Police Grant Report

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I want to start, as the Minister did, by paying tribute to the men and women who serve in our police service. The counterpart to this debate took place a little under a year ago, and no one could have imagined the unspeakable series of attacks that would follow in 2017. Throughout, our police service officers have risen to the highest standards of bravery, dedication and duty, truly honouring the founding principles of policing in the process. Chief among that covenant is that our police service depends ultimately on public support. After a year in which we have seen officers run into danger to keep the public safe, the police can rarely have counted on such strong public support as they enjoy today.

But I know from speaking to those officers that they are tired of warm words, backed up with no action from politicians. Today they are under sustained pressure the like of which the service has rarely, if ever, encountered, and today we have heard that there is not to be a single extra penny from central Government for local police forces.

Before I go into the detail of the funding settlement before us, I want to deal with the demand that the Minister says he recognises the police are under. Between 2010 and 2017 the average number of 101 and 999 calls has rocketed; in South Yorkshire it has tripled. Just last year 999 calls increased by 15%. Forces such as the West Midlands police are receiving the number of calls on one day in June that they used to receive only on new year’s eve. In the last year overall crime has risen by 15%, the largest increase since records began, violent crime is up by 20%, robberies by 29% and sexual offences by 23%. Last year over 1.4 million more people than the year before experienced antisocial behaviour, while the number of orders handed out fell by a quarter. Yet those are only a tiny proportion of the issues our police have to deal with.

On becoming Home Secretary, the now Prime Minister told the police their only “mission” was

“to cut crime. No more, and no less”,

but 83% of calls to command and control centres are non-crime-related. They are calls associated with mental health—last year the Met took an average of one mental health call every five minutes—or with missing persons, a demand that has tripled for some forces over the last seven years. They are associated with a raft of vulnerabilities, because, as other services buckle, the police are relied upon more than ever as the social service of last resort.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, contrary to what the Minister has alleged, what Labour Members are doing today is standing up for their constituents and voting against cuts that are unsafe and putting our constituents at risk?

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Today we will be voting against a completely inappropriate police funding settlement that leaves our communities exposed and the public at risk.

On top of all the demand I have listed, there is the unprecedented terrorist threat our country now faces. It is frankly unbelievable that, as the National Police Chiefs’ Council has recognised, the report before us fails to meet those growing needs and exposes gaps in the protection of the public.

So we have no choice but to vote against the motion tonight. We do so for three key reasons. First, the report prescribes an eighth consecutive year of real-terms cuts in Home Office funding. Secondly, it pushes the burden on to hard-pressed local taxpayers, and the very areas that have seen the most substantial cuts will get the least, inevitably creating a lottery of winners and losers that has no place for public safety. Thirdly, it fails to meet the needs identified by police chiefs, first and foremost in the area of counter-terrorism but also in local policing.

[Simon Hoare]

I am sure the hon. Lady has done a lot of homework before today’s debate, as we all have. Therefore, given the backdrop to what she has just said, can she advise us how much money—how many pounds, shillings and pence—her party would be adding to the police grant this year?

[Louise Haigh]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, our manifesto spelled out very clearly that we would dedicate 10,000 additional neighbourhood policing officers. The settlement before us today does not dedicate any additional funding to local policing and in fact, as I will come on to, would be swallowed up almost completely by inflationary and cost pressures.

One of the chief jobs of Parliament is to hold the Government accountable for the promises they make to the public and for their record of action in office, so I want to briefly focus on the context for this year’s police settlement. In 2015, the current Prime Minister promised the public that after a period in which £2.3 billion had been taken from police budgets, the Conservatives would now “protect police funding”. On many occasions that promise has been repeated to the public and to this House. Indeed, it was repeated by the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s questions just today. In fact, the House of Commons Library has shown that real-terms central Government funding to local forces has fallen by £400 million since 2015—the equivalent of more than 7,000 officers.

[Sandy Martin]

Does my hon. Friend agree that when the Conservatives say we are inventing the cuts, they are not taking into account the cuts to police officer numbers? Between 2010 and 2017, Suffolk has seen 150 fewer officers, 100 fewer specials, 86 fewer PCSOs—50% of the group—and 200 fewer support staff. That represents a 25% cut in personnel across the board, so it is not surprising that we have seen a concomitant increase in crime.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Despite what the Government like to say, every single Member of this House will have seen frontline cuts to police forces. Two weeks ago, the Leader of the House insisted in this Chamber that

“frontline policing throughout the country as a whole has not changed—it has, in fact, slightly increased since 2010.”—[Official Report, 25 January 2018; Vol. 635, c. 421.]

This has been a familiar refrain throughout the Government’s time in office: “Yes, we are making cuts, but they are having no real impact.”

[Gloria De Piero]

More than 36,000 101 calls went unanswered or were abandoned in Nottinghamshire last year, which is a 201% increase year on year. Those people needed genuine help, but they did not get it.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The number of abandoned calls has increased as the number of calls to 101 and 999 has increased. We now have 21,000 fewer police officers on our streets than there were when Labour left office in 2010, 17,000 fewer police staff, who perform vital functions in investigations, and 6,000 fewer PCSOs. Neighbourhood policing—the absolute bedrock of our model of policing—has been decimated, which is an appalling legacy of this Government. Neighbourhood policing is not just a “nice to have”; it is vital to our policing system and underpins the police’s ability to police by consent. It is almost wholly responsible for building and maintaining relationships with communities, and if we reduce our police to nothing more than a blue light that arrives only when the absolute worst has happened, we risk rolling back all the progress that has been made in police accountability and trust over the last generation.

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling speech. Does she agree that the cuts to police numbers in areas such as mine mean that there simply are not enough police officers to attend crimes as they happen, such as burglaries that are in progress? Vans are continually broken into and people have their tools stolen time and again, but the resources to help those people simply are not there.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Minister has heard time and again from Opposition Members that the police do not have the resources to respond to serious crimes, with burglaries being a particular problem, but the Government seem happy to sit back and allow that to happen. They are the only Executive in modern times to have presided over consecutive falls in police numbers in every single year of their time in office.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady join me in welcoming the policy of Katy Bourne, the Sussex police and crime commissioner, who is recruiting an extra 100 officers?

