Crime and Policing Bill
Will the hon. Lady give way?
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Crime and Policing Bill
I rise to support new clause 144, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers). On Monday, the Government hastily came to the House to deliver yet another U-turn and to announce a national inquiry into rape gangs. It is apparent that this U-turn was forced on them, because whenever any member of the public or Member of Parliament said that they wanted a national inquiry, the response from the Government was that they were “far right”, “jumping on a bandwagon” or even blowing a “dog whistle”—those were the words used by Ministers on the Front Bench. This was a hasty U-turn. In fact, those on the Government Front Bench were somewhat taken aback, as it appears that the Prime Minister had appointed Baroness Casey of Blackstock in the hope that the whole thing would go away and that the inquiry would not happen. She said that she changed her mind because of the weight of evidence that confronted her. Her words were, “I think I have surprised people in Downing Street and beyond.” She did, and the clincher was that the local inquiries were inadequate, because local authorities could decide whether they were going to commission an inquiry and the Government would not intervene. She also said that of the five local inquiries, only one came forward—that was in Oldham. There was reluctance from local areas to face up to the facts and to accept their failings. Denial ran through absolutely everything. Denial is like a poisonous thread: it weaves its way through all public bodies, strangles the truth and stops justice coming forward. It is essential that an investigation is held into all the failings of the police, local authorities, prosecutors, charities and political parties. The Prime Minister himself was in denial until Saturday, when the U-turn was forced upon him. He often brandishes his credentials as the former director of public prosecutions, and in 2014 he penned an article for the Guardian in which he acknowledged that there were at least 1,400 victims, but he did nothing until the U-turn was forced upon him. We need to ask questions about the statutory inquiry, because the public need to know the answers. Who will chair the inquiry? What type of inquiry will it be? It already seems to have been watered down. Will it be independent, a national inquiry or, as it now seems, a national commission? What are the terms of reference? It is not good enough to say that we will hear “in due course”. What are the inquiry’s powers? That is unclear. Will there be judicial powers to subpoena people to give evidence?
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Crime and Policing Bill
The inquiry should not delay that, but the inquiry needs to be done with speed and haste, not be watered down and not brushed under the carpet, because it is essential that the victims’ voices are heard and that they have justice. The House also needs assurance there will be no exemptions from prosecution in exchange for evidence. It needs to know if witnesses can be compelled to produce documents protected by public interest immunity. When will that happen? It is not good enough that the Home Secretary was saying that it would be three years away, close to a general election. It needs to be done as soon as possible. I also wonder why it will be a statutory inquiry, not a criminal inquiry. Is it because a criminal inquiry can lead to arrest, charges and criminal prosecutions, whereas a statutory inquiry tends to make a series of recommendations to then be acted on? At the end of this inquiry, will we see prosecutions? Will we see deportations? Time and again, we heard that community cohesion was put above working-class girls. That cannot ever happen again. That issues were not investigated for fear of people being labelled racist cannot ever happen again. If somebody does wrong, the colour of their skin or their religion do not matter: they have done wrong. If they have committed a criminal act it is right that they are brought to justice. This Government will not get away with a watered-down national inquiry. They have been dragged kicking and screaming to deliver a national inquiry. That national inquiry needs to be delivered.
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Crime and Policing Bill
On that point, will the Minister give way?
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Crime and Policing Bill
On that point, will the Minister give way?
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Educational Outcomes for Boys
9. Whether she plans to take steps with Cabinet colleagues to develop a strategy to improve educational outcomes for boys.
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Educational Outcomes for Boys
The logic behind having a Women’s Minister was the idea that women present and have different problems in society. By that logic, men and boys do, too; we know about suicide, and we have just heard about educational attainment. We hear about help-seeking opportunities, and I welcome the men’s health strategy, but is it not time we had a Minister for men and boys to look across Government and deal with education, unemployment, suicide and health, and really get to grips with the problems facing young men and boys?
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HS2 Reset
As a south-west region MP, does the Secretary of State agree that the west country has for decades been the poor country cousin of our rail network, and that money spent on HS2 is money not spent elsewhere? Will she do all in her power to ensure that the relatively small changes that are necessary on the network in the south-west to make life a lot easier go ahead, and will she look particularly at the absolutely woeful west of England line?
