256, 258 to 260 and 505, introduced by the Government and by Baroness Owen and Baroness Bertin, all seek to further tackle the proliferation of demeaning and degrading intimate images online. The Government share these aims, and we are clear that intimate image abuse is completely unacceptable. Lords amendment 255, brought forward by the Government, will criminalise the making, adapting and supplying of nudification tools. These tools use artificial intelligence to create deepfake, non-consensual intimate images, many of women. While creating, sharing and threatening to share non-consensual intimate images is already illegal, this amendment goes further, and criminalises the developers making and supplying these tools. As well as the criminal duties, once this new offence is in force the requirements of the Online Safety Act 2023 will kick in. This means that social media services will be required to take down content that supplies nudification tools, and search engines will have to reduce the visibility of search results linked to these tools.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady makes her case very clearly, and we can agree that we need to design out those kinds of issues. The challenges are in what we do and how we do it—those are the challenges we had with this particular group of amendments. Obviously there is wider work being done on violence against women and girls and how the Online Safety Act is to be rolled forward, and that work is really important, but we are talking about this particular group of Lords amendments on chatbots and the challenges with them. That is why, through amendment (a) in lieu, we commit to reporting by the end of the year on our progress to develop regulations. We are clear that regulation is a more effective and proportionate tool than the criminal law for addressing risks from AI chatbots and setting industry best practice. Incorporating currently unregulated chatbots into the scope of the Online Safety Act will ensure that such regulation applies extraterritorially, which is crucial when dealing with international companies. The Government’s approach is also broader in scope than the content of amendments 360 and 368 to 372. Those amendments would not capture image generators creating non-consensual graphic images of women or online AI chatbot toys such as Gabbo. The Government’s amendment in lieu does capture such services and allows them to be clearly brought under online safety regulations.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Yes, and we are looking at that issue as we speak, making sure that we strike the right balance. At the moment, there is a huge cost to policing from football matches and other events more widely that is not covered. That support is not there, so we think it is right that we look at the issue.

• 28 Jan 2026 · Animal Testing · Hansard source

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  I will certainly take that question back to my colleagues who are implementing the strategy, and I have heard from other colleagues the call for a faster timeline. The science is developing, and my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles mentioned the transformational technology that we have and the opportunities for growth. We do not know the answer to some things because the science is not yet finished, but I hear the point about pushing for change as soon as possible. The purpose of the strategy is to phase out animal testing. That is this Government’s ambition and intention. The relevant human alternatives that we want to replace it with have to continue to protect public health and product safety, and we have to be sure that replacements are able to do that. Uncomfortable though it is, we know that the use of animals in science has enabled us to develop medicines that we would not have been able to develop otherwise would. To replace that, we need to make sure that what comes afterwards is robust. It is everybody’s ambition to have a revolution in research and innovation in this country, and to build on that and use our expertise to make sure we go as fast as possible, but I hear the call for timelines and I will talk to my colleagues about how we try to do that. The strategy has a tiered approach to identify which animal test can be replaced soonest, and which are the easier ones to get done first. I very much hear the call for a timescale for a longer-term road map. There is great public interest in making sure that we treat animals as they should be treated when they are used in research. My hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles talked a lot about the work of the regulator, and how we should take a robust approach to regulation. The regulator is overseen by the Home Office Minister Lord Hanson, who signed off on a package of reform to it last year, which my hon. Friend mentioned. My hon. Friend was slightly more dismissive of it than perhaps we would be, and I heard what he said, but there has been an increase in the number of people who are able to ensure oversight and a new focus through the reform programme. It has just begun, and we need to give it a bit of time to see whether it works more effectively. I hear loud and clear his calls for the Government to ensure that the regulator is as robust as it can be. It might be useful to look at how the regulator currently works, and then we can work together going forward. I do not know if my hon. Friend has met the regulator, but it might be worth convening something with other interested MPs, to have a conversation about the reforms and where we think things will improve. The regulator is set up to prevent compliance breaches and investigate them. If non-compliance is confirmed, the regulator has a broad range of sanctions available. There is a conversation about whether it is using all those sanctions in the way that it could. The sanctions range in severity, and my hon. Friend mentioned those at the lower end, but the regulator does have more extensive powers to act. It might be useful to have a conversation with the regulator about how we balance self-referral. Self-referrals often come in; we have very good and honourable people doing research and using the system as it should be used. I also hear the slight question about self-referral, and whether we are in the places that we need to be as much as we should be. There is a balance in the regulatory approach and how punitive the approaches can be. We want the sector to be open and transparent, so we have to get that balance right. I am sure that my hon. Friend understands that. If we are disproportionate—if that is a risk—then work gets offshored and goes elsewhere, where the systems are not anywhere near as powerful as they are in this country. We need to have proportionality in our approach to non-compliance. We also need to understand that self-reporting is not a bad thing, but a good thing. We want a culture of care that is respectful of animals. Most incidents of non-compliance are self-reported, as I have said, and the decisions taken after that are then proportionate. Where there are more significant breaches, the sanctions are there, and we could have a conversation with the regulator about when those sanctions are imposed and when they are not. I thank colleagues again for raising this issue. We have a strict and rigorous licensing regime, which I am partly responsible for, both for the 100-odd companies that are able to test on animals and the 13,000 individuals who have a licence to use animals in testing. The regulator is going through reform and has had its functions beefed up over the last year. We have an ambition as a Government to end the use of animals in science, but, as a Minister, I will always commit to push for more and will always listen to my colleagues for advice. The good takeaways from this debate are that we need to understand where the regulator is coming from a bit more, what the balance is for proportionality, how we can all move forward, and, having heard the calls for more timeliness in ending the use of animals in testing, how we can work with colleagues across the Government to deliver that. Question put and agreed to.