[Louise Haigh]

If that is the case, I am delighted for Sussex police that it is recruiting additional officers, but that comes in the context of severe cuts and a fall in police officer numbers over the past seven years.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that any current recruiting follows year-on-year consecutive cuts to police numbers? Southwark has lost 200 police officers and PCSOs despite having the highest volume of 999 calls in London, experiencing a terror attack last year, and seeing high rates of moped and knife crime.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is right that the context is seven years of prolonged, deep cuts from this Conservative Government that have led to police officer numbers falling and crime rising. Looking across Europe for international comparisons, we see that only Lithuania and Iceland, both of which are suffering deep depressions, chose to cut frontline policing by proportionally more than we did over the past 10 years. These choices have not been made out of necessity; they have been made out of ideology. Promises to the British public have been broken time and again. That is why we were right to treat the Policing Minister’s statement before the Christmas recess with a heavy serving of scepticism. He told us the settlement would give the police “the resources they need.” When Opposition Members doubted him, he told us to go away and read the detail so that we might feel more positive. Well, we have, but we are not.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council has also read the detail and said that it did not meet the level of investment required. It is not hard to see why. The council’s funding document, which was submitted to the Home Office ahead of the settlement, requested £450 million for local policing alone, not for the entire service, as the Minister has sought to claim. It estimates that inflationary pressures on local forces add up to £209 million—not to mention cost pressures of £38 million and the additional pressure of the unfunded pay rise announced last year. Taken together, all of that will almost entirely wipe out the funding raised from precepts, meaning that local people will be paying more and getting less. As has been said, that will happen on top of an eighth year of real-terms cuts in the support the Government give to local forces. The flat cash settlement this year will equate to a cut of £100 million over the next year, so it is not difficult to see why commissioners across the country are calling the settlement “smoke and mirrors.”

I turn to the precept, because it is not additional money from Government, as the Minister tried to claim. Any additional money will come if PCCs take the decision to increase their policing precept. Once again, the Government display the worst type of localism: passing all the blame on to local decision makers while refusing to fund the tough decisions that they have to make.

What is more, this method of funding the police is fundamentally unfair. The areas that have taken the biggest hit from funding cuts since 2010 stand to gain the least from the maximisation of the precept. For example, the West Midlands, which has lost a staggering 2,000 officers since 2010, will raise a little over 2% from the precept. By contrast, Surrey, which has half the population, will raise almost the same in cash terms as the West Midlands, but by maximising the precept it will be able to raise 7.5% of its budget. When it comes to public safety, the settlement creates winners and losers based on postcode. The police funding formula at least made an attempt to fund forces based on need, but it seems to have been kicked into the long grass yet again. The alternative—funding the police through the precept—means that community safety depends on the ability of the local community to pay.

Before I conclude, I want to discuss reserves, which the Minister was keen to dwell on and which have been published with greater transparency this month. When the unfunded pay settlement was announced last year, police forces were lectured over their levels of reserves and were advised to use them for the 2% unconsolidated increase. The figure bandied about for the total amount of reserves is £1.6 billion, but the Minister knows full well that the vast majority of that figure is earmarked for capital projects or for known future spending. The real figure of usable reserves is £378 million, as the Minister’s own publication shows. Much of that is routinely being used for day-to-day policing as a result of cuts, and there is a danger that some forces will be put in the vulnerable position of not being able to respond to an emergency. In fact, the last available HMIC analysis revealed that only nine forces out of the 43 have more than the 5% level of reserves recommended by the Audit Commission, so the attempt to continue to distract us with the reserves is transparent, and the public and police leaders across the country will see right through it.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly given the horrific events of the last year, I want to turn to counter-terrorism. Nobody who has read the report of David Anderson, QC’s review into the four fatal attacks in the spring and summer of 2017 can be in any doubt about the strain on counter-terror policing. In one chilling excerpt, he notes:

“On 21 March 2017, prior to the Westminster attack on the following day, investigation of Khuram Butt”—

one of the London Bridge attackers—

“was suspended. Investigation of the other SOIs”—

subjects of interest—

“investigated under the operation had been suspended the previous week, due to resourcing constraints brought on by a large number of P1 investigations”—

that is, priority one investigations.

Mark Rowley, the national lead for counter-terrorism policing, told the Home Affairs Committee in October that counter-terror policing was dealing with a 30% uptick in operations. He warned that

“dealing with this uplift in work at the moment is a real stretch”,

and that counter-terrorism had been put on an “emergency footing”. He continued:

“Given that we now have a growing number of subjects of interests we are investigating and a very big growth in the number of investigations…we have a bigger proportion of our investigations that are at the bottom of the pile and getting little or no work at the moment.”

I am certain that will horrify the public, as it horrifies me. I am equally certain that the public will wish the Government to give counter-terror policing the resources it needs to counter that threat. It is therefore staggering that Ministers have chosen, through this settlement, to give counter-terror policing just half of the resources it requested to keep the country safe.

Police chiefs are now openly warning, in an unprecedented way, of tough choices as a result of Ministers’ failure properly to resource their efforts in a threat climate described as “stratospheric.” If the first duty of any Government is the safety and security of their citizens, the responsibility of the Opposition is to make sure the Government keep to that promise. The failure properly to resource the counter-terror effort alone would be justification enough for the Labour party to vote against the police grant today, but in fact this settlement fails to meet not only our security needs but the needs of local policing and of the communities that are most in need.

The Minister has said time and again that he will ensure the police have the resources they need to do the job. There will not be a single chief constable in this country who can tell him that he or she has the resources needed to fully protect the public and provide a professional service in the current climate. Under the Government’s watch, crime is soaring and the public are exposed. The Government must urgently think again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hurd]

With the leave of the House, I will respond to some of the contributions from Back Benchers. Given how many interventions I took at the start of the debate, and in the interest of time, I do not propose to take any now. It has been good to hear so many Members on both sides of the House paying tribute to the hard work, bravery and dedication of their local police forces.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) has spoken to me regularly about fair funding for Dorset. He wants more officers on the ground, and I am sure he will make representations to Dorset’s police and crime commissioner about what the PCC proposes to do with the additional £4.2 million he should receive from the settlement.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) made the extremely important point that as crime is changing, the police have to change, too. That point was also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris). We never hear Labour talk about this, but the Government are committing £1.9 billion for cyber-security, for example. My hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset asked me to look seriously at merger proposals, and we will do so once we see a business case.

