Abu Qatada

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks. Of course, this is not purely my effort; the Minister with responsibility for crime and security, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup went to Jordan, and a significant number of Home Office and Foreign Office officials have been working extremely hard over the past weeks and months since the original judgment to ensure that we reached the position we are in today, whereby we have been able to arrest Abu Qatada and resume deportation. It has taken a long time overall, and part of the reason is the lengthy legal process that has taken place. That is one of the reasons why I believe it necessary to look at whether we could make any changes to enable us to make these deportations quicker.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

May I join in the congratulations to the Home Secretary on the progress she has made? Without asking her to predict failure, if the Brighton conference fails to produce a suitably robust reform for the Strasbourg Court, do the Government have a fall-back position for getting these things into a far better, more streamlined state?

[Mrs May]

I am rather more optimistic than my hon. Friend is about the Brighton conference, because I know of the considerable work put in by my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary, and by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and others across government, to work with the other 46 member states—remember, 47 countries will be around the table to discuss this. I am confident that the areas of change the Prime Minister has set out will indeed be addressed.

Alcohol Strategy

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

That was the usual response from the right hon. Lady—bluster and political point scoring. One thing was missing. After the disaster of Labour’s Licensing Act 2003, after election text messages saying, “Couldn’t give a XXXX for closing time,” and after all that drink-fuelled violence and disorder, there was not even a hint of apology from the right hon. Lady.

I suggest that the right hon. Lady speaks to the previous Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), who said that he regrets not doing more during his time in office to tackle the problems caused by binge drinking. It is a shame that she cannot bring herself to be as frank about her party’s record in office.

It was difficult to decipher the right hon. Lady’s questions about the actual statement on alcohol strategy. I think she raised two points. She asked about ensuring that the minimum unit price did not lead to a cash windfall for supermarkets. I do not believe it will, because the supermarket industry is highly competitive; it has small margins on its goods and I expect money made through higher alcohol prices to be passed on through lower prices for other goods. When the cost of living is an issue, I should have thought that the right hon. Lady would welcome that.

The right hon. Lady asked about health bodies. They will of course be in a position to contribute to local licensing decisions; indeed, the new public health and wellbeing bodies will be able to participate, alongside the police and local authorities, in setting strategies to deal with alcohol in their local area. The right hon. Lady now takes an interest in health bodies having a role, although sadly she and her party opposed the Bill that enabled them to be set up.

I recognise that the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, is not in the Chamber, but last year he said:

“May I welcome the Government’s proposals for a minimum price for alcohol? They are of course in keeping with the recommendations that the Home Affairs Committee made last year.”—[Official Report, 24 January 2011; Vol. 522, c. 3.]

In 2008, the Home Affairs Committee talked about the cheap availability of alcohol, recommending that

“the Government establish as soon as possible a legal basis for banning the use of loss-leading by supermarkets and setting a minimum price for the sale of alcohol.”

What I think I deciphered from the right hon. Lady’s bluster is that the Opposition actually support the idea of an alcohol strategy and what the Government are doing. If I am correct, I welcome that.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I think the whole House welcomes what the Home Secretary is trying to achieve with the policy, and we certainly wish it every success. Could she comment on how we can tackle a possible increase in the black market—the smuggling of cheap booze from abroad? We do not want the reinstatement of the booze cruise to France.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I think I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. When we look at police forces such as his, Northumbria police, we see that they have taken some really important steps to make savings and efficiencies while cutting crime at the same time. Rather than criticising the efforts of police forces such as Northumbria, which has seen a 15% fall in violence against the person, we should be supporting the steps they are taking to find efficiencies and dealing with the problems left by the previous Government.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I am sure that the Minister will be pleased to join me in congratulating Derbyshire police, as crime in Derbyshire continues to fall, detection levels are at a record high, my constituents’ satisfaction with the police has gone up each year and they are meeting their savings targets.

[James Brokenshire]

I certainly congratulate my hon. Friend on working closely with his local police force. As he has highlighted, the important thing is how police officers are used. Better deployment, better shift patterns, reduced bureaucracy and increased scope for officers to use their professional judgment are steps that many forces are taking and that this Government support.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I know from talking with chief constables in Wales that they are absolutely committed to continuing to reduce crime. The important point is that, according to the latest figures, recorded crime in Wales continued to fall. It is very important that police forces focus on ensuring that the available resource is deployed effectively and that they prioritise the front line and drive out cost in those back-office functions. Forces up and down the country are showing that that can be done.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

Does the Minister not think that it is time to review the damping mechanism in the settlement, which deprives forces such as the Derbyshire constabulary of large amounts of funding each year?

