| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Miss Anne McIntosh (Vale of York): While I do not disagree with the Home Secretary's sentiments about
UEFA's action, can he assist the House in understanding why UEFA refused to act after the death of two Leeds United fans in Turkey following a match there?
Mr. Straw: I take the hon. Lady's point, but I cannot assist the House because I do not have access to the internal considerations of UEFA. If she wishes me to do so, I shall take the matter up with UEFA via our football authorities.
Mr. Banks: Of course no one blames UEFA for its rightful anger--we all feel it. However, it is extraordinary that, before the press conference, the chairman and the chief executive of the Football Association were not given an opportunity to discuss the matter. There comes a point when one feels that an element of politics has entered the situation, and that would be disastrous for the English game--and for world football.
Mr. Straw: I understand my hon. Friend's concerns, and he has much greater knowledge than I do of the internal workings of international and European football associations. However, the House will agree that it is unruly so-called English supporters who have provided the occasion for the decisions that UEFA has made so far and of which it has warned us.
The latest figures that we have are that 916 British citizens have been arrested in the course of the tournament, many in disturbances in Brussels and Charleroi last Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The majority of those arrests were what the Belgians call "administrative arrests", with a great many people being picked up for failure to carry a passport or other identification. In such cases, no charges have followed, but many--although by no means all--of the individuals concerned have been subject to deportation. Some 464 of them have so far been returned to the United Kingdom, being flown back either to Manchester or Stansted airports. Some of the remainder are likely to be deported direct to the UK, but many have been released without any further charge in Belgium, and that includes a majority of those arrested in Charleroi. The British consul in Brussels knows so far of six--of the more than 900 arrested--who are subject to criminal proceedings in Belgium, although that figure may rise.
Sir Norman Fowler (Sutton Coldfield): Is it true that a substantial number of the more than 400 people who have been deported have criminal convictions?
Mr. Straw: The information I was given this morning showed that 16 of those 464 were on the list of 1,000 provided by the National Criminal Intelligence Service of known football hooligans or those with football-related convictions. An analysis is being made, and I shall provide it to the House when it is available, but it is true that a substantial proportion of the total number arrested had criminal convictions against them that were not related to football. In order to put that into perspective, however, I should also like to explain--I shall provide more details in a moment--that a third of all young men have a criminal conviction of one kind or another by the age of 30. That is a dreadful commentary on our society,
but it happens to be the case. A quarter of a group born in 1968 who were subject to analysis had convictions by the age of 24.
Sir Norman Fowler: Does the Home Secretary feel that it would have been franker and better had he made that clear in his statement yesterday? As it is in the press this morning, I assume that it was in the knowledge of the Home Office when he made the statement.
Mr. Straw: Had I had the information, I would have made it available. I have never sought not to make available information of that kind. The fact that it is publicly known that a third of all people have convictions by the age of 30 would have led people to say that, of any random sample of 1,000 men picked up anywhere in the country, at least a third were likely to have had criminal convictions.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): Of the 97 Britons so far subject to international banning orders, how many are known to have breached those orders? Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House what assessment he has made of the criteria for, and of the resources allocated to, surveillance operations on suspected football hooligans?
Mr. Straw: I think the total, which I was given this morning, of those subject to international banning orders is 99. We have checked, and the latest information is that 94 of them have fully complied with their reporting conditions. The police are making inquiries about the whereabouts of the other five. They have committed an arrestable offence of failure to report, and the police will be following that up.
I cannot give the hon. Gentleman an exact answer with regard to surveillance resources. I shall be happy to write to him or see whether my hon. Friend the Minister of State can provide the information when he winds up. We have sought to ensure that the police have adequate surveillance methods and equipment, and also, of course, that they have adequate powers.
Mr. Burns: In the light of the right hon. Gentleman's answer about the criminal records of a number of people in Europe at present, will he reconsider the answer he gave me yesterday? Does not this new fact of which the Home Secretary is aware make the case that if we had had banning orders for unconvicted football hooligans before Euro 2000, we could have stopped most of them leaving this country for the tournament?