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Businesses in Rural Areas
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Western. The family farm tax was a hammer blow to our agricultural businesses. We understand that the Government seek to raise money, but there is an alternative on the table: the so-called clawback proposal. I hope that the Minister will update us on that and, if the Government do not think that the clawback proposal would work and raise potentially even more money than the current policy, I hope that he can explain that. More broadly, the Government have said that they will increase spending on environmental land management schemes, but they are cutting back in other areas. The overall budget for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is coming down in real terms. What will that mean for our agricultural businesses? Beyond specifically rural businesses such as farms, rural constituencies have all manner of other businesses that just happen to be in rural areas. As colleagues have said, those businesses face additional challenges, first among which is connectivity. I hope that the Government will do more on the shared rural network; it is going quite well in Scotland and Wales, but we need more of it in England. On the transition to VoIP—voice over internet protocol —we need to ensure that businesses have proper power back-up systems in place for power cuts. We need a rapid expansion of banking hubs, because the loss of banking infrastructure is felt particularly in rural areas, where banks are more spread out, and we need full utilisation of the national post office network. As well as dealing with problems, we must seize opportunities. A couple of colleagues have already mentioned the wine sector, which is a great growth opportunity for rural areas. Much more could also be done on tourism, both inbound and domestic, as well as agritourism. We need to ensure that young people growing up in our constituencies have the same opportunities as others, and that means a particular focus on T-level industrial placements for children from rural areas, as well as ensuring that they can get to work; I would love to see a national version of the wheels to work programme, renting scooters to young people.
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Crime and Policing Bill
I rise to speak to new clauses 12 and 123 in my name, new clause 43 in the name of the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) and new clause 121 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage). New clause 43 seeks to commence the Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023, which was taken through the House as a private Member’s Bill by Greg Clark, the predecessor of the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells. Greg did great work on this Bill. I was one of its supporters and a member of the Bill Committee. I spoke on Second Reading, Third Reading and in Committee. It is a simple Act, which had cross-party support—it was not in any way a controversial piece of legislation. It corrected an oversight in the law that had been missed out in a previous piece of legislation. As so often happens, a private Member’s Bill requires a statutory instrument to commence it, and that statutory instrument has not yet been laid in this House. I am sure the Minister is well aware of that and is seeking to do so. This new clause would allow the Act to commence now, rather than requiring that statutory instrument, thereby saving her a little bit of time. I hope, therefore, that she might look favourably on it. As I say, this was an Act that was supported across the House. There was no Division on it; it was very much something that we all wanted to see, so I hope that the Government accept the new clause and that the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells can follow on in the footsteps of his predecessor in making sure that this Act of Parliament becomes live and real for the people who need it. Let me turn now to new clause 121 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport. I was almost disappointed not to be able to table this new clause myself, because it fits with the work that I have done previously on these issues. I was Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport when the Digital Economy Act 2017 introduced age verification for pornography. Again, new clause 121 is a simple piece of legislation, which would make non-fatal strangulation a criminal act if in pornography. This does not impact on what people may wish to do in their private lives, but it does mean that those images would not then be available to be seen in pornographic films. It also means that there is protection for children who may be looking at this pornography—we do not want them to look at it, but we are realists and recognise that this happens—and that it does not normalise what is a really dangerous act, which should not be promoted in any way. I know from experience that social media companies will remove content if it is illegal. They will not remove it if it is not. Therefore this simple change would mean that the depiction of non-fatal strangulation would become illegal content and social media companies would therefore be forced to act. I hope that this is something that can be supported across the House. Although I understand that we will be pushed to Division this evening, I do hope that the Minister can say something about the Government introducing something similar—perhaps in the other place—so that we can make sure that this inappropriate content is illegal and therefore not available to be seen by children. Let me turn now to the new clauses in my name. I wish to start with new clause 123, because my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti), who has been such a champion of this legislation, has to go to a Delegated Legislation Committee at 2.30 pm. I also wish him a very happy birthday. He is choosing to spend his birthday in this Chamber and attending a DL Committee—what a hero! Again, I think that this new clause will have cross-party support. It concerns the removal of parental responsibility for individuals convicted of sexual offences against children. When I have talked about this to colleagues and asked them to consider supporting the new clause, they have been utterly amazed that anybody convicted of a sexual offence against a child may be allowed to have parental responsibility for their own child. That responsibility is stopped only if the offence is committed against their own child. That cannot be right. How can it be that a convicted sex offender—somebody who has been convicted of a sexual offence against a child—is allowed to make parental decisions about their own children? My hon. Friend’s constituent has talked about this—I believe that they are known as “Bethan” in this situation—and has been a real champion on this issue. In this particular case, a man who was convicted of raping a relative who was a child still has parental responsibility for his own child. That cannot be acceptable. Again, this feels like a piece of legislation where, at some point, we just failed to address this one issue. I hope, therefore, that this can be seen as a defect in the legislation that we all agree should be corrected. New clause 12 is a relatively simple amendment to the Modern Slavery Act 2015, but it reflects a phenomenon that we simply did not know about when we introduced the Act 10 years ago. As the Minister on the Bill, I remember going through many definitions of what constituted trafficking and exploitation, but, at the time, the phenomenon of orphanage trafficking was simply not known. That may be a shock to some in this Chamber, because there is such awareness of the issue in Australia and New Zealand but we simply do not know about it here.
