Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle and Clitheroe (Jonathan Hinder) on his career in policing, on everything he shared with us and on securing this debate. The start of his speech was incredibly powerful, and reflected what I hear often from our police both in my incredibly privileged position as Policing Minister and in my constituency role in Croydon.
I have heard of many cases, such as that of a police officer in Croydon who had to hold the wound of someone who had been stabbed while they waited for the ambulance. The trauma of that side of the role is there loud and clear for everyone to see, but there is also cumulative trauma from all the other things that have to be done, from how the police are sometimes treated and from how they feel that they do not necessarily have the support of Government or the public. My hon. Friend the Member for Pendle and Clitheroe described that well, and I cannot do it better.
Tomorrow, I will spend the day trying to be as incognito as possible while going around with a neighbourhood police officer. I will spend the whole day on a shift and hear as much as I can about the lived experience of being a police officer. I am sad not to have done that before this debate, but I am looking forward to it very much. However, my hon. Friend made a powerful speech and, as I think all other Members in the debate have said, the police do a brilliant job and we should not underestimate what they do. We should thank them, never forget what we ask of them and always do right by them.
Within that context, the Government are trying to reform policing to enable the police to do the job that they came into the service to do, whether that means ripping away the bureaucracy of a lot of the tasks that the police are given—historically, we have not invested in new technology and pieces of kit—or putting police back into our neighbourhoods, so that we can do the things that the public want us to do without public frustration at the lack of response. Of course, the biggest police reform in 200 years is looking at the whole structure within policing. In that context, police officers still have to get on with their job; they not only have a difficult job, but have quite a lot of change heading their way. We need to respect that.
In the middle of all that is the Police Federation, which has an interesting role. A lot of Members have said the same thing: on the one hand, the police do a brilliant job, and a lot of the fed reps do a brilliant job, but on the other hand, something is clearly wrong with how the federation has been functioning. We have talked about this before, but since I became the Minister in September I have seen the fed every two weeks and we have a catch-up. Most of the conversations are about what we are doing on the transformation journey, what has happened and what is coming down the line. I think that it is fair to say there has been frustration, such as about the 33 recommendations for changes needed in the federation made by Baroness Bousted in her review. The change is not coming in the way that people expect, as fast as people want, or in a way that we would expect.
Government have a role, but we do not have quite the same relationship with any other organisation; we have a statutory responsibility. The legislation states:
“There shall continue to be a Police Federation for England and Wales for the purpose of representing members of the police forces in England and Wales, and special constables”,
and that in fulfilling that purpose, the federation
“must…protect the public interest…maintain high standards of conduct, and…maintain high standards of transparency.”
Our obligation as a Government to ensure that those things are happening is set in law. Clearly, therefore, we take the question of whether those functions are fulfilled in the way that they should be very seriously.
It is no secret that we have been frustrated, as have many others, at the pace and scale of change. Of course, we saw arrests that came in the middle of this conversation as well, which have made things very difficult. We were very explicit about this in the White Paper on police reform. We said:
“We expect to see clear plans and…demonstrable improvement”
in the fed’s operation. We also said:
“In the absence of such improvements, this Government stands ready to bring forward reforms to ensure that the interests of rank-and-file officers are properly, effectively and robustly represented.”
Given the arrests since the publication of the White Paper, it is very hard for the federation to give us the reassurance that we need, because of everything that has happened. We are continuing the conversations with the federation. There is a lot of interaction between officials in my Department and the fed, and we are sharing data and information, and talking these things through.
I do not think that anyone can pretend that the status quo is an option. It is not. This Government stand ready to do the right thing. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers), asked what we are considering. I am not in a position to say what the next steps look like, but clearly matters have moved on and we need to ensure that there is proper representation for rank and file. The judicial review, as well as the criminal investigation, means that there is a limit to what I can say.
I very much welcome this debate and the contributions to it. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his kind remarks and I will see the Superintendents’ Association of Northern Ireland soon. My hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Margaret Mullane) talked about what she and the police in her community need, and she said that she is supporting the campaign. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) talked about the importance of mental health.
The Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman), talked about the challenges for women members of the fed in particular, which is something that is very live to me as well. I have attended several meetings in which I have talked about the issues that arise if a police officer is, for example, in a relationship with another police officer and there is domestic abuse in that relationship. What we do in that space is very difficult; there are lots of challenges there.
I thank everybody who has attended this debate, including the shadow Minister, for their thoughtful comments. I think that we all know that there is a problem and I recognise the frustration felt by my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle and Clitheroe, because he wants to see movement. We are looking at this issue very carefully. We are very mindful of the arrests that have happened, very mindful that we have not seen the pace of change that we want, and very mindful of our legal obligation to make sure that the rank and file have representation.