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Tag: 2020

  • Keir Starmer – 2020 Letter to Every Gurdwara in the Country

    Keir Starmer – 2020 Letter to Every Gurdwara in the Country

    The letter sent by Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Opposition, on 30 November 2020.

    Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh.

    I would like to send my heartfelt best wishes to all Sikhs throughout the UK and across the world, as you celebrate the 551st birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of the Sikh faith.

    I want to use this opportunity to extend my gratitude for the huge contribution the Sikh community has made during the pandemic. Gurdwaras and Sikh organisations have looked after their local communities and those most vulnerable in our society. Even when Gurdwaras were closed for worship, volunteers went in to prepare langar and thereafter delivered free warm meals for people in the community. Sikhs have also been on the frontline as key workers, who have been the backbone of our nation.

    We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Sikh community in exemplifying the core teachings of Guru Nanak. The seva (selfless service) of Sikhs during the pandemic is a shining example of their community spirit. Guru Nanak championed oneness of humanity and I have seen these founding values embodied by British Sikhs.

    I appreciate that due to Covid-19 restrictions, Gurpurab celebrations will not be the same. I know how incredibly difficult and upsetting this will be for families and communities, who won’t be able to come together as they normally would. However, Guru Nanak’s teachings of selfless service and perseverance will continue to be an inspiration to us all.

    On behalf of everyone at the Labour Party, I would like to wish you and your families a very happy Gurpurab.

    Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa,

    Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh.

  • Daniel Zeichner – 2020 Comments on Agricultural Payments After Brexit

    Daniel Zeichner – 2020 Comments on Agricultural Payments After Brexit

    The comments made by Daniel Zeichner, the Shadow Farming Minister, on 30 November 2020.

    If the government mishandles the transition away from existing payment schemes, it risks pushing family farms over the edge.

    And risk is even greater if the Tories push ahead with a series of race-to-the-bottom trade deals that allow cheap food produced to lower standards to be imported into our shops and high street takeaways.

    Where public money is supporting farmers it should rightly promote good environmental practice. But if the government can’t put the new systems in place in time, farmers’ livelihoods won’t survive.

  • Wes Streeting – 2020 Comments on National Tutoring Programme

    Wes Streeting – 2020 Comments on National Tutoring Programme

    The comments made by Wes Streeting, the Shadow Schools Minister, on 30 November 2020.

    Yet again this government is failing to deliver on its promises which will exacerbate an attainment gap that was widening even before the pandemic. Urgent investment is needed in catch-up learning, alongside support to keep schools open and ensure children self-isolating have access to laptops to enable them learn remotely.

    The Conservatives’ approach is holding children’s education back and without urgent action children’s learning will be permanently damaged by this pandemic.

  • George Eustice – 2020 Comments Giving Clarification on Definition of a Substantial Meal

    George Eustice – 2020 Comments Giving Clarification on Definition of a Substantial Meal

    The comments made by George Eustice (GE), the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with Nick Ferrari (NF) on LBC Radio on 30 November 2020.

    NF – If you’re in Tier 2, you can only serve alcohol with a substantial meal. What constitutes as a substantial meal, a Scotch Egg?

    GE – I think this is a term that is understood very much by the restaurant trade.

    NF – I’ve had a number of restaurateurs who have genuinely asked for guidance. Would a Scotch Egg count as a substantial meal?

    GE – I think that a Scotch Egg would probably count as a substantial meal if there was table service, often that might be as a starter. This is a term that is understood within licensing since you can have the concept of a table licence for alcohol which also requires you to serve a substantial meal.

  • George Eustice – 2020 Speech to the Oxford Farming Conference

    George Eustice – 2020 Speech to the Oxford Farming Conference

    The speech made by George Eustice, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, on 30 November 2020.

    It is a real privilege to be here today to launch our Agricultural Transition Plan.

    I’d like to begin by thanking the Oxford Farming Conference for hosting this event. Of course, we all look forward to the time to when we will have turned the corner of this pandemic and can return to meeting again properly, but for now let me start by taking this opportunity to thank all those of you who working in our food supply chain to keep the nation fed. The response of the sector has been phenomenal and has been a timely reminder of the critical importance of domestic food production to our food security as a nation.

    My family have farmed in West Cornwall for six generations. The names of fields were passed from one generation to the next. Like all farmers, we knew our land and so I understand the responsibility that farmers feel to the hard work of previous generations and also their commitment to the future.