[Nick Herbert]

My hon. Friend will have an opportunity to raise that issue in the police funding debate on Wednesday. I know that that is a constant concern of forces that lose out from damping and that they want to move towards the formula. We are committed to doing that and will look at these issues carefully for the next years of the spending settlement. However, an equal number of forces feel that they would lose out as a result, so it is a very difficult issue.

Police Forces

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing this important debate. She was right about many things, in particular that the police struggle to speak for themselves—they are one of those services that cannot strike—so it is right for Members to have police debates, when we can speak up for them.

I have the pleasure of being on the police parliamentary programme, spending about 15 days with the police this year. I am always cautious speaking in a police debate, because if I say anything that they do not like, the chances are that I will find that out the hard way on the next day that I spend with them. My next day with them involves going up in a helicopter, so they will have scope to show me whether they like the things I say.

The police are facing a variety of what they probably regard as attacks from all angles, such as the funding cuts and the changes to the pay and conditions of police officers, although we should draw a distinction between those for uniformed police constables and those for police staff, who, I suspect, are often in an even worse position. The Government are also making structural changes to the accountability of the police force, which the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) discussed.

This is the fourth or fifth policing debate that I have spoken in over the past year, and I always start by urging the Government to review how they allocate funding to various police forces around the country. If we look at the impact on forces, we need either to implement the existing funding formula, so that forces actually have the funding that the formula calculates for their needs, or to find a better formula and implement that. We cannot, however, remain with a formula that calculates for Derbyshire police £5 million more than they actually get, and yet each year say, “That’s difficult, we will leave that for another year.” I am sure that the Nottinghamshire police force of the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) is in a similar situation and that we will get the same pleas from his force. If we need to be more efficient, can we start with fair funding in the first place? Derbyshire police force thinks of itself as extremely efficient—it has had to be for years, because in its view it has been underfunded. The concern of Derbyshire police is that, while it accepts the scope for more efficiency and further savings, it is hard to keep getting more blood out of the stone when it sees other forces not being forced to make the same level of efficiency savings. I have made that plea almost half a dozen times now. I hope that a different Minister will give a more encouraging answer to my police force, but I fear that that might be beyond his role today.

In common with all Members present, I have been lobbied by various serving and retired members of the police force about the impact of the proposed changes to their pay and conditions. All of us who have been in employment, and who have experienced threats to the business in which we are working or announcements of change and redundancy reviews, know that such times are horribly unsettling and uncertain. One lesson that I have learned is that the time of uncertainty should be as short as possible for it to be as fair as possible on the people affected, so I am concerned that many weeks have gone by since the Hutton and the Winsor announcements. Serving police officers do not yet have any idea which of the proposals will be implemented by the Government, which will not and how the proposals will impact on individuals. If we want to get police morale trending back upwards, we need to resolve what the Government proposals actually are, although I understand that they are under negotiation and that it is hard to come up with any public statement. Human nature, however, is to flick through the reports, find all the worst possible scenarios, add them all together and envisage a situation that, I suspect, is far worse than the reality will be.

[Toby Perkins]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has highlighted the situation in Derbyshire, which we both represent. At the Police Federation conference, Derbyshire representative Sarah Adams reminded everyone of what the Home Secretary said at an earlier conference:

“If you come with me, I will make this promise: I will always back you, I will always support you, I will always fight for you.”

Sarah Adams finished by asking the Home Secretary

“how can you expect police officers or the communities we serve to trust you or your Government?”

Our representative from Derbyshire said that to the Home Secretary. Does that make the hon. Gentleman feel neither that the police have misunderstood nor that the Government have failed to explain, but that the policy is wrong?

[Nigel Mills]

I have had some great times with the police going around the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, because we are advised on the police parliamentary scheme not to go around our own seats in case we attract more attention than the police do themselves. I would not go as far as he did in his intervention. Without doubt, we have a huge deficit, which has to be tackled, and there is no way that police forces can be shielded from that—they will have to pay their share, and I think that they accept that. I am sure that we will disagree about how large the share should be, but, when pay accounts for three quarters of police budgets, there is no way around the fact that that is what must take a fair chunk of the strain.

