Police

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this is the first of many debates that we will no doubt be having on the future of policing in this country as the police reform and social responsibility Bill, which we expect to be published shortly, begins to move through both Houses. I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, for that very interesting speech on his own involvement and how he has seen the different dimensions of policing. As someone who is new to this dossier, I was reflecting on how much policing has changed since I first had contact with police forces as a junior lecturer in Manchester. I was dealing with the Irish Government and therefore, for the first time, coming to terms with Special Branch, which in those days was concerned with Irish terrorism. Special Branch today has to deal with a far wider range of terrorist threats.

Some 20 years ago, I was at Chatham House and was asked to chair a seminar of senior policemen about the international dimension of domestic policing. This was early 1989 and it was fascinating to have a number of policemen who thought that this was a small and specialised dimension of what they had to do, although I recall a policeman from north Wales saying that he really needed to train some of his policemen in Dutch because so many Dutch holidaymakers crashed their cars in north Wales every summer.

When, some years ago, I was the chair of EU Sub-Committee F, I was astonished to discover that there were by then police liaison officers in UK embassies throughout the European Union and beyond, that SOCA had been created to deal with the international dimension of British policing and that, according to the national intelligence model, we now have three levels of policing: level 1, the area that the public care most about and are most conscious of, which is local policing; level 2, which is the national policing of cross-border crime by different cross-border police forces; and the increasingly important level 3, which is transnational crime.

The increasing sophistication of crime is something with which we are now all familiar. Organised crime has ceased to be predominantly domestic; it is increasingly cross-border. Forms of international crime include drug-smuggling, international financial fraud, human trafficking—we had an interesting debate on that the other week—and now also cybercrime, on which I was given my first briefing the other day. We are in another world and the pace of change is increasing. I was struck when I read an HMIC report from July this year that said that there is no time for a royal commission, and that the police leadership needs to rise to the challenges of a cessation of the rapid increase in funding that has come in the past few years and the changing tasks that are required of it. The pace of change requires us to respond.

Many people here have talked about the changes in democratic accountability which the Government are proposing. We will have plenty of time when the Bill is presented to discuss in more detail the role of police and crime commissioners and their relationships with chief constables and with the police and crime panels that will, in turn, hold them to account.

I assure the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that the intention is that police and crime panels will consist predominantly of representatives of local authorities. There is, as he rightly points out, a large question about what we mean by “local”. The current structures of police forces and that of local authorities, as we well know, do not fit. That is part of the problem, and part of the reason why the Government are proposing police and crime commissioners to fit these separate entities that are now our largely regional police forces.

My noble friend Lord Bradshaw asked a number of questions about who will stand, who will vote and what they will all campaign on. American experience, which has been prayed in aid in this House as a horror story, has actually led to some rather good police commissioners and indeed elected mayors arriving. We must not necessarily assume that democracy is a dangerous thing that might lead to disaster.

The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, asked about the future role of ACPO. It will continue to play an important role in providing professional leadership to the police service but, again, discussions are under way about the way in which this association of chief constables will continue to drive value for money and improve the quality of co-operation among different police forces. Noble Lords will be familiar with the discussion over the past few years about whether another round of police mergers was necessary. The decision has been taken that the structural solution of further mergers itself carries costs, and that we wish to promote as far as possible—the previous Government believed this, as well as the new Government—closer co-operation among different police forces. A range of areas, from sharing police helicopters to co-operation across many other areas, can be improved.

The move from SOCA to the national crime agency is also intended to pull further together the different abilities of different police forces and the specialised tasks that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, has been talking about, while trying as far as possible to maintain the historic principle of local responsibility for local civilian police forces.

We are concerned about value-for-money savings. Police budgets have increased rapidly over the past five years, and we recognise that they will cease to do so over the next four to five years. Government core funding of the policing will reduce by 20 per cent in real terms over the next four years. Taking into account our precept for local budgets, that amounts to an average—I stress, an average—for police forces of 14 per cent in real terms. In December, we will set out to Parliament exactly what this settlement will mean for each police force. However, I stress that real costs have been imposed on police forces by the previous Government through the central targets and the very detailed guidance. As the HMIC report states:

“In 2009 alone 2,600 pages of guidance were issued to officers setting out how their work should be done; and there are now 100 processes in the criminal justice system, requiring 40 interventions by police officers, staff and specialists. The cost to policing is estimated at £2.2 billion per year”.

