Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Lord Bach and Baroness Redfern

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the police and crime commissioner for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. This group of amendments is very interesting, as is the first part of the Bill with these early clauses on statutory collaboration. It would be hard to find anyone, anywhere who does not believe that collaboration between the emergency services is a good thing. At any time, not just at a time—as at present —of economic uncertainty, it must be advantageous for services to work closely together, not just because of the savings that may be made but because it is better for the members of the public who need the help or assistance that the emergency services can give.

On whether a statutory requirement is necessary, I remain a little sceptical. It may help, it may not. What really matters, it seems to me, is whether the collaboration is—to use the phrase—bottom-up; in other words, comes naturally and is not forced. My feeling is that that is happening more and more around the country. In the Leicestershire area—Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland—collaborative programmes have been started and others are planned for the future. We have to take a chance with them. They may not always succeed, and we have to be aware of that.

I was grateful to the Minister and her officials for meeting me this morning to discuss such a scheme in Leicester called Braunstone Blues, which is still in its comparatively early days. Its origin lies in the excessive number of 999 calls made to the emergency services by some individuals and families living in that general area of the city, some of which could not be classed as emergencies by any standards, but were made none the less. They, of course, involved cost resources, both financial and human. As a consequence of that, the police, fire and rescue services, ambulance service, city council and health authorities got together to run a programme that involves visiting and, if necessary, helping people in that area. They are given advice about the unnecessary calls, of course, but help is also offered beyond that with other issues and concerns. This joint work has begun to show results but there is a long way to go.

The point I am attempting to make is that this is exactly the sort of bottom-up collaboration which should be encouraged. If the Bill has the effect of encouraging collaboration, with or without these amendments and with or without a statutory basis, that is very much to be welcomed. I, too, look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in reply to the questions that have been asked.

[Baroness Redfern (Con)]

My Lords, Clause 2 concerns collaboration, and I see that in terms of further collaboration between services. I declare my interest as leader of North Lincolnshire Council, as noted in the register of interests. In Committee, we must highlight the importance of this issue in strengthening and building the capacity and accountability of the police service.

As we know, the profile of demand for all emergency services is changing. I am pleased to say that even the fire and rescue services have seen a steep decline in the number of calls made to them. Many people now have fire detectors, which has led to a reduction in the number of call-outs. Conversely, there has been an increase in demand for the ambulance service, while a large proportion of police activity has been directed towards public protection.

Collaboration presents a real opportunity for emergency services to increase their efficiency and effectiveness, maximise resources and improve the service delivered to the public while giving value for money. Seeking greater integration with other elements of the criminal justice system also offers great benefits. Sharing good governance structures with other services such as fire and rescue services could open up a desire for collective working, resulting in real efficiency gains. With a joint delivery of training, fleet, logistics and the collocation of premises, a fully integrated prevention and community protection team, formed from a police and fire joint operation team, could plan all operational activity across these emergency services. Therefore, today’s debate must be about endorsing collaboration to make significant savings through the multiagency implementation of a hub to transfer incident data. We know that quicker, smarter and more advanced technologies are operated by emergency partners when more than one service is required at an incident, again saving operator hours per year.

The more we can do to improve taxpayers’ value for money and improve our service to our communities, the better it will be, and the Bill will give that opportunity. This is not about the takeover of one emergency service by another. There is a distinction between operational police and firefighting which should always be recognised. Like my noble friend Lady Scott, I do not have experience of the police and fire services being co-terminous. Lincolnshire is progressing through devolution and, at the moment, part of the county is served by Lincolnshire PCC while the northern part comes under Humberside. We hope that that anomaly can be looked at so that we can move forward on it.