Speeches by Jones.

“Yes, I can absolutely assure the right hon. Gentleman that we will learn whatever lessons we need to learn and take whatever action we need to take. Of course, that applies across all forces, not just West Midlands police.”

“I completely reject the right hon. Gentleman’s framing. We have been clear, and the Prime Minister has been clear, from the minute this decision was made that we believe it to be the wrong decision, and we worked tirelessly from that point to try to ensure that the match went ahead with the fans present. There was a we…”

“I cannot answer my hon. Friend’s question. As we mentioned at the Select Committee, how many times the safety advisory group was meeting was slightly unclear to us at the Home Office, because our relationship with the safety advisory group is through the UK football organisation. We were receiving information in a slig…”

“I will certainly look back at and read that report, which I very much welcome. It relates to some of the wider questions about nationally significant events and how SAGs operate. I am sorry that there has not been a response to the Committee; I encourage everybody to respond as quickly as possible. The hon. Lady is rig…”

“As far as I am aware, UEFA was not in the SAG meeting. Of course, there would have been conversations with Villa, which ultimately had to make the decisions. It is a complicated decision-making process, as the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) said. The SAG sits to consider advice. The police…”

“They are very much not a burden or a nuisance; they are doing their civic duty, for which we are very grateful, and we encourage them to continue to do so. Reporting is absolutely key. I have had similar conversations to the ones that she and, I suspect, all of us have had, particularly when things have gone on for a v…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) on securing the debate. There is clearly a problem. It is not my job to defend the status quo; it is my job to consider what we can do about the problem. This debate has brought forwa…”

“The hon. and gallant Member is absolutely right; people can, and I would encourage them to do that. Respect orders are part of the legislation that we are bringing in. We do not have time to get into this because I want to let the hon. and gallant Member wind up at the end, but respect orders will have a place in terms…”

“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…”

“Do you want to talk through the detail, Richard, and then I can come back?”

“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 …”

“If I can come in here, when police forces want mutual aid—support for matches—the request does not normally come via us; it would come into the wider policing system, so we would not necessarily be part of that process. As Richard says, I asked for information on the 15th. We got information back that said that there w…”

“There is a big difference between commenting after a decision has been made and before. No comment was made in the run-up to the decision. It would not have been right, nor did we try or even think about trying, to influence what the police may have to say about the safety of a match. Once the decision had been made, t…”

“We had neither the risk assessment nor any intelligence.”

“I am Sarah Jones, the Minister for Policing. I used to be on the Home Affairs Committee.”

“It is much nicer on that side of the table.”

“As I said, the Prime Minister was expressing a view. Rightly or wrongly, people thought that Jewish people were not being welcomed into our country to watch a football match. Of course, the decision—and this speaks to the challenge that we have in looking at these issues—was not made in a vacuum. The police chiefs know…”

“Do you mean that in terms of whether it was the hooligan element?”

“He met with my predecessor as Policing Minister. We were not there, but the action from that was that the UKFPU was to work with Lord Mann, as we understand it. Lord Mann will know whether that happened or not.”

“One of the struggles that we had with this process was that we did not actually have the information on why decisions had been made within the SAG. With the previous panel the Committee talked about what the SAG does and how it operates. We were not in the SAG process; we did not hear what the reasons were. We did not …”