    So as we contemplate the biggest change in agricultural policy in half a century, we need to design a policy that is not only right for those who are the custodians of our countryside today but which is also right for those who follow in their footsteps tomorrow. Those who we’ve yet to meet. Those perhaps who yearn to go into farming but cannot currently get access to land; the farm managers who want to set out on their own; maybe those who left the family farm twenty years ago but wish they could find a way to return.

    So, today we are publishing further details of our approach to changing the way we reward and incentivise farmers.

    We will remove the arbitrary area-based subsidies on land ownership or tenure and replace them with new payments and new incentives to reward farmers for farming more sustainably, creating space for nature on their land, enhancing animal welfare and delivering, of course, the other objectives set out in the Agriculture Act 2020.

    We will remove the old style, top down rules and draconian penalties of the EU era starting with important changes next year that will substantially reduce guidance that farmers need to follow.

    This of course is a moment of great change, where, for the first time in fifty years, we have a chance to do things differently. So, we should not waste that opportunity. We should think through from first principles what a coherent policy actually looks like, and then chart an orderly course towards it.

    There is no doubt that the intensification of agriculture since the 1960s has taken its toll on wildlife and on nature. So, to address this, we need to rediscover some of the agronomic techniques that my Great Grandfather might have deployed, but then fuse these with the best precision technology and the best plant science available to us today.

    The centre piece of our future policy will be made up of three component parts.

    Firstly, the Sustainable Farming Incentive will pay farmers who are in receipt of BPS for actions that they take to manage their land in an environmentally sustainable way.

    Secondly, the Local Nature Recovery will pay for actions that support local nature recovery and deliver local environmental priorities. This scheme will also encourage collaboration, helping farmers work together to improve their local environment.

    Finally, Landscape Recovery will support the delivery of landscape and ecosystem recovery through long-term, land use change projects. They will help us to meet our targets; to plant 30,000 hectares of new woodland each year by 2025, to create and restore some of our peatlands, to protect 30% of land by 2030, to reach net zero by 2050.

    We know that this marks a significant change and I’m also very conscious of the fact that for many farm enterprises, they are dependent on the area subsidy payments to generate a profit. And that without it some might assume they would not be profitable, but that is why we have created a seven-year transition period. We want this to be an evolution, not an overnight revolution. That means making year-on-year progressive reductions to the legacy direct payment scheme, while simultaneously making year-on-year increases to the money available to support the replacement.

    Between 2021 and 2024, we will help farmers prepare to take part in our Environmental Land Management offer.

    This will include expanding the Countryside Stewardship scheme and opening a new Sustainable Farming Incentive, which will be open to every farmer from 2022 onwards.

    We will also continue to develop pilots for Environmental Land Management.

    We will also increase the amount of funding available for environmental and animal welfare improvements in each year of the early transition, using funding released from Direct Payments as we move towards the roll out of the three components under Environmental Land Management, which will then take effect in full from 2024.

    We recognise that there is a problem with poor profitability in agriculture, but the premise behind our new policy is to tackle the causes of that poor profitability, rather than masking it with a subsidy payment.

    So our new financial incentives for sustainable farming and nature recovery will be set at a rate to incentivise widespread participation and will give consideration to natural capital principles so that in some areas we will go beyond the income foregone methodology of the past.

    To support farmers in reducing their costs and improving their profitability, there will be new grants to invest in new equipment to reduce costs.

    There will be exit schemes to help those who want to retire or leave the industry to do so with dignity, and there will be grants to create new opportunities and support for new entrants coming into the industry.

    We will also provide grants for farmer-led Research and Development, and for the use of innovative new techniques led by farmers and growers.

    I would like to say a bit more about what the early part of the transition is going to look like.

    Next year, we will begin to reduce Direct Payments, improve how existing schemes and regulations operate, and offer grants to help farmers invest in environmental and productivity improvements.

    Reductions in Direct Payments will begin at 5% for most farmers.

    Enforcement will be more proportionate – with written communications rather than financial penalties and the approach taken to inspections will be overhauled.

    We will continue our programme of tests and trials and start a new National Pilot for Environmental Land Management.

    And our future agricultural policy will be designed with farmers, for farmers, so that it works in fields and on farms, not just on paper. I know that we haven’t always got it right in the past. I know that administrative processes have caused problems. I want farmers to trust our reforms. And we want to work with you all to get this right.

