PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Topical Questions - 23 March 2026 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

I want to address the terrible scenes in Golders Green last night, where four Jewish community ambulances were set on fire. Mercifully, no one was hurt. For that, we owe our thanks to the police and fire services, which responded with speed and professionalism. An investigation is under way. The Metropolitan police are treating this as an antisemitic hate crime, and have stepped up their support to Jewish communities across London. The fact that the attack was directed at Hatzola, a community ambulance service and an institution devoted to saving lives, illustrates how warped those behind the attack are.

I am pleased that the Health Secretary is providing replacement ambulances, but clearly justice is required. There have, as yet, been no arrests, but the perpetrators must be in no doubt: we will pursue them and make them face the consequences of this wicked crime. I urge anyone with information to contact the police, who have the full support of my Department. The incident comes at a time of soaring antisemitism in our country, and today my message to our Jewish community is clear: we stand with you, we will do everything in our power to protect you, and we will fight relentlessly to rid our society of antisemitism.

I congratulate Maya’s law campaigners, particularly Maya’s great-aunts Gemma and Rachael, on their passion and tenacity in lobbying MPs to support their campaign to improve child protection laws in the UK. Does the Minister agree with me that it is unforgiveable for someone who is supposed to look after a child to hurt them instead? Will the Minister ensure that the debate that my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist) has secured on Maya’s law receives the full support of the Government?

Order. This is topical questions.

The circumstances outlined by my hon. Friend are obviously horrifying. It is abhorrent for anyone entrusted with the care of a child to cause harm to them. I assure her that the Government will absolutely engage fully and constructively with the debate that she mentions.

I call the shadow Home Secretary.

I have come to the House directly from Golders Green, where I have visited the scene of the appalling attack on the Hatzola ambulance service. I strongly urge the Home Secretary to visit as well. I thank the police, fire service and Hatzola volunteers for their response in the early hours of this morning. The members of the Jewish community who I spoke to this morning in Golders Green feel under attack, so what more can the Home Secretary say about the Government’s plans to protect the Jewish community, including potentially by using counter-terrorism-style surveillance powers to identify and disrupt antisemitic attacks before they occur? Does the Home Secretary agree that calls on our streets at marches for jihad and intifada are calls for violence that fuel antisemitism, and does she agree that they should no longer be allowed? Finally, will she ensure that all antisemites and extremists who are not British citizens get deported?

I assure the shadow Home Secretary and, most importantly, the whole of the British Jewish community—not just those in Golders Green—that this Government take the rise in antisemitism that we have seen across our country very seriously. We are approaching this issue with a whole-of-Government response. My colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Education and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government are all taking forward the Government’s social cohesion action plan and taking specific measures to tackle antisemitic hate crime. There must be zero tolerance of antisemitism; I know that across this House, there is unanimity on that, from all Members. The shadow Home Secretary knows that we have an independent review on public order and hate crime legislation. We will bring forward more proposals in due course, but we will never tolerate antisemitism in our country.

I will pursue these questions with the Security Minister, when he gives his statement later.

Media reports suggest that the Home Secretary is under pressure from the former Deputy Prime Minister on her indefinite leave to remain policy, so will the Home Secretary tell the House who is running the Government’s immigration policy now? Is it her, or is it the former Deputy Prime Minister? Will the Home Secretary confirm to the House now—

Order. I say to Members on both Front Benches that these are topical questions, and Members from all parties are waiting to ask them. I gave the shadow Home Secretary a lot of leeway during his first question; he has already asked one, and is coming in with another. That is not acceptable to any of the Back-Bench Members who I am trying to look after. Please ask one question during topicals. There will be a statement shortly on the subject that he asked about. It is a very important issue, and I am very concerned about it, but I have to allow Back Benchers time to ask their questions. It is unfair of Members on the Front Benches to take up that time.

I have almost forgotten the shadow Home Secretary’s question, but the assertion he just made is absolute rubbish. He knows that the Government have already said that we will consult on the changes that we wish to make, and I will bring forward those proposals in due course.

My hon. Friend is right to raise this matter, because misinformation and disinformation seek to undermine our institutions and divide our communities. The defending democracy taskforce is addressing these threats through a whole-of-society approach, and we are also working closely with partners to hold platforms accountable for harmful content under the Online Safety Act 2023.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

The agreement to fund French police activities to prevent small boats from leaving the French coast is about to run out. That risks the resumption of higher numbers of small boat crossings, which place lives at risk and undermine efforts to bring control to the asylum system in this country. Many in the Home Secretary’s own party are crying out for the Government to speed up reintegration with the EU, and public opinion on the failures of Brexit is now clear. Will she go to Cabinet colleagues and advise them that it would be easier to fix the asylum system if we had a much closer relationship with Europe?

The hon. Gentleman knows that we work very closely with our European counterparts, especially France, our nearest neighbour. He mentions the important work that we do together, which has prevented 40,000 crossings since we took office; we want that work to continue. We are having those conversations with France at the moment, and I do not think he would expect me to negotiate from the Dispatch Box.

Without wanting to step in on the operational independence of my hon. Friend’s local police force, I am very happy to have a meeting with him to talk about this issue. I take a keen interest in custody suites, and with arrests up by 5% under this Labour Government in the last year, we need to ensure that we are running them properly.

I think Boris Johnson closed a lot more front counters than Sadiq Khan has, but that is a different issue. We are putting more funding into frontline policing. We want police on our streets and in our neighbourhoods—not behind desks, as they were under the previous Government—and that is where the public want to see them.

