Speeches by Cooper.

“We just confirmed today the continuing funding for the violence reduction units next year. We want to work more closely with the violence reduction units on the focus particularly on the ambition to halve knife crime over the next 10 years alongside halving violence against women and girls. To take a step back for a se…”

“We should frame it as we are consulting on our intention to ban the ninja swords. There is a process that we go through but we will want to implement a ban as soon as possible. However, we do go through a consultation first.”

“Stop and search is an important policing tool. Of course, it has to be used appropriately, but it is an important tool for policing, including for things like preventing knife crime. A review was carried out by the inspectorate a few years ago about how to make sure that all police forces have the right standards and s…”

“I had a conversation with a local authority enforcement officer who used to be a neighbourhood police officer. We were standing in the town centre and he talked about repeat perpetrators, because we were talking about problems with antisocial behaviour in the town centre and he described to me powerfully how they used …”

“One of the reasons that we worked with the College of Policing on drawing up a neighbourhood policing guarantee and a new performance framework for neighbourhood policing—and we continue to work with the police forces on this—is how to have a system so that you can prevent the high levels of abstraction, how you can ma…”

“A lot of the work on tackling retail crime has been very much linked to the discussions with retailers and with USDAW as one of the main trade unions representing shop workers. USDAW has been heavily involved in the work to get a new offence around assaults on shop workers.”

“Today’s statement sets out the funding for the police forces for the next year, the £1 billion additional funding that I set out at the start of today. That includes increases in the core grant and an additional £100 million for neighbourhood policing. The £100 million is about enough to recruit over 1,000 police offic…”

“That is partly what the move-on officers are designed to do and that is a new development. MCHLG is in the same building as we are and so it has been quite easy to have meetings with the Deputy Prime Minister on exactly these issues and we have been discussing them directly. I have found great willingness across the Ho…”

“Matthew or Simon will correct me if this is not fully accurate but I understand that it was to do with the implementation of the Illegal Migration Act and, in particular, the retrospective element of the Illegal Migration Act. The way that the Illegal Migration Act was drawn up—it is incomprehensible that it was drawn …”

“Yes, we want to stop using asylum hotels. It is inappropriate and extremely costly. The cost of hotel accommodation hit a peak of, I think, £8.8 million a day last year. It is an appalling waste of taxpayers’ money, spending money on that kind accommodation which was expensive but necessary because the asylum backlog h…”

“We have a programme of work looking at the appeals, both trying to speed up appeals and also trying to make sure that we can increase the quality of decision making. Part of the problem, of course, is that some of the cases that are going through appeals are about decisions that were taken a long time ago. The faster t…”

“There you go. The move-on officers will work with local authorities on how, when asylum is granted, to work at pace to help people to get jobs, find private rented accommodation that they can fund, and so on.”

“First, the progress with the backlog—we have just served closure notices on another seven hotels and they should be closing in the new year as a result of bringing the backlog down. We are determined to make progress on that work. Andrea Eagle is taking forward work on setting up new arrangements with local authorities…”

“We need to do two things. The first and most important issue is to get the backlog right down because the backlog that we inherited is extremely costly. The second thing is to be able to get out of the very costly hotel arrangements and the contracts. Bear in mind that many of contracts were signed in a rush in the sum…”

“Part of the reason for having the liaison officers in local areas is for them to co-ordinate with local authorities so that when a decision has been made, where somebody has fled persecution, arrangements can be swiftly put in place for them to be able to work, be part of a community and be supported. You can look at r…”

“No. We try to remove people as swiftly as possible. Bear in mind that the whole point is to be able to deliver the returns while respecting and enforcing the rules. You want to use the detention facilities as effectively as possible in order to do that. The focus always has to be on the likelihood of being able to deli…”

“No. The issue is what can you do with each individual case on a case-by-case basis to be able to make decisions as swiftly as possible and to be able to remove people as swiftly as possible.”

“There are still safeguards in the existing system around anything that is disproportionate detention. If you have somebody held in detention and there is no prospect of being able to remove them, you will not be able to keep them in detention. However—and this is the point that Simon Ridley made—if you have a fixed tim…”

“I will ask Matthew or Simon to follow up on this because a lot of the work around the Brook House immigration removal centre took place before the election. Ten areas of concern were raised in the report, and a lot of very serious issues were raised around standards. It was a very troubling report. In any of these issu…”

“If you have cases of voluntary returns that are not being progressed as swiftly as they could be, I and Angela Eagle, the Border Security and Asylum Minister, would be extremely keen to follow it up with you to make sure that we can make progress. In general, the detention centres tend to be used for the enforced retur…”