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Crime and Policing Bill
I have a similar concern about mobility scooters. Obviously, they are a fabulous tool, enabling so many in our constituencies to get out and about, but the number of serious injuries caused by mobility scooters has gone up by nearly 60% in the last 10 years, and the number of fatalities has doubled. These heavy class 3 mobility scooters, which can go up to 8 mph and travel on the roads, are not subject to insurance rules and cannot be penalised under dangerous driving regulations. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is something the Government also need to consider very carefully? I would really love the Minister to look at whether there is any legislation that would be implementable in cases such as these.
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Crime and Policing Bill
I rise to speak to new clause 121, which is tabled in my name and supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) and, I am very pleased to say, by Members from both sides of this Chamber. It would extend the definition of extreme pornography to include depictions of non-fatal strangulation, known as NFS. NFS was made a criminal offence in 2021 under the last Government, not because we think the Government should necessarily stick their nose into what people want to get up to in the bedroom, but because abusers use non-fatal strangulation without consent, as it leaves little visible injury and makes it hard to prosecute under domestic abuse cases. When a woman dies from strangulation, it is becoming increasingly common to use the defence that it was a sex game gone wrong. Non-fatal strangulation has a life out there in the world of online porn. As we know, the UK is a large porn consumer. In any given month, more than 10 million adults in the UK will access online porn, and the vast majority of them will be chaps. That is up to them—we do not judge—but we know from research that online porn is so widespread that one in 10 children have seen it by the age of nine. Unfortunately, it is the guide that many young people use to learn about sex. That is why I am extremely worried that non-fatal strangulation has been found to be rife on porn sites. Evidence has shown that it is directly influencing the sexual behaviour of young men, who are non-consensually strangling young women during consensual sex. Recent polling has suggested that 17% of 16 to 34-year-olds have been strangled without giving consent during consensual sex. We are not being prudes in calling for this misogynistic act to be banned in online porn. Health experts warn that there is no way to strangle someone without risk, given that blood and airflow may both be restricted. A person can become unconscious within 10 seconds of being choked, and within 17 seconds they can have a seizure due to lack of oxygen. Death can occur within 150 seconds of being rendered unconscious. Almost 20% of the women killed in the UK since 2014 were strangled by an intimate partner. Perpetrators who choke their partners are seven times more likely to kill them. I am sure the Minister will agree that it is alarming to hear reports of young men and boys seeking advice on how they can safely strangle their partner in bed and that girls are expected to accept that kind of behaviour. There was even a report last year, which the Minister may have heard about, of draft personal, social, health and economic education guidance from a Welsh local authority including safe choking during sex for a child sex education class. We need to send a signal that strangling your partner in bed is not safe—it can be a precursor to coercive, abusive behaviour. I know that the Government also want to send that signal, because in February they said, in their response to an independent review commissioned by the previous Government: “The government will take urgent action to ensure pornography platforms, law enforcement and prosecutors are taking all necessary steps to tackle this increasingly prevalent harm.” I therefore urge the Minister to support my new clause 121, which sets out one of the necessary steps referred to in the Government’s response. We need to back this amendment, ban this harmful practice, and send out a very strong message that depictions of non-fatal strangulation in porn normalise something that is not normal and is not safe.
