The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Monday 2 September.
“With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will now make a Statement on the violent disorder that occurred earlier this summer. Just before the parliamentary Recess, I made a Statement to this House on the horrendous attack that took place in Southport on 29 July. Five weeks on, our hearts still ache for the three precious little girls who lost their lives, for their loved ones, and for the other children who were injured or endured unspeakable horror that day. The House will know that a suspect has been charged, and the investigation into the attack is ongoing. Those grieving families, the Southport community and the country will need answers, but, for that reason, the legal process must now take its course.
That day in the House, all of us came together in sorrow and in solidarity with the families and the people of Southport, and I spoke of the bravery, compassion and distress of the police, the paramedics and the firefighters I had met that morning, who were first on the scene. It is truly appalling that within hours of that Statement, the same Southport police were facing the most disgraceful violent attacks from criminals and thugs. Police officers were pelted with bricks and bottles. The local mosque—a place of worship—was subjected to violent attack. While millions of decent people across the country were praying for bereaved families, a criminal minority of thugs and extremists saw only an opportunity to hijack a town’s grief. The Merseyside chief constable, Serena Kennedy, spoke at the funeral of Alice da Silva Aguiar, where she said she hoped that anyone taking part in the violent disorder was
‘hanging their head in shame at the pain’
that they had caused the bereaved family.
In the days that followed, we saw further disgraceful violent disorder in a number of towns and cities. There were repeated attacks on the same police officers whose job it is to keep communities safe, and over 100 officers were injured. In Sunderland, a Citizens Advice branch was set alight. In Liverpool, a library and vital community hub was torched. In Hull, shops were looted and a mosque was targeted. In Rotherham, a hotel used as asylum accommodation was set alight when people were inside. In Bolton, clashes between rival groups involved fireworks and bottles being thrown. And we saw people targeted on the streets because of the colour of their skin. This disgraceful disorder and racist hatred, including that whipped up by a hateful minority online, was an insult to those grieving over Southport.
Let us be very clear: those violent and criminal attacks were not protests. They were not about grievance. They were thuggery, racism and crime. Plenty of people across the country have strong views about crime, policing, immigration, asylum, the NHS and more, but they do not pick up bricks and throw them at the police. They do not loot shops or attack places of worship, and they do not set buildings alight knowing that other human beings are inside. There is a lot to debate on all kinds of policy issues, but no one should make excuses for violence or thuggery that risks public safety. This was brazen criminality, perpetrated in many cases by those with existing criminal convictions.
The Prime Minister and I made it clear that criminals would pay the price for their violence, and we meant it. The Prime Minister announced a new national violent disorder programme to bring together the best policing capabilities and enhance intelligence sharing across forces, and Ministers worked daily with the police and criminal justice partners to ensure that there was a strong and determined response. The National Police Coordination Centre operated a national mobilisation plan to ensure that strategic reserves of public order officers were ready to be deployed in support of different police forces. More than 40,000 officer shifts were worked by public order officers over 10 days, with over 6,600 public order officers deployed on one day alone. Rest days were cancelled and additional hours were worked.
The Crown Prosecution Service deployed over 100 additional prosecutors, boosting its 24-hour charging service with additional advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions so that they could move swiftly to charge. The Ministry of Justice accelerated the work on new cells to bring 500 more prison places on stream earlier, and the Lord Chancellor made it clear that the courts stood ready to hear all the cases coming through. The Home Office established a new rapid procedure for security support for mosques to ensure that communities felt supported and safe. In total, around 1,280 people have been arrested, around 800 charges have been made and over 570 individuals had been brought before the courts for offences such as violent disorder, assaults on emergency workers, arson and encouraging violent attacks online. This robust and swift response from the Government and the criminal justice system has provided a strong deterrent and shown our steadfast determination to keep people safe. Most importantly, order was restored.
I want now to update the House on some of the next steps we will take. First, we will take forward positive policing reform to build on the important work done by the National Police Coordination Centre this summer. I want to particularly thank the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the public order lead for the mobilisation work that they did, but the reality is that the co-ordination infrastructure and systems that they had to work with were too weak. I am therefore asking His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services to work quickly with the NPCC, the College of Policing and the national lead for public order to review the lessons from this summer’s events so that we can ensure that strong co-ordination and intelligence systems are in place and that there is sufficient public order policing for the future.