My point is that it is only fair on people to tell them what the changes will be as quickly as possible, rather than dragging out the uncertainty for months. Some things in the Winsor review and, in particular, the Hutton review are welcome. Hutton singles out the police force for a better deal on pensions than other public sector workers can expect, because they will be allowed their pension at 60, rather than the age rising to 66 or 67.

[Mr Burley]

Does my hon. Friend accept that some police officers may receive their pension as early as the age of 48? Police officers have unique job security. It the only job in the public sector that I can think of which people may start at 18, and have a job for 30 years, and a guaranteed pension of around two thirds of salary with no chance of being made redundant. Police officers cannot be made redundant, unlike people in every other job in the public and private sector. That unique job security should be reflected in the overall pay and conditions and, indeed, pension.

[Nigel Mills]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention, but I think he is leading me down a line that would cause some difficulty. There is merit in considering whether police officers should sign up for 30 years, or whether they should join on a shorter contract. There is logic in signing up for 10 years, and if that works out for the force and someone wants to stay longer, they can do so. If it is not working out after 10 years, they may want to do something else. I was encouraged that Police Federation representatives from Derbyshire whom I met a few months ago were keen on that idea, and could see some advantages.

My hon. Friend tried to tempt me down the line of police redundancy, and my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) has introduced a ten-minute rule Bill on that topic. I think that that would probably add more uncertainty to police officers’ views on their future. Some to whom I have spoken have colleagues who are unfit for work or have lost their enthusiasm for it, and a mechanism allowing them to leave would probably be a positive step, but I suspect that that is not the general view of the police force.

I want to plead for police staff whose terms and conditions are not as generous as those of serving police officers, but who have borne the brunt of some previous savings rounds. They do not have redundancy protection, and they fear that they are being even more unfairly squeezed when police forces are looking to make savings. I have certainly had representations from them saying that they do not have the same generous pension to look forward to and cannot retire at the same time. We must ensure that the balance of savings is spread fairly.

When we talk about front-line and back-office functions, it is easy to blur the fact that some of those functions that are key to the front line, but are not strictly uniform, are being squeezed. I have had representations from scene-of-crime officers saying that compared with years ago when a team would sent to almost every burglary, there is now a squeeze on and it is hard to get an operative to go to a crime scene. Certainly that service is not available for many burglaries. That is not the way to improve the rate of crime detection.

There are many challenges, and at a time of funding constraint, it is important that the Government give the police all the necessary powers to tackle crime as efficiently as possible. I will cite one example from the burglary division of Derbyshire police. I am sure that the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) agrees that Derbyshire police has made great improvements in recent years in tackling burglaries and in providing a service to victims of such crimes. It has told me that many burglaries are carried out by people who want to steal jewellery to fund their drug habit. They rob a house, nick the jewellery and take it straight down to the local jeweller, who sometimes has a melting pot. The jewellery is sold for cash, and even if the police receive a tip-off about where the jewellery has gone, there is no trace of it or whom it was bought from. Previously law-abiding jewellers are being snared by the high price of gold into that route of crime. There are no regulations that the police can use to tackle jewellers or to force them to keep details of jewellery that they buy or whom they bought it from.

Regulations apply to scrap metal dealers, and even to pawnbrokers, but not to jewellers. If we are to help the police tackle crime, we must tackle the demand side and give them the powers that they need. I hope that the Minister will encourage his colleague, Baroness Browning, to look at the matter a little more closely than she suggested a couple of weeks ago.

I want to touch on accountability, because it is important that the police are brought back closer to the communities that they serve. There have been many welcome developments on neighbourhood consultation, but the introduction of elected police commissioners will do that, and I hope that the Government will proceed with that and not bow down to Lords wrecking amendments. It will be an important development, and even serving police officers have told me that they are looking forward to it, because it will make the force seem more accountable. Perhaps even at chief constable level it will encourage focusing priority on the area and not on the national, high-profile matters that chiefs sometimes focus on. That reform is essential to bring the police back to their trusted status with the public. I urge the Government to progress with that.