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Engagements
I associate myself with the Deputy Prime Minister’s remarks about the tragic air crash in India, and of course about our dear colleagues Jo Cox and Sir David Amess. I also join her in calling for de-escalation between Israel and Iran, while noting that everything possible must be done to stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon. Yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition and I met survivors of the rape gang scandal and their family members. Fiona, Teresa, Lucia and Marlon told us how authorities deliberately covered up the systematic rape of young girls, and some boys, by gangs of predominantly Pakistani-heritage men. They covered it up because they cared more about so-called community relations than protecting vulnerable girls. That is disgusting. The survivors told us that they will only have confidence in an inquiry if it is independently led, has full statutory powers, and covers all 50 towns affected, including Bradford. They will also only have confidence in it if those who covered this up are prosecuted, foreign perpetrators are all deported, survivors are closely involved, and it is set up before the summer recess. Can the Deputy Prime Minister give the survivors and their families those assurances?
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Engagements
It is vital that scandals like this are never again covered up because of the racial background of perpetrators. Baroness Casey’s report said, to use her words, that people who downplay the ethnic dimension are letting victims down, so I have to raise the matter of the language that the Prime Minister used in January, when I am afraid to say he smeared campaigners as jumping on a “far-right bandwagon” simply for calling for the very inquiry that he has now been forced to set up. Standing up for rape victims is not far-right. Will the Deputy Prime Minister apologise for what the Prime Minister said?
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Engagements
Smearing campaigners who stand up for rape victims as being “far-right” is completely unacceptable, and the Prime Minister should never have said that. I commend his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), for the grooming gangs taskforce that he set up, which led to 550 arrests in its first year. Baroness Casey’s report also said that a significant number of rape gang perpetrators were non-UK nationals or asylum seekers, many of whom entered the country illegally. We also know that most illegal immigrants crossing the channel are young men, contrary to what the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said last week. Does the Deputy Prime Minister now accept that the small boats crisis is one of public safety, as well as a border crisis?
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Engagements
If she wants to find out who has lost control of our borders, I suggest that she looks to her immediate right, because ever since the Home Secretary scrapped the Rwanda deterrent before it even started, illegal immigration across the channel has gone up by 30%. So far, 2025 has been the worst year in history for illegal immigrants crossing the channel. That is on her watch; that is down to her Government. The Prime Minister is planning crisis talks with President Macron, and is finally admitting that the situation is, in his words, “deteriorating”. The Government’s laughable plan to smash the gangs lies in tatters. Will the Deputy Prime Minister at last accept that we need a removals deterrent, so that every single illegal immigrant who arrives on these shores is immediately removed? Will she commit to that—yes or no?
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Engagements
I do not see how the Deputy Prime Minister has the brass neck to claim that she has the situation under control when the numbers crossing the channel this year are the highest in history. She asked about the Rwanda deterrent. She was obviously not listening to what I said earlier. The Rwanda scheme never started; indeed, illegal immigrants in Calais—[Interruption.]
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Engagements
The Rwanda scheme never started. Illegal immigrants in Calais said before the election how much they wanted the Prime Minister to get elected because he would help them to get here. When Australia started a similar scheme about 10 years ago, it worked within a few months. As a consequence of the Government losing control, they now accommodate in asylum hotels and flats growing numbers of illegal immigrants, many of whom crossed the channel. The Home Office’s suppliers are actively offering above-market deals to landlords to get hold of their properties for use by illegal immigrants. In the meantime, hard-pressed young people here are unable to rent or buy. Why do this Government prioritise housing for illegal immigrants above housing for our young people?
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Engagements
Goodness me, the Deputy Prime Minister has a cheek. Housing starts in quarter four last year went down—her mission to rebuild Britain is not going very well. She talks about asylum hotels, but she obviously has not looked at the most recent numbers. The number of people in asylum hotels was higher in March this year than it was at the time of the election. And she gave no answer about the priority being given to illegal immigrants over people already living here. A Zimbabwean paedophile due for deportation was recently allowed to stay in the UK because a court found that he might face “some hostility” back in Zimbabwe, which apparently breached his article 3 rights. What about the rights of children here to be protected from this dangerous paedophile? Who is looking out for their rights? Not the Government. There are thousands of such cases involving foreign criminals. There is a solution: we need to scrap the Human Rights Act for immigration matters so that this sovereign Parliament decides on the law that our courts apply. But the Deputy Prime Minister’s party voted against that. I have a simple question: why do the Government side with foreign criminals and not the British public?
