Thank you very much Home Secretary, permanent secretary and second permanent secretary for appearing before the Home Affairs Select Committee this afternoon. We are starting a little later than we had hoped, and some Committee members are not yet back from the Division, but I want to make a start because I am aware that you have a very busy schedule, Home Secretary, and we do need to get on with things. On that basis, I remind everyone that if you can keep questions short and answers brief, that will be very helpful so that we can cover as much as possible of this extraordinarily wide brief. I would like to start by asking you, Home Secretary, about what happened in Liverpool last week. I am extremely aware that criminal proceedings are under way, so I realise that there will be limits to what can be said, but I would like to have your view on how the police handled the situation, particularly in respect of the information that was given out by Merseyside police as quickly as it was.

I want to pay tribute to the first responders—the police, the fire service and the ambulance service—for the way they responded to what was a horrific incident. We will all have seen the images. It came on what should have been a day of joy for the city of Liverpool. Obviously, there were so many people there in the first place because they were organising a major event. When I went to meet the first responders the day after, it was clear that their planning around a major incident had been so crucial to the way in which they were able to respond to an event that I think everybody feared could have turned out so much worse than it did. All our thoughts will be with the those who were injured and those who were affected by what happened. As you know, what is said about an incident, about somebody being arrested, and about the other circumstances, are operational decisions. We obviously want to see as much transparency as possible in those circumstances, but I also think it is right that the decisions are made by police forces and not by Government Ministers, when it comes to the information they can put out that is relevant at the time.

Thank you. You will have seen the report that we published as a Committee about the policing of the disorder following the Southport attack, and that we were very concerned that there had not been much transparency. One of the things we were also concerned about was the CPS protocol, which seemed to us not to be reflective of the current situation with social media. Do you have any information on that? Has there been any update to it?

The Law Commission are undertaking a review on contempt of court and how information can be provided in anticipation of a trial. We have a long-standing tradition of trial by jury in this country, which has impacts on what can be said to ensure that there is a fair trial and that we do not end up with trial by jury being jeopardised as a result of partial information, misinformation, incomplete information or people hearing part of the story and not getting the full evidence in court. Obviously, the full evidence should be put before the court as well, and there should be as much transparency as possible. We all have to recognise that, as you put in your report, the pace at which information circulates on social media means that the framework that we had all understood to be in place when we were only dealing with traditional media has all changed now, so police forces in particular need to be able to respond to that fast pace of both information and misinformation in order to make sure that, actually, that can be part of protecting trial by jury and protecting a fair trial. We have urged the Law Commission to speed up that particular bit of their consideration, and we look forward to their reflections on the detail. The Committee is right to raise it as a very significant issue.

Thank you very much. We will move on to neighbourhood policing with Margaret Mullane.

The first steps we have set out on neighbourhood policing are perhaps one of the most important things we have done since I was last before the Committee. Over many years we have had the decline of neighbourhood policing, if not the decimation of neighbourhood policing, with many areas seeing their neighbourhood policing effectively just cut in half. That really matters, because it is that connection with local communities that builds confidence, that helps to prevent crime and tackle local problems, that gets the intelligence so that we can go after criminals and perpetrators, and that can make sure we get swift justice. So we are determined that we need to restore neighbourhood policing across the country. As part of the first year, we have increased the funding for police forces by up to over £1 billion for this year, including £200 million specifically dedicated for neighbourhood policing across the country. As a result of that, 3,000 additional neighbourhood police officers are pledged for this current financial year, of which 2,500 are police officers and around another 400 are PCSOs. If you will allow me a brief tangent, that means that in my constituency we now have seven-day neighbourhood policing shifts for the first time in a very long time. We have previously had on/off shift patterns that local criminals have been able to exploit. That is the kind of difference that it makes. On the Met’s position, the Met do have some particular structural problems in their finances, and some historical legacy issues around their finances, so we are working on that with the Met and the Mayor’s office. Notwithstanding some of those historical challenges, they are still increasing their neighbourhood policing, with 470 additional police on the streets of London in the course of this year. So notwithstanding the financial challenges that we are working through with them, they are still putting additional neighbourhood police on the streets.

We have been working very closely with the National Police Chiefs’ Council on how we roll out neighbourhood policing, including by making sure that we have regular monitoring, including month-by-month monitoring, to ensure that neighbourhood policing is being rolled out and that the financing within the £200 million follows only once the neighbourhood police are in place. We are also working with policing to have proper systems in place to monitor and prevent that kind of abstraction, because you are right that you would often talk to neighbourhood police teams and they would say, “Oh, well, half our team is being abstracted for something else.” That is not the way we need to do neighbourhood policing; we need them dedicated in teams. There will always be emergencies, situations or events that happen—including, for example, the kind of event that happened in Liverpool last week—when neighbourhood police will of course be moved to where they need to be, but we still need them to be spending the majority of their time in the local communities.

I have a follow-up question. One huge concern for my constituents in rural North Cornwall is that the neighbourhood policing guarantee performance framework will not actually take account of rural areas. Obviously, per head of population is important, and policing resources are put there, but in constituencies like mine we have county lines drug gangs and lots of rural thefts. How will you and your Department take account of the rural areas to make sure that they benefit as well?

First of all, neighbourhood policing matters in rural areas as much as it matters in urban areas. They are obviously different and will operate in different ways, with different patterns of working in rural areas, but that needs to be responsive to the kinds of communities. Secondly, we are working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council on a rural crime strategy to be able to recognise the different patterns of crime. We have sometimes seen serious and organised crime exploiting issues in rural areas, for example. Devon and Cornwall are seeing a significant number of neighbourhood police increases—I should have had the table in front of me so I could tell you the precise numbers for this year—but we need to be making sure that every area has neighbourhood policing. We have asked the police to prioritise town centre patrols as part of this first year, because town centre crime, with increased shoplifting and street theft, has been a particular issue. That needs to be a priority, but it needs to apply to all areas.

I recommend that you speak to Staffordshire police. They have been doing excellent work on this for a number of years, so I want to give them credit.

Before we move on, I also encourage you to look at West Mercia police, who are looking at and consulting on preventing CSOs from being on duty after 8 pm. I understand that you will respect police independence, but that clearly goes against the grain of the guarantee we are talking about, doesn’t it?

The point of neighbourhood policing is to respond to the different kinds of challenges within each individual community. Depending on some areas, that might be about daytime shoplifting in particular town centres, or it might be about the nighttime economy—there might be particular areas where there are challenges in the evenings. It is important that police forces respond to exactly those kinds of challenges. I know that Staffordshire police, for example, are doing some very good work around off-road bikes, including using drones to go after them. As part of the Crime and Policing Bill, we are introducing stronger powers for police to seize the bikes much more swiftly.

Do you share the concerns raised by the Met, the NCA and MI5 about the risk to public safety of releasing offenders earlier in their prison sentence?