Secondly, as well as ensuring that there is proper punishment for those responsible for this disorder, we will be pressing forward at pace with this Government’s mission to take back the safety of our streets and restore respect for the police and the rule of law. We will put thousands more neighbourhood police officers and police community support officers back on the streets, reversing the collapse in community policing and rebuilding the relationship between local communities and forces. This Government are very clear that wherever and whenever violence and disorder emerge—whether in Hartlepool or Harehills, Sunderland or Stoke—we expect crimes to have consequences and perpetrators to face the full force of the law. The criminal violence we saw after the Southport attacks was not the only violent disorder this summer. We also saw disgraceful arson and attacks on the police in Harehills. In that case, 32 people have been arrested and in the past week three men have pleaded guilty to arson and violent disorder after a bus was set alight.
Thirdly, I have been concerned for a long time that not enough is being done to counter extremism—including both Islamist extremism and far-right extremism—as there has been no proper strategy in place since 2015. I have ordered a rapid review of extremism to ensure that we have the strongest possible response to the poisonous ideologies that corrode community cohesion and fray the fabric of our democracy. Alongside that, the Deputy Prime Minister is overseeing cross-government work to consider how we support our communities and address issues of cohesion in the longer term.
Fourthly, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology will strengthen the requirements for social media companies to take responsibility for the poison being proliferated on their platforms with the rollout of the measures in the Online Safety Act 2023, and we will continue to be clear that criminal content online results in criminal sanctions offline. Fifthly, we stand ready to support the police through the special grant for policing, and the Home Office will work with police and crime commissioners to ensure that the Riot Compensation Act 2016 works effectively in the areas that are affected.
The country recoiled in horror at the scenes of violence and disorder in some cities and towns earlier this summer, but let there be no doubt: the minority of criminals and thugs who sought to cause havoc do not represent Britain. Instead, across the country we saw decent people coming together to support each other, to clean up the damage and to rebuild communities: the bricklayers who repaired the wall of the Southport mosque; the residents who donated funds and books to restock the Spellow library; and the volunteers in Sunderland who found a new site to offer community advice. There are many more examples, and those small, unassuming acts of selflessness should serve as a message to the criminals and extremists that they do not speak for Britain and they never will. I commend this Statement to the House.”
My Lords, this is the first opportunity we have had in this House to express our sorrow at the events in Southport and our sympathy to the family and friends of the victims. It was an appalling tragedy, and they all have my sincere condolences and I hope those who were injured make full and speedy recoveries. I also take this opportunity to extend similar sympathies and condolences to the family and friends of Cher Maximen and Mussie Imnetu who were killed at the Notting Hill Carnival.
I thank the Home Secretary for making the Statement yesterday. I am quite sure that the Minister had his summer seriously disrupted by the dreadful violence and disorder that we saw on our streets. By and large, I think that the police and the Government dealt with this violence well. There can never be any excuse for this type of behaviour, and I agree with the Home Secretary that this was thuggish and criminal activity. There are plenty of ways to express legitimate frustrations and points of view in this country, and many do without resorting to violence and intimidation. Acting at speed to quell the disturbances was the right thing to do, and I commend the Minister for his part in that.
However, the Home Secretary’s Statement yesterday also prompted a number of questions which deserve to be explored. First, the Home Secretary described actions taken by the NPCC and referenced that:
“the co-ordination infrastructure and systems that they had to work with were too weak”.
Can the Minister expand on that and explain which systems were too weak and why? He will be aware of a phrase that I had to repeatedly deploy when I was in his shoes—often to my regret—that our police forces retain operational independence. That phrase may be frustrating on occasions, but it also describes an important underlying principle that Ministers, while no doubt “working daily”—to quote the Home Secretary again—should not get involved in operational matters. I have no doubt the Minister will agree with that.
My Lords, the shocking deaths of three little girls in Southport, followed by the shocking disorder on our streets perpetrated by a minority of violent thugs, was truly frightening. There was racist mob violence in our towns and cities, clearly incited and organised by far-right groups and individuals —mainly online, where shockingly they shared the locations of hotels and hostels housing asylum seekers and migrants. We saw footage of thugs trying to set fire to some hotels, terrifying the people in them. The locations of immigration offices were leaked online, so they were facing attacks as well.