Significant savings can be reached through reducing this sort of central top-down bureaucracy. On average, only 11 per cent of total police strength is visible and available to the general public at any time. We are confident that reducing some of these reporting and bureaucratic elements will enable us to maintain the police front line while reducing costs.

Others have raised questions about political leadership.

[Lord Rosser]

The Minister has referred to the police front line. Will he define what the Government mean by the front line as far as policing is concerned?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The police front line is increasingly sophisticated because, as I was saying earlier, if we look at what we want the police to do, the police front line is not just what is visible on the street. It is the policeman dealing with domestic violence in a sexual assault referral centre; it is the policeman dealing with financial fraud in the City of London Police which, as the noble Lord knows, is a specialist force for international financial fraud. The front line has become rather more sophisticated in that area, as crime itself has become more sophisticated. The public think of the front line as the police they see on the street. Very often, the public see the front line in police community support officers, who command a great deal of confidence because they are visible. The public see special constables as part of the front line. We pay tribute to our predecessors in government in that the number of special constables has increased from 11,000 to 15,000 over the past four or five years, and we would like to see it increase further. We all recognise that the front line has to include these more specialised and sophisticated areas as well.

[Lord Rosser]

Can I be clear: is the Minister saying that the reductions in policing expenditure will not affect the quality and effectiveness of the front line of policing as he has just described it?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is our aim and intention. We are looking at how far we can reduce costs by reducing reporting requirements, the time spent in the station, and so on. It will be tough, but we will do what we can. That means slashing the bureaucracy that gets in officers’ way. There are a number of reports from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary; I am sure that noble Lords have seen the two reports on policing in an age of austerity and valuing the police. They show us the direction in which to go. I think the first was commissioned by the previous Government, so I am not being entirely partisan in this respect.

The noble Lord, Lord Condon, introduced me to a phrase with which I was not familiar before—the policing covenant. I am much more familiar with the military covenant. The idea of the policing covenant is very interesting, and I look forward to debating it further. We want a police force that has the confidence of the public and is highly professional but which feels itself to have, in the broadest sense, public confidence. The management of the demonstration yesterday was a good illustration; we all recognise how difficult it is to maintain this balance. I look forward to hearing whatever the noble Lord would like to feed to me on what he has on that very interesting concept.

The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, talked about recruitment and accelerated promotion. Recruitment to the police has been affected by the rising proportion of young people going to university. Many of my children’s friends have gone to university with the intention of joining the police and have then done so as graduates. That is part of the way in which the police themselves are changing.

The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, and the noble Lord, Lord Condon, raised the question of police pay and the report of the Winsor review. This is not an easy issue. The Government are committed to maintaining the current settlement until its completion. After 2011, however, the Government intend that pay across the public sector for civilians should be frozen for two years after the end of the current agreement.

The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, asked about ethnic representation. I am happy to say that there has been, under the previous Government, a gradual increase at all ranks in the number of ethnic minority police. It is now approaching 5 per cent among the professional and warranted officers. Among special constables, who are volunteers, it is now approaching 10 per cent. Similarly, 25 per cent of full-time police are now female, as are a third of specials.

The noble Lord, Lord Condon, raised the concept of a network of policing. I have already said that we see ourselves resisting further police mergers but encouraging closer co-operation in specialised units and the sharing of facilities wherever possible. The Home Office business plan sets out that, with a national crime agency, police forces will be encouraged to network as closely as possible. Collaboration is the way forward.

We all recognise the vital importance of this topic. Domestic order is the basis for a stable democratic society. Public confidence in how the police maintain that public order is vital, and civic engagement with the police is the basis for a stable society. I look forward to many future debates on the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, and on many other aspects of policing. We face a range of future challenges to the maintenance of our borders. I have not mentioned the establishment of a UK police border command, which we will, perhaps, turn to another day. There is the developing use of the internet, with cyberfraud and other matters. There are links to many other themes, such as active citizenship and the greater engagement of the public in taking control of order and anti-social behaviour in their own communities.

We welcome the increase in the number of volunteers from within local communities in recent years. Alongside this, we value enormously the role that professional and highly trained police provide, often in specialised groups, linking across different forces, working through SOCA now and the national crime agency in the future, and working internationally with forces in other states through Europol and Interpol. How best to balance all these competing demands and tasks within a civilian police force is a constant concern to us all. We all appreciate how well our police attempt to do that. We all also understand how difficult a balance it is to strike.