Government Reductions in Policing

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

This is the fourth time in my short career in the House that I have spoken in a policing debate and, sadly, the second time I have done so while a murder investigation is ongoing in my constituency. That makes it a good time for me to pay tribute to the police for their hard work. Large-scale and difficult investigations like this one after the senseless murder of young Jia Ashton in Somercotes a couple of weeks ago help us all to appreciate how hard a job the police sometimes have.

It is important to put our debate on policing into context. We are debating the subject in the shadow of the most difficult public finance situation in peacetime history. As we look through these large and confusing numbers, it is important to realise, as my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) just explained, that the Opposition’s last financial plan when they were in government involved them in about 90% of the spending reductions for this financial year—a difference of only £2 billion, which they spent many times over. They cannot get away with saying that if they were in power we would not have to face the huge savings that need to be made or the huge cuts that need to be found. In fact, neither of the main parties at the last election pledged to make no reduction in police funding or police numbers. Moreover, the last Labour Home Secretary—we have already had three shadow Home Secretaries in this Parliament—admitted that police numbers would fall under Labour as well.

The public do not much enjoy listening to us throwing blame around the Chamber. They want to hear us talk about what the Government should be doing to ensure that we have the efficient and effective policing that we need. The Government might have passed a Bill stating that there would be no reductions in uniformed police officers, but I am not sure whether we could have recommended such a Bill or whether it would have worked or been at all sensible. We have all seen the awful trend of having uniformed officers working at back-office functions for which they are not trained and which they are probably overpaid to do. What we need is something different. We want the highly trained police officers to be out on the streets, not doing support or back-office roles, however we want to define them.

The Government clearly can and should do certain things. I would like to talk about three particular examples: the funding for each force, reforms to pay and conditions and taking steps to strip away bureaucracy. I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is still in the Chamber. She has heard me say this before, but I think it is important to bear in mind the difference in funding levels. Let me point out yet again that for many years Derbyshire has lost about £5 million a year —which equates roughly to 160 officers—because the last Government did not implement their own funding formula establishing the requirement for each force.

I realise that it was not possible for any Government to solve the problem in the time available, but I urge the Home Secretary, when the next funding round arrives, either to start to implement the existing funding formula or to introduce a new one. It cannot be right for us to keep saying “Here is a formula; here is the amount that you want; oh, sorry, you cannot have it”. That simply is not sustainable. We are led to believe that some forces do not have to work under the same financial pressures as Derbyshire and several other authorities in the east midlands.

I may gain more agreement from my colleagues on the Front Bench when I speak of the need to reform pay and conditions. The point has been well made that at a time when more than 75% of police budgets is spent on pay, there is a clear link: if we do not reform pay and conditions, we shall have to accept a smaller head count. Although imposing a two-year pay freeze is not a pleasant task, reforming police allowances and overtime payments must be the way forward. I say that cautiously, as the police service parliamentary scheme enables me to spend Wednesdays touring Chesterfield with members of the police force. I hope that, if they read the report of my speech, they will understand what I was trying to say. I am happy to debate the issue with them.

I urge the Government to make some progress on the Winsor review. The last thing that any of us want is for police forces to have to make cuts and savings and then, when the final recommendations of the review are published, to discover that the problem was not as bad as had been feared, and that they need not have made those savings. A degree of certainty on pay and conditions and the pension position will help everyone. I do not think that any of us work at our best with a huge amount of uncertainty hanging over us for longer than necessary.

We also need to strip away bureaucracy, and during their 11 months in power the Government have made considerable progress in that regard. We all want as many man hours as possible to be spent on the front line. I believe that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary defines the front line as officers

“who directly intervene to keep people safe and enforce the law”.

I do not know whether others agree with that definition, but it strikes me as a reasonable form of words.

The abolition of the police pledge, the reduction of bureaucracy and the granting of more discretion to the police to fight crime should be hugely welcomed. Talk of absolute police numbers is not the clearest way of discussing the issue; I think that what the public want to see is the right number of officers engaged in the right duties at the right times and in the right places, working in a smart manner.

[Tom Brake]

One issue that the hon. Gentleman and, indeed, other Members should consider is the amount of time spent by safer neighbourhood teams on petrol stations. I was appalled to discover that one BP garage in one ward was using 20% of the safer neighbourhood team’s time to deal with drive-outs and shoplifting. I suggest that Members with petrol stations in their constituencies ask how much of the local safer neighbourhood teams’ time is being spent in that way because they have not, for instance, ensured that CCTV is up to scratch, and that staff are properly trained to prevent shoplifting from becoming rife.

