Speeches by Jones.

“The Home Office was aware. As was discussed in the previous panel, its relationship with what was happening, in terms of the West Midlands police, the SAG and the decisions, was via this body called the United Kingdom Football Policing Unit, or UKFPU, which was the interaction that the Home Office had. The Home Office …”

“Again, I will bring in Richard in a minute on the timings of what happened when, but I think the fundamental point was that the Home Office position was to be a receiver of information. We were asking for information—DCMS was the same—and were part of the flow of information across Government. We did not have a role, s…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Stringer, and to take part in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) on securing this debate and on leading the charge in Parliament for more action for his constituents on bike theft. He was right when he …”

“The right hon. Member is right to say that confidence in policing is incredibly important. We need that confidence across all our communities, and we know that there is a lot of work to do in some areas in particular. I am not going to comment on what appears to be the case, but I can reassure him that, as I have said,…”

“To the right hon. Gentleman’s first point, the Prime Minister’s view was very clear: the wrong decision was made. That is our position. We believe that the decision made was the wrong one. On the safety advisory groups, we have asked the inspector to look at them, their role and their function. Of course, the right hon…”

“Of course we want to ensure that as much information as possible is in the public domain. We do not yet know the truth about some of the statements in yesterday’s article and we need to get to the bottom of that. I know that Members of the House will be very interested in hearing about where the inspector gets to in hi…”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. I know that he understands the principle of police operational independence, and that we need to ensure that we reflect that correctly when such decisions are taken. Stepping back, there are wider lessons that we need to learn, which is why the Home Secretary has written to…”

“I agree entirely with the shadow Home Secretary that we should not allow the threat of mob violence to stop matches going ahead. With respect, I think that he is jumping the gun a bit with some of the phrases he has used, saying that it was “just made up”. We are not clear on that at this point, and I do not want this …”

“I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this urgent question. Let me begin by acknowledging the concern and disappointment felt by supporters affected by the decision regarding attendance at Villa Park on 6 November; I recognise the strength of feeling in this House and the wider communities on the matter. As Mem…”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. At this point, I cannot give him the answers he wants about intelligence—the root of it and the truth of it. We are responding simply to the information that we got yesterday, and we have asked the appropriate questions to get to the bottom of that. He is right to say that …”

“The SAG looked at lots of considerations in terms of what the options were. Should it have been a closed match, for example, with no fans? That sometimes happens. Should the match not have gone ahead at all? As my hon. Friend says, should it have been a match with a limited number of tickets? Many options were being we…”

“I think not, but there we are. He is my constituency neighbour in Croydon, so best wishes to him always. The 2 October was the point at which the Home Office asked officials in the United Kingdom football policing unit for the update, and we were told that a range of different options were being considered. That is cer…”

“There were a series of different interactions and communications between the different groups in that period, as Members would expect. There is a balance to be struck with the operational independence question, and we need to get that right; it is not for the Home Secretary to march in and demand that the police say a …”

“I can definitely give my hon. Friend that assurance—she is absolutely right, and I thank her for the work she is doing as chair of the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism. I have been involved with that group and with Danny Stone for many years; they do a fantastic job, and I recommend that all Members o…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for the work that he did supporting colleagues and his constituents after the Manchester attack. He is right to point to the 1980s, when we had a completely different era of huge violence in football. We are very glad that that has, in the main, subsided. He says that there should be no no-go are…”

“We were not fully briefed in advance of the decision; we were told when the decision was made. As we have already said, we knew that options were being considered. This is the way in which these processes work: a safety advisory group makes recommendations, and the local authority responds accordingly. In response to w…”

“The right hon. Member is right. I am very familiar with Sutton Coldfield—and my husband is a Villa season ticket holder, as are my twin boys. It is in some ways the bane of my life, because I never see them as they are always at Villa. It is worth saying that Villa fans are lovely and it is a lovely club. They are deva…”

“The right hon. Gentleman is right to talk about political impartiality. It is absolutely crucial that our police are not making decisions based on politics. We ask them every day to almost do that, even though we are very clear that they must not. It is difficult and complicated, and when they are policing—for example,…”

“I would very much like to talk to Lord Mann about the work that he has done, which was prior to me being in post. I will pick that up.”

“The hon. Member raises a good question. Of course, we need to work with the Jewish community to make sure that relationships with police are strong. The Community Security Trust has a really good relationship with police. It works very closely with them, and it obviously has a huge infrastructure, for which we are very…”