argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Daniel Owen Jarvis (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Today the Government tabled a written statement announcing a report on the important issue of supporting veterans in the criminal justice system. I am sure that you would have been as disappointed as I was, Mr Speaker, to see conclusions from the same report published more than two weeks ago in The Sunday Telegraph and numerous other media outlets. What is more, the report was released to the press just after the House had risen for the recess. It is hard to believe that it could not have been ready in time to be presented to Members before we broke up for Christmas. The Justice Secretary has form in this regard. On 14 September last year, just after we had risen for the recess, he announced in the press plans for a victims law, about which the House was not told until three weeks later May I ask you, Mr Speaker, whether it is in order for announcements on such important subjects to be released to the media before being presented to the House? If it is not, will you please use your good offices to ensure that the Justice Secretary notifies the House before making such important announcements in the future?
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Keith Anthony Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way so early in her speech. As she knows, I support the creation of the National Crime Agency and the Select Committee has recently taken evidence from Keith Bristow on his first year in office. Given the failings of the Serious Organised Crime Agency—or, to put it another way, the failure of SOCA to meet the expectations and ambitions of Parliament and Ministers—does she feel the NCA is on the right track and enough has been seized, given the figures given to the Committee and the figures she has given today and the fact that she puts the amount of serious and organised crime at £24 billion?
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): The point is to make sure that legislation is enforced; we all support improvements to legislation but we also want to know that it is being enforced. Can the Home Secretary explain why the number of restraint orders used to freeze assets dropped from 1,878 in 2010-11 to 1,368 in the most recent figures? Frankly, her commitment to tackling the problem of the proceeds of crime looks rather weak if all she is prepared to do is change laws but never actually enforce them.
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): The Home Secretary said something interesting about default sentences a few minutes ago. She said that if, as the Government expect, the provision raises money, they will extend it to sentences for those who owe less than £10 million. She will be aware that her party has today produced a rather dodgy dossier claiming to cost a Labour proposal that assumes that changing default sentences does not raise any extra money at all. Does she therefore think that her own dodgy dossier is nonsense?
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Margaret Patricia Munn (Labour, Centre-left): May I suggest that, because this is a complex area and there are questions about recklessness and wilfulness as well as neglect, the Home Secretary will want to consider whether guidelines should be issued after the Bill is enacted, to make sure that prosecutors and all professionals are clear about the Government’s and Parliament’s intentions?
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): We welcome many of the measures in the Bill and we will support it tonight, but as a policy to tackle serious crime in Britain, it is still too weak. Rightly, it has been improved in the other place as a result of strong campaigning for amendments to be added, but more still needs to be done. As a final Bill for this Parliament, it is not ambitious enough to deal with the serious crime challenges that face Britain today Crime is changing and the criminal justice system is still not keeping up. The challenge from serious crime is increasing, not falling, and more needs to be done. Violent crime is increasing, yet fewer violent crimes are being prosecuted or convicted. More sexual offences are being reported, but fewer are reaching conviction. Reported rapes and domestic violence are increasing, yet fewer are reaching conviction. Far fewer drugs are being seized on their way into this country, and online crime is escalating exponentially and the police are not equipped to keep up. The problem is getting worse, not better, and the criminal justice system under the Home Secretary is not keeping up The measures are welcome, but they do not address the scale of the problem that we face. Let me deal with the measures in turn and highlight the areas in which the Government need to go further. The Government must stop the clock turning backwards. We have supported from the start the extension of extraterritorial jurisdiction for the two offences under the Terrorism Act 2006, preparation of terrorist acts and training for terrorism. We argued from the start, however, that the Home Secretary would need to go further, restore the relocation powers that she abolished in terrorism prevention and investigation measures, and strengthen Prevent. We will discuss those further measures later this week in the context of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, in which she has had to do exactly that We support the measures on accessing child pornography but believe that much more needs to be done to tackle this growing crime. I will come on to that in a moment. We support the measures to tighten the law on hacking and to address the international challenge that online crime poses. We welcome in particular more action to stop criminals benefiting from the proceeds of their crimes—something for which we have been calling for some time. Members in all parts of the House will agree, I think, that we should recover the proceeds of crime. Ill-gotten gains should not furnish the lifestyle of a criminal, in some cases long after their sentence has concluded. Wherever possible, there should be recompense to victims of crime, who have often lost so much.