[Nigel Mills]

The hon. Gentleman has made a sensible point. I hope that the Government’s decision not to increase fuel tax even more will not provide any further encouragement for thefts from petrol stations.

Various reports have been quoted as saying that in 2009 only 14% of police officers’ time was spent on patrol and 22% was spent on paperwork. That cannot be right: there must be scope for the police to work in a far smarter manner. According to Jan Berry’s report—which has been referred to—about a third of police time is ineffective, and that demonstrates the scope for savings.

I commend the work that Derbyshire police have done, and continue to do, in their “Moving Forward” savings programme. I recently had an opportunity to quiz the chief constable, the officer in charge of the change programme and various others about how they were approaching it, and to challenge them by suggesting some additional things that they could think about. I was impressed by how well on track they were, and how well they had thought everything through. They have managed to save £700,000 already by putting sergeants back in charge of evidence gathering and case preparation, and they have saved about £1 million through increasing regional collaboration, so there are things that all forces can do.

[Mrs Grant]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is also an emerging police willingness to work with other agencies in the community, and that they are doing that in a very exciting and innovative way, which is good for both public services and the improvement of the police force generally?

[Nigel Mills]

It would be impossible not to agree with that; it has to be the way forward for all the services that have interactions with each other to make those interactions more effective and to avoid the duplication that can arise.

People must feel that the police are on their side. In the election campaign, I suspect that the following concern was expressed to every one of us time and again: “What do the police do? We never see them. They only want to tackle innocent motorists, and they don’t tackle serious crimes.” That is why the introduction of elected police commissioners—I have the pleasure of serving on the Public Bill Committee dealing with that—is a hugely powerful step. It is a way of saying, “Look, here is someone who can ensure that what the police do is what the public actually want them to do, and not what the chief constable, or the Government, might want them to do. Here is someone who is accountable to the public for delivering on police priorities.”

Finally, let me say that it would have been a far more constructive use of parliamentary time if today we had debated those aspects of the Winsor review that we welcome or have concerns about. Instead, we have had what must be about the third debate on police funding, which has more to do with playing party games before the local elections than trying to improve the police force. Let us instead look at the challenges the police face, and work constructively to get the best and the most efficient, but also the most effective, police force that we can for all our constituents.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

I absolutely agree, and I am familiar with Broad street—I have seen how it has been transformed into a relatively safe place over the years. There will always be a minority who cause problems, but if local late-night economy establishments, the local authority and the police work together proactively, they can transform an area. Although it is a burden to pay additional fees through the late-night levy, the venues will be paid back, because if more customers can see that the levy has created a safe environment, they will have the confidence to go to the venues and spend money.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend said that every town is different, and I am interested in his experience of running a late-night venue. The Bill would apply the provision to a whole council area, and not just to one town in it. As a nightclub owner, would he have been happy to pay for problems in a different town, and for none of his money to be spent in his town?

[Justin Tomlinson]

My understanding is that that is why picking areas has been delegated to local authorities. I would extend it so that the measure is venue-specific. There are some proactive, good venues and there should be an incentive to encourage that; the opposite should apply to establishments that are perhaps less proactive and more responsible for the minority of problems.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Brokenshire]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) for his contribution. He talked about not wanting to have fun at my expense, but I genuinely take his point on board.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) was in the Chamber only fleetingly. Perhaps he did not want to be present at the denouement. I remember him, when he was a Minister, grappling to try to make the alcohol disorder zone policy work. I was an Opposition spokesman at the time, and I used to pick holes in it, saying that parts of it would not work and that it was too complicated. I asked how areas would be defined and which businesses would be part of the scheme. I also asked how the costs and charges would be calculated, and what steps would have to be taken to set the scheme up. I could almost see the beads of sweat forming on the hon. Gentleman’s brow, because those were all fair questions that many people were asking. I do not claim any great credit in that sense, because many outside agencies, including the Local Government Association, shared the view that it was a nice idea but that it really would not work. It is now right and proper to accept that, to move on and to learn the lessons from that time.