Clearly, we need to ensure that the prisons crisis is dealt with, that we do everything possible to make sure that criminals face justice and penalties for their crimes, and that public safety is maintained. We inherited the most appalling prison crisis. The previous Government, even in 14 years, had built only a few hundred prison places, compared with the many more that we have delivered since the election and the 14,000 prison places that the Lord Chancellor has committed to. Notwithstanding that, we cannot reach a situation in which if the police arrest a dangerous offender, there is no place to put them—there is nowhere to put someone on remand or while being arrested. That is why we commissioned the sentencing review, and why the Lord Chancellor has taken forward an initial response to that review and will be bringing forward legislation. As part of that work, the Government have rejected one of David Gauke’s recommendations around some of the most serious offenders, and we are exempting the most serious offenders, including terrorism offenders, from some of the early release arrangements. We are also strengthening the work in terms of curfews, tagging, much stronger penalties in the community and stronger monitoring. The Lord Chancellor has already been working closely with the police and others, and some of the stronger safeguards, particularly around terrorism offenders, were announced after that letter had been drawn up.

By definition, if prisoners are not in prison, they are in the community, which will require more resources in the community to manage those offenders. Has that formed part of your submission to the Treasury as part of the spending review? If so, would you like to say anything more about that and how it links to those important national organisations raising concerns?

First of all, on the terrorism offenders, obviously the most serious offenders are being exempted. There needs to be proper action in communities to make sure that cases are monitored, which is why the Lord Chancellor has already announced the increase in probation. As much as many Members might want to tempt me to comment on the spending review in advance of it being announced next week, I will refrain from doing so. Clearly, we will always want more investment around policing and meeting the challenges that they face, which includes challenges from the sentencing review and different patterns of changing crime.

Before we move on from the spending review, it is important that the ambitions the Government was elected on in July are funded. Are these things being taken into the round as part of the submissions? I do not ask you to break any confidences around the process, but it is very important to communities and constituents like mine.

Clearly, those will be a central focus not just of the Home Office but right across the Government. We have set out our plan for change, and it is important that that is delivered and that we ensure the centrality of security underpinning much of what we do. It is the approach that we take in the Home Office, but it is really an approach right across the Government: if you do not feel secure and safe, you cannot enjoy the opportunities in your life. If a country does not feel safe and strong, we will not get the kind of growth that we need. While growth is the Government’s first priority, security and public safety are the first duties of any Government, and that is certainly the case for a Labour Government.

On police reform, Sir Mark Rowley has stated that the police are “up for radical reform” and Gavin Stephens has called for “bigger, capable forces”. What is your view on police reform? Do you see a case for fewer chief constables and fewer police forces across England and Wales?

We are working with the police in a way that I think has not been done by the Home Office before—certainly not for a very long time—in drawing up proposals for the police reform White Paper. It is looking at a series of issues on how we modernise, reform and overhaul policing. That includes looking at what should rightly be done at the national, regional, force and local neighbourhood levels. We will set out our conclusions when we set out the police reform White Paper. It does mean recognising that some things should not be done in the current chaotic way across 43 different police forces, even if that concerns the underpinning enabling services such as forensics, helicopters and the NPAS service. Some of those elements need to be driven by, effectively, a new national policing body. That will be part of the reforms. We will set out in due course what should then be done at regional and local level.

What you are setting out is the centralisation of capabilities—I think there is probably a strong case for that—but do you see a case for fewer chief constables and fewer police forces, and for mandating reform from the centre as, for example, the Deputy Prime Minister is doing around local government?

We are aligning our approach with some of the work around local government. For example, where mayors are being introduced, we have talked about policing powers coming under part of the responsibilities of mayors and deputy mayors. I understand the question that you raise, but some of these issues will be set out in the overall response as part of the police reform White Paper.

Does the Home Office have the capability and capacity in the centre to oversee the reform programme and also to hold the police to account, notwithstanding their operational independence, for some of your pledges?

We are strengthening that capacity. I think the Home Office did not have that capacity. Policing in the Home Office had been hollowed out over many years, going back to about 2013, as part of the reforms that were introduced. I think the Home Office was then hollowed out on policing and lost a lot of the sense of oversight of data, and of being able to properly monitor and have a performance management approach to policing, so we are re-establishing that. We are rebuilding the performance management framework, including the performance monitoring unit in the Home Office. But we are not doing this as just, “Let’s strengthen the Home Office separately from policing.” We are doing this as a partnership, because of the way in which policing and the Home Office need to work together in order to raise standards and make sure that there are real, proper drivers for reform.

I declare an interest, as I have previously: a member of my family works for the Home Secretary. I want to ask about facial recognition technology, which I asked about when you last came to the Committee. The evidence, even since then, from think-tanks and from abroad has been that it can have a transformative effect for police forces in tackling day-to-day antisocial behaviour and also some of the most serious offences, including rape and murder. From the outside, it seems there has been little progress from the Government in building a legal framework that would allow police forces to take advantage of facial recognition; can you update the Committee?

As you know, most police forces now use retrospective facial recognition, but there is also huge potential in terms of live facial recognition. Police forces strongly think that it requires a clear legal framework within which they can operate. The Policing Minister has been holding a series of meetings with police forces and more broadly about what the framework should look like. We want to bring forward a new framework so that it is clear that more forces can use facial recognition in the most effective way.

Is there any sense of a timeframe for that?

I can write to you with the Policing Minister’s assessment of what the next steps and the timetable will be.

Clearly, the reality of modern policing needs to be the driving force behind police reform. I want to discuss protest policing. Currently, only London and the City of London Police receive specific funding for protests, while areas such as Greater Manchester, which are at the very least regional centres for protests, if not national centres, receive nothing and have to meet costs from existing budgets. That leaves the Greater Manchester city region about £2.6 million worse off because of protests. It seems unfair that council tax payers in my constituency and across Greater Manchester see their precept diluted by protests in that way, while council tax payers in London do not. Would you consider, as part of police reform, a demand-led approach to protest policing so that areas such as Greater Manchester are not disadvantaged and do not have to use stretched existing budgets?

Individual police forces all over the country always have concerns that they face particular pressures. Those pressures may vary: they can be particular patterns of protest, other kinds of crime and other incidents. The capital faces the issue of big national events, such as the King’s coronation, and international events as well, although international events may be held in other parts of the country, which also puts pressure on. In the end, we have to balance all of that. We need police forces to be able to manage the pressures they face within their budgets, and we need to keep that balance around the country. That is why there is currently an additional capital city grant for London that is not replicated in other parts of the country. As part of the police reform White Paper, we will continue to look at issues of funding all around the country and the way in which funding takes place, but those issues are never easy, because everybody always has a reason why they want to change the funding formula and the approach.

Of course, but should the recent significant increase in protests and protest policing form an important consideration going forward? Is the balance as it stands, where London is ringfenced, fair? Other major cities—such as Manchester, I feel obliged to point out—have hosted many international events alongside extremely high levels of protest, especially in recent months.

I understand that, and I know that many forces will continue to make representations about different issues. We will always look at representations that are made to us. All I would say is that there is never a perfect way to ensure funding for police forces, and there will always be individual police forces—probably including several of the forces that are represented around the table here—that want to raise the particular challenges and pressures they face.

