Child Abuse Inquiry
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Angela Smith(10 years ago)
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Mrs May
The inquiry panel will be looking at all the views and all the issues that have been raised in relation to historical child abuse. As I said, it is absolutely my intention to ensure that all Government Departments and agencies make sure that the inquiry panel has available any evidence that it wishes and needs to see in order to be able to undertake its duties properly and to look at the historical cases of child abuse but also the more recent cases of child abuse.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Will the Home Secretary tell the House why the Home Office felt it necessary to remove a specific reference in the early drafts of Fiona Woolf’s letter to allegations of child sex abuse in Edinburgh?
Child Sex Abuse (Rotherham)
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Angela Smith(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Mrs May
Obviously, some of the officers in South Yorkshire police today were not in post at the time of some of the situations, although the report did cover the period up to 2013, which is very recent. However, the chief constable of South Yorkshire is absolutely clear about the importance of ensuring that the force is dealing with these issues properly, and is giving that very clear message to people in the South Yorkshire force area. However, for everybody the proof will be in the actions that South Yorkshire police take, and that is why I have already had a conversation with him about what they will be doing.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
The people of south Yorkshire are expressing an unprecedented anger at what has happened to those young girls. Indeed, in my time as an elected representative I have never seen anything quite like it. The least they expect is that the individuals who let those young girls down are held to account. So what support can the Government practically give to the process of holding those individuals to account, especially given that one of them is now resident in Australia and discharging a very senior post in child protection over there?
Mrs May
That is one of the issues. Obviously, there are different processes that take place, depending on whether the individuals are council officials or members of the police. As I have said, South Yorkshire police are bringing another police force in to look at the whole question of how, from their point of view, the situation was managed. We will be discussing the issue of council officials with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government as he looks at the implications across local authorities.
Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Angela Smith(11 years ago)
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Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Can the Home Secretary confirm that Mr Mohamed was previously relocated outside London?
Border Checks Summer 2011
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Angela Smith(13 years ago)
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Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Angela Smith(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
The chief constable of South Yorkshire, Meredydd Hughes, has said that reductions in back-office support will put an increased operational burden on officers, which will detract from their front-line duties. Does not that show that the Home Secretary’s reductions in red tape are just a sham?
Mrs May
No. I am very pleased to say that the chief constable of South Yorkshire has also made the clear point that despite challenging times he is,
“confident that the men and women of South Yorkshire Police will continue to effectively serve their communities”
and that they are determined to uphold the standards that they have been able to maintain in recent years.
Throughout the country, chief constables are rising to the challenge and ensuring that they protect services to the public while making necessary budget cuts.
National Crime Agency
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Angela Smith(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs May
Of course, one of the difficulties in all such issues relates to the definitions that one uses for those types of crime, but serious crime that is not undertaken by organised crime groups is predominantly dealt with by individual police forces. As a result of the National Crime Agency being set up, however, I believe that it will be possible to share intelligence on serious crimes of that sort. It will encourage greater regional co-operation among police forces, so it will be possible to deal better and more effectively with serious crime that is not related to organised crime groups.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
The Home Secretary bravely claimed that the new initiative will result in a dramatic improvement in our response to national and international crime. May I therefore ask her how the performance of the NCA will be measured and how it will be reported to the House?
Mrs May
As I have made clear, the National Crime Agency will be accountable to the Home Secretary. We will look at the procedures that we can put in place to ensure that there are appropriate timed reports to the House on this matter—although, as I observed to somebody who asked me that question earlier today, I have every confidence that the Home Affairs Committee, apart from anything else, will show an interest in it. The measurement of success is one of the issues that has dogged SOCA, because SOCA’s role is not only about finding and prosecuting criminals and seizing assets but preventing crime from taking place. Indeed, the success of such agencies often lies as much in what they prevent as in the number of criminals that they catch. We will be looking very carefully at the measurements that can be used because, as I say, SOCA has suffered from the sort of measurements that have been applied to it.
Policing and Crime
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Angela Smith(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes an important point about the behaviour of the Opposition today.
On the proposal about the royal commission, the cuts we have to make and the timetable within which we have to make them means that we have to make decisions now. However, we are not just making those decisions as a Government. I set up the independent review into police pay, terms and conditions under Tom Winsor, who has produced his first report. The proposals from that report are now going through the Police Negotiating Board, and decisions will be taken by the Government once those proper processes have been gone through. At the beginning of next year, he will report on the second part of his review. I felt that it was important for the police that we ensured that an independent reviewer looked at these issues who could fully take into account the impact of all the changes.
I remind any hon. Members who are considering the royal commission proposal that in its report last summer HMIC said, in very stark terms, that there is no time for a royal commission because of the nature of the decisions that have to be taken and the speed at which they have to be taken.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
The police represent the best of public services. They work tirelessly, they sign up to no-strike agreements, and they cancel leave at a moment’s notice to deal with murder or any violent crime. Do they not deserve, therefore, to be given a royal commission on pay and conditions and not to be treated as another victim of Government cuts?
Mrs May
The hon. Lady is right. We have the best police force in the world and the best model of policing in the world. I believe that the British model of policing is one that we should welcome, support and applaud. However, if she thinks that there is time for a royal commission, she should consider why, as a member of the Labour party, she allowed it, when in government, to get the finances of this country into such a state that we need to take the action that we do. [Interruption.] It is all very well for Opposition Members to say, “Oh no, we don’t want to hear it again”, but if the hon. Lady’s party were in government today, it would be cutting £7 for every £8 we are cutting this year.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Angela Smith(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Police community support officers play an important role in policing our communities, so will the Minister join me in congratulating the new Labour administration in Sheffield on its decision to restore the funding for 10 PCSA posts that had been cut by the previous Lib Dem administration?
Government Reductions in Policing
Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Angela Smith(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Angela Smith
On Friday, my constituent—a very senior officer in West Yorkshire police—came to see me at my surgery and asked me to put on the record in this debate his deeply rooted view that the Government’s police spending cuts will damage the service. What does the Home Secretary have to say to my constituent?
Mrs May
I would suggest that the hon. Lady says two things to her constituent. First, she should make it clear why the Government are having to make cuts in public spending—they are a result of the decisions taken by the previous Labour Government. Secondly, she should also make clear the commitment that Chief Constable Sir Norman Bettison has given to what he calls the central drivers of the way in which West Yorkshire police will deal with the budget changes. He states that the first is that
“local policing will not suffer, the sort of policing you see when you open your curtains and the emergency response of the police at the times when people are feeling vulnerable, under threat or have suffered some criminal act or tragedy.”
On bureaucracy, we have scrapped the so-called policing pledge and done away with the last remaining national targets and we have replaced them with a single objective: to cut crime. We are scrapping the stop-and-account form, cutting the reporting requirements for stop and search, and restoring discretion over certain charging decisions to the police, and that is just the start.