I respect the comments of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), who I know probably wants to gloss over the alcohol disorder zone episode, as does everybody nowadays, and move on to a new chapter. The ADZ episode taught us that in seeking to apply a charge in that way, defining the area can seem quite straightforward initially but prove devilishly difficult. That was one of the issues behind the ADZ problem.

We have sought to take a different approach by looking at the issue on a time basis rather than at a specific area and by dealing with the problems of managing the late-night economy. Research showed that there were pressures on the police and increases in crime in the early hours of the morning, suggesting the importance of the time at which this was happening. That is why clause 126 makes it clear that the late-night levy must

“begin at or after midnight, and… end at or before 6 am.”

I hear the points made about rural areas, for example, where there might not be a problem. I note the question about whether, if the levy were applied more generally across the whole local council area, it would capture the well-run community pubs in the locality. If this were set to start only at midnight, I would suggest that those well-run community pubs are most likely to have shut by that time—before the levy comes into operation. If this is a problem, there is flexibility in the setting of the time at which the levy starts; it could begin from 1 am, for example. That flexibility is built into the measure.

[Nigel Mills]

It would help us and the industry if we understood how we are going to deal with the problem of events accidentally going beyond midnight or 1 am. Although there might not be any problems, a licence might be sought to cover a wedding or other event. At times such as new year’s eve places are open for a long time, which might technically tip them into the levy, although that is not the Government’s intention.

[James Brokenshire]

I think I made it clear in Committee that in those circumstances we would allow people to change their licence conditions to avoid the levy. Temporary event notices for specific issues would be considered under the TENs regime.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate on a Bill that will fulfil many Conservative manifesto commitments, namely electing police commissioners and tackling the antisocial behaviour that is caused by excessive drinking in some of our towns. It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee for the second time in a week. I found myself losing concentration thinking how wonderful it would be to be able to summon Batman to tackle the crime in our towns, but I sense that that solution is not possible.

I will start with the less high-profile measures in the Bill and leave police commissioners for the end of my small amount of time. Even areas such as mine, which lack a large city and its attendant problems, face the problems of alcohol-induced antisocial behaviour in the early mornings; people finding back routes home from the pub that take them past people’s houses, where they disturb people with their noise; and people’s frustration when they are not allowed to object to a licence because a vicinity test does not quite work. The reforms on those matters are greatly to be welcomed.

We must be careful that in the well-meaning attempt to tackle these problems, we do not create a different problem or use the proverbial sledgehammer to crack the nut. An example is the late-night levy, which is an important measure and a great tool for councils. My understanding of the Bill is that if a council such as mine introduces the late-night levy, it has to do so for the whole borough. My seat contains three towns, so all three towns would be included and not just the one where there might be a problem. We could therefore end up imposing a provision that is not required on establishments that are completely responsible and in areas where there is no issue to be tackled. Perhaps that point can be addressed in Committee so that the words achieve what we want them to.

[Andrew Griffiths]

rose—

[Nigel Mills]

I am sorry, time is too limited.

Police commissioners, as the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) said, are not something that one reads about and at once thinks, “Oh, marvellous.” People do not come to our surgeries and say that they want a police commissioner by May 2012. However, when one works through the ideas and looks at the problems that we are trying to tackle, it is clear that constituents feel divorced from the police. Perhaps unfairly, they think that the police are not accountable to them and are not doing what people want. In comparison, people are usually quite happy with the safer neighbourhood team with which they associate. There is a general view that the police are happily sitting behind desks or racing around in cars, rather than doing policing. That is a real problem that we need to tackle, because we all believe in policing by consent.

No one is arguing that we do not need some kind of authority or body to hold the police to account. We would not want to leave it to the chief constable to do whatever he felt like. We all accept that there have to be policing priorities. We cannot have police everywhere doing everything on every issue all the time. It is right that when difficult choices have to be made, there is some democratic accountability.

No Member has argued tonight that police authorities are a great success. I imagine that most of my constituents would struggle to name a single member of their police authority, and I do not recall an election leaflet saying, “This guy’s been on the police authority for the past four years. Hasn’t it been terrible? You should vote him out because of his record on that”. It just does not happen.