    In 2022 and 2023, we will reduce spend on Direct Payments by around 15% in each of those years.

    We will start to roll out some of the core elements of the Environmental Land Management. The Sustainable Farming Incentive will support sustainable approaches to farm husbandry that help the environment that might include, promoting integrated pest management, actions to improve soil health or catchment sensitive farming.

    We will make more funding available within the legacy Countryside Stewardship Scheme. We will offer a slurry investment scheme, to help reduce pollution, take us close to net zero and help us leave the environment in a better state than we found it.

    There will be standalone projects to support tree planting, peatland restoration and nature recovery.

    We will be launching a new-industry-led R&D scheme to invest in innovation and to benefit farmers.

    We will also, as I said, offer an exit support scheme – to help farmers who want to retire to do so with dignity and to help new entrants into the industry. We will be consulting further on these scheme designs in the new year.

    We will begin rolling out of the full three components of our Environmental Land Management in late 2024. By the end of 2024, the legacy Basic Payment Scheme probably will have been reduced by about 50%.

    We then intend to delink Direct Payments, and the bureaucracy of the cross-compliance regime will be a thing of the past.

    By 2027, we want to see a reformed agriculture sector. We want farmers to manage their whole business in a way that delivers profitable food production and the recovery of nature, combining the best modern technology with the rediscovery of the traditional art of good farm husbandry.

    We want farmers to be able to access public money to help them tackle climate change and support the environment and animal welfare on the land they manage and to help their businesses become more productive and sustainable.

    We want to support confidence in UK food internationally, prevent environmental harm and protect biosecurity and animal welfare.

    In conclusion, rather than the prescriptive, top down rules of the EU era, we want to support the choices that farmers and land managers take on their holdings, and we will work with them to refine and develop the schemes we bring forward. If we all work together to get this right, then I believe a decade from now the rest of the world will be coming here to see how it’s done.

  • Alister Jack – 2020 Comments on St. Andrew’s Day

    Alister Jack – 2020 Comments on St. Andrew’s Day

    The speech made by Alister Jack, the Secretary of State for Scotland, on 30 November 2020.

    St Andrew’s Day is a chance for us to celebrate all that is great about Scotland, and Scots, and to reflect on what it means to be Scottish.

    In 2020, St Andrew’s Day will feel very different.

    We are living through a global pandemic. Our lives are almost unrecognisable from a year ago.

    But I believe that, this year more than ever, we should take the time to mark just how much we have collectively achieved.

    Over the past few months, we have risen to the challenge of the, frankly terrifying, virus. We have, and are, all doing our bit to defeat it. We have made huge personal sacrifices because we know it will save lives and protect our precious NHS.

    Our frontline workers – from health care staff to supermarket workers, teachers and everyone in between – have been nothing short of heroic. Looking after the ill, supporting the vulnerable, and keeping the country going. You are an inspiration to us all.

    So many others have also done their bit. From picking up shopping and prescriptions, to organising spirit-lifting video chats and amazing charity fundraisers – individuals up and down the land have gone out of their way to look after friends, relatives and neighbours, and also strangers in need.

    We have much to be proud of. In 2020, it seems to me, being Scottish is about fortitude and kindness. And also optimism. With new vaccines on the way we are starting to see some light at the end of the covid tunnel.

    So, this St Andrew’s Day, I ask you to join me in thanking everyone who has done their bit to help us all get through 2020 so far. I have never felt more proud to be Scottish.

  • Boris Johnson – 2020 Comments on Medicine Fund

    Boris Johnson – 2020 Comments on Medicine Fund

    The comments made by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, on 30 November 2020.

    This new £20m fund will significantly increase the capacity and resilience of our medicines and diagnostics manufacturing supply chains and equip us to fight future health crises.

    Throughout the pandemic we have seen a coming together of British scientific industry and innovation and this new fund will enhance the UK’s manufacturing capabilities even further.

  • Greg Smith – 2020 Speech on Mental Health Support for Police Officers

    Greg Smith – 2020 Speech on Mental Health Support for Police Officers

    The speech made by Greg Smith, the Conservative MP for Buckingham, in the House of Commons on 25 November 2020.

