Elections for the positions of Chairs of Select Committees took place in Parliament this week.
Karen said,
"I am delighted to have been elected as Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, a cross-party committee of MPs responsible for scrutinising the work of the Home Office and its associated bodies."
Karen's statement that was published for MPs across the House to read before the election is below:
The new Parliament means change all round. Conservatives have exchanged government for opposition and the duty of His Majesty’s Loyal opposition is to oppose. We can oppose with better ideas, better policies, better arguments.
But opposition doesn’t just mean disagreeing for its own sake. It means practical, honest scrutiny of government proposals. Parliamentary committees are a vital part of that democratic scrutiny and that’s why I’m standing as chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee.
I’ve been an MP for 14 years and during that time I’ve been a Whip, a minister in the Home Office and a cabinet minister at DCMS and the Northern Ireland Office, and I’ve also been the Procedure Committee chair. Most importantly I’ve been the representative of Staffordshire Moorlands. That means I’ve seen all aspects of Parliament. I hope that experience is part of the reason colleagues on both sides of the House will support me for committee chair.
As Minister for Preventing Abuse, Exploitation and Crime at the Home Office, I brought in the Serious Crime Act and then the Modern Slavery Act.
Over this summer we’ve seen shocking threats to law and order and the committee’s scrutiny of ministers’ response to the chaos is an important part of giving the public confidence in our system.
The Modern Slavery Act is particularly close to my heart. It provides the tools to protect people in the UK from this evil exploitation. We’ve set a lead in this field as a country and if I’m committee chair I would aim to help make sure ministers maintain those standards.
Modern slavery is not a crime happening somewhere obscure overseas but right here in the UK. It's impossible to estimate the number of victims of modern slavery in our country reliably, but it's clear that there are at least 10,000. In 2023, the National Referral Mechanism for Modern Slavery received 17,004 referrals, the highest ever. That's both heartbreaking and unacceptable.
How can the Home Office better address modern slavery? One problem is that the department does not distinguish between human smuggling, where people are illegally transported with their consent, and human trafficking, in which the individuals illegally transported are victims of coercion and exploitation. I’m concerned that this vital distinction is being systematically missed by Home Office policymakers. The result is confused policymaking. As chair, I’d make addressing this problem a priority.
Alongside these reforms, the Serious Crime Act better protected British girls from criminalised coercive and coercive controlling behaviour within families for the first time. That goes hand in hand with the Preventing Violence against Women and Girls Strategy that our Conservative government introduced in 2016. This emphasised early intervention to prevent abuse and sought to ensure the prevention of violence against women and girls was a priority for every government department and agency.
From addressing rising crime and cracking down on people smuggling, the Home Office is responsible for many of the British people’s key priorities. But the reality is that the institution often struggles to turn policy into reality and Home Office bureaucracy is highly complex. Effective parliamentary scrutiny helps the department to work better.
I worked with some exemplary officials at the Home Office but their efforts are hampered by two key problems.
First, the Home Office is both a policy department and an operational department. It sets policy on immigration but also physically controls the border. This prevents it from developing the necessary institutional expertise in either.
Second, the complex division of responsibilities between the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Attorney General’s Office, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the UK’s police forces make it hard to pursue a unified strategy when tackling a complex problem like violence against women and girls. All of these organisations need to be on more or less the same page. As chair, I would aim to help the Home Office to work more effectively and challenge ministers to make sure these organisations are aligned.
Our select committee system embodies much of what’s best in our Parliamentary democracy. Change in Whitehall can often be frustratingly slow but I know from experience that both the process of committee scrutiny and committees’ considered conclusions help to improve government. In all our interests.
I have been involved in a number of select committees and All Party Parliamentary Groups in my time in the House. I’m the co-chair of the APPG on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery and outside Parliament I’m a trustee of the Human Trafficking Foundation.
Like other MPs across the House, I take an active part in other parliamentary groups that encourage scrutiny of government and promote democracy – things we can’t take for granted in 2024. I’ve been active in the last few years in the British group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union helping like-minded parliamentarians around the world make their democracies more effective. My involvement in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association helps emphasise the vital importance of fighting modern slavery and other international challenges.
More recently, I was honoured to be elected by MPs from all across the House as Chair of the Procedure Committee. How Parliament works is sometimes technical but always important. I didn’t expect the role to be so high profile – who would think the Procedure Committee would ever be high profile? But Covid struck and we needed to deal with proxy voting, distancing in Parliament and other practical matters like correcting the Parliamentary Record. I’m proud that my chairing the committee helped maintain Parliament’s role through the chaos.
Every parliamentary session provides opportunities to improve government and make the UK a better place to live. Whatever happens, as an MP I’m going to play my part and hope that you will support me for chair of this important committee.