My old friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), has been a long and passionate advocate for fairer funding for Suffolk, as have other Suffolk MPs, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill). My hon. Friends the Members for Waveney and for Newton Abbot have my assurance that we will look seriously at concluding the fair funding review in the context of the next comprehensive spending review, and I noted the representations from my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney about the emergency grant. He made a very important point about the precedent of Ipswich Town in the policing of football.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) inevitably raised the tone of the debate by speaking about the parable of the talents. He is right about reserves, and I note his desire to see more officers in Dover and Deal. I know he will make representations to Matthew Scott, who now has more resources to deliver just that.

Various Labour Members offered variations on the same theme. A number of Labour west midlands MPs, including the hon. Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) and for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), talked about cuts and depleted reserves. The fact is that West Midlands police will receive an additional £9.5 million next year, which the police and crime commissioner says he will use to recruit a further 100 officers. Not unlike many other forces, West Midlands police has increased its reserves by £26.9 million since 2011.

The hon. Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper) again talked about cuts and depleted reserves, but Lancashire police will get an additional £6.1 million and has increased its reserves by £26.6 million since 2011. I am sure that she will be as curious as I am about how it intends to use that money.

The hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) made a typically thoughtful and well-informed speech on police matters. Again, however, her local force will receive an additional £8.9 million, and has increased its reserves by £60 million since 2011. I am sure that she will make representations about how that money is spent. She was rightly thoughtful about the issue of mental health, and there is a common theme across the system that police are spending more of their time dealing with people on the mental health spectrum. In many cases, that is entirely legitimate, as the police might be pursuing criminal activity or being deployed for public safety, but we are actively working with the police to get a better evidence base on exactly what is happening. Obviously, we want people on the mental health spectrum to be dealt with by qualified people and we want our police officers to be focused on their core job. The hon. Lady asked me about the date for the next stage of the “Protect the Protectors” Bill, and I can tell her that this will be on 27 April. I can also assure her that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) will get an answer to his letter.

Given the various themes that came out of the speeches made by Labour Members, I am disappointed by Labour’s approach to this. Policing is one of our most important public services. These are very serious and demanding times for the police, so a serious response is required. I have to say that it sounds as though Labour is now very much in the scaremongering, fake news business, totally detached from reality. For example, Labour continues to use the mantra that crime is rising, even though the independent statisticians show that it is falling. The bottom line is that, as the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) said, Labour Members will vote against £450 million of increased funding for policing, including a £70 million uplift for counter-terrorism in the face of the worst terrorist threat for a generation. That is the position of the modern Labour party. On this side of the House—

[Louise Haigh]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hurd]

I will not give way. The Government will continue to invest in policing, meaning that this country will invest £13 billion next year in policing. We will do the right thing to make sure that the police have the resources they need, and I commend the motion to the House.

Question put.

The House proceeded to a Division.

Draft Policing and Crime Act 2017 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2018

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 General Committees

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

The Committee will be pleased to hear that I do not intend to speak for the full remaining hour and a half. Like the Minister, I do not even intend to address all of the draft regulations, even on this day of the centenary of women’s suffrage. I was pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East arrive; I was worried I would be the token woman serving on the Committee.

I want particularly to address the issues around the regulatory amendment to the Contempt of Court Act 1981 and the reform of the pre-charge bail system. The Opposition are very happy to support the draft regulations, but there are some concerns about the implementation of these reforms. As the Minister said, as a consequence of the Policing and Crime Act 2017, rather than being bailed, a large proportion of defendants are now released under investigation, which has already begun to raise a number of issues in practice.

First, unlike what the regulations intend, there is no clarity or timescale whatsoever for the suspects as regards their investigation, leaving them in limbo and with that investigation stretching ahead of them. Suspects are now unaware of when it is safe to assume that they are no longer under investigation, or indeed whether they are likely to face further police involvement if they contact someone connected with the allegation, despite there being no bail conditions preventing them from doing so.

Furthermore, many elements of police investigations can take substantially longer than 28 days, such as the examination of electronic devices, as we have seen recently with the issues around police disclosure. That means that the police will still investigate the matter as normal, but a suspect is no longer required to return to a police station to formally answer their bail. However, without that impending bail appointment, it is possible that investigations will take even longer to conclude, as the police no longer have fixed deadlines by which to provide updates. I know personally of several cases where suspects have waited for months for investigations into the most minor offences with no clarity about their investigation. The legislation is therefore having the opposite effect of its intended laudable consequences.

Concerns have also been raised about the consequent costs for policing and the court system as a whole. The evidence appears to suggest that releases under investigation have simply replaced bail with a fall of 26% of suspects bailed last March down to 4% in the three months that followed, while releases under investigation rose to 25% in the same period. Will the Minister review the figures and consider whether the new system has achieved its intended outcome, as it has been in place for almost a year? As I say, the Opposition are happy to support the regulations.

County Lines Exploitation: London

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Dame Cheryl. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, and it is a pleasure to respond to this debate today, as it has been a fantastic one, with so many well researched, thoughtful and excellent contributions—not least from my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan). I congratulate her on securing the debate and continuing the discussion on this issue in Westminster Hall. She gave a fantastic and thorough overview of the exploitation and treatment of these young people—many of whom, as she said, do not feel themselves to be exploited—and of the very profitable business model that underpins the crime, which combines kidnap, child abuse, drug dealing, trafficking and violent crime.

Right hon. and hon. Members spoke from personal experience today about their own constituents, whether young victims themselves or the victims of cuckooing, which the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) spoke about. I know he has done a lot of work in this area. He demonstrated the implications of the crime on not just London but towns outside London and spoke of the victims in his constituency. He spoke of the need, as everyone did, to support victims, rather than criminalise those young people. Rotherham was mentioned as a comparator. The similarities are key here. I have spoken to many survivors of the Rotherham scandal who told me that they were treated as sluts rather than victims. I have spoken to Sammy Woodhouse, who has been campaigning for Sammy’s law, which would allow their criminal records associated with the grooming to be expunged, and Labour is very happy to support that. The situation has very strong similarities here, because those children and young people were victims, just as many of these young people are.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), who is nothing less than an expert on this issue—and has worked on it over many years, in particular on the vulnerability of looked-after children—gave some great examples of good practice in this area on criminal behaviour orders and child abduction warnings. She made the very sensible case for treatment under trafficking legislation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) gave a very thoughtful and emotional contribution, again distinguishing between victims and offenders, who should face the true sanctions that this horrendous crime deserves. She laid out the scale of the problem in just one borough and police force area out of 32. She made some important points about the Modern Slavery Act, which I will come on to, and the difficulties of prosecutions under that Act, and about how relevant it is for this offence, which is nothing less than slavery. I know how useful it has been as a deterrent in Merseyside, which has had some success in prosecuting offenders under the Act, because those gang members have not been treated as big kingpins in prison. They have been treated differently under the Modern Slavery Act and been isolated in prison and it has served as a deterrent for other people who could potentially be involved. We absolutely support my hon. Friend’s call for a review of that legislation.

