Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Lord Garnier and Jack Dromey

Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey]

If I agree that it should have been included in the past, I hope the Minister will agree that in future never again will I hear the Government say, “We’ve cut crime.” Crime is not falling; crime is changing.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

This is all very interesting, but surely the central point of the hon. Gentleman’s argument is that clause 35 should be deleted, full stop. All these pussy-footing little amendments that he has tabled are really designed to undermine the concept of the volunteer. He disagrees with the concept of volunteers; the Government clearly think they are a good thing. Why does he not just speak to that argument rather than wasting our time with amendments 11, 12 and 13, which are actually designed to make it difficult for someone to perform the function of a police volunteer?

[Jack Dromey]

With the greatest respect, I would not downplay the significance of this, including to the public out there whom we serve. We will come specifically to two issues relating to amendment 10, on volunteers, and amendment 13, on volunteer PCSOs being able to carry CS gas and PAVA spray.

It is simply not true that crime is falling. Nor is it true that the Government have protected the frontline. The Policing Minister has been good enough to acknowledge that he inadvertently misled Parliament by suggesting that. Nor is it true that police funding has been protected. Last November, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said:

“The police protect us, and we are going to protect the police.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1373.]

Sir Andrew Dilnot has now made it clear that a £160 million cut, in real terms, in this financial year alone would be sufficient for 3,200 police officers. The inconvenient truth for the Government is that 18,000 officers have gone and ever fewer are doing ever more, just when demand is growing. Coming to the point made by the right hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), that is crucial in this respect: given the context in which this Bill has been introduced, our amendment 10 would block proposals to grant additional police volunteers until the Government have passed a police funding settlement that guarantees that funding to police forces will be protected in real terms. The Government said that it would be protected last November, but that is not true. We ask that it now be the case, rather than the phoney police promise that we heard from the Chancellor of the Exchequer last November.

[Jack Dromey]

The interesting thing about what the hon. Lady says is that the current police funding formula skews funding away from metropolitan areas towards leafy Tory shires. Why is the west midlands hit twice as hard as Surrey? If we ask the police and crime commissioner for Surrey, we find that he agrees. To add insult to injury, the Government finally said, “We admit that the formula is unfair. We will change the formula,” which led to the omnishambles before Christmas when they had to abandon the proposed changes to the formula.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I have been listening with deep fascination to the hon. Gentleman for the last 15 minutes or so, but he is yet to come to amendments 11, 12 or 13. Are there any arguments in support of those?

[Jack Dromey]

Absolutely. Under the current arrangements in the police service, there is an agreement between the Home Office, the National Police Chiefs Council, the College of Policing and the police staff unions that police support volunteers should bring additionality to the workforce but should under no circumstances replace or be a substitute for paid police staff. The Government claim that they have protected police funding and that they are not using the provisions to plug holes left in the workforce from funding reductions. If plugging gaps in our hollowed-out police service is not the Government’s aim in these ill-though-out proposals, there should be no reason whatsoever for them not to support amendment 10.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Dromey]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I used to be chairman of the defence unions. I am proud of my long association with members of our armed forces, of which he was an admirable example. It is extraordinary—I have given some reasons for this, and I will come on to others—that there is no clarity about training and accountability. A proposal has simply been inserted in the Bill for volunteer PCSOs to be issued with CS gas and PAVA spray, which raises fundamental issues of concern. I suspect that if this was raised with members of the public in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, they would say, as was the case in Hove and in my constituency at the weekend, “What planet are they living on?”

[Sir Edward Garnier]

If I can just bring the discussion back to this planet, I accept that the Labour party does not want volunteers to be able to enter our police system in the way proposed by the Bill, but where on earth does the hon. Gentleman get that idea? I hope he is just making it up as he goes along, because if he has thought about his arguments I am even more worried than I was a moment ago. Where in the Bill does it say that anybody is going to be handed a noxious substance such as CS gas or the other spray without adequate training? It defies belief that anyone with common sense would advance that argument, and it is even less likely that a consequence of the measure would be that they would not get that sort of training. It is just bananas.

[Jack Dromey]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman should put that question to his Front-Bench colleagues so that the concerns he has just expressed can be allayed. The concerns raised during detailed scrutiny of the Bill in Committee were heard but not acted on, and that is precisely why we are having this debate today.

On the principle of volunteers in the police service, I went out of my way to say at the beginning of this debate that there is a long and honourable tradition of excellent men and women serving as special constables and in neighbourhood watch teams. Had we won the election in May 2015, we had plans to enhance the role played by local people in having a local say over the policing of their local communities, including greater volunteering and co-operation with the police. The question is where we draw the line on what is and what is not appropriate. Perhaps I could visit the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s constituency and we could ask the first 100 people we meet, “What do you think of volunteer PCSOs being able to carry CS gas?” I suspect that I know the answer we would get.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

That, I respectfully suggest, is not a very clever question, because it is loaded to produce the answer that the hon. Gentleman wishes to receive. He is very fond of other volunteers, but he does not like clause 35 volunteers. If I asked anybody in his constituency or in mine, “What do you think about untrained people carrying shotguns, police weapons or CS gas?”, of course they would say that that was not very sensible, but the question removes reality from the practical application of the Bill. No volunteer within the ambit of clause 35 is going to be walking around Market Harborough, still less the hon. Gentleman’s own constituency, without having been properly trained in the use of the materials, weapons or instruments to which they will be given access. That is just plain silly, and I wish he would move on to something rather better.

[Jack Dromey]

I agree it is plain silly that the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s Front-Bench colleagues have not answered those questions. When they speak today and during the Bill’s subsequent stages, I have no doubt that he will pose those questions and say, quite rightly, that it would indeed be silly for something to happen without proper training or accountability. At the moment, for the reasons I have spelled out, that just is not in the Bill.