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Crime and Policing Bill
The hon. Member has just painted a complex legislative picture. Does he not agree that there was a need for the 2022 legislation, because all the measures that he has just read out simply were not working?
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HS2 Reset
East West Rail is due to travel through my constituency, on the historic Marston Vale line. How will the Secretary of State ensure that the mistakes made on HS2—we have heard some shocking stories today—will not also be made on East West Rail? I am afraid that there is very little confidence in the East West Rail Company. It is important that my communities are listened to, that we deliver this infrastructure faster and at lower cost, and that people who are impacted are properly compensated.
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Violence against Women and Girls
On Friday, my private Member’s Bill is due for Second Reading. It calls for the Government to publish a strategy to tackle interpersonal abuse and violence against men and boys. The strategy would ensure that male survivors of crimes considered to be violence against women and girls, such as rape, sexual assault, domestic abuse, forced marriage and honour-based violence, are given dedicated support, and also prevent male survivors from having to be in spaces that should be for women. Currently, male survivors are to be included in the strategy for women and girls, due to be published this summer. Can the Minister reassure me, and male survivors in desperate need of support, that the Government will introduce a dedicated strategy for men and boys, and if they will not, why not?
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Crime and Policing Bill
My right hon. Friend and I had a discussion about this earlier. On the subject of illegal e-bikes, does he agree that we need to clamp down on the illegal conversion kits that are readily accessible online which allow an ordinary bicycle to be converted to do anything up to 30 or 40 mph? I tabled a written question about that, and the Government said that it was for the Office for Product Safety and Standards and local authority trading standards to enforce that, but could the Government do more to crack down on it?
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Crime and Policing Bill
I wish to speak about new clauses 84 to 86 and return once again to policing and police funding. In new clause 86 on neighbourhood policing, the Liberal Democrats seek to address the Government’s recently announced neighbourhood policing plan. The plan pledges to recruit an additional 13,000 police officers—a figure that still simply does not stack up. I spoke last week in Westminster Hall about the discrepancies in the Government’s pledge, the lack of clarity around the baseline figure against which progress will be measured, the fuzziness around how the 3,000 officers transferred from other roles will be determined or implemented, and the fact that the 2,611 officers overcounted as being in neighbourhood roles by 29 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales means that the 3,000 officers the Government have announced this year is all but net neutral in terms of additional warranted police officers—it is an in-year increase of just 389 officers once the adjustment is taken into account.
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Crime and Policing Bill
At no point did I say that I was against minimum levels of neighbourhood policing. I merely pointed out that the Liberal Democrats’ new clause is simply not good enough in articulating that point. This is where I would encourage the Liberal Democrats to put pressure on the Policing Minister to change the police allocation formula.
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Political Prisoners
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I commend the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) for securing the debate and for defending so courageously Jimmy Lai. He is not merely her constituent; he is one of us. He is a British citizen, and as such he deserves the full protection, advocacy and diplomatic support that the United Kingdom extends to all its nationals under threat abroad. I thank all the hon. Members who have spoken up today for Jimmy and other political prisoners who are unlawfully detained. His Majesty’s Opposition will always support the Government in all their efforts to free British citizens who are locked up unlawfully in parts of the world where regimes carry out such atrocities. Mr Lai, of course, is currently imprisoned in Hong Kong under Beijing’s draconian and unaccountable national security law, which has criminalised dissent and dismantled every safeguard that once distinguished Hong Kong from the Chinese mainland. Jimmy Lai is being persecuted for the crime of believing in democracy, for founding Apple Daily, one of Hong Kong’s most popular pro-democracy newspapers, and for calling out the encroachment of the Chinese Communist party into the life of the city that once, under the British Crown, enjoyed liberty, autonomy and the rule of law. He has done all that at the age of 77, despite his serious health conditions. Beijing has trampled on the promises made in the Sino-British joint declaration, a treaty lodged at the United Nations and signed in good faith. That agreement guaranteed Hong Kong’s freedom, rule of law and way of life, but today those guarantees lie in tatters and people such as Jimmy are paying the price. Despite the cruelty inflicted upon him, Jimmy Lai’s spirit remains unbroken. His quiet defiance calls to mind