The bravery and professionalism of the police and emergency services are to be commended. They were dealing with what was sometimes an impossible job. However, it is disappointing that the Official Opposition has not mentioned the targeted attack on Muslim communities. They were clearly the focus of these attacks; online, we saw the most appalling Islamophobia and hate crimes. That affects not just Muslims in this country but those perceived to be Muslims, who were of course migrants and asylum seekers—and anyone perceived to be a supporter of or even associated with asylum seekers, or from an ethnic-minority community. I know of what I speak: members of my own family in some of these communities that were targeted, who wear visible headscarves, were terrified. Some of them felt that they could not stay in their homes, in an area such as Walthamstow that was targeted.
Does the Minister agree that to tackle record levels of hate crimes against Muslims we need a consistent and coherent approach to tackling Islamophobia, underpinned by a working definition to better understand what Islamophobia is and is not, in the way that we have—quite rightly—a working definition of anti-Semitism? Six years ago, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims put forward the first working definition of Islamophobia after two years of consultation with 800 community groups up and down the country, with all faiths and with victims of hate crimes. That definition was accepted by all parties, apart from the last Government. Will this Government look to revisit that, and start to come to a proper understanding and definition of what we mean by Islamophobia? Do they intend to appoint an independent adviser on Islamophobia—a post that has been vacant for two years? Discrimination, prejudice and hatred damage everyone and the fabric of our society. We must work together to challenge it.
I thank noble Lords for their contributions. Like the noble Lord on the Opposition Front Bench, I start my response where he started his: with the families of the victims in Southport and the families of the victims in Notting Hill. I cannot begin to imagine the pain that they have gone through, attending a dance class or a carnival and then finding dead bodies of young children and family members at the end of those events. We need to put that at the forefront of our minds. When the event happened on the Monday just before recess, our first thoughts were with the families.
The noble Lord mentioned—as was echoed by the noble Baroness from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench—that there is no excuse for the actions that followed the incident in Southport. It was thuggery and it was appalling behaviour, and it was in much part orchestrated by forces that we need to examine in the longer term and deal with accordingly.
For the interest of the House, we had 40,000 police hours over the course of those riots. I pay tribute from this Front Bench to police officers who gave up their leave, faced attacks, and stood for the values of this House and this Parliament in defending individuals from the Islamic community, and from other communities, who were under attack from forces which should have known better. Such forces will now have time to reflect, during their time in prison following judicial exercise, fair guilty pleas and/or—in due course—criminal convictions.
The noble Lord mentioned police independence. We fully support police independence. However, he will know that the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, me and other Ministers in the Home Office met police shortly after those events to encourage and understand the response that they were going to make independently. Make no mistake, when criminal acts of intimidation and Islamophobia are committed, properties are burned down and legitimate sources of government support for asylum seekers are attacked, the courts will take action. Ultimately, those who have committed these crimes—if found guilty or pleading guilty—will face considerable sentences. That has been shown in the response to this House.
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Following on from that, what are the terms of reference for the review that the Home Secretary has commissioned to ensure that there is
“sufficient public order policing for the future”?
What does “sufficient” mean? At this point, I will refrain from passing comment on the efforts of the noble Lord’s party to frustrate the previous Government’s public order efforts.
The Home Secretary also talked about rebuilding respect for the police. I agree, but would remind the House that this is not simply about numbers. The previous Government fulfilled our promises and ensured that there were more policemen on our streets than ever before, but numbers are not everything. Policemen have to be tasked with doing the right jobs, and that is inconsistent across the country. I obviously hope that the Government succeed in their aim to rebuild community policing, but I fear that the Minister will soon be talking about operational independence again. How many community officers do the Government expect to recruit and where will they go?
The Home Secretary talked about countering extremism, and that is of course welcome. She referenced Islamist and far-right extremism, but I note made no mention at all of far-left extremism. Why not? I am sorry to say that the far left is in large part responsible for the most enduring form of racism: that of anti-Semitism. That is worse now than in my lifetime, and it sickens and disgusts. I will be charitable and allow that those who conflate what is happening in the Middle East with the British Jewish community are just stupid, but some will not be, and they are just as manipulative as those who foment hatred of other groups and individuals. Can the Minister reassure us that the previous Government’s work supporting CREST and the Jewish community will continue, and that anti-Semitism and those stoking it will be met with the full force of the law?