Thank you. On counter-extremism, what were the findings of the end-to-end review of Prevent thresholds? Did it look at drivers and trends in the growth of extremism, particularly among young boys and men?

That is one of the issues that I am really worried about. We are seeing increasing extremism among young people. The CT caseload involving teenagers has trebled in the space of three years. I see it in the kinds of cases that I am briefed on as well. There are increasing numbers of teenagers, even as young as 13, where there are serious concerns, perhaps about Islamist extremism or far-right extremism, or it may be the sort of violence-fixated individuals where there is a mixed and unclear ideology, but there are growing numbers of young people. I was a Cabinet Minister in the previous Labour Government. We were looking back at the patterns and the numbers over time, and in the last three years of the previous Labour Government, 14 young people were arrested for terrorism-related activity. In the last three years, 114 have been arrested. We have also seen a doubling of the number of young people being referred to Prevent since last summer. This raises significant challenges for us. It is one of the reasons we are introducing the youth diversion order as part of the Crime and Policing Bill. It is also one of the reasons that we are setting in train changes and some reforms to Prevent, looking again at its thresholds and asking David Anderson to review the overall operations as the interim Prevent commissioner—we are setting up the independent Prevent commissioner for the first time. One thing to come out of the review we did after the election and our work around countering extremism was the need to reform Prevent to look at thresholds. I continue to be concerned about the threshold ending up too high and not enough Islamist extremist cases being referred to Prevent, and the need to make sure that more cases are referred. That also includes the ways Prevent could respond and its ability to work with other local services. I know the Committee is looking into this issue, and I would very much welcome the Committee’s reflections on some of these issues around young people.

There is obviously a broad degree of consensus among the National Crime Agency’s national strategic assessment, the director general of MI5 and lots of other figures about the role that online radicalisation plays in this process. That concern is reflected by parents and people right across the country; many people come to speak to me about this, and I am sure other Committee members share that experience. From your perspective, a national security perspective and a violence and terrorism perspective, what is your view on the need to limit access to such material online in social media channels? What is your view on the Government’s agenda and approach in that area?

Some of this is terrorism-related material—it is unlawful and should not be online—but some of this is about radicalising processes that are taking place online, where the material may not be unlawful but the approach to young people is exploitative and dangerous. The first step is that, as part of the Online Safety Act, Ofcom has introduced its new code of practice and new standards that social media companies now need to adopt, including restrictions and safety requirements for under-18s. Obviously, we want Ofcom to be extremely robust in enforcing those standards, and it is important that it does. We are also working with the National Crime Agency, which does some of the investigations around the criminal networks operating online. We have seen there are sometimes overlaps between extremist radicalisation networks and criminal exploitation networks. You might have heard the National Crime Agency talk about the “com” networks pursuing the most horrendous child abuse and child sexual exploitation online. We are building and developing stronger work across the different agencies to address this, and doing more work at the moment. I am flagging to you that this is an area I am personally really concerned about. I think that the Government and organisations across society will need to do much more.

Finally, to move to an international issue, I have been approached by many concerned Jewish residents and community groups regarding the recent arrest of three Iranian nationals and the support they were giving to the regime in Iran, considering its pernicious role in the middle east. Given the legal challenges identified by Jonathan Hall in applying the Terrorism Act to state-backed threats, when do the Government intend to bring forward legislation to create a new power of proscription to cover such threats?

We do need to bring forward new legislation. Jonathan Hall identified challenges with the existing legislation, which was drawn up around terrorism. State threats often look like terrorism in their impact in communities and on public safety, but Jonathan Hall has made it clear that the nature of the organisation behind these threats, the purpose and the way they operate mean it is too difficult to use existing terrorism legislation and proscribing powers in the same way. I am clear that we need a proscribing power for state-backed organisations that pose a threat to our country. It is incredibly important that we defend our national security and have those powers in place. We are doing the follow-up work now on what those legal provisions will look like, based on Jonathan Hall’s report, and we will bring them in at the earliest opportunity. As you know, there is a limit to what I can do to pre-empt parliamentary timetable discussions, but we are clear that this change needs to take place. Whether it is about Iran or Russia, or other organisations or other countries that have posed state-backed threats to our country, we need to make sure that we have the powers to keep people safe.

Good. Thank you.

What will be the difference between the new independent Prevent commissioner and the counter-extremism commissioner?

The independent Prevent commissioner is probably more similar to the independent reviewer of counter-terrorism in its form. It is effectively an oversight process and mechanism to look at the effectiveness of the Prevent programme. As we know, Prevent has huge numbers of referrals each year and takes action on them, but there has never been proper oversight or an independent person to look at the decisions made and their impact, to be able to raise concerns or problems, to look at changes in patterns of the cases being referred to Prevent or in the way the programme needs to respond, or simply to say, “Actually, there have been problems and some serious problems in individual cases.” We need the independent Prevent reviewer to do that, in the same way that we have a counter-terrorism legislation reviewer who can play that independent role. I think the counter-extremism role is a different one. It includes working with a series of different agencies across society, such as charities, or on different standards around local authorities, and so on. I think those are different approaches—

So one is more a reviewer and the other is more wide-ranging.

Yes. The counter-extremism role is probably a more wide-ranging role, focused outwards across the country. The independent Prevent reviewer is about this particular programme that is crucial to our public safety and about making sure that there is proper oversight of it, in order to ensure that it meets the highest standards.

As you said, we are looking at this. We have the new inquiry on new forms of radicalisation, so we will look at it.

I want to focus on child sexual exploitation and gang-related grooming. Home Secretary, last month I met your colleague, the Safeguarding Minister, alongside a leading child abuse lawyer, David Greenwood, who has acted on behalf of many victims and survivors of the Rotherham cases. We presented a dossier to your Department that concluded that there are potentially tens of thousands of children across Keighley and the Bradford district who have been exploited, going back to the 1990s. I hope that dossier has made it to your desk. Despite growing calls for a local inquiry, the dossier listed the documented refusals that we have had at a local authority level and indeed across the mayoralty, saying that we should not have a local inquiry. That is deeply concerning to me. Are you worried about the situation in the Bradford district? Does it not set off alarm bells to you that local leaders in Bradford rejected the prospect of a local inquiry within hours of the statement you made on the Floor of the House in January, well before they would have had time to read the contents of your announcement, let alone analyse them properly?

I know that the Safeguarding Minister has met you, and I thank you for the information and evidence that you provided. This is a truly vile crime, and there are really disturbing, lifelong consequences for the children and teenagers—very often teenage girls—who have been raped, abused and subjected to the most horrendous of crimes. Thank you for raising those cases. The Safeguarding Minister also met some victims from Bradford and other parts of the country, as part of the response. To update you on where we are, we asked Baroness Casey to do an audit of the nature, scale and patterns of child sexual exploitation and abuse, and gang abuse right across the country. She has asked for a short extension, and I obviously written to the Committee on that. I think we need her audit to inform the next steps and decisions about the local inquiries. We have said from the start that we will support at least five local inquiries. Work is already under way with Oldham, but we are waiting for Baroness Casey’s report back. I recognise the Bradford case that you have raised, as does the Safeguarding Minister. We are waiting for Baroness Casey’s report before we can take the next steps on that.