• 5 Jan 2026 · Rural Crime · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is lucky to have such wonderful places in his constituency. Of course I will meet him—this is a very important matter. We are supporting the work of Historic England on a number of issues to tackle heritage crime, but I am sure that we can go further, and I look forward to talking to him about it.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Maccabi Tel Aviv FC: Away Fans Ban · Hansard source

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  I remind the House that the Prime Minister’s view and the view of this Government is that the decision taken was the wrong one. The Prime Minister was very clear about that from the outset, saying: “This is the wrong decision. We will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets. The role of the police is to ensure all football fans can enjoy the game, without fear of violence or intimidation.” That is our view, as it has been consistently since. We are trying to make sure that we can avoid such a situation happening again. HMICFRS will do its report in the normal way, and we are asking it to do so in two stages. One stage will include the information about West Midlands, and the second will take a wider look at how police information is fed into safety advisory groups. HMICFRS will do its report in the way that we would expect. I do not want to disagree with the hon. Member about the harm that this has done. I am very well aware of it, and I have had many conversations with Jewish colleagues and organisations since this incident. I hope that we can put it behind us by learning the right lessons and making sure that we take appropriate action.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Maccabi Tel Aviv FC: Away Fans Ban · Hansard source

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  Let me again acknowledge the concern and disappointment caused by the decision to ban away fans at Villa Park on 6 November. I recognise the continued strength of feeling in this House, and in the country more widely, and I welcome this opportunity to update Members on the latest developments. The House will be aware that Chief Constable Craig Guildford, Assistant Chief Constable Mike O’Hara and police and crime commissioner Simon Foster gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee last week. I am aware that Assistant Chief Constable Mike O’Hara has since apologised for some of his remarks in relation to Jewish community support for the decisions taken. He will need to set out his correction to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee directly and we will await the Committee’s conclusions. Any suggestion that the intelligence gathering and community engagement led by West Midlands police was anything other than of the highest standard would, of course, be a matter of profound concern. I am sure that the House will understand that I remain limited in what I can say about the specific intelligence underpinning this decision while investigations continue. However, in my evidence to the Committee last week, and to this House before then, I explained that the Home Secretary had already commissioned His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services to review how forces in England and Wales provide risk assessment advice to local safety advisory groups and other bodies responsible for licensing high-profile public events. That wider report will be returned to the Home Secretary by 31 March. Before then, I can confirm that, by the end of the year, HMICFRS will also provide a specific update on the intelligence gathered by West Midlands police on this matter and how it was used. Operational independence is an important principle and one we must protect. At the same time, scrutiny and accountable are essential, especially when it comes to issues with clear implications for public safety and public confidence. It is absolutely right that West Midlands police are asked to explain as fully as possible how the decision was reached. Sport is a source of joy and excitement for millions of people around the world. Football supporters should be able to follow their team, whatever their nationality, faith or background. That has been the clear and unequivocal stance of the Government throughout this episode, and it will remain so.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Maccabi Tel Aviv FC: Away Fans Ban · Hansard source