My final questions relate to—I choose my words very carefully here—perceived inconsistencies in the policing of protest. I stress again that the response to this summer’s riots was appropriate and that the Government deserve praise for their commendable actions, but there is a lingering suspicion that some riots and disorder attract more robust attention than others. Referring back to my previous question, there was clear evidence of anti-Semitism on our streets in relation to Israel/Gaza, and I know that the police have now made many arrests. I understand, of course, that it can be difficult to make arrests during a demonstration; the police are usually heavily outnumbered, so that could cause more trouble. Nevertheless, the impression created was one of a degree of tolerance for the chanting of well-worn anti-Semitic tropes and the display of symbols sympathetic to proscribed terrorist organisations. Similarly, in Harehills, in Leeds the police seemingly disappeared when the Romanian Roma community rioted. Why? I note that arrests are now being made, and that is welcome, but surely the response should have been more robust at the time. If there is a good operational reason why that was not the case then I am more than happy to hear it, but I would like an answer.
Finally—I have little doubt that the Minister will agree—there can never be any room for statements from politicians that can be read as equivocation in these matters. Violence and disorder of the type that we saw across the summer is always wrong; any suspicion that this is not the case will merely fuel the keyboard warriors and stoke yet more trouble. The first step towards rebuilding trust in the police is consistency, so I hope that the noble Lord will take my questions in the constructive way that they are intended. None of us wants to see more of this and we all want the police to succeed.
The Statement mentions far-right extremism, which has been on the rise. We saw some people on the streets with signs depicting Nazi emblems. Make no mistake, these people are entrenched in anti-Semitism if they support Nazi symbols and that kind of behaviour. The Statement mentions a review. Can the Minister set out whether enough attention is being given to tackling far-right extremism? Can he say a bit more about how the Government intend to look into that in the review?
Both Front Benches have mentioned the question of a review. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Home Office team will undertake a review not just of the incidents and the response, and not just of the capability of the response or how it was organised, but of the underlying factors behind those concerns. It will be a review of what led individuals across towns and cities in this United Kingdom to pick up rocks, attack their fellow citizens and attack not just people seeking asylum but long-standing residents with businesses in this country. That is not acceptable behaviour, and I hope that the government response, which I know the noble Lord on the Front Bench opposite has accepted, responded well to that point and has helped to close down the initial concern. But there remain long-term concerns that we need to deal with.
I say to both Front Benches that extremism on all sides is something that we have to take cognisance of; we must be responsible in our approach to it and look at the underlying causes. There is much radicalisation online; there are people in bedrooms on their own being radicalised from both the left and the right, and on a whole range of issues. We need to look at that in the longer term, and my right honourable friend in the House of Commons, Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for DSIT, is going to look at how Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms have responded and encouraged by their use what happened in the events that we have just seen.
The noble Lord’s question on anti-Semitism is equally as important as the point about Islamophobia. I want to see individuals in this society respected for their beliefs. I was very pleased to see, in discussions I had with members of the Church of England, that they had reached out to colleagues from the Jewish and Muslim communities and, particularly in Southport, had stood side by side to show support and that we have respect for religious beliefs. We respect the differences in those religious beliefs and understand that people live their lives and live their religious beliefs differently, but all have a right to live, breath and support themselves in the communities that we represent. That question of tolerance is one that should come from this House.
Let there be no mistake that a crime is a crime, and when people throw rocks, abuse, intimidate, organise on social media or encourage others to do so—we have 90 convictions of people who encouraged people to burn down asylum seekers’ properties—those are crimes. Those people will be held to account independently of Ministers and of the police, ultimately. The CPS will decide whether to charge, a court will determine whether guilt or innocence is in place and a sentence will be passed. That is a message that we will share—and I know that the noble Lord shares that message too.
I have a final point to make in response to points made by the noble Baroness on the Liberal Front Bench. She is right that the question of Islamophobia is extremely important. We live in a multicultural society. These are people of the Islamic faith who have been born here and whose fathers and mothers have been born here. It is not an issue of race but an issue of faith, and people have the right to express their faith openly, in accordance with their principles. One thing that we did in response to the attacks was to provide additional support to mosques in a protection fund. To go back to the point about anti-Semitism, that has applied equally to Jewish community organisations and facilities. We will continue to do that.
The message that this House should send out is quite clear. We live in a decent society, and those people who committed those offences did so in a way that is offensive to this House. We will collectively review what happened, look at what needs to be done and look at the underlying causes, but ultimately make sure that we have a tolerant, fair and open society.