We have heard shocking examples of the practice from around the country. We know that London is the biggest metropolitan supplier of this crime, but the National Crime Agency has found that 38 of the 41 forces in England and Wales have identified this form of exploitation taking place in their area. The Children’s Society estimates that 4,000 children are at risk from this crime every year across England and Wales.

Organised crime and its associated effects lead to hundreds of deaths every year, with figures for 2016 showing 2,479 deaths from illegal drugs alone. Though figures for deaths from the violence linked to organised crime are not specified, it is a significant factor in gun and knife violence. A total of 26 people were shot dead in the year to March 2016, and a further 213 were victims of stabbings.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

May I recommend my review to my hon. Friend, in which I talk specifically about youth crime and the disproportionality of black and ethnic minority children going into the youth justice system? We have to do more to use the exploitation legislation and understand that these young people are just as vulnerable as many of the young women that we have raised in the past.

[Louise Haigh]

I have of course read my right hon. Friend’s review and thoroughly recommend it to all other Members in the Chamber today. It is a very thorough overview of the criminalisation of black and minority ethnic young people and people of all ages in our criminal justice system and the pervasive attitudes that still exist, sadly, across elements of our criminal justice system, which lead to that over-criminalisation.

It is no surprise that as serious and organised crime grows, as we have heard today, violent crime is rocketing. The threat is growing and the police are struggling to keep up. They have suffered horrific cuts over the last seven years, which have devastated local intelligence collection. Now, in unprecedented fashion, senior officers are sounding the alarm across the UK. Unfortunately, serious and organised crime and violent crime are only one part of the picture of the demand that our police forces face, as 999 and 101 calls are up by as much as 30% on last year. Some 83% of the calls to command centres are non-crime related. They are related to mental health and missing persons—vulnerable people—and the police are not the appropriate agency to be dealing with vulnerable people. In some forces, missing persons are up by 300% in the last five years.

Violent crime is up by 13% on last year. In that time, our police forces have lost more than 20,000 officers and more than 40,000 police staff. As we have heard, the only response from this Government is to require police and crime commissioners to increase the precepts. That will not fill the gap that has been left by cuts to police forces, alongside cuts to the Crown Prosecution Service, courts and local authorities.

The chief constable of Merseyside Police, Andy Cooke, has warned that fewer neighbourhood officers make it harder to win the trust of local communities and make it more likely that there will be a wall of silence to protect local gangs and criminals. The director general of the National Crime Agency is increasingly concerned that organised crime is not being prioritised. She said that the £377 million annual funding handed to the NCA by the Government is nowhere near enough, given the severity of the threat. She said that

“we have got to recognise that it needs investment if we are going to protect the public from some of the most invasive crimes.”

There is simply no precedent in the service’s modern history for tackling the phenomenon of organised criminal gangs while so starkly under-strength. That has hampered the effort to tackle county lines, which has been referred to as a hidden crime. It took time for it to be given the recognition it warrants as a highly exploitative crime, partly because of the difficulty police have in identifying it. The runners involved can appear initially to be voluntary and often a number of red flags would need to be raised before the practice itself is identified. That requires a good deal of police work. Indeed, that was the point in establishing the more elusive form of criminality in the first place—that it would be difficult for the local force to identify non-resident dealers.

The successful prosecution of a leading member of a gang that used county lines in London revealed that the activity regularly brings in up to £150,000 a month for one particular criminal gang, causing incalculable harm in the process. It is the number of exploited children that truly marks out this form of crime as horrifying. One metropolitan force told me that, in one city alone, organised criminal gangs are able to exploit a pool of 20,000 to 30,000 children who are missing or absent from school or home by coaxing them into their criminal networks.

The reach of county lines is deeply concerning, and very few forces are immune. The National Police Chiefs’ Council estimated that there are 282 county lines coming out of London, and that they reach 65% of forces nationwide. The work to break those networks is onerous and costly. Intelligence collection is critical to bringing the leading figures in the networks to justice, but it is through safeguarding that vulnerable youngsters can be protected and the practice disrupted. That is why it was astonishing to learn that, last year, the Government rejected a force’s bid for funding from the police transformation fund to do exactly that kind of safeguarding work, focusing specifically on county lines and stopping the flow of vulnerable youngsters into the criminal practice. At a time when serious and organised crime is growing, it is perverse that a bid to safeguard youngsters who may fall into criminal gangs was rejected.

I want to leave the Minister plenty of time to respond to all the points raised today. I would welcome some further clarification from her about the operation of the networks and the telecommunications order, which was mentioned. I was pleased to support measures to disrupt these networks’ means of communication at the end of last year, but at the time I raised concerns about the speed and the effectiveness of the measures in taking down the networks of those suspected of dealing in county lines. I also said that criminals could easily switch phones and continue to communicate. The NCA’s most recent report seems to support those concerns. Many forces identify that criminals use more than one phone line. I appreciate that the new measures have been in place for only a month, but I would welcome an update from the Minister on how they are operating.

The NCA also said that we need a more consistent approach to capturing county lines intelligence. What role is the Home Office playing in helping to build a picture of the threat so we can assess the true scale of the practice? It has a clear definition of county lines, but a variation in its application has caused a potential blurring of the threat picture and may account for some perceived discrepancy in activity. What efforts are being made to capture and utilise county lines intelligence to ensure it can be accessed by all relevant stakeholders, not just police forces?

I reiterate my call for a review of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and the way it is applied to county lines. It is crucial, as all hon. Members said, that such children are treated as victims and are placed on the national referral mechanism. As the Children’s Society said, the response to child victims is too often punitive, rather than protective. We need a national response to ensure that all police forces in all circumstances understand that they are victims, not criminals.

Corrosive Substance Attacks

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 20th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I shall not detain the House for long, as the Minister has been asked many questions and I want to leave plenty of time for her to reply. There has been unified support from right hon. and hon. Members for regulation and licencing, and for acid possession offences. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) made a compelling case for restrictions on and licensing of acid, including what she said about the implications of the bonfire of the quangos in 2015, and the consequences of that deregulation. She also spoke compellingly about Katie Piper and her bravery—it was a powerful contribution—and about the importance of putting victims at the heart of all we do in response to such horrific crimes. I should be grateful if the Minister updated us on what has happened to the victims law promised by David Cameron in 2015, of which we have since seen nothing.

