Public Disorder

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

As I have just said and as I have made clear to the police from when I first took on this role, I will always back officers who do the right thing and operate within the law. Appropriate action must be taken against officers who do the wrong thing, but we will back officers who do the right thing and I will back them as Home Secretary.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mrs May]

I ask my hon. Friend to bear with me for a few minutes because I want to talk about another way in which the police response could have been better, which is in the harnessing, sharing and analysis of intelligence.

Even in the best of economic times, we would not have the resources to keep up this level of deployment continuously, so public order planning and intelligence will need to be considerably better. This is not the first time that criminals with plans to disrupt life in our towns and cities have used technology to plot their crimes. Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook and messaging services such as BlackBerry Messenger have been used to co-ordinate criminality and stay one step ahead of the police. I will therefore convene a meeting with ACPO, the police and representatives from the social media industry to work out how we can improve the technological and related legal capabilities of the police.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

I noticed the hon. Gentleman’s nerves when holding his piece of paper to read out what was clearly another Whips’ question, but I say to hon. Members that serious issues need to be addressed in this House about what the Government are doing, and what this House should be doing, to address the serious criminality that is taking place.

Let us deal with the wider problems this raises about resources for our police and the views that are being expressed to us—and, I am sure, to Members on the Government Benches in their constituencies—about the scale and pace of the policing cuts across the country. The Prime Minister claimed that he was making only 6% cuts, but he used cash figures, not real figures, when he knows that inflation is high and that the cuts set out in the spending review—according to the Treasury’s figures, not mine—were for a 20% cut in the Government’s police budget. The independent Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary report makes it clear that 16,000 police officers are going as a result—the equivalent of every one of the police officers on London’s streets last night will go.

Any of us who were on London’s streets last night will know quite how many police officers were on the streets of our capital. We have heard the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary tell us that front-line, visible policing will not be hit, but, with respect, it is being hit already. The HMIC has confirmed that front-line officers will be lost this year. The Prime Minister himself used a figure of 7,000 officers in back-office jobs, but 16,000 will be cut.

We agree that the police need to make savings and efficiencies, that they need to do more to get police officers out on to the streets and that they can sustain sensible reductions in their budgets, but the cuts set out by the Government go too far, too fast, and we do not agree that now is the time to cut 16,000 police officers across the country.

[Miss McIntosh]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the hon. Lady, if she can tell me whether she supports cutting 16,000 police officers at a time such as this.

[Miss McIntosh]

I think the right hon. Lady would agree that recent events have united those of us living in the north and the south and in rural and urban areas. May I take her back to the time of the previous Government, who introduced a raft of community support officers with no power of arrest and had a load of police officers with the power of arrest filling in forms? Does she think that that was the best use of police resources at that time?

[Yvette Cooper]

I think it was right to increase the number of police officers and to introduce police community support officers. PCSOs have done an excellent job across the country, working with police officers and communities, and have been an important part of addressing some of the tensions, concerns and difficulties that we have faced in the past few days.

Today, the Prime Minister again ruled out reopening the police budget. I implore him to think again. The newspapers report that Ministers now have doubts, and I urge him to listen to them.