As well as increasing the number of police officers on our streets and in our neighbourhoods, we are introducing respect orders to tackle antisocial behaviour. We are seeing shop theft charges going up in our town centres, and we are taking a targeted approach in policing, so that we really tackle our town centres. We take antisocial behaviour very seriously. We will continue to ensure that we make our streets safer—and they are becoming safer. They will be even safer when we have 13,000 additional officers on our streets.

We are ensuring that each police force has the additional funding that it needs, and we are rolling out our target of 13,000 additional police officers. The hon. Gentleman asks an interesting question about new towns and ensuring that we have policing in them. We are reviewing the police funding formula, which is outdated, as everyone in this place knows. Through all those things together, we will ensure that his community is supported.

I welcome the Home Secretary’s commitment to community sponsorship of refugees who come here under proposed new safe and legal routes; we have several good examples of that in my constituency. What steps is she taking, in line with the recent asylum policy statement, to allow more communities like mine to sponsor refugees and support the Government’s safe and legal routes programme?

My hon. and learned Friend knows that we have announced three specific types of safe and legal route for students and workers, as well as a community sponsorship scheme. The student scheme will go live later this year, with the first applicants arriving in the autumn of next year. We are designing the community sponsorship route with community organisations and international partners. I am sure that he will want to make representations on what his community wants to contribute to the new routes, but the design is under way, and the routes will be rolled out in due course.

As the hon. Gentleman knows, these are matters that we take very seriously and are addressing through the work of the defending democracy taskforce.

I am currently supporting a constituent who, after leaving her abuser, was locked out of her home, left with thousands of pounds of arrears that had been run up in her name, and denied access to her own bank account. Does the Minister agree that post-separation abuse is too often overlooked and still not recognised widely enough? What steps is she taking to better protect victims?

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The violence against women and girls strategy will focus on the specific issue of ensuring that services such as the police get it right about post-separation coercive and controlling behaviour.

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Rural waste crime is completely unacceptable; it is often driven by larger, serious organised criminal gangs, and we are determined to bear down on it.

The Home Secretary has been commendably robust in her response to antisemitism and attacks on Jewish institutions, particularly since the two members of the congregation at Heaton Park synagogue were killed. After that attack, the Macdonald inquiry was set up to look into hate crime and public order. I think this afternoon is the first time that we have heard that that inquiry is not going to report until May, when it was promised for February this year. Can the Home Secretary speed it up, please?

It is an independent review. I am in constant discussion with Lord Macdonald, who has requested a short extension in order to deal with the matters comprehensively. It is right that the independent review has the time it needs, but it will be brought forward very soon.

I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that England and Wales policing, which I am responsible for, will get the support it needs and bear down on criminals in exactly the way it should.

I regularly meet lead stakeholders in my constituency who work passionately to keep children safe and reduce knife crime. What work are the Government doing with grassroots organisations to support them in their work to prevent knife crime?

This Government fund violence reduction units. Where we do not have them, our police and crime commissioners make sure that we are funding a raft of organisations that know what is happening on the ground, what the right interventions are, and how we can drag children out of crime and into making better choices. I see that in my constituency, and I know my hon. Friend sees it in hers. As she knows, those community leaders are the bedrock, and we must support them as much as we can.

I am, and will always be, a very proud British Muslim.

I commend Northumbria police for overseeing a huge and safe policing operation at the Newcastle-Sunderland match over the weekend, one of the many matches successfully policed every season. However, given that those officers are taken from normal day jobs in response teams, neighbourhood policing and so forth, does the Minister agree that it is time to think about the Premier League contributing more than the 20% it currently contributes to those costs, so that we can put that money back into policing?

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.

Small boat returns run at around 6% of the total numbers arriving in this country, but the Home Secretary denies that this is anything to do with the European Convention on Human Rights. If not the ECHR, which part of the Government’s flawed policy is responsible for that feeble rate?

The hon. Gentleman will have heard me say that under this Government, removals have now reached 60,000. That is up by 31% on our predecessors, so I cannot accept the argument that we are not removing people at pace and at scale. The routes by which people come generally depend on which country they come from and how likely they are to have their claim accepted.

My constituent was just 13 months old when she came to this country. As a teenager, she was taken into care. She was then groomed and exploited in county lines and is now serving time in prison. Why are this Government deporting her, when she has only known this country? Will they instead look at giving her proper rehabilitation and getting her life back on track?

The Secretary of State has a strict legal liability to remove anybody who gets a sentence of a year or more and, from today, anyone who gets a suspended sentence of a year or more. Nevertheless, my hon. Friend has raised an important case. If she sends the details, I will look at it closely.

If the right hon. Gentleman checks the record, he will see that I answer an awful lot of questions from colleagues on a daily basis. I seek to give the fullest available information, so that we can have the best and most based in fact debate on what is a very contentious issue. I will have to look more closely at the element he raises, but he will know from his time in government that cost and person time are factors in what we can and cannot pull together to release.

In the past few weeks, the Home Secretary has announced a whole swathe of new restrictive asylum and immigration policies which, as we know from over the weekend, are at best contentious. When will we have a vote on them?

The hon. Gentleman secured and hosted a good debate on this subject only last week. It was well subscribed, and we had a very good conversation. As he is well experienced in this place, he will know that when we need primary legislation, there will be primary legislation. When we need secondary legislation, there will be secondary legislation. If things are a matter for policy, they will be a matter for policy.