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  I cannot answer my hon. Friend’s question. As we mentioned at the Select Committee, how many times the safety advisory group was meeting was slightly unclear to us at the Home Office, because our relationship with the safety advisory group is through the UK football organisation. We were receiving information in a slightly ad hoc way, according to when we asked for that information, and that is one of the things we need to look at. Of course, I am very happy, as my hon. Friend is, to go back and ask questions about who was there.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Catapults and Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) on securing the debate. There is clearly a problem. It is not my job to defend the status quo; it is my job to consider what we can do about the problem. This debate has brought forward that problem in a good-natured way, setting out a number of ideas, which we can talk through today but need more thought. The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), referred to existing laws, and the need to look at how they are implemented. Other suggestions, from this place and beyond, may also help. The starting point is that there is clearly a problem. Although the national data is not great on this subject, it appears to be a rising problem, as borne out by the Kent statistics. I will say a couple of things about the broad approach to governing. Most of the public want police in their neighbourhoods, with the time and space to tackle physical crimes. The Government are working on a White Paper on police reform, which we hope will do exactly that. We are not only putting in more money—already bearing fruit in funding neighbourhood police in local communities—but looking at the time police spend on bureaucracy. Artificial intelligence can help to free up time, with new technology such as live facial recognition or drones playing a role, to enable the police to do what we want them to do. We are also spending a lot of time on outlining plans for a national centre for policing, which could do what the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) suggested: bring together national aspects of policing, so that local police can deal with the problems that face them. The hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne also talked at some length about the good youth engagement activities in his constituency, and pointed out the cuts to youth work. I think we would all agree that policing is one thing, but activities are very much another. We have a brilliant ambition for a 30% increase in the number of cadets by 2030, which would ensure that people are gaining skills, learning about being a good citizen and occupying their free time. Hon. Members will have examples of great youth clubs and sports groups, which we want to support where we can. Those are the two principles that I would start with. The hon. and gallant Member described very vividly some of the injuries to wildlife, which are very upsetting. Concerns were also expressed about where that violence would escalate to over time. Something that is increasingly taking up Government time is thinking about people who are obsessed with violence. Where does it come from? How do we stem it? I suspect that people who are attacking wildlife are on some path that we would want to stop. Interventions at that point are necessary, too. The hon. and gallant Member set out his arguments and made a very compelling case that we need to take this issue seriously. I was in a meeting just before the debate, and I said to those I was meeting that I was coming to this debate, and they said, “Oh, Dennis the Menace!” The hon. and gallant Member made exactly the same point. This is how people perceive catapults; that is not the nature of what is happening here. The letter he read out paints that picture very clearly. My hon. Friends the Members for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) and for Dartford (Jim Dickson), who I was pleased to meet recently, made very good points about the challenges in their communities. My hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey talked about the urban nature of this problem, and the churches and high streets that have been damaged. This is clearly a problem that is affecting a number of areas. We heard that from Northern Ireland as well. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford talked about TikTok and the role of social media, and this strange new habit that seems to be to commit these violent offences and put them on social media, which is obviously also very worrying. In terms of what the Government want to do in response, as I set out, reforming our police so that our police can do what we want them to do and they can implement the legislation that is already there because they have more time is a major priority. That is, in part, about funding neighbourhood police and making sure that we tilt resources in that direction. It is also about freeing up people’s time, so they can get on and do what they need to do. The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent, made the sensible point that there is no point in having legislation just for the sake of it, but there are some changes that we do want to see. As we heard, Spelthorne borough council has a PSPO that includes catapults. That is a really good thing. The Crime and Policing Bill will increase the upper limit on fixed penalty notices for breaches of PSPOs to £500, which gives some more power to that function. People have mixed views about PSPOs—some work; some do not—but making sure that they have teeth is important. Tackling antisocial behaviour generally is a big priority for this Government, and we are doing that in a number of ways, one of which is being much more savvy when it comes to data—looking at hotspot policing and targeting policing in the areas where crime occurs the most. For that to work, we have to have people reporting crime. So please can the message to all our constituents be: “Do report any crime you see; report it online if that is easier.” We are being increasingly sophisticated in the way that we are responding to crime, and data drives that. If we do not have the data, it makes it harder.