I completely acknowledge and thank you for that response. I will look at the report when it gets released, but the reality is that it is not looking specifically at local authorities; it is focusing more on police forces. My point is that at Bradford council, we were given the reasoning by our leader that a report would be too expensive for a local authority to pursue. Based on the announcement you gave back in January, my understanding is that there will be a £5 million allocation for five local inquiries to take place. If Bradford were to be one of those and that money were allocated, would you expect the leadership at Bradford to get behind that?

We have identified funding to ensure that there is additional funding for local inquiries, which is clearly important. Once the Casey audit has reported back to us, we will set out the next steps about how we will expect local inquiries to be taken forward and the funding support that we will give. Obviously, we want all local organisations and agencies, including councils, to support local inquiries. That is immensely important. The overarching thing is that there is clearly an issue about policing, but there is also an issue about local authority responsibilities because, very often, victims were in care or in areas where other social services had engagement with them, so there are responsibilities there. On the policing side, as you know, I have always said that the most important thing is to get perpetrators behind bars and to make sure that they face justice for these horrendous crimes. I can update the Committee on that, because I asked all police forces to review historic cases. Half of all forces have reported back to the Home Office. We asked police forces to review cases that were closed when no further action was taken, and, where there are cases, to work with the police child sexual exploitation taskforce, which is the national taskforce and has considerable expertise, to review them and look to reopen and pursue any new lines of inquiry that have not been properly pursued. Around half of all forces have reported back to the Home Office, and we are waiting for the reports back from the other half. For those forces, 287 historic cases have been identified for review by the police child sexual exploitation taskforce, and I will keep the Committee updated with progress on that.

May I bring it back to local authorities? Don’t forget that Bradford is a local authority that had children’s services taken away from it under the previous Administration and a new trust structure set up, so there are deep levels of concern about what is going on in Bradford. One of the reasons for refusal, as I have already said, was that it would cost a huge amount of money, and the second was that the leader of Bradford council argued that the inquiry, if we had one in Bradford, would simply be paying somebody to write another report, and there would be “no new learning”. Do you agree with Bradford council’s local leadership in thinking that these local inquiries will provide absolutely no new information or learning?

What we found from the experience of the Telford inquiry, as well as the two initial Rotherham reviews that took place about 10 years ago—one by Alexis Jay and the other by Baroness Louise Casey—is that they can come in different forms. Three different kinds of review have taken place: the Alexis Jay inquiry, the Louise Casey inquiry, which was done under Local Government Act powers, and the Telford inquiry, which was set out locally. In each of those cases, they not only uncovered important new local information but provided a basis for action to be taken, both to go after perpetrators and to ensure that new standards are in place. As I have said, we will take forward the next steps with those local inquiries when we have the audit back from Baroness Casey. However, we are clear that local inquiries can play a very important role in this process.

That is excellent to hear, but the point I am trying to make is that local authorities are coming up with excuses as to why not to have one, which I am absolutely seeing in my own area of Keighley and the wider Bradford area. Where we have local authorities that refuse to put themselves forward for an inquiry, will you step in using your powers as the Home Secretary? Why on earth are we allowing a voluntary approach at the moment, which is effectively allowing local authorities to mark their own homework? If Bradford council continues to refuse to have one, and given we have presented a dossier to you and raised such huge levels of concern, will you step forward as the Home Secretary and make Bradford council get behind your calls for a local inquiry to take place?

The first thing I would say is that they have to be independent inquiries. They cannot be done by local authorities, and it is only independent inquiries that we will provide funding for—that is what happened with the Telford inquiry. Although it was initiated by the local authority and local organisations, it was then conducted independently, which is crucial. I understand the question that you are asking, but we will respond to some of these points once we get Baroness Casey’s audit. Part of what she is looking at is the key areas and issues that are raised by what we know at the moment. We need to ensure that the framework for the local inquiries, as well as other reforms that we will need to introduce, reflects that evidence and information. This needs to look at the issues in both getting to the truth of the police investigations and ensuring that there are proper accountability mechanisms in place. We are alive to all those points, and we raised some of them at the very beginning of this process, when we identified some of the principles that we need to reflect. When we agreed the timing for this session, we thought we might have had responses earlier, but we are awaiting Baroness Casey’s audit, and I hope people will understand that that is important.

I am going to move us on, as I know that Robbie will keep coming back on that.

I have a question on this issue, Home Secretary. I have met victims of abuse and child rape in my constituency and South Yorkshire. One aspect of this horrific scandal is the fact that some children who were victims of crimes now have criminal records. I wrote to you last month asking the Government to look at ways in which those criminal records could be expunged and justice could be done in that small but important regard. Can you offer the Committee any update?

We have to take action on this. The law has changed, but there are people who have been convicted of crimes who were the victims of the most horrendous exploitation as children. Although the prostitution laws have now changed, the idea of treating somebody as a prostitute when they were the victim of the most horrendous exploitation as a child, including sexual exploitation and rape, is just wrong. The law has changed and we now need to look at the necessary action to ensure that those historic cases are addressed and people do not carry around a criminal record with them for the rest of their lives, for outdated laws and things that happened in their childhood when they were being exploited.

We have a vote. I have to suspend for 10 minutes, so we will be back at 3.55 pm. Sitting suspended. On resuming—

We resume, following the vote, and I turn to Jake Richards to ask about digital ID.

Yesterday at Home Office questions, Sir Edward Leigh, the Father of the House, said there was now cross-party consensus across British politics on the need for a more universal digital ID system. Obviously, the Government are making huge strides on this agenda. We have the e-visa programme; we have digital driving licences, which Secretary of State Peter Kyle is leading on; we have One Login—there are various initiatives. Is there any scope in your mind for a more ambitious cross-departmental programme to utilise digital ID?

As you rightly say, DSIT is already developing digital ID. What we are particularly looking at is how we have digital ID for everyone coming to the UK, whatever visa or system they arrive in the UK through. We set out in the White Paper our next steps on this. We want, for example, to have a digital service linked to e-visas and our border management process, to be able to determine whether an individual is in or out of the UK, whether they have left at the point at which their visa expires, or whether they are overstaying and immigration enforcement action is needed. We also want to ensure that e-visas can effectively be used as a way of having that digital ID around the ability to work and to be here lawfully. One of the things we are doing is strengthening the enforcement capabilities of our immigration enforcement teams. We have increased illegal-working raids by 40% since the election and increased arrests for illegal working by around 40% since the election, because we have made it clear that it is a core principle that the rules need to be respected and enforced as part of the immigration and asylum systems. For too long, they have not been, so we need to strengthen that enforcement. As part of that, if the immigration enforcement teams have biometric kits, that allows them to do on-the-spot checks, to see whether somebody has a valid e-visa and whether they are lawfully able to work for that particular employer or not. The roll-out of those biometric kits is starting this year, and we think that is an important part. It is about having the digital infrastructure alongside the ability to check it, to make sure you can get the proper, effective enforcement in place.