    Policing and supporting our police officers are both enormously important to me. I have worked with police officers throughout my political career, especially during my 12 years in local government, and every single police officer who serves has my absolute and total respect and thanks for all that they do to keep us safe, often putting themselves in dangerous situations to do so.

    I also speak as someone who grew up with policing. My father served for 31 years. As I reflected on the subject of tonight’s debate, it struck me how policing changed so much throughout his career and continues to do so to this day. When he joined the Birmingham City police in 1970, he was issued with the usual tunic and a truncheon and sent out on patrol. By the time he retired from the Metropolitan police in 2001, stab vests had already become the norm and ASPs had replaced truncheons. As I joined officers in Aylesbury Vale a few Fridays ago to see first hand their day-to-day operations, it struck me how it had become necessary for so many to carry a taser.

    The inspiration for this Adjournment debate came from my constituent Sam Smith—for the record, he is not a relative—who came to my surgery with a number of very well researched points about mental health support in policing, which I shall put to the House and my hon. Friend the Minister in the hope that they will be addressed.

    To set the scene, my constituent is an ex-police officer who served for three years on the frontline. Unfortunately he had to leave service a year ago because of struggles with his mental health caused by the trauma experienced in policing. He reports that throughout his short policing career very little support was offered for his mental health and he points to a strong stigma around mental wellbeing in general. It came as a surprise to him when he found out from a survey of nearly 17,000 serving officers and operational staff last autumn—conducted by the University of Cambridge and funded by the charity Police Care UK, and entitled “The Job & The Life”—that 90% of police workers had been exposed to trauma, and almost one in five suffers with a form of post-traumatic stress disorder or complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Those who work in law enforcement are almost five times more likely to develop PTSD than the general UK population.

    To give a flavour of what our police officers face on a daily basis, the British Transport police were in touch with me this week. The nature of BTP’s work means that their officers regularly deal with the most traumatic of incidents. For example, tragically about 300 people take their own lives on the railway each year and British Transport police officers attend and manage all of those incidents. Some 40% of BTP staff are impacted by one of these incidents every year and over 1,000 staff are impacted by two or more.

    Going back to the survey, among the 80% without clinical levels of post-traumatic stress disorder, half reported overall fatigue, anxiety and trouble sleeping. It is concerning that this information is not regularly provided to officers during their initial training, so that they can be aware of the dangers of the job for their mental health. If someone tried to join the police while suffering from PTSD it is unlikely they would be considered medically fit, so it is worrying that we are allowing so many officers to struggle with their mental health and go through trauma while being responsible for the safety of members of the public. Another sad statistic from the Office for National Statistics data is that approximately one officer every two weeks is taking their own life. The true number and risk is hard to quantify, as not all police forces in the UK are separately recording this data.

    After experiencing the inadequate support currently available for officer mental health, my constituent decided to start a campaign for change. Through his experiences he felt that there was a lack of prevention and support for resilience to help avoid mental health issues and he believes that his force at the time concentrated on aftercare, which he informs me is poorly advertised and rarely used. Officers’ experiences are unique to the force they are serving in, so the level of care that officers receive comes down to individual forces. That position is backed up by Gill Scott-Moore, the chief executive of Police Care UK, who said:

    “There is no comprehensive strategy to tackle the issue of mental health in policing, and that has to change.”

    Indeed, there is no Government mandate or minimum standard for forces’ management of trauma exposure or mental health, and no requirement for anything to improve. This has led to a mix of positive and negative experiences for officers struggling with mental health.

    Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)

    I apologise for missing the start of this very important debate. As a former police officer myself, I am aware of this issue and the additional burden that police officers face in supporting people who also have their own mental health challenges. One constituent contacted me to say that they had tried to take their own life but had been stopped by police officers. The officers said that they wished they could do more, but that they were not trained in mental health. Indeed, today Deputy Chief Constable Will Kerr, at a Scottish Police Authority board meeting, said that the

    “level of demand has outstripped capacity”

    and Police Scotland’s

    “professional ability to deal with”

    those with mental health issues. The hon. Gentleman is talking so compassionately about the experience of police officers. Does he agree that we need to make sure that police officers have mental health support to give to other people?

    Greg Smith

    I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I agree with her, particularly on her point about training. I will come on to that later on in my speech.