There has been strong support for tougher sentencing and the sending of a message from the courts and from this place about the abhorrence of the crime in question. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham on keeping the issue firmly on the agenda. She and my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) have led the way and are largely responsible for the good progress that has been made by the Government so far. This is the first Westminster Hall debate that I have taken part in with the Minister in her present role, and I congratulate her again and welcome her. I look forward to working constructively with her, particularly in the area that we are considering.

I pay tribute to the brave victims who gave evidence in the most recent trial, which resulted in a man being sentenced to more than 20 years for an attack in a London nightclub, in which he indiscriminately sprayed acid over a dance floor packed with people on an Easter bank holiday. He injured 22 people and 16 of them suffered serious burns. Their courage in facing up to their despicable attacker ensured that justice was done. It is encouraging that he was charged under section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and received a significant sentence. However, sentencing in acid attack cases is inconsistent, which is probably because there is an array of selectable charges for prosecutors to consider. Acid is not explicitly considered an offensive weapon, so I echo the request for clarification on the updates and on progress at the Sentencing Council. Will the Minister’s Department work with the Crown Prosecution Service to gather data on what charges are successfully prosecuted, so that the public can have clarity as to how offenders are being punished? As my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham said, the data is incredibly incomplete, so it would be helpful to have an update on the progress of research about the motivation for attacks, and, indeed, on test purchases.

Emerging evidence is clear; individuals are making use of corrosive substances because of the difficulty of tracing them back to the perpetrator, and the looser laws on possession. The proposed offences mirroring existing knife laws, on which the Government have consulted, will have our full support, and I commend my right hon. and hon. Friends for putting the issue firmly on the Government’s agenda. I would also welcome clarification on timings.

On the matter of sales, there is not the same harmony between the Government and the Opposition. The Government’s proposal to restrict the sale of acid to over-18s is of course welcome and will gain our support, but it is nowhere near enough. I am equally interested in the proposal of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham with respect to sales to under-21s, and what is happening in Newham at the moment. First, the data return from 39 forces showed that only one in five offences was committed by someone under 18. How many of those people bought the substances for themselves is up for debate. That is a critical point, because until now the Government’s response on the restriction of sale has, I regret to say, been weak. We need a comprehensive approach to restrictions on sale, and a focus on under-18s entirely ignores the evidence and fails to consider the issue in the round. The Government need to put that right because the changes made under the Deregulation Act 2015 were clearly a mistake.

Previously, the most dangerous substances could only be sold by a pharmacist in a retail pharmacy business, and sales had to be recorded on a register. Substances in part II of the poisons list could only be sold by retailers that had registered with their local authority. Under the previous system, acids could be purchased only from registered retailers, usually hardware or garden stores. According to the Government’s explanatory notes, the Deregulation Act 2015 intended to

“reduce the burdens on business. The Poisons Act 1972 and the Poison Rules 1982 were highlighted as adding burdens to businesses”.

The Minister at the time, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), referred to retailers being unable to sell “perfectly innocuous” substances because of red tape.

We also know that the Government rejected the views of the now abolished Poisons Board during the 2012 review, which suggested tighter controls on the sale of corrosive substances. Those changes mean that “reportable substances” such as sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid and ammonia can be bought by any person in any retailer, and that that retailer does not even need to register. Answers to my parliamentary questions have shown that at least 69 attacks have been from ammonia and therefore from “reportable substances”.

We would like the Government to go much further in this area. We would like the reform of individual licences, so that where there is clear evidence that an acid is causing harm, it is designated as a regulated substance that will require retailers to enter the details of any sale. That would include substances such as sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid and ammonia, which have no place on general sale.

Some have said that such a measure would be excessive, but it has been proposed by the British Retail Consortium, whose members have agreed voluntarily to stop selling sulphuric acid products. It points out that under the Control of Poisons and Explosives Precursors Regulations 2015, which are intended to restrict the supply of items that could be used to cause an explosion, sulphuric acid is covered but it is found under the lesser “reportable substance” category. The consortium proposes that sulphuric acid be promoted to the “regulated substance” category. Regulated substances require an explosives precursors and poisons licence, and a member of the public needs to show a valid licence and associated photo identification before making a purchase. That proposal is also supported by the Association of Convenience Stores.

I was extremely concerned to read in an update letter from the Minister’s predecessor that the limit of the Government’s action for retailers was to consider a series of “voluntary commitments”. Will the Minister update Members on what those voluntary commitments will be, and what use they will be?

I have been out with Operation Venice, which is a team in Islington and Camden that tackles moped crime. It is a real credit to the Metropolitan Police. One issue that the police and the Police Federation raise with us consistently is the current law on pursuits. I know that the Home Office is looking into that, and the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham) made a compelling case yesterday in a ten-minute rule Bill. I would appreciate an update on that review.

Finally, the Opposition will take a constructive approach to this issue. Where the Government warrant our support, they will have it, and where we feel they should go further we have been clear about what changes we would like to see.

Law Enforcement Co-operation and Border Control: Schengen Information System

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I confirm that the Opposition support the motion before us, and I echo the Minister’s thanks to the European Scrutiny Committee for bringing forward this debate, because the motion raises some important questions about our national security and the consequences and potential implications of Brexit.

Our security, and the apparatus on which it rests, is utterly dependent on co-operation with our European partners. The UK should be rightly proud of the role it has played in establishing and developing our shared security through Europol, the European arrest warrant and the Schengen information system. As the Minister says, SIS II is already proving its worth, helping to underpin the operation of the EAW and delivering 12,000 hits on suspected criminals and terrorists since its introduction in 2015. It has been a game-changer for policing leaders and for day-to-day policing.

We know what the Prime Minister makes of the SIS II system from what she told the House of Commons in November 2014, the month in which she also said that support for it is vital

“to stop foreign criminals from coming to Britain, deal with European fighters coming back from Syria, stop British criminals evading justice abroad, prevent foreign criminals evading justice by hiding here, and get foreign criminals out of our prisons”.

However, without an agreement and a commitment that this will be foremost in the Government’s negotiating priorities, this apparatus will all fall away the second we Brexit.