the courage of dissidents during the final years of the cold war—acts of resistance that were welcomed and celebrated by leaders across the democratic world, not least by our own former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. The same unwavering belief in liberty should, I believe, stir the conscience of every free nation today, just as it did then, and shame us into action. The British Government have said that Jimmy Lai’s case is a “priority”. I welcome that, but I must ask the Minister what the Government mean by that in practice. What do they consider success in Jimmy Lai’s case—his release, or simply raising the issue diplomatically? Surely, rather being seen as simply a complex consular case, it needs to be seen as one with serious geopolitical ramifications. From where I stand, the message coming from Downing Street is worryingly vague. It appears—I say this with regret—that the defence of human rights is being quietly traded for economic expediency. What is worse is that what is happening to Jimmy Lai is not an isolated injustice; it is part of a wider campaign by Beijing to silence criticism, intimidate the diaspora and exert extraterritorial pressure on sovereign nations, including our own. Will the Minister call on the Prime Minister to meet the Lai family, listen to their story and understand what is at stake? We are concerned that Jimmy’s health is deteriorating and, as every day passes, we lose time. If the Government are not prepared to stand by Jimmy Lai—I hope that the Minister will confirm today that they are—then the United Kingdom simply looks weak. We must be prepared to defend our British citizens, our values and our international obligations—or we look away and, by our silence, give permission to authoritarian regimes to target our people, suppress the truth and redefine the rules of the international order. The world is watching, and so is Jimmy Lai in his cell in Hong Kong—imprisoned not because he committed a crime, but because he dared to be free.
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Crime and Policing Bill
On neighbourhood policing, I welcome the fact that we have some extra capacity coming into the west midlands, but I have not yet had clarification on whether the money that is coming to the west midlands will cover all the extra national insurance costs. The Labour police and crime commissioner is already saying that his budgets are underfunded under the Labour Government.
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Crime and Policing Bill
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for setting out those policing numbers. Does he share my concern about the additional police officers we are getting? When I look at our figures for the west midlands, the boost is coming from deployments. I worry about where they are actually coming from and just how much of an increase we are really going to see.
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Crime and Policing Bill
According to Keep Britain Tidy, littering and fly-tipping cost the country £1 million a year.[Official Report, 17 June 2025; Vol. 769, c. 206-207.] Does my hon. Friend agree that that is money that could go to frontline services, so it is about time we took more stringent measures to change behaviour, along with some good enforcement?
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Crime and Policing Bill
As we have heard, the Bill is broad in scope. Before I turn to the couple of amendments that I support, I want to recognise that the Bill’s scope is evidenced by the breadth and number of amendments and new clauses. It is worth gently reminding ourselves that a number of the measures were carried over from the Criminal Justice Bill, which sadly fell due to the general election almost a year ago, though there are obviously new clauses and amendments. I hope the Minister is in listening mode, in change mode and is willing to work across the House, and I hope that she accepts some of these amendments, because they would go a long way to further improving this legislation. I have read through the Bill, and much of it goes right to the heart of the communities we seek to serve and represent. There are topics in the Bill that regularly pop up in my inbox and I am sure into colleagues’ inboxes as well. I want to cover two specific areas. The first is fly-tipping and littering—an issue that I have spoken about on many occasions in this Chamber since I was first elected. I support the amendments and new clauses tabled by the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers). In an intervention earlier, I touched on the cost of littering to the country. I think I said that it was £1 million, but I meant £1 billion; I hope that can be firmly corrected, because it is a big difference.[Official Report, 17 June 2025; Vol. 769, c. 189.] (Correction) The principle is the same—it is money that could go back into our communities—but £1 billion spent on managing littering and fly-tipping is a huge amount of money that could otherwise buy a huge amount of services for constituencies up and down the country.
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Crime and Policing Bill
The hon. Lady makes an important point. There is a social and community cost that is difficult to evaluate. I am fortunate to have some fantastic volunteers and groups, including the Wombles group, that go out and litter pick. I do not mind going out and helping when I can. There is a great sense of a community coming together, but nothing is more frustrating than litter picking a street, walking back and finding that one of the tossers has just tossed some more litter out of their car.