    My constituent found in his research that, although it is a near costless process, not all forces are recording tragic police suicides separately, so they cannot feed in to the work we must do to prevent those suicides taking place. The research by the charity Police Care UK and the University of Cambridge into police trauma and mental health made headline news in May last year. The research highlights areas in which police officers are not given adequate opportunity to look after their own mental health or that of others. For example, 93% of officers who reported a psychological issue as a result of work said that they would still go to work as usual, and 73% of those with possible or probable PTSD have not been diagnosed and may not even know that they have it. This represents a huge human cost to police officers’ wellbeing, and the implications for performance and public safety do not bear thinking about. With figures like these, I put it to my hon. Friend the Minister that change is required.

    For a long time now, mental health has come second to physical health. The statistics show that mental illness is as dangerous to a police officer’s health as physical injury, and we therefore need to give mental health the same attention that physical health has received for so many years. The College of Policing is working on creating a national curriculum for police safety training. This is the training that focuses on the physical side of policing. Police safety training was reviewed after the tragic death of PC Harper last year, and it was unanimously agreed by all chief constables that the training should be consistent across forces, as there were major discrepancies in the quality of training across the board. I put it to the House that mental health and trauma resilience should feature as a key component to that officer safety training.

    By creating a new, pragmatic, national approach, the Home Office could guarantee that every force would meet the agreed and expected standard to best protect our officers. Initiatives such as the national wellbeing service are very welcome. However, Police Care UK’s research with the University of Cambridge illustrates that there is an over-reliance on generic NHS services. As long as police officers and staff are on NHS waiting lists, the existing national approach can hope to have only limited success. Challenges such as these have already been recognised by the NHS, which has set up its own specialist service to support the mental health of its doctors through practitioner health programmes. There needs to be an equivalent for our police.

    My constituent’s campaign therefore proposes that the same is needed for mental health in the police force, and that a 360° approach to mental health needs to be adopted. This would include prevention through education, maintained resiliency and aftercare, so that no matter what stage someone was at in their policing career, they would be better protected from the overwhelmingly high chances of being a victim. In particular, mental health prevention and education on officers’ personal welfare are widely missed, and training currently focuses only on dealing with mental health in the community. The fully encompassing approach should also increase awareness of the existing aftercare support that is currently being underused.

    This consistent and fair approach would also help to break the long-standing stigma around mental health in policing. The benefits of this would go far beyond protecting those who serve; it would mean that police officers were able to carry out their duty more safely and be at less risk from finding themselves in situations where they were being investigated, for example, for misconduct. It would reduce long-term sickness and better retain experienced police officers who would otherwise have their careers cut short. While this is not about money, the long-term financial savings would outweigh the short-term spending required to implement the new approach.

    The fear is that, without Government intervention and guidance, the 43 individual forces will continue to go off in different directions, and someone’s mental wellbeing should not be put down to the luck of which police force they are located in. We are showing a lack of equality not only in the way we view mental health but across the wider policing family. The police covenant offers the perfect opportunity for my hon. Friend the Minister to listen to these concerns and to instigate simple, specific and vital changes to managing police mental health across the UK, such as monitoring PTSD prevalence and suicide rates. Providing the police with a full support network for both physical and mental health is the very least we can do.

    It is clear that no force would send an officer to a stabbing without a stab-proof vest, so why do we as a country continue to send them into repeated trauma without the knowledge of how to safely manage their own mental health? Unlike physical health, mental health is too often invisible, but it is there and we cannot ignore it. Mental illness affects not just the person suffering; it can destroy entire families and cause great heartache for years to come. The question for my hon. Friend is this: will she support and help implement a change nationally to provide equal standards of mental health welfare, training, support and access to therapy for every officer that serves for Queen and country no matter what force they are in?

    Crucially, any initiatives introduced need to make provision for addressing the backlog of cases that need support. Police Care UK has seen a fivefold increase in demand for therapy over the past 12 months alone. Will my hon. Friend the Minister back this campaign? Will she make it mandatory that all police forces in the United Kingdom show consistency and record those PTSD prevalence rates and those sad tragic suicides? As Dr Jessica Miller of the University of Cambridge says:

    “A stiff upper lip attitude will not work in contemporary policing. Without decent interventions and monitoring for trauma impact and a national conversation involving the Home Office and the Department of Health, the alarming levels of PTSD our study has uncovered will stay the same.”

    Every single day, police officers across the country face risks—dangerous risks—defending our communities. I was proud to stand on a manifesto that committed to backing our police by equipping officers with the powers and tools that they need to protect us, including Tasers and body cameras. It is now time that we increased steps to look after their mental health, too.

