Speeches by Cooper.

“You are right that it is very ambitious. I do not think any Governments, international or domestic, have tried to do this before. However everybody has talked about tackling violence against women and girls for a long time, but we have only had incremental change and what we need in many areas is almost a system overha…”

“The work is underway. As part of the strategy, we will set out which measures we are going to use. We have been doing some provisional work but we will confirm it as part of the strategy. The issue with the ONS will be timetables, not just to identify the measures but also the timetable to be able to conduct those meas…”

“That is what we are still working through at the moment. This will partly depend on the work that the ONS has underway. The reason behind halving is that we think that we need that scale of ambition to try to get everybody away from just thinking about the incremental change. If you want to really transform things in a…”

“You are right that the system has become a bit stuck and we have ended up with very long delays in the national referral mechanism. One of the things that we have done is to recruit 200 additional staff members to clear the backlog for the national referral mechanism. We are looking at future support services for victi…”

“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 …”

“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.”

“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…”

“Yes, I have spoken to him and we have announced, as part of the police settlement that we announced today, a £65 million increase in the national capital city grant. That reflects two things, first the existing grant for the capital cities because they obviously do have lots of national events that will take place in t…”

“I think we already have different forms of safe routes, that will always need to be part of the UK system. That is one of the things that we did with the family reunion for Afghanistan and that will always need to be part of the system. All countries will always need to do their bit but I think it is just not an altern…”

“The UK will always need to do its bit alongside other countries to help those who have fled persecution, what we have done with the Ukraine programme, with Hong Kong, with Afghanistan, and so on. We made some changes to the Afghanistan arrangements earlier this year to help reunite family members who had been separated…”

“In the conversations that I had in Italy at the weekend, the shared interest was around going after the illicit finance. The Italian Government have been doing a huge amount. They have parallel challenges with boats across the Mediterranean. Interestingly, the work they have done on a combination of law enforcement, bu…”

“The German Interior Minister, Nancy Faeser, would say that the same criminal gang networks that are operating in Germany, are operating in northern France, organising boats across the Channel and stretching across Europe as well. That is causing challenges in Germany. The smuggler networks, for example, are facilitatin…”

“The number does change week by week because of the numbers of people whose permits run out, new ones are granted and so on. Also people leave the country so the numbers are fluid. Overall, however, it is estimated that around 4 million people have biometric permits and need to switch to e-visas. More than 3 million peo…”

“Seema Malhotra, our Minister for Migration and Citizenship, has spent a lot of time working through the detail on this. I think the intention behind the e-visa system is absolutely the right one. Having a digital approach to borders and visas means that you can have a much more streamlined approach to people travelling…”

“I think we will continue to work with universities and with other organisations to make sure that we have both the benefits of international students coming to the UK, but also make sure that there are proper rules in place so we do not have misuse, and also proper arrangements for housing.”