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): We support a series of measures where we think the Government should go further. We will table amendments in Committees and we will probe the detail of the Government’s legislation. I am happy to talk further to the hon. Gentleman about the details of those issues, as they are immensely important. There are areas where we should do more to take back from criminals the assets that they have stolen from victims of crime right across the country. The aspects that we highlighted in the past related to preventing criminals from switching their assets to family and friends and getting away with it, and toughening sentences to deal with the problem of people serving only short sentences, even though they were continuing to squirrel away huge illegal gains. We support the measures to give more powers to the courts to tackle so-called designer divorces and third parties keeping hold of assets, and we support plans to require offenders to pay swiftly. The Government accept that more can still be done and we will probe this further in Committee.
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): Wherever racketeering and exploitation take place, action should be taken to tackle those serious crimes. It is a problem that we highlighted from the beginning, when the legislation for the National Crime Agency was drawn up, but Northern Ireland is not covered by the work of the National Crime Agency. That continues to be a challenge and to cause problems If we can increase the resources taken from the proceeds of crime, that will help victims and also help to improve and support the criminal justice system. I welcome the Home Secretary’s comment today that she believes the Bill will raise additional resources and will save money, and that she will consider extending the relevant measure to those who owe less than the £10 million provided for in the Bill. That is the same policy that she claimed this morning would cost £19 million, and her own document claimed would not save any money at all because it assumed that no one would change their behaviour. So she said one thing at noon and something completely different at 5.30 in the afternoon, and undermined her claims from this morning Many other aspects of the Bill have been added as a result of strong campaigns and amendments put forward or supported by Labour in the Lords and by many Members across this House. We welcome, for example, the three new clauses and new schedules added in the Lords for stronger action against the appalling and barbaric crime of female genital mutilation that takes place against young girls. We have called for stronger prevention orders and are glad that they are included, as well as the measures on anonymity for victims and stronger responsibility. I pay tribute to some of the campaign groups which have worked so hard, as well as hon. Members who have pursued the issues. We will look further at the detail in Committee.
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend is exactly right. It is a matter not just of the legal framework, but of making sure that the law is enforced. We must ensure that the law is strong enough and that prosecution authorities, the police and authorities at every level, including schools and other organisations, are properly aware of the seriousness of the crime and of the risks to young girls in this country, and are prepared and ready to take action to tackle this awful crime.
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): We will certainly do so. I am happy to talk further to the hon. Gentleman about the matter. We, too, have spoken about the issues surrounding mandatory reporting not only of female genital mutilation, but of child abuse more widely. There is a strong case for making sure that professionals across the board are aware of the serious damage being done to young people as a result of these awful crimes We welcome the proposals to strengthen the law on domestic abuse. I pay tribute to Women’s Aid and Paladin, which have campaigned for the strengthening of the law so that it recognises the cumulative impact of different forms of psychological abuse, as well as physical abuse, and the way that that can trap women in particular and men in abusive relationships, causing huge harm to them, their families and the children. We look forward to discussing the clauses in detail On protection for children, I pay tribute to Action for Children for its campaign to strengthen the law on child cruelty, and to the campaign by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and by Lord Harris, who argued, with our support in the other place, that the Bill should include a new offence of sending a sexual message to a child As an overall response to the scale of serious crime, however, the Bill does not yet go far enough, because crime is changing and serious crime is a grave and growing problem. Over the decades there has been a welcome fall in the number of high-volume crimes, including most theft offences, domestic burglaries and car crimes, but the number of many of the most serious crimes is going up. Reported rapes continue to rise at about 30%, yet new figures show that the number of arrests has gone down by 8%. Arrests as a proportion of recorded rapes have dropped from 90% to 63% in the past few years. That is completely unacceptable. Violent crime is also increasing, but prosecutions and convictions are falling On sexual offences, the Home Secretary sometimes refers to a Yewtree effect and historical offences, but that is not the case, because the latest figures show that the majority of the increase in reported sexual offences has occurred in the previous 12 months. Reported child sex offences are perhaps one of the most troubling areas of all.
