Labour MP For Hartlepool Says "Broken" Asylum System Needs Review After Riots
Rioters set fire to a police car in Hartlepool last week (Alamy)
5 min read
The new Labour MP for Hartlepool has said he has “deep frustrations” about the lack of openness and transparency of private companies operating in the UK asylum system, but insisted this was a “separate conversation” to tackling the riots affecting his constituency and other areas.
Rioters have taken part in violent clashes with the police in many locations over the past week, with at least 11 people arrested in Hartlepool so far and many more across the Teesside region in north east England.
The worst disturbance in Hartlepool took place on the evening of Wednesday 31 July, with rioters attacking police with missiles, glass bottles and eggs, and setting a police car alight. Two boys aged 11 and 14 were among those arrested in the aftermath, and others arrested have been accused of violent disorder while shouting racist and Islamophobic chants.
Jonathan Brash is the Labour MP for Hartlepool, having been elected for the first time at the General Election in July. He told PoliticsHome he viewed the riots as a “tiny minority of violent folks”, and that there was not “any excuse or any justification” for the violence on the streets.
However, he suggested that going forwards, a separate conversation would need to be had about the “capacity” of local areas to be able to deal with issues surrounding immigration and asylum – something the new MP has already brought up in his first weeks in Parliament.
“One of the deep frustrations that I have with the system that we've inherited is that you get private companies who are tasked with housing asylum seekers, and they're not required to interact on any level with the local community, via the local authority or anywhere else,” he said.
“Openness and transparency should be an important part of the process – and that's not to denigrate or demonise anybody at all, but being able to have an open conversation and understand where people are in a community just makes sense.”
When Labour was in opposition last year, the party tabled an amendment to the Illegal Migration Bill that would put a duty of the home secretary to consult with local authorities when choosing areas for asylum seeker accommodation. Yvette Cooper, now home secretary, said at the time that the Tory government was “trying to bypass local councils and communities”.
Brash said he would in support of a move to include local authorities in consultations over where to place asylum seeker housing and hotels.
“There is the need to have a grown-up calm conversation about issues in terms of asylum and immigration,” he said.
“I think that there is concern in towns right across the country about the impact that the broken asylum and immigration system that we inherited is having on towns like that.”
Addressing the home secretary in the Commons on 22 July, Brash asked what steps she would take to reduce the “increasing and intolerable pressure on local communities” such as Hartlepool, with Cooper responding that there would be “challenges in getting the system working again, which means that bringing down the backlog will take longer than we initially anticipated”.
Brash told PoliticsHome that his immediate priority was to communicate with his constituents about the actions of the police, but also in the longer term to begin to “lead a broader conversation about how we fix some of the issues, some of the problems, some of the deep, rooted concerns that people have”.
The policing minister had assured him that “any support” that Hartlepool would need to respond to the riots would be available from police, and he added that he was “delighted” that it seems 24 hour courts might operate in order to process the cases.
“That's going to send a very clear message to people, we will not tolerate public disorder in this way,” he said.
“That is not the way to make your point, it's not a way to get a discussion about a key and important issue.”
Brash, who has visited local community groups, businesses and mosques to “reassure people”, said that the police had confirmed that the majority of the people arrested in Hartlepool were local to the area – but that there “outside forces” looking to spread misinformation and “whip up tensions” on social media.
“I, almost on a daily basis, read things on social media that are just fantasy fiction, lies, designed to cause huge tension in communities and whip up this kind of tension,” he said, adding that he had seen examples on local groups on Facebook in particular.
“There will be other social media platforms that I'm not aware of.
I think part of the problem here is that demographically speaking, different social media platforms target different groups, which means the groups who are not targeted by that really have no idea that it's happening… there's a lot of this stuff that I, you and other people simply won't see, but it's clearly there.”
While the MP said he did not agree with banning certain platforms, he thought it showed the government would need to “tighten up” the rules and regulations binding social media firms, perhaps regarding clamping down on anonymous accounts.
“I think if some people were forced to face their own words, then that would make a difference, because there is a lot of anonymity online,” he said.
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