Quite frankly, it is astonishing that the Government have given no guarantees that we will seek to retain full access to SIS II on our departure from the EU. Despite underlining its importance in the position paper earlier this year, in a letter to the European Scrutiny Committee, the Minister said it was “too early to say” whether SIS II will be one of the measures that the Government will seek to include in a new post-Brexit agreement. The Committee has noted that

“there is no justification for this reticence.”

Our security depends on it, but we know why Ministers are showing such reticence. It is because of the role of the European Court of Justice and the EU charter of fundamental rights.

The Prime Minister has made it abundantly clear that there will be no permanent role for the ECJ, and the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill has explicitly dumped the EU charter. However, there is no precedent for a country to operate within SIS II—nor to operate the European arrest warrant, for that matter—without accepting that the ECJ will play a leading role. Indeed, the regulations before us explicitly prohibit third-country access to SIS II data. In his letter to the European Scrutiny Committee, the Minister attempted to suggest areas where countries do not submit directly to the jurisdiction of the ECJ, but in the case of SIS II, the precedent is clear: whether direct or indirect, the determinations of the European Court are final.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making some very important points. Does she not agree that this puts paid to the crazy suggestion of having no deal, because getting a deal on a security treaty will be absolutely crucial to the safety and security of this nation?

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that no deal is simply not acceptable for security or for data, which I will come on to shortly.

The Minister mentioned that four non-EU countries are members of SIS II, which is absolutely right. Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein participate by virtue of their membership of Schengen. These non-EU member states are bound to avert any substantial differences in the case law of the ECJ, and they are required to implement structures and procedures that keep pace with changes in the Schengen rulebook. If they do not do so, their agreements will be terminated.

[Robert Neill]

I understand precisely where the hon. Lady is coming from, but in fairness to the Minister, this may be a question about the direct nature or otherwise of the jurisdiction. Does she agree that the evidence to the Justice Committee was most compelling about the practical need to get the data regulations aligned so that data can lawfully be passed from EU member states to us as a third country in the same way that they are passed to the four non-EU countries she has mentioned?

[Louise Haigh]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because he pre-empts my next point.

At the heart of these strictures is the issue of data. All SIS II systems operate on a hub-and-spoke model, with a central SIS II hub exchanging data from national servers in each participating member state. The European Commission is very clear that this is European data. Although the police may have some leeway on the speed at which they create an alert, once they do, the data passes to the central SIS II hub. Therefore, without an agreement on data transfers, we simply cannot participate in this critical information-sharing system. That is the insanity of having no deal.

The proposals before the House require compliance with EU data protection laws and fundamental rights enshrined in the EU charter. The EU will insist on these rights being protected in order for the UK to share information, so what exactly do the Government propose? Can the Minister reassure the House that no arbitrary red lines, on the ECJ or otherwise, will be put before the safety and security of the British public? Will he confirm that it is the UK’s negotiating aim to retain full access to SIS II? If not, can he explain how after Brexit we would track the hundreds, if not thousands, of serious criminals, foreign fighters and those who pose a threat to our national security who are flagged by the system every month? There are few areas in which the UK is more dependent on agreement than security co-operation as we Brexit. The consequences of failure are scarcely imaginable.

The regulations are necessary to maintain our membership of SIS II for the time being and for our negotiating position, but they signify the huge risk that Brexit poses to our national security and the gaping holes in the Government’s approach to negotiations. We will support the motion and any and all of the Government’s efforts to maintain access to such security systems and close co-operation with our European partners, but we will continue to hold the Government to account on their approach to negotiations that are so fundamental to our national security.

Draft Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (Investigations: Code of Practice) Order 2018 Draft Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (Investigative Powers of Prosecutors: Code of Practice) Order 2018 Draft Terrorism Act 2000 (Code of Practice for Authorised Officers) Order 2018

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 General Committees

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

First, let me put on record that the Opposition fully support the statutory instruments, which is why it is baffling to see so many Members here so early in the morning.

As I say, we fully support these powers. They are absolutely necessary but nowhere near sufficient. Our biggest impediment to tackling the current terrorist threat is bodies on the ground, but police officer numbers are being cut up and down the country. I was in Norwich over the weekend; every single police community support officer post in Norfolk is being abolished. That is an incredible threat to our ability to tackle not just crime and antisocial behaviour, but the unprecedented terrorist threat we face. Our PCSOs and neighbourhood policing teams are the eyes and ears of our counter-terrorism units, and they need not just powers but resources and bodies on the ground.

The Minister referred to the right to respect for private and family life and to peaceful enjoyment of property under the European convention on human rights. Will he say a little more on the training that our law enforcement officers and financial investigators will receive, to ensure that those rights are fully respected and understood? We must ensure that the codes provide sufficient guidance on that.

I will not detain the Committee any longer. We are more than happy to support the instruments.

Draft Drug Dealing Telecommunications Restriction Orders Regulations 2017

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2017 General Committees

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Wilson. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I also welcome the new Minister to her place. If the reaction she had yesterday was anything to go by, she is a very popular choice to succeed the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton).

I make clear the Opposition’s support for the regulations and reassure Committee members that I will not detain them for long. I am pleased by the urgency outlined in the explanatory memorandum and encouraged to read that the regulations will come into force almost immediately.

I have met dozens of chief constables and police and crime commissioners since taking up my position in July. As well as mentioning resources, they all raised with me the issue of keeping pace with the increasing sophistication of serious organised crime. The evolution of the powers available to the police is a substantial part of that. As the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham have outlined, county lines is one of the most serious, exploitative crimes facing our police service. We know that organised crime gangs exploit vulnerable children and engage them in trafficking, forcing them away from home to sell drugs. The practice is growing in both the capacity of existing gangs and the number of gangs themselves, and it is therefore absolutely right that we give the police all the powers they need to disrupt this abhorrent crime.

I will raise a couple of operational points with the Minister. I appreciate the reasons that a consultation and a more thorough public analysis were not possible in this instance; she may wish to write to me about that, which I would welcome. The success of the entire system will be incumbent on the speed at which the restriction orders can be implemented. That will be critical in two ways. First, the use of the relay system to make illicit transactions means that it will be crucial for the police to simultaneously disrupt the entire network, or else the organised gangs may easily subvert the disconnected phone. Secondly, the low cost and ease with which criminals can buy a new phone and re-establish the network may require a fairly constant war of attrition between the police and organised gangs. For those reasons, it is critical that an order can be obtained with speed.