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): The honest truth is that we do not know what is happening to underlying prevalence, but we do know that reporting has increased. I have been very careful to talk about the reporting of rape: reports of rapes and sexual offences have increased. We want more people to come forward and report crimes because we know that many of them have been underreported. However, the serious problem is that, although more cases are being reported, fewer cases are being prosecuted and reaching conviction. I am not talking about a simple proportion of crimes: these are absolute numbers. Fewer rape arrests are taking place even though more rapes have been reported to the criminal justice system. That is a serious weakness and I am concerned about what is happening in the criminal justice system and policing under this Government.
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Sarah Deborah Champion (Labour, Centre-left): I am sure my right hon. Friend and the Home Secretary are aware that one of the reasons for the delays is that the search engines are charging between £50 and £80 for the information and the police simply do not have the resources for that.
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. If there are such obstacles and delays, Parliament needs to address them. We should be taking action to make sure that the police and the NCA can take the necessary action to protect children and investigate these extremely serious crimes. However, it is very difficult for us to do that if we do not have the full facts about the scale of the problems, the extent of the delays and the problems that may be building up for the future. It is simply not fair on those who may be vulnerable victims of these crimes for us not to act when we know that the information is there and we could be pursuing it Finally, the wider issue of cybercrime is another area where the Government need to be more ambitious in their strategy. Adrian Leppard, the commissioner of the City of London police, has said that "this nature of crime is rising exponentially." It is estimated that more than 12.5 million people have fallen victim to cybercrime in a 12-month period in the United Kingdom, yet the commissioner of the City of London police told the Home Affairs Committee that a quarter of the 800 specialist internet crime officers could be axed as spending is cut. Already there are too few people in the police who have the expertise to pursue these rapidly escalating crimes. We do not want the clock being turned backwards on the expertise we have—quite the opposite: we need to make sure we get greater expertise in the police. We will table amendments on that, including to ask the Sentencing Council to review sentencing guidelines for e-crimes. For example, Anonymous hackers who cost PayPal more than £3.5 million were given sentences of between seven and 18 months, considerably less than they would have been given if they had committed a physical crime to the same value This Bill and the action taken by the Government are not strong enough. The Government are not yet doing enough to tackle the rise of serious crimes—cybercrime, violent crime, domestic violence, rape, child sex offences—or to protect victims. The Home Secretary has been far too complacent about the drops in volume crimes. We all welcome such falls, but the rise in serious crimes is too often ignored. She needs to do far more to act against the rise in serious crimes, particularly in relation to the protection of children, which is her responsibility The Bill has been improved during its passage through Parliament, but it has not yet been improved enough. As it passes through this House, we must improve and strengthen it if victims are not to be let down.
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Keith Anthony Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful case about the need to focus on cybercrime. Will he endorse the work done by Europol in that area, which is essential to try to deal with countries and individuals—some of these crimes are committed by countries—that seek to engage in cyber-wars?
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Keith Anthony Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) who has brought a great deal of expertise on cybercrime to the House. As we approach the last 12 weeks before Parliament must be dissolved, some might have thought that the temperature would rise. However, we have a crime Bill that will pass through the House of Commons not unchallenged by the Opposition, but with their support and that of all the other parts of the United Kingdom. That is a recognition of the fact that we are dealing with very serious issues on which there is common ground. I welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate and support the Government’s agenda, with the caveats expressed by the shadow Home Secretary in such a constructive way. I am not quite saying that peace has broken out, but it is good to see Parliament working together on an issue of such importance This would be a Christmas tree Bill, but we have passed Christmas and are now in the new year—I am not sure what the parliamentary term is for so many different parts of the Home Office’s agenda put into one Bill.
