Speeches by Cooper.

“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…”

“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…”

“This was important. There have been a series of these investigations. There was the work that was commissioned by the Mayor in Greater Manchester, there has been some by IICSA, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse as well. Some of the issues go back to the point about how you identify the most dangerous offe…”

“Of all the overarching issues that were raised as part of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, the most shocking thing is that they have not been implemented. We have had one set of recommendations; we have had other recommendations coming out of individual local inquiries and it is important that those are…”

“This is an issue for every single local authority and for every single area. Every area has to look at whether its safeguarding arrangements are strong enough, whether it has strong enough support for victims and support for people who are coming forward. If you have victims and families coming forward and identifying …”

“I will ask the Safeguarding Minister to write to you on this one. I am conscious that she has held meetings very recently with Alexis Jay and with groups of survivors of child sexual abuse as well. She can update you directly on the next steps on that.”

“Yes, I will. When the Greater Manchester reports came out, I did speak directly to Andy Burnham about the content, about what his next steps were going to be and what the local next steps were going to be. We take very seriously the local reports, be it the Greater Manchester ones or the Rochdale and other ones as well…”

“It is a fundamental principle of British policing that they are operationally independent. That principle is rooted right through the heart of British policing and remains immensely important. There will always be operational independence in terms of particular investigations, in terms of local priorities and in terms …”

“We are keen to do a major programme of policing reform but we want to do this with the Home Office working with policing to be able to do this. We are working at the moment on establishing joint teams to be able to work together to draw up proposals for a White Paper sometime next year on policing reform. Some of the c…”

“Yes, and this also links into your question, Chair, about how you make sure that you can encourage innovation and make sure that innovation is not penalised, but also make sure that you get take-up of successful innovation in other police forces right across the country. We do not currently have a strong enough framewo…”

“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…”

“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 …”

“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…”

“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…”

“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.”

“Facial recognition technology has significant potential and it is already being used by some forces. There is no clear overarching governance framework for it and that means that some police forces are not really clear about the legal basis and when and where they can use it. We have been working at pace. Dame Diana Jo…”

“I will ask Dame Diana Johnson to update the Committee on the timescale and the work that she has under way. She has had a series of meetings with policing and community organisations.”

“You also asked about productivity issues and over-funding. There is a series of other areas where we think that productivity and efficiency could be improved and savings made. That is why we have set up a commercial efficiencies programme. We think that there is evidence that we can save significant sums of money on pr…”

“The Lord Chancellor is giving evidence in the next room as we speak. I am sure he will be being asked about some of the prison issues. The big focus of neighbourhood policing is around both preventing crime and tackling some crimes around anti-social behaviour, town centre crimes, issues around shoplifting, street thef…”