Given that the orders will be heard by county courts, which were recently subject to a punishing round of closures, can we have confidence that they will be issued and implemented with that necessary speed? The explanatory memorandum refers to resources being made available to Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service and to the police. Can the Minister be a bit more specific? Given that the Government’s own impact assessment states that it is impossible to know how many orders will be made, what measures do the Government have in place to ensure that the courts are not put under considerable pressure, particularly during the first year after the order is passed?

The impact assessment also makes reference to the courts benefiting from increased court fees. However, as county courts are under considerable pressure and currently subject to long delays, what assessment has been made of the impacts on courts beyond monetary gain? As I said, I am happy for the Minister to write to me with her responses, and I reiterate the Opposition’s support for the regulations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I assure my hon. Friend that I have spoken directly to the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable in Derbyshire to get an update on the performance of the service and the demand on it. That will feed into the review that I have signalled, which will, in turn, feed into the decisions about the 2018-19 funding settlement, for which he will not have to wait too long.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

The Minister says that he wants evidence for police funding. How about the document that every chief constable and PCC in the country signed up to this month, which warned that without extra investment on Wednesday, up to 6,000 more police officers could be lost by 2020 and that usable resources are, in fact, a fraction of the figure that he keeps citing? If he thinks that the UK’s most senior police leaders are wrong, will he commit today to making no further cuts to police officer numbers during this Parliament?

[Mr Hurd]

I can confirm that decisions about police funding have not been finalised, but that that will be done shortly. An announcement will be made to the House as part of the draft grant settlement for 2018-19 in the usual way. On the report that the hon. Lady cites, I hope she understands that we have worked with that report closely, because the Home Office and the police system wanted to do a proper job of updating our understanding of the pressures that the police are under, which are real.

Community Policing

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 7th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I too congratulate the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) on securing the debate. I concur with him and with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) that policing and tackling crime are fundamental issues of social justice and equality. People are far more likely to be victims of crime if they are poor, an ethnic minority or living in a vulnerable community.

Crime and antisocial behaviour can make people feel under siege in their community. We cannot tackle, prevent, investigate or bring to justice offenders without a robust, well-resourced neighbourhood policing presence, as we have heard clearly today. If we speak to chief constables and policing leaders across the country, as I have done, they tell us exactly that. The model for policing in this country was developed on that basis, and it makes us the envy of the world.

[Lilian Greenwood]

Is that not precisely why the very people my hon. Friend talks about—police chiefs and police and crime commissioners—write:

“The legitimacy of policing is at risk as the relationship with communities that underpins all activity is fading to a point where prevention, early intervention and core engagement that fosters feelings of safety are at risk of becoming ineffective”?

Is that not precisely why we need today’s debate, and why we need the Minister to respond to their calls for extra funding?

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The neighbourhood policing model, which I will come on to, is not just a “nice to have”. It is a fundamental component of our policing model in this country. It is therefore completely disingenuous for the previous Home Secretary, now the Prime Minister, to tell the police that their only job is going out there and reducing and attacking crime. The police do much more than that, as I will come on to shortly. Our police, and our police staff, who are often excluded from the debate around police officers, are the eyes and ears of the fight against crime and terrorism. Neighbourhood policing is an irreplaceable component in the battle to keep our communities safe and prevent crime.

Norfolk has been mentioned a couple of times. Other police forces across the country looked on in horror as Norfolk announced that it would be abolishing every single one of its police community support officers in the new year. I hope that Norfolk will look to examples such as my force in South Yorkshire, which merged neighbourhood policing with response two years ago, effectively abolishing it. It now has to divert resources away from response and restore neighbourhood policing because of the disastrous effect of abolishing it. The police chief and police and crime commissioner did that without consultation. Does the Minister think it is appropriate for such a major change to a police force, and such a divergence from a police and crime plan, to happen without consultation? It sets a dangerous precedent for changes to other forces.

As we have heard, crime is up. The crimes that most concern the public are once again on the rise: knife crime, gun crime and all violent crime are up, as is acquisitive crime. What angers us is that all of that was foreseeable and foreseen. If we look across Europe, only three other countries chose to cut their police force by proportionately more than we did. Two of those—Lithuania and Iceland—were reeling from chaotic and deep depressions. It was a political choice to preside over the erosion of neighbourhood policing, and when the police raised the alarm, it was a political choice to attack them for crying wolf, rather than listening to their legitimate concerns.

Only last week, we saw the Home Secretary castigating policing leaders for problems she had created, accusing them of not grounding requests for additional resources in evidence. As we have heard, there is a wealth of evidence. The country’s top counter-terror officer, Mark Rowley, told the Home Affairs Committee that there had been a 30% uplift in counter-terror work. He said that with the huge growth in the number of investigations,

“frankly…we have a bigger proportion of our investigations that are at the bottom of the pile and getting little or no work at the moment.”

It is not enough to say that funding has gone into counter-terrorism, because as we know, for every £1 spent on the Met’s counter-terror budget, £2 has to be spent by that police force on mobilising officers. On top of that, there is an £85 million funding shortfall in the armed officer uplift that the Prime Minister promised the Government would cover, which means that forces are picking up 50% of that cost. Is that the kind of evidence that the Home Secretary was looking for?

How about the document written by the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners and the National Police Chiefs Council, which my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) mentioned, and which laid bare the perilous state of neighbourhood policing in this country? Does the Minister accept that the funding settlement means accepting “higher risk for communities” and

“a reduction in the services resilience to cope with major emergencies”?

Will the Minister confirm, as the document laid out, that proactive crime prevention policing is down 25% on the last year alone; that local policing is fading to the point where it is ineffective, due to degradation in local intelligence collection; and that emergency 999 systems are failing too often? When exactly were Ministers planning to tell the public that the funding settlement risks a further 6,000 police officers being cut over the next three years?

The Minister knows the pressures the police are under; he has exactly the same conversations as I do. We have heard this morning about a wide range of forces— from large forces to smaller, rural ones—having record 999 and 101 calls, record levels of unsolved crimes and record mental health and missing persons call-outs. I was a special constable in the London Borough of Lambeth just five years ago, and policing has already changed drastically from what I experienced on the frontline.

As hon. Members have said, the facts have changed since the last budget settlement was agreed. It is time for the budget to change as well. Before the Minister responds and tells us that the police are sitting on reserves of £1.6 billion, £1.7 billion or £1.8 billion—it depends on which side of the bed he gets out of in the morning—will he take this opportunity to correct the record and confirm that, for all 43 forces across the country, just £363 million is genuinely usable and is not earmarked for capital spending? Will he also take the opportunity to tell us what models of local policing he has seen work across the country, and how important he sees neighbourhood policing as being to the fundamental British model of policing?