  • Nadine Dorries – 2020 Statement on the Elizabeth Dixon Investigation Report

    Nadine Dorries – 2020 Statement on the Elizabeth Dixon Investigation Report

    The statement made by Nadine Dorries, the Minister for Patient Safety, Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, in the House of Commons on 26 November 2020.

    Today we have published the report into the events surrounding the death of Elizabeth Dixon—a baby who sadly died in December 2001 from asphyxiation resulting from a blocked tracheostomy tube and while under the care of a private nursing agency.

    I offer my heart-felt condolences to Elizabeth’s family, to Anne and Graeme Dixon for their loss, compounded by the length of time—the passage of 20 years—before the facts of this case have been brought to light.

    The investigation led by Dr Bill Kirkup was tasked with reviewing the care given to Elizabeth Dixon between her birth on 14 December 2000 and her death on 4 December 2001—and the response of the health system to a catalogue of errors and serious failings in that care.

    This report describes a harrowing and shocking series of mistakes associated with the care received by Elizabeth and a response to her death that was completely inadequate and at times inhumane. Elizabeth and her family were let down by a failure to diagnose or respond to her underlying condition, to put in place the care she required, to acknowledge the circumstances of her death or provide her parents with an honest account of these failings.

    The investigation sheds light on what the report describes as a “20 year cover up”. It alleges that some individuals have been persistently dishonest in accounting for their actions or inaction.

    Underlying all of this was the acceptance of a flawed prognosis that influenced the future course of events. It created a situation in which

    “facts were wilfully ignored, and alternatives fabricated”.

    Shocking too is the implication in the report’s recommendations that the presence of her physical and mental health needs may have been used to justify or excuse the inadequate care she had received.

    On behalf of Government and the health system I would like to say I am truly sorry for the devastating impact this must have had upon the Dixon family.

    Individuals made mistakes and acted unprofessionally, but the system allowed it. The report makes it clear that

    “clinical error, openly disclosed, investigated and learned from, should not result in blame or censure; equally, conscious choices to cover up or to be dishonest should not be tolerated”.

    It is also unacceptable for patients ever to be exposed to unsafe or poor care, and I remain fully committed to ensuring we provide the highest standards of quality and safe services to all patients.

    I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) for commissioning this investigation in June 2017 when he was Secretary of State for Health and bringing these events into the open. I would also like to thank Dr Bill Kirkup and his team for the diligence and hard work that has informed their report.

    Particularly, I would like to pay tribute to Anne and Graeme Dixon who have fought so hard for answers. I hope this report is the beginning of a process that will bring some closure for the family. They should not have had to wait for so long.

    This report shines a light on a culture of denial and cover up 20 years ago that left a family with little choice but report their concerns to the police. Families should not have to fight a closed system for answers and I will not hesitate to expose this sort of behaviour whenever it appears today. Indeed, Elizabeth’s legacy should be that other families will always be told the truth.

    Relevant organisations will need to consider and reflect carefully on the report’s recommendations. There is no room for complacency. The continual appearance of shocking reports about patient safety—historical or more recent—implies there is much for the NHS to focus on. My Department will therefore have oversight of their responses and report back to the House. There needs to be learning and implementation, but above all I want to be assured that we are doing all we can to make sure such events cannot happen again.

    No other family should ever again have to go through the heartache and frustration experienced by the Dixons and I apologise again for the failings set out in this report.

    Copies of the report have been laid before the House.

  • Priti Patel – 2020 Comments on Agreement Between UK and France on Illegal Migration

    Priti Patel – 2020 Comments on Agreement Between UK and France on Illegal Migration

    The comments made by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, on 29 November 2020.

    Today’s agreement is a significant moment for our 2 countries, stepping up our joint action to tackle illegal migration. Thanks to more police patrols on French beaches and enhanced intelligence sharing between our security and law enforcement agencies, we are already seeing fewer migrants leaving French beaches.

    The actions we have agreed jointly today go further, doubling the number of police officers on the ground in France, increasing surveillance and introducing new cutting edge technology, representing a further step forward in our shared mission to make channel crossings completely unviable.

    On top of these new operational plans, we will introduce a new asylum system that is firm and fair, and I will bring forward new legislation next year to deliver on that commitment.