You mentioned the White Paper. Obviously, there is huge potential for digital ID in terms of new arrivals, securing our borders and having an immigration system that is fit for purpose. In terms of the wider population and other issues, online fraud and online crime is one of the huge challenges for your Department and for crime prevention and the criminal justice system. Do you see digital ID having a role to play in that and more generally across the population, or do you see it as being confined to simply an issue of immigration and border control—under the auspices of the Home Office, of course, because there are other benefits in other Departments?

Our clear focus is around being able to ensure that we have proper rules being respected and enforced in the immigration system and the asylum system and to ensure that if people are not here lawfully or are not working lawfully, we can get that information and take much stronger action to prevent that kind of abuse of the system from taking place. There are then wider considerations for DSIT on making sure you have secure standards and a secure underpinning for people to be able to use digital ID, online and so on.

To follow up on that, in terms of the DSIT One Login and using digital ID to help customers and businesses interact, there is a role for the Home Office and crime prevention in ensuring that online activity is safe, whether that is with regard to child abuse, which increasingly happens online, or online fraud. Are there conversations going on between the Home Office and DSIT about working together on this, or are you working in silos at the moment?

We do work with DSIT on all the issues around online crime, online abuse and online exploitation. There is a lot of cross-Government working. Part of the issue here is making sure you develop systems that can evolve over time to be used in the most effective way. You talked about silos. We have over a very long period of time had silos of different technologies operating in different ways. How you overcome that and get systems that are designed to work effectively across not just different Government Departments but different agencies is part of the challenge. It is about making sure you have systems that are deliverable, rather than things that just do not work in practice.

Are you confident that that is happening across all Departments? It is not just DSIT. The NHS is increasingly using patient passports. In the Education Department, unique identifiers for children have just been introduced in legislation. Do you feel confident that cross-departmental working in this digital space is happening better than it did when you were in government before, for example? I think technology has moved on a bit.

Digital technology has moved on a very long way since then. Again, this is from an immigration perspective, but for example, we are looking at ways in which the technology we have around whether people are in the country or not—depending on not just their visas but the check-ins and outs through the border, using the modern technology there—can be integrated with issues of fraud for other Government Departments, whether that be DWP, HMRC or other agencies, to make sure they are able to take action if somebody who has been claiming something here is actually living somewhere else and is not eligible.

There are two issues: there is the actual prevalence of violence against women and girls, and then there is the reporting of it. We want more victims of crime to be confident to report their case to the police, to be able to get the support they need. We know that sexual assaults and sexual crimes have been under-reported for a long time. We know that domestic abuse is badly under-reported as well. We need to increase reporting as part of strengthening the response to violence against women and girls. The ONS is building a new way to measure violence against women and girls by looking at what will effectively become a composite measure that combines figures on domestic abuse, on sexual offences and on stalking. That will be able to measure the prevalence—the number of people in the last 12 months who have experienced or been victims of one of those crimes. That will continue to be separate from the police records of the number of those crimes that are reported. Even in survey data, there is still an issue, because even in response to a survey, people may not be identifying coercive control or domestic abuse. Therefore, building people’s confidence to talk about it and report, even in response to a survey, may also affect the responses to the survey. The most important thing is that, if we have those new measures and the new violence against women and girls strategy, which we plan to take forward this summer, then we have the combination of the ways to better measure it and the framework to take much stronger action.

We are now going to move on to immigration and the White Paper.

I draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and the support that my office receives from RAMP. Home Secretary, I want to ask you about the immigration White Paper, which you published a fortnight ago. It is one of the biggest changes in British immigration policy for a long time. You have said that you are committed to lowering net migration. On violence against women and girls, you have set a target. On knife crime, you have set a target. But on migration, you have not. Why is that? The Migration Advisory Committee’s view is that the issue is not just the aggregate number of migrants in the country; it is the different types of migration you get. Do you agree with the MAC on that?

The starting point is that we have a history in this area of confidence understandably plummeting. A lot of promises were made to people across the country about what would happen to net migration under the previous Conservative Government. A lot of promises were made about what the impact of the new Brexit agreements would be, as well as about what the impact of Government policies would be, on net migration. Actually, the opposite happened: net migration quadrupled in the space of just four years, in a period in which the Government had made a formal commitment to bring net migration down. We are not going to take that approach. We are not going to do things that undermine confidence further. We are instead going to take practical steps—step by step, as we set out in the White Paper. We have identified the impact of some—not all—of the measures in the White Paper. The combined impact of the measures on higher English language standards, the higher standards for the skilled visa, the higher skills thresholds and the removal of the visa for care workers from abroad is expected to further reduce visas issued by around 100,000. We will set out those sorts of measures, and of course the net migration statistics will continue to be published, so people will identify and be able to see the progress. But the confidence issue is important, and we should not set specific targets that end up undermining that process. I agree, though, that there are different kinds of migration and that we need to look at those very differently. Of course, it is important for international students to come here to study, learn and bring new investment into not just our higher education institutions, but our economy and communities. We will always want to benefit from the highest levels of global talent. But the scale of the increase that we had in the social care visa, for example, meant we had huge exploitation as a result. It meant that too often, employers ended up driving a big increase in overseas recruitment rather than dealing with issues around skills or pay and conditions here in the UK. That is really damaging for the economy, as well as for the immigration system and confidence in the immigration system. It is right that we have a different approach for different kinds of migration, for different skills levels and for the different impact they have, but it is also why we do this within a broader framework that says, “The objectives of the immigration White Paper are to bring net migration down, to restore order and control to a system that had become really chaotic, and also to make sure we can better link the immigration system with skills and the economy—the expansion of the domestic skills and the domestic workforce that we need.”

Thank you for that answer, Home Secretary. I want to pry a little bit on that confidence issue. If you are saying that the reason you do not want to set a target on immigration is because of public confidence, that implies that you know what the target is, but you just do not want to be clear with the public about it, because if you miss it, that may damage confidence. Is that true? Have I got that right? If so, does that not read across to your other targets? If you miss the target on violence against women and girls, for example, will that not damage confidence in that system too?

I think there is a particular issue about confidence in the immigration system—and, frankly, quite understandably, given the way in which those numbers shot up in such a short period of time. I have said that I think that really was a free market experiment in which, effectively, employers were encouraged to recruit from abroad, including by being given a 20% discount on the wages that they were able to pay people who they recruited from abroad below the going rate. That makes no sense at all, because it applied to shortage occupations, where it may well have been that part of the answer to preventing them from being shortage occupations was to pay people properly and increase pay, rather than to have a 20% discount. At the same time, there were no requirements to train here in the UK. There is a particular challenge around the lack of confidence in the immigration system, which I think is different from the approach to violence against women and girls, where we are trying to drive the whole system and different organisations and agencies to feel part of that mission. It also reflects back to the other point that you made. We want international students to continue, but we do not think—we agree with the previous Government, belatedly, at the very end of their period—that short-term masters students should be bringing dependants. We think that we need to have global talent and we need to make sure that we have the right approach for those high-potential individuals, but we should not have the care work being recruited from abroad. We are differentiating. There is an overall approach, which is that net migration needs to come down, but it is also about restoring control and recognising the different kinds of controls we will have in the system for different kinds of migration.