As I have said, neighbourhood policing is not just nice to have; it is vital to our policing system. It underpins the police’s ability to police by consent. It is almost wholly responsible for building and maintaining relationships with communities, and if we reduce our police to nothing more than a blue light that arrives only when the absolute worst has happened, we risk rolling back all the progress that has been made in police accountability and trust over the last generation. We have heard about the erosion of trust in officers and the police if they do not turn up when something as serious as a residential burglary—one of the most invasive and intrusive crimes someone can fall victim to—happens.

Finally, I refer to comments made to the House less than two weeks ago by the Policing Minister:

“we will…ensure that the police have the resources they need to do the job”.—[Official Report, 25 October 2017; Vol. 630, c. 132WH.]

We have heard categorically that the police do not have the resources they need to do their job. Will the Minister finally take this opportunity to announce that we will see an end to real-terms funding cuts, which have left our communities exposed?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hurd]

I could not have been clearer in my remarks; demand on the police has grown. We have two sets of data, which is sometimes confusing. We track people’s experience of crime through the crime survey. That shows a long-term decline in people’s experience of crime, which I hope every Member will welcome. In terms of police recorded crime, which is trying to capture something different, we are seeing an increase. Part of that is a genuine increase in crime, which I totally accept, as the Office for National Statistics does. Part of it—I know the right hon. Gentleman will welcome this—is people feeling more comfortable to come forward about crime, particularly in some of the murky, difficult, complex and often tragic areas, and police getting more effective at recording crime. It is confusing. People’s experience of crime is down, according to the official survey that has run for many years, but recorded crime is up. There are two sets of data trying to do different things.

I want to address the point about stretch. Whenever I visit a police force, I have a meeting with frontline officers, and the message from those officers could not be clearer: they feel extremely stretched. They are working very hard under very difficult circumstances indeed. As I say, the fact that that message is coming out of a can-do organisation means we have to listen to it.

That is why we are conducting a demand and resilience review, led by myself. I will be visiting or speaking to every single force in England and Wales. The review will update our understanding of demand and how it is being managed, the implications of flat cash force by force and the strategy for reserves, which are public money. The last audited numbers in 2016 showed reserves of £1.8 billion. That figure is now down a bit, to perhaps around £1.6 billion, but it is still public money, and we need to know the plans for it.

[Louise Haigh]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hurd]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will not, because I want to finish my remarks.

That review will be assessed in parallel with the fair funding review that colleagues will have tracked and that is of particular interest to Suffolk, Bedfordshire and other counties that feel they have been on the wrong end of the allocation in recent years. It will come together as a piece of analysis and work with the provisional grant report and provisional settlement for 2018-19, which I expect to come to the House before the year end.

I would like to assure colleagues who are concerned about whether the Government are listening to the messages from their local police chiefs and police and crime commissioners that we feel strongly that we have to take decisions based on evidence, not assertion, and that is feeding into the review. We owe that to the taxpayer. We are determined to ensure that the police have the resources and the support they need, without giving up on the challenge we have to give them to ensure they are using that money in the most effective way.

For this Government, as for any Government, public safety is the No. 1 priority. I assure the House that in the work we are doing, we are determined to ensure that hard-working police forces up and down the country doing incredibly difficult work under very difficult and often dangerous circumstances have the support they need. With that, I close, in order that the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton can conclude.

Draft Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2017

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2017 General Committees

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I add my congratulations on your appointmen, Ms McDonagh. I know you will be a fantastic Chair—it feels strange to call you that—and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

The official Opposition are happy to support the statutory instrument. We have heeded the advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which found that MPA has no known medicinal, commercial or industrial benefits. The Government and the Opposition—everyone in this place—have a duty to ensure that the law is coherent and consistent as the temporary order on this drug expires.

As the evidence suggests, MPA has often been marketed as a legal alternative to cocaine, often in concoction with other stimulant drugs. Its side effects of predominantly include tachycardia, chest tightness, anxiety and nausea. We accept the conclusions of the ACMD that it is a high-risk drug, with known deaths related to its use.

I want to use this opportunity to press the Minister on two points. The drugs strategy and policy making surrounding drugs and their classification are largely based on the crime survey for England and Wales. We are therefore concerned, having learnt last week that the Government are cutting the sample size, the response rate and the questions relating to performance, experience and attitudes to the criminal justice system. Will the Minister say how that will affect future decisions relating to drug classification? The drugs strategy is utterly reliant on crime survey data, so it is worrying that its legitimacy is being reduced. I hope the Minister will pass those concerns back to the Department and think again.

The new drugs strategy board is intended to oversee the strategy itself and, by implication, the classification of MPA. It comprises among others, Public Health England and the national policing lead. Has the full composition been agreed yet? Also, when will the Minister report on the work of the national recovery champion, who was to travel the country establishing best practice on drugs policy and the drugs strategy implementation?

Having said that, we recognise the harm caused by MPA and the importance of it being tightly controlled. We are pleased to support the statutory instrument.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He is absolutely right. The great success of the Psychoactive Substances Act is that, when Public Health England or police officers are worried about a new substance they see appearing on the market, immediate protection can be put in place, with a lesser burden of evidence required than for full scheduling, to prevent people from getting that harmful substance. Temporary control orders give time for the evidence base to be gathered—the full toxicology reports and the data from Public Health England and police forces—and put in the round to measure the harm in full, so that we can properly schedule substances under the 1971 Act, which is exactly what we are seeing today; the whole process is working its way through.

Stronger penalties are associated with the possession or dealing of drugs according to the schedule. We very much hope that those stronger, tougher penalties act as a deterrent and send out a clear message to young people or anyone that these are harmful substances that we do not want them to even think about taking.

[Louise Haigh]

I am a bit confused by the Minister’s answer. My understanding is that substances controlled under the Psychoactive Substances Act but not the Misuse of Drugs Act did not carry a possession offence. Indeed, the police are dealing with that problem at the moment in relation to Spice: they can control the supply but are not able to tackle possession, because that is not a criminal offence under the Psychoactive Substances Act. My understanding is that MPA was brought under this schedule because it would not be treated as a possession offence under the Psychoactive Substances Act, but it now will be.

[Sarah Newton]

I thank the hon. Lady for that clarification; I am sorry if my answer was not clear. I thought I was saying that, by bringing it across, there are those stronger penalties. She is absolutely right about that.

Question put and agreed to.