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Sarah Deborah Champion (Labour, Centre-left): I am not sure whether a "Whoopee" is appropriate, but—"Whoopee!" I look forward to working with the Minister I would like to move on to other elements that I will be arguing for in the Bill, all of which have been successfully debated in the Lords. The first relates to the lack of protection for 16 and 17-year-olds under the law. The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) has already mentioned this point. While most English law treats anyone under 18 as a child, the criminal law on child cruelty, which dates back 80 years, protects children from neglect or ill treatment only until their 16th birthday. This makes it much harder to protect 16 and 17-year-olds from cruelty and sends a message that they are less at risk of abuse or neglect than younger children. In 2013-2014, local authorities issued 40 serious incident notifications to Ofsted relating to 16 and 17-year-olds. Some of them resulted in serious case reviews that highlighted the vulnerability of 16 and 17-year-olds. They showed the seriousness of the neglect and the cruelty to those children, which often had tragic consequences for the child but resulted in no punishment for those responsible As the Home Secretary has stated, the current law is outdated and reflects what life was like when the legislation was passed in 1933. The school leaving age at that time was 14, and in 1931, 88.5% of males and 75.6% of females aged 16 and 17 were in work. In 2014, 85% of 16 and 17-year-olds were in full-time education or training and in 2012, 90% of all 16 and 17-year-olds lived with their families. These children are much more dependent on their parents now then when the law was introduced, making them much more vulnerable to abuse or neglect I have already mentioned child abduction warning notices, but a gap in the law means that such notices cannot be used to protect 16 and 17-year-olds unless they are in local authority care. I am grateful for the research that the Government carried out in this area when I first raised this anomaly in the Criminal Courts and Justice Bill earlier this year, but I would like them to revisit it as it is a matter of considerable concern. Unfortunately, I am finding a considerable amount of exploitation in this area Finally, I want to raise the issue of female genital mutilation and part 5 of the Serious Crime Bill. I acknowledge that awareness of this horrendous and debilitating crime has been greatly heightened in recent years, but eliminating FGM requires a change in culture. Work to achieve this change is being disrupted by those who promote the religious or cultural justifications for carrying out FGM and, in doing so, place parents under huge social pressure to conform. Legislation is, unfortunately, needed to prevent people from encouraging FGM, thereby preventing its perpetuation at source. The Bill presents an excellent opportunity publicly to condemn this act and prevent it from occurring, rather than having to wait until the abuse has been committed before prosecuting
Serious Crime Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-01-05
Topic: Law and Crime
John Eugene Joseph Dromey (Labour, Centre-left): We understand the concern expressed by the hon. Gentleman, and the Government should have sorted this issue a long time ago. We will talk to all parties in Northern Ireland about making progress at the next stages. We see the strength of the argument being deployed and are sympathetic to it, but this is about how then we might go forward and that is necessarily done in dialogue with the parties in Northern Ireland This well-informed debate has drawn on the experience of many Members of this House, and there has been much common ground. We want to ensure that the Bill becomes a strong Act, with strong action then taken to ensure the will of this House is acted upon. As we have seen time and again in today’s debate, times may change and the nature of crime may change, but we need to send an unmistakable message to those engaged in serious and organised crime: there will be no hiding place.
Northern Futures Project — House of Commons, 2015-03-24
Topic: Government Operations
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): Is the Deputy Prime Minister actually going to tell me, or the people in Yorkshire where I represent the town of Huddersfield, that this late conversion to the northern powerhouse and all this talk is anything more than pie in the sky? The Government should have been doing something about the northern regions in the past five years.
Northern Futures Project — House of Commons, 2015-03-24
Topic: Government Operations
Stephen Twigg (Labour, Centre-left): First, may I echo the Deputy Prime Minister’s words about the tragic air crash in the Alps Over the past five years, average cuts to local authorities have been £80 per person, but in the Deputy Prime Minister’s city of Sheffield the figure is almost three times higher, and in my city of Liverpool it is almost five times higher. Will he take this final opportunity at the Dispatch Box to admit to the House that the Conservative Government whom he has supported for five years is no friend of the north?
Devolution: England — House of Commons, 2015-03-24
Topic: Government Operations
Graham Eric Stringer (Labour, Centre-left): The devolution proposals for Greater Manchester have been widely welcomed, but the proposal to appoint an interim mayor with no executive powers is less welcome. Does the Minister agree that it should be a priority to arrange for primary legislation so that Greater Manchester can have an elected mayor?