Nobody appreciates or values what police authorities do, and despite the costly newspaper that appears through my door every so often, nobody really understands what on earth they are for. There is a vacuum, and I cannot imagine that the way to fill it is through each district electing its own commissioner and all of them coming together to try to agree on something. I cannot see that working. The right answer has to be to elect an individual whom the public will recognise. People will understand that that is the person who is there to be accountable and to whom they can complain. That is the person to blame, who can set the strategy that the police force will follow. People will know that if it does not work, they can vote that person out four years later. That has to be the right way forward.

I do have some concerns about the electoral system for police commissioners included in the Bill. It is a bit strange that we will have a referendum next year to decide how we elect our MPs, yet we have jumped almost to the other side of that debate in the Bill. I might have preferred us to use the same electoral system for commissioners as for MPs. That would be far more understandable for the public.

I understand the argument that the method proposed will ensure that we do not end up with an extremist person having a commissioner’s power by mistake on a flukily low vote, but frankly, I would trust the people of Derbyshire not to end up in that situation. Those of us who represent a seat where there are British National party councillors can be a little nervous about that, but we can trust the people to elect a responsible person as commissioner. They will see that it is a very important job, and it will be valued, so I do not think people will do unfortunate things with their vote.

I wholeheartedly welcome the Bill. It meets a whole load of the promises that we made at the election, and it will be a great step forward in bringing the police back closer to the people. We should all welcome that wholeheartedly.

Identity Documents Bill

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). I have done it so often he might want a restraining order at some stage.

I understand the argument for why the people who foolishly bought an ID card should get some compensation—[Interruption.] I am not saying I support that argument, but I can see its logic. However, I struggle to see the logic behind the arguments for new clauses 2 and 4, one of which would, if I am right, see the existing cards be valid for nearly another 10 years. The other would provide for a discount, at some point during those 10 years, if someone applied for a new passport. I struggle to see, however, how having ID cards that are still valid in nine years and nine months would give those holding them the advantages they sought when they paid for them. Where would those ID cards be accepted as a proven form of identity? What is the risk that people could forge them? Would people struggle to tell the difference, if they did? Would people be able to travel around the EU using an ID card instead of a passport? I struggle to see how that would happen, and it would open up the door to a manner of identity fraud different from what we already have, so I cannot vote to keep it in place for the next 10 years.

The idea of credit against a passport is a better one, but again we would have the problem of having to keep the data for all that period. We would also have the problem of how to process that data. I presume that the easiest way would be that, when a person applied for a passport, they would have to send in their ID card to prove that they actually had one in the first place. Again, however, how would we deal with people who had changed their names, lost their ID card or found it useless for eight years until their passport renewal came round and had to dig it out from the bottom of a drawer somewhere? There would also be the risk that people might try to create fraudulent cards, meaning that someone would have to go back to the original list of people with ID cards for proof. And how would we handle the fact that not everyone actually had paid for their card? I accept that the proposal provides for that, but it means that someone would need a record of who had paid for their card and who had got theirs free.

With respect, therefore, I cannot see how we can vote for either of the two solutions. There is no way I can vote for either. Given some of the concerns raised by Opposition Members about the legal issues involved in scrapping ID cards without compensation, I would be grateful if the Minister could repeat the assurance he gave us in Committee that the Government had received solid legal advice that it is legal and will not be overturned at huge cost to the taxpayer resulting from the court proceedings subsequent to this process.

[Julie Hilling]

Hon. Members on both sides have been extremely rude to constituents of mine who have written to me about how they bought an ID card in good faith. I assume that a lot of Members in the Chamber today were not part of the pilot programme in which constituents were able to buy ID cards. Had they been, perhaps they would also be speaking up on behalf of those constituents who bought ID cards but will not now get a refund. Those who have written to me are mainly pensioners and on a low income. They decided that they were only going to be travelling as far as Europe and that therefore an ID card was a good value alternative to paying the full amount for a full passport. These people are taxpayers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Hilling]

Especially in a marginal.

I have received letters from about a dozen people in my constituency, and as I say, they are on low incomes and are taxpayers. Each of them entered into a contract with their Government saying, “I will purchase an ID card, and for that I will have the benefit of travel within Europe and other benefits, such as proof of identity, for 10 years.” It is not unreasonable for those constituents to expect either to get their money back or to receive credit for it.

[Nigel Mills]

Will the hon. Lady confirm my understanding that those constituents will already have had a passport that they can use to travel to the same places?