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  I agree with the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s question. Where we can, we want to ensure that intelligence is correct, that decisions are made on the basis of a wide range of factors, and that football, a sport that this country loves so much, carries on in the way that we all want it to.

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. I know that he understands the principle of police operational independence, and that we need to ensure that we reflect that correctly when such decisions are taken. Stepping back, there are wider lessons that we need to learn, which is why the Home Secretary has written to the inspector to ask him to look at how the SAG process occurs and how the group makes decisions. Members will know that the SAG process was set up following the Hillsborough tragedy as a means by which we can make decisions and secure safety at football matches and other large-scale events. The Home Secretary has asked the inspector to consider the degree to which the police take into account intelligence and the degree to which the SAG process takes into account wider community impacts. That speaks to the hon. Gentleman’s question, which I cannot answer now, about who was giving the information and on what basis the police were making their recommendations. The review will look at whether the balance of those factors is being struck correctly, and I hope we will come back through that process. We wrote to the inspector at the end of October to ask him to undertake the work. We have asked him to provide his initial conclusions by March next year and made funding available for the additional inspection. On the specific chronology of events, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that Home Office officials asked the United Kingdom football policing unit for an update on the match on 2 October. They were told that force gold was considering and it would go to the SAG for decisions, and several different available options were laid out at that time. I have written to the chief constable of West Midlands police to ask for clarity following yesterday’s newspaper article. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I cannot tell him about the truth of those claims—it is a newspaper article and we want to get to the bottom of it—but there are questions within it that we need to understand. I have written to the chief constable to answer those questions. I am happy to share more information as I get it, and the Home Affairs Committee has already taken a lead in asking West Midlands police some of those questions.

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  There were a series of different interactions and communications between the different groups in that period, as Members would expect. There is a balance to be struck with the operational independence question, and we need to get that right; it is not for the Home Secretary to march in and demand that the police say a certain thing or act a certain way. There were communications—I am sure we could help by outlining them—between the period of 2 October, when the Home Office first asked the question of the United Kingdom football policing unit, and 16 October, when the decision was made. To be clear, the Department found out about the decision when it broke on the news; we were not told in advance.

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  The right hon. Member is right. I am very familiar with Sutton Coldfield—and my husband is a Villa season ticket holder, as are my twin boys. It is in some ways the bane of my life, because I never see them as they are always at Villa. It is worth saying that Villa fans are lovely and it is a lovely club. They are devastated that there would be any of this controversy. They just want to play football, watch football, support football, support their players and get on with it. Having talked to lots of them, I know that they have found the whole thing upsetting. They just want to watch the football. As the right hon. Gentleman says, Birmingham is a great city. I pay tribute to the faith communities in his area and, I suspect, in many of our constituencies where the Faiths Together groups meet and bring different leaders together to ensure that we are all learning from each other and living side by side in peace.

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  I think not, but there we are. He is my constituency neighbour in Croydon, so best wishes to him always. The 2 October was the point at which the Home Office asked officials in the United Kingdom football policing unit for the update, and we were told that a range of different options were being considered. That is certainly true, and I will not shy away from that. It is now important we ensure that where there are lessons to be learned, we learn them.