Mr. Straw: With great respect to the hon. Gentleman, I shall come on to who said what to whom during the proceedings on his Bill if he wishes. But the central truth, which means that the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald was almost entirely off the point in her speech, is that the police have a list of 500 or so against whom there are banning orders of one kind or another. They include the international banning orders that the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) mentioned, of which there are 99. The other 400 are made up of other kinds of banning orders; the hon. Gentleman will know that there are three kinds.
Those names have been provided to the Belgian and Dutch authorities. In addition, the names of 500 other hooligans known to have football-related convictions
against them have also been provided to the Belgians and the Dutch. Where there has been an attempt by individuals on either list to travel to Belgium or the Netherlands, we have, thanks to a very effective spotting system, provided that information to the Belgian and Dutch authorities, and those people have been turned round at the port of entry.Of course I accept that we would have preferred to have on the statute book the full range of orders available through the vehicle of the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns). We have never pretended otherwise. However, the work that has been done means that we have achieved by other methods the ends sought--by the hon. Gentleman and by the Government--in that Bill, and that the people involved have been dealt with effectively. As I shall explain, the problem is that the football-related violence that has happened in Belgium is caused by people who are not on those lists.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: My right hon. Friend referred to the central point in this matter. Millions of people believe that that central point is the appalling statistic that my right hon. Friend produced--that one third of all young men under 30 in the United Kingdom have been the subject of a criminal charge. That shows what the values of the 1980s and 1990s did to a generation of young people. They are the children of Thatcher, and we are paying the price for the damage done in those years.
Mr. Straw: If I may, I shall give my hon. Friend and the House the precise information on that matter. For a cohort of men born in 1968, 26 per cent. had convictions by the age of 24, and 10 per cent. had convictions for violence against the person, sexual offences or robbery. In comparison, among men born in 1953, 34 per cent. had some convictions by the age of 40, and 10.5 per cent. had convictions for violence, sexual offences or robbery.
In the interests of complete accuracy, I must tell the House that a note just passed to me states that the total number of people subject to international football banning orders is 101, not 99.
Mr. Simon Hughes: The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) raised the underlying issue, but I wish to return to a matter of fact. Given the fear of violence in Belgium or Holland, will the Home Secretary say whether the Home Office considered intervening to prevent people with previous convictions for violence--in the past seven years, for example--from travelling on the basis that there was reasonable cause to believe that an offence might be committed? Would it not have been possible under our existing law for our police to stop such people leaving the country, or for the Belgian or Dutch police to stop them entering their countries? That approach would cover a range of people who may turn out to have been involved in the violence and to have been sent back from those countries, but who have never had football-related offences recorded against them.
Mr. Straw: A good deal of attention has been given to that matter, and to the provision of intelligence about people who were identified, through being questioned at ports, as having previous convictions that were not football-related. That information has been provided to the Belgian and Dutch authorities. In the main, those authorities have decided that their laws mean that it is not possible for them routinely to turn those people back.
I of course considered carefully whether powers existed in the United Kingdom that would have allowed people seeking to leave the country to be peremptorily turned back on the basis that it appeared that they might cause trouble abroad. However, the House knows that powers to restrain United Kingdom citizens from leaving the UK are not available to any Secretary of State. Whether such powers should exist is a very large question, as they would give individual police officers huge discretion.
A point that I have raised repeatedly in discussions with my Belgian and Dutch counterparts is that, in Europe and around the world, it is always easier peremptorily to refuse entry of a non-national to a country than it is to prevent the exit of national from that country. It is routine, on my direct signature or by delegated authority, for all sorts of people to be refused entry to the United Kingdom because their presence is not regarded as conducive to the public good or because they fall foul of other criteria. We hope very much that the Belgian and Dutch authorities will follow suit.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |