Minister for Policing Chris Philp is Grilled by Yvette Cooper MP for Home Secretary Suella Braverman's absence following her comments on pro-Palestine protests and the police's decision to let the protests go ahead on Armistice Day.
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00:00 confidence the Metropolitan Police and other police forces will ensure this weekend passes
00:05 off peacefully and without disruption.
00:07 >>Rebecca Cooper (Bury South) (Lab/Co-op): Where is the Home Secretary? She has sent
00:16 the Policing Minister to come to refuse to repeat her words. We have seen her words this
00:22 morning, attempting to rip up the operational independence of the police, attacking their
00:28 impartiality in the crudest and most partisan of ways, deliberately undermining respect
00:34 for the police at a sensitive time when they have an important job to do, deliberately
00:39 seeking to create division around remembrance, which the Policing Minister rightly said should
00:45 be a time for communities to come together and to pay our respects. She is deliberately
00:51 inflaming community tensions in the most dangerous of ways. She is encouraging extremists on
00:58 all sides, attacking the police when she should be backing them. It is highly irresponsible
01:05 and dangerous, and no other Home Secretary would ever have done this.
01:13 Remembrance events are really important to all of us. Those events need to be protected.
01:17 That is the job of the police—to enforce, to respect the law, maintaining public safety,
01:23 tackling hate crime and extremism, and respecting rights in law to peaceful protest. They have
01:29 to follow the law and the evidence, whatever politicians think, and not be the operational
01:34 arm of the Home Secretary, because whether she likes it or not, that is the British tradition
01:40 of policing, and I for one am proud of it. We know what she is up to—claiming homelessness
01:46 is a lifestyle choice, picking fights with the police to get headlines—but the job
01:50 of the Home Secretary is to keep the public safe, not run an endless Tory leadership campaign.
01:56 Cabinet colleagues are refusing to agree with her, and former police chiefs are lining up
02:00 to condemn her. So two questions. Does this Government still believe in the operation
02:06 independence of the police, and how can they do so while this Home Secretary is in post?
02:11 Did the Prime Minister and No. 10 agree to the content of this article? Either the Prime
02:18 Minister has endorsed this, or he is too weak to sack her. If he cannot get a grip of her
02:23 conduct, it means he has given up on serious Government, and he and the Home Secretary
02:27 should both let someone else do the job.
02:30 >>Mr Lidington I thank the shadow Home Secretary for her
02:34 questions, as always. She asked about where the Home Secretary is. It may have been wise
02:39 to ask privately rather than publicly, but she is with a close family member who is having
02:44 a hospital operation this morning. I have the Home Secretary's permission to say that
02:48 to the House in the event that somebody raised it, as the shadow Home Secretary has done,
02:52 and so I am passing that message on to the House.
02:56 I think the House should keep in its mind, as we consider this topic, the fact that many
03:00 of our fellow citizens are feeling deeply uneasy about what is going on in the middle
03:06 east, but there are repercussions domestically as well. We have seen a spike in Islamophobic
03:13 offences. There have been 21 arrests in the last four weeks for Islamophobic offences.
03:16 We have seen a surge in anti-Semitic offences. There have been 98 arrests for anti-Semitic
03:21 offences in the last four weeks. I have been contacted this morning by members of the Jewish
03:27 community who are deeply uneasy about what this weekend will bring. I do not think it
03:33 is acceptable that our fellow citizens feel scared or uneasy walking about the streets
03:40 of London. It is reasonable for politicians—the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and others,
03:44 and I am sure some on the other side of the House as well—to raise those concerns and
03:48 make sure that the police are protecting those communities. It is not acceptable to have
03:52 fear and hatred on our streets. Let that message go out from this House today.
03:59 In relation to the question about operational independence, yes, of course, the Government
04:03 resolutely back the question of operational independence. As the Prime Minister made clear
04:08 yesterday after his meeting with the Commissioner at No. 10, he also said that he would hold
04:18 the Commissioner to account, as politicians are supposed to do, as police and crime commissioners
04:23 do, as the Mayor of London does, as London's PCC does and as we do as Members of Parliament.
04:29 That is perfectly proper and perfectly right.
04:31 In terms of the approval process with No. 10, I am afraid I do not have any visibility
04:35 on that at all. Let us keep in mind that we are seeing a humanitarian crisis unfolding
04:42 in Gaza. Let us keep in mind that 200 people are being held hostage. Let us bear in mind
04:47 that 1,400 people were slaughtered by terrorists, and Members of our own community are feeling
04:53 scared this weekend. Let us keep that at the front of our minds, not party political point
04:57 scoring.
04:57 Thank you.
05:04 [BLANK_AUDIO]