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Crime and Policing Bill
That is an important point about pride in where we live and about hope. As I travel around the country, I often take a mental note of the number of potholes I drive across; there is a noticeable difference from one authority to another. I have to say that Walsall is quite good at the moment when it comes to filling potholes. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about litter and communities. My local authority of late has been successfully prosecuting some litterbugs. I have seen a couple of examples on social media just this week of individuals who have been treating the high street in Pelsall as their own personal litter bin, and the local authority has gone after them and fined them. That sends a strong message, but there is more we can do. Although much of this is about clearing up after these people, we also need deterrence to stop this happening. A lot of it is down to a lack of respect for the community and antisocial behaviour, for want of a better word, and it is a burden that we should not expect the taxpayer to keep shouldering. We have reached something of a tipping point, and we need to do something more than letting people walk away with a slap on the wrist. Whether it is bin strikes, as we have seen in Birmingham, rural fly-tipping or littering, a lot of our communities feel absolutely fed up and overwhelmed, and they want action. I support the amendments tabled by the shadow Minister because, taken together, they form a serious and joined-up response that would help to protect and support not only our communities and those who want to keep them clean, but the local environment and wildlife too. Similarly, it is often local farmers who face the burden of fly-tipping. When fly-tipping happens on their land, the cost of removing it falls to them. It hardly seems fair that they are left to foot the bill for waste that they did not create. Amendment 172, on clean-up costs, seeks to address that. I have heard time and again from frustrated landowners and farmers that the system often punishes the victims of fly-tipping, not the perpetrators.
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Crime and Policing Bill
The hon. Lady makes another important point about tackling waste crime—I think that is the technical phrase for it. Again, that is something that I see locally. Enforcement matters, but there also has to be strong reminder—I hate to use the word “education”, so perhaps “reminder” is best—to our constituents: if somebody comes to you and says they will clear your rubbish away, your need to think carefully about where they are putting that rubbish. In my constituency, fridges and mattresses have been dumped. I was driving down Bridle Lane last year and saw a whole lorry or van-load of rubbish that had been fly-tipped in the middle of the road. That meant that the road had to be blocked. That is outrageous and it needs to stop.
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Crime and Policing Bill
On that point, will my right hon. Friend give way?
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Crime and Policing Bill
My hon. Friend is making an expert and well-informed speech, and I shall be supporting her amendment. On the point about the risks involved with abortion to birth, what does she think about jurisdictions such as New Zealand and the State of Victoria in Australia that have decriminalised abortion and seen a significant increase in failed late-term abortions—where a baby is born and there has been a lot of physical harm and risk as a result?
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Crime and Policing Bill
I am delighted to tell my hon. Friend that I, too, will be supporting her amendment. There has been a lot of talk in this place in recent weeks about coercion—in a different Bill and in a different context. The kind of coercion that she describes is a reality. It is all fine and well to have a fanciful middle-class view of the world, but as I said in respect of a different Bill, there are many wicked people doing many wicked things. The kind of coercion that she describes is the truth; it is the reality.
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Crime and Policing Bill
I am trying to reconcile the two things that the hon. Lady has said. She talked about the significance of the 1967 Act. When Lord Steel—David Steel as he was then—spoke on its Second Reading, he said that it was not his aim “to leave a wide open door for abortion on request”,—[Official Report, 22 July 1966; Vol. 732, c. 1075.] yet she has said that it is a human right and so people should have the right to an abortion. How does she reconcile her advocacy of what she described as the “settled will” of the 1967 Act—not having abortion on request—with the right to have an abortion on request?
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Crime and Policing Bill
There is a calumny at the heart of this, which is that these new clauses are compatible with the ’67 Act. When breaching an Act of this Parliament ceases to be unlawful, it loses its force and therefore its purpose, and that calumny cannot be allowed to stand on the record.
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Topical Questions
I am grateful for the consideration the Secretary of State has already given to finding a fairer and more effective way of compensating those injured by a covid vaccination, but he knows that those who are profoundly affected by such injuries are anxious for news. Can he give me, and indeed them, a progress report?
- Hansard source
Crime and Policing Bill
My concerns about these amendments were such that I and others commissioned a leading King’s Counsel to draft a legal opinion regarding their effects. Let me inform Members of his conclusions. I begin with new clause 1. The KC confirms that, under new clause 1, in practice, “it would no longer be illegal for a woman to carry out her own abortion at home, for any reason, at any gestation, up to birth.” I note that the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) acknowledges in her explanatory statement to new clause 1 that her amendment applies “at any gestation”—that is, up to full term. Let us be clear what this means. Under new clause 1, women would be able to perform their own abortions—for example, with abortion pills, which can now be obtained without an in-person gestational age check—up to birth, with no legal deterrent.