You started touching there on the economic impact of migration. It is clear that the Government’s No. 1 mission is economic growth, but I think this is the first White Paper that the Government have published that does not address economic growth particularly. Why is that, and what is your view on the economic impact of migration? Returning to the point about different types of migrants having different impacts, do you think it is too crude to see all migrants the same when you analyse their impact on the economy? I know the OBR does that, and I wonder what your view of that is.

One of the things we highlighted as part of the immigration White Paper is the importance of increasing domestic skills, which improves our productivity. In the period in which we saw net migration quadruple—the biggest driver was an increase in overseas recruitment and an increase in work visas during that period—we also saw reductions in the level of investment in skills and training in the UK, and a big increase in the number of working-age people who were inactive and not in the labour force at all. Those things are related. That is why it is really important that we have a broader approach to the labour market that looks at all the different aspects, instead of just thinking, “There’s a labour market problem. What’s the answer? Oh, let’s increase migration.” Actually, that is counterproductive for our economic growth, long-term economic sustainability and productivity. We are talking about shifting from what had been, over the last five years, a high immigration, low skills approach to the economy, to bringing down immigration and ensuring we boost skills. Immigration will always be an important part of the UK. For generations, people have come to the UK to work in our NHS, to start up businesses or to be part of our universities. That has always been important, and it will continue to be so, but it has to be controlled and managed. The immigration system has to be controlled and managed otherwise it is not fair, effective or sustainable. That is why the whole approach is about restoring control and order to the system. By doing so, I think that helps support growth—rather than it always being seen as this polarised approach that somehow runs contrary to growth.

My final question is on skills and immigration. The concern would be that as you reduce people coming into the country, there will be a skills gap that will not be met by the domestic workforce fast enough. We see that in a lot of sectors, but some of them are really critical to the Government achieving their objectives. I am thinking particularly of house building. How confident are you that you are working with other Departments and other key sector stakeholders to manage any skills gaps that will be an externality of your policy?

Construction is a really good example. Construction will continue to be on the new temporary shortage list. But the difference between the temporary shortage list and the previous lists that the Government have had, with discounts and so on, is that the whole approach should be, first, a temporary arrangement, and secondly, combined with having a workforce strategy in place. We already have the important components, with the work that Bridget Phillipson has announced, to train up 60,000 construction workers over the next few years. These two things go hand in hand, and this is a good example of that. Yes, there should be provision under the temporary shortage list to recruit from overseas, but it has to be alongside that training and that domestic workforce strategy. The new approach is for the labour market evidence group to bring together different skills bodies—not just Skills England but the different devolved skills organisations and Governments as well—alongside DWP, because that is about labour market access; the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council, because that is about the role of employers and some of the issues around the way terms and conditions impact; and the Migration Advisory Committee. These different labour market bodies have all only looked at one aspect of labour market policy in the past. There has been no overview that says, “You know what, we have a huge shortage of construction workers, so what are we going to do? How are we bringing all of this partnership together?” We need to properly bring that together with the labour market evidence group, and then we need them to identify what the key priority areas are that we need workforce strategies drawn up for. From the point of view of the immigration system, we need the MAC to say, “Okay, are these workforce strategies drawn up? Are they being met? Are they adequate? And what does this mean in terms of whether an occupation should go on the temporary shortage list, and how long for?” That then allows for occupations on the temporary shortage list to be capped or time limited, and for us to have those additional controls and safeguards in place.

Given that it takes many years to train skilled workers, is there not a danger—and this talks to the point that you rightly made earlier about trust—that the temporary shortage list just becomes a loophole? Is there not a danger that the system decides that “temporary” means “semi-permanent” for years ahead? What mechanisms and oversight will you, the Department and the wider Government have in order to ensure that this is not the case, and that in years from now what was once temporary is not still classed as temporary?

As part of the immigration White Paper, we have already identified a series of occupations that will be taken off what used to be the immigration salary list, which we are abolishing and replacing with the temporary shortage list. The number of occupations on the temporary shortage list will be significantly lower than the number of occupations currently on the immigration salary list. I was flicking through to see whether I had that number in front of me, and I don’t, unless somebody can remember—

I haven’t got the number in front of me, but I will find it while you are talking, Home Secretary.

We may find it in our notes and be able to tell you the expected reduction in the number of occupations on the list. We will be reducing that number of occupations, but then the list has to be linked to the workforce strategies for the future. Part of what the Migration Advisory Committee will do when they are assessing what jobs should go on to the temporary shortage list will be an assessment of whether the workforce strategy is working and whether it is being pursued.

So there is not a solid definition of “temporary”, as measured in time.

That will vary from occupation to occupation. Clearly, if you have something where the training takes a long time, that will be different from something where there may be some additional needs for training, but to be honest, you could do the training in two months. There will be a difference in the approach taken to different occupations.

We have millions of job vacancies currently and we have millions of people unemployed or economically inactive. What happens if British businesses say to you as the Home Secretary, “We simply cannot get the workforce from Britain. There is a temporary arrangement. That’s coming to an end, and we simply can’t do it”? Will there then be a move from the temporary shortage list to a more permanent solution? Will the system be that agile?

The approach is that the skills threshold is being raised, so the skilled worker visa will apply to graduate level jobs. Below graduate level jobs will be able to go on the temporary shortage list only if they are in, effectively, the critical areas—for example, those that are critical to the industrial strategy or something like construction. There will be some areas where there are shortages at the moment that industry themselves probably need to address and they can do that relatively swiftly. Those areas will not be put on to the temporary shortage list. The employers and those sectors need to respond and adjust, because we are actually trying to get the economy to behave in a different way here and to make sure that we have the level of investment in skills and training that we need. We also need to put proper value on certain jobs, where it may just be about shift patterns that are a total nightmare. No wonder you cannot recruit people to do those jobs, because the shift pattern makes it totally impossible to drop the kids off at school or makes it totally impossible to live your life. There is no understanding of the need for employers to respond. There will be some jobs and occupations where those things will always be constraints and will always be difficult, but there are others where we want employers to be able to adapt. It has been interesting in the reception of the White Paper how much there is a sense that employers also want a high-skill economy. Employers also want to know that they are not being undercut by other employers, who actually just end up breaking the rules or not doing their bit. Across the economy, I think there is a strong commitment to us being a high-skill economy—making sure we get the highest skills and talent that we need from all over the world, but also making sure that we are bringing net migration down and focusing on the training here in the UK. Simon has kindly checked out the number. He says that up to 180 jobs and occupations have been removed from the immigration salary list and will not go on to the temporary shortage list.

Thank you, Home Secretary. I have two quick questions—

Very quickly.

One is detailed and the other is more about principle. I declare my interest as chair of the APPG for events. Does a 28-day visa that allows workers and visitors into the country for business fit into your definition of controlled and managed migration?

The net migration figures are for people coming to the UK for more than 12 months. There are obviously already a series of different temporary visas and arrangements for businesses—for example, for people who want to come for business meetings in the UK as part of international trade. It is really important that you can continue to have those sorts of meetings where you have trade arrangements, contracts that cut across borders, and so on. There have always been those kinds of arrangements, and those kinds of arrangements need to continue.

That is what I am particularly concerned about; I will take that offline. On the broader question, I expect I know what your answer will be, but I will ask it anyway. Do you think that we should look at how other countries organise the difference between illegal migration, which sits with the equivalent of the Home Office, and legal migration, which normally sits or can sit with the Business Department, which sees it as economic growth? Are there arguments in favour of that, particularly given that the two things are often mixed together in public opinion?

You are right that people often link the different things, but actually I think people have different attitudes to different aspects of legal and illegal migration. I think people’s strongest concerns are about illegal migration and the dangerous small boat crossings that undermine border security and put lives at risk. As for trying to carve up different systems, we could spend a huge amount of time doing so. In the end, there has to be order and control across the board. Making sure that there is order and control in the legal migration system is also about how we make sure that the rules are enforced, and that means identifying where there is illegal migration as well. I will give you one example of where I think those are linked and where we are now taking stronger action. We have increasing evidence of visa misuse, and of people who claim asylum at the end of their visa, even though nothing has changed in their home country in that period. Different kinds of visas are also suddenly being used for a surge of asylum claims, even from countries that that is not justified for. We have already taken steps to tighten restrictions and reverse the loosening of rules that took place under the previous Government for countries like Jordan and Colombia, where we have seen a big increase in asylum claims as a result of the loosening of visa controls. We have also taken some action on the visa measures for Trinidad and Tobago to ensure that we can restore order to the system. We are also looking at some other areas, including where people claim asylum at the end of their student visa, even though, again, nothing significant has changed in their home country during that period. That is why I think there are benefits from having all these systems interrelated.

I am conscious that we have just over a quarter of an hour left, so I urge brevity, please.

One area that has drawn particular attention is the role of care workers. I want to build on the point that the Home Office expects the impact of the announced changes to overseas recruitment on the approximate number of care workers to be about 7,000. I was wondering how many previously displaced care workers have been successfully rematched with new care roles.

I do not have those figures in front of me. I do not know whether we have them—

I do not have the precise number in front of me.

We will have to write to you with that. Obviously, we have set up a system for those who come to the UK on a care worker visa, but then it turns out that the sponsorship of that care worker has had to be revoked because the sponsor was not meeting the proper standards—they did not have proper checks in place, or sometimes the job just did not exist. We have a pool system so that those workers can be recruited by other employers, rather than those other employers continuing to recruit from overseas. That system does exist. I will write to the Committee with any figures that we have.

Thank you; we would appreciate that. What advice are the Government giving, or what are they looking to do, if care providers cannot fill those essential roles?

For a transition period, employers will continue to be able to recruit international care workers who are here already on an alternative legal route. Those who are here legally already, with permission to work, will be able to get care worker jobs and to transition to a care worker visa. We will continue to do that for a transition period but, as part of that, we also have to implement a fair pay agreement to ensure a proper strategy for supporting care workers in the UK, and for making sure that we have domestic recruitment and value people who are doing one of the toughest jobs that there is in the country.

As part of the decision to try a strategy that brings about a reduction in inward migration of about 7,000 care workers, has there been any impact assessment, or fiscal impact assessment, of the cost of care for care providers if they find gaps or cannot keep that level of recruitment going given the new announcements?

We think that the care industry will be able to recruit from those who are here lawfully, whether UK residents or people who are already here lawfully from overseas. We think they will be able to do that and meet the recruitment pressures that they face, but we are working with the Health Department on this. As we introduce different changes through the immigration rules, legislation and so on, from the different parts of the immigration White Paper, we will also produce further impact assessments and so on, but we have set out some of these provisions as part of the annexe to the White Paper.

I want to spend the last 15 minutes on illegal migration and the asylum system, but I have a quick point around the Ukraine scheme. Concerns have been raised about what will happen come the autumn, when the 18-month extension will start to be just 12 months. Given the risks there will be for children getting into schools, people taking up jobs and so on, I wonder whether you could look, before the summer recess, at whether you can give some certainty to Ukrainian refugees who are here on that visa scheme.

Yes, we are continuing to do that. I think it is particularly important that that academic timetable for young people is taken into account. I am very conscious of that and of ensuring that we recognise that as part of our continuing support for the Ukraine scheme.

Thank you. We will move on to illegal migration—Chris Murray is going to lead on that—and then Paul Kohler will come in on the asylum system.

Home Secretary, 10 years ago, we did not have small boat crossings, but now they are one of the biggest challenges that your Department faces. What has changed in the interim is that we do not have the Dublin system; there is no mechanism for the Home Office to send people back to the European countries where they should be. Are you looking at ways to work with European countries to strengthen that? Can you tell us how many gangs you’ve smashed so far?

I think there is a series of factors behind what has happened. We have seen this big increase in small boat crossings over the last few years; if you go back to 2018, it was barely a handful. Since then, an entire criminal industry has taken hold along our borders, with networks, including supply chains, that spread right across the—

Sorry, but we do not have much time; I want to be really specific about international co-operation on this issue.

In terms of strengthening international co-operation, we have always said that we would like to see a replacement for the Dublin scheme, and we recognise the impact of that. There is evidence of that impact, with people who arrive in the UK raising that as being a factor for them.

Yes, we’ve met them.

Nobody should be making these dangerous boat crossings; they undermine border security and they put lives at risk. The numbers that we saw on Saturday were completely unacceptable, as is the continuing nature of the problem. The central focus of the co-operation that we are building at the moment, particularly with France, is their agreement to change the law—or change their rules—about interventions in French waters. They have a maritime review under way and we are very keen for them to implement that law change as rapidly as possible. I was also in Berlin last week, meeting the German Interior Minister to talk about the stronger enforcement that we need and their agreement to change the law in Germany so that we can go after the warehouses that are in Germany.

Would you see a return to Dublin as an option for the Home Office? Is it something you are pursuing, given that when we had it before, we did not have small boat crossings?

We have always said that we would like to see those sorts of arrangements, and a replacement for that kind of arrangement. We obviously need to make sure that we have a system in place that is workable. You also referred to the impact in terms of the gangs. Information will be released later this afternoon about an additional set of arrests that have taken place in the UK, led by Immigration Enforcement, into a criminal gang network that has been running both illegal entry and facilitation of illegal working, and we can send you those further details. We have substantially expanded the work that the National Crime Agency and Border Security Command are doing here in the UK. This particular example today is about a gang that has been operating and based here in the UK. Iraqi Kurdish gangs and other gangs have been operating in northern France. We are co-operating with France, Germany, Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government to be able to pursue those gang networks.

When I asked that question, I did not expect you to say you had smashed a gang today, so that is very interesting to hear. I have one final question. A lot of the people who come over in small boats end up in asylum hotels, which are so controversial. They have cost the Home Office £7 billion over this contract. They are creating huge issues in local communities, and are actually quite difficult for some asylum seekers themselves. Moreover, this is overseas development assistance; this is money the UK says we want to send to the poorest people in the world. We had the providers in, and they told us they have been penalised only 3% of the time, and they have paid only £4 million out of their £400 million in profits. You have a break clause coming up in these contracts next year. Please tell me you are considering breaking those contracts or at least substantially revising them.

We inherited these contracts.

I recognise it was all inherited.

I am concerned about the level of money that has gone into these contracts. There is also the scale of the backlog that we inherited. We need to end asylum hotels altogether. Some of that is about bringing the whole backlog down and being able to clear the decision making.

Sorry to interrupt, but we will come to some questions on the asylum backlog. I am conscious of the time.

In terms of the management of the contracts, we will introduce tighter conditions in the contracts. I think you have Minister Angela Eagle giving you more evidence on that.

We do.

She can talk through some of the details on that. You will know that we have been taking action to remove one of the suppliers, Stay Belvedere, from the supply chain, as part of the tighter contract management. We will keep all contracts under review, but the core issue is to bring the overall numbers down in the asylum accommodation system.

On the provider question, the National Audit Office briefed us on its report, and we also heard from the providers themselves that they have put tens of millions of pounds aside to pay back the Home Office from excess profits. Why on earth has the Home Office not taken that money back and used it for the priorities of the British people?

We have already taken a series of steps since the election to drive better value through the contracting process. We are already saving hundreds of millions of pounds, compared to previous years and compared to the plans that we inherited, as a result of those changes. We are looking at further changes to drive those costs down and get better value.

I absolutely appreciate that, Home Secretary, but we had providers in front of us who said that they have literally put tens of millions of pounds aside and they have not paid it over to the Home Office, because the Home Office have not asked yet.

This is the profit-share mechanism—we can go into the detail next Tuesday with Dame Angela Eagle. Essentially, we are doing the audit of the money at the moment. Once we have been through the audit, we will request the money that is due.

I have one final question. This is clearly a huge issue for the electorate—for constituencies. Is it not time now for a radical solution around the application of the European convention on human rights, and whether we really need to look differently at the interpretation of that convention or to disapply ourselves from it in part, either on a temporary basis or on a permanent basis?

Compliance with international law has already helped us get new agreements in place with France and Germany to help tackle some of the serious problems we face with the criminal gangs’ operations. On the agreements with France, as you may know, the previous Government tried over a six-year period to get the French Government to agree to intervene in French waters, and at each stage they would not do so. They have agreed to do that now, but part of the way in which we have been able to build up that much stronger co-operation is by saying that we will continue to comply with international law. It is similar with Germany, with their ability and commitment to changing the law. However, we also need to look at the way in which laws are being interpreted. As we put in the immigration White Paper, there are areas, for example, where the system around family migration has become so complex. The proportion of decisions being taken as “exceptional”, often under interpretations around the ECHR and particularly article 8, ends up being around 30%. Well, that is not exceptional; that is a much broader proportion. That reflects some of the complexity of the overall system and the way in which decisions have been based on a series of court decisions, as opposed to having a clear framework set out by Parliament, which can be much easier for the courts to interpret and reflect much more what I think the public would want to see. We are looking at that as part of this.

We are going to have to move on. We have five minutes, and Paul Kohler has questions on the asylum system.

At last. I refer the Committee to my entry in the register of interests: one of my donors, Safwan Adam, had an interest in Stay Belvedere. There are something like a quarter of a million asylum seekers in the system at the moment. I know that you inherited this backlog, but when do you expect to clear it?

We have already had a significant drop in the number of people awaiting an initial decision. We have speeded up decisions substantially since the election, including the initial decisions, and we are also taking action as part of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill to introduce statutory timetables for appeals. We can make substantial progress on the initial decisions, and we are doing so. We expect the time to come down over the coming months.

What is the target on that? What are we looking at with regard to initial decision? When should that be made? By what time?

I am just scrolling through my notes. Initial decisions are more than double those in the three months before the election, in the period January to March. We are going to continue with that high level of decision making, and that should bring down the initial decision making. There is obviously a certain point at which the process just becomes the number of people and the time it takes for process decisions to go through the system.

What is the target, though? What is the target for making an initial decision? What is the time target and duration?

We expect, over the course of this year and certainly over the course of the next six months, a very substantial drop in the backlog on initial decision making. But if we do not have the legislation on the appeals system go through, we will still end up with long, unacceptable delays in the system. We are introducing the statutory timetable for making appeals decisions, so that we can speed things through—both initial decisions and then appeals decisions as well.

Will you answer my question about a target for the initial decision? Do you not have a target for the initial decision?

At the moment, we are still working through a backlog of cases that have been in the system for a considerable amount of time. As the Home Secretary was saying, there will always be a level of what we call unworkable cases in that system—people who are up for trial or something. We need to get through that backlog, which will be of longer cases—we still have about a third of cases that have been in the system for longer than a year, which goes back to the delays last year through the IMA—to establish the rhythm and whether we are going to put some target service level agreement around initial decisions.

The backlog is down to 79,000 in the most recent figures, and it has continued to fall since then—those are the most recent published figures. That, in itself, was a 13% drop on the previous quarter. That is the pace at which we are making decisions at the moment. We will continue to make initial decisions at that current pace. But we also need to ensure that we speed up the appeals.

I understand all that, but why are you resistant to declaring that you have a target for the initial decision to be made? Why is that so difficult? You are going for a target for the appeals period, so why are you reluctant to give me a target?

Do you mean a timetable target?

How long should it take for the initial decision to be made?

We are going to set out further reforms to the asylum system, but one of the things I have always been keen to do is to have a system for fast-track decisions and appeals. If people arrive from predominantly safe countries, they should not be sitting in the asylum system for a long time. We should be able to take those decisions really quickly, and make sure that those people go through the appeals system really quickly and are returned really quickly as well. That would mean a fast-track system alongside the main asylum system, and it would be really important in making sure that the system is fair. It will require legislation in order to be able to do that, as well as new system design. I do understand the question you are asking, but part of the reason is that I think there should be faster tracks for those cases so that we can get them through the system really quickly—within a matter of months.

I understand the reason why we need some fast tracks, but when are we talking about with this legislation?

The first phase of legislation we have introduced in this area is the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which brings in the counter-terrorism powers for tackling the small boats and the criminal gangs. It also includes some measures around this issue, including the statutory timetable on appeals. We want to bring forward further legislation; we will announce further measures as soon as we are able to, and I will update the Committee as soon as I can.

I am very conscious that we have overrun the time we had. We had an hour of voting, so we lost quite a lot of time. We have many questions that we would like to put to you, Home Secretary, so I hope we can invite you back again soon. Thank you very much for coming, and thank you to the Committee for your questions.