Policing in the 21st Century

Alan Johnson Excerpts

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement about a consultation paper that I am publishing today. Entitled “Policing in the 21st Century: Reconnecting police and the people”, it sets out the most radical reforms to policing in at least 50 years.

For this Government, police reform is a priority, not just because we inherited the worst public finances of any major economy, but because for too long the police have become disconnected from the communities that they serve, been bogged down by bureaucracy and answered to distant politicians instead of to the people. Crime remains too high, too many families and communities suffer from antisocial behaviour and barely half the public are confident that important local issues are dealt with. Meanwhile, the challenges that we face have changed. Terrorism, the growth in serious and organised crime and cybercrime all require new approaches that cross not just police force boundaries, but international borders.

First, we will transfer power back to the people. We will introduce directly elected police and crime commissioners by 2012. The commissioners will set the police budget, determine police force priorities and have the power to hire and, where necessary, fire their chief constable. To help the public hold their local police to account, we will publish local crime data and mandate local beat meetings so that people can challenge the performance of their neighbourhood policing teams.

Secondly, we will return professional responsibility to police officers. Front-line staff will no longer be form writers; they will be crime fighters, freed from bureaucracy and central guidance and trusted to get on with their jobs. We have scrapped the policing pledge. We have got rid of the confidence target. We will restore police discretion over charging decisions for particular offences. We will limit the reporting requirements for “stop and search” and we will scrap the “stop” form in its entirety.

Thirdly, we will shift the focus of Government. As the Home Affairs Committee noted during the previous Parliament, the previous Government tried to micro-manage local policing but failed to support forces effectively on national issues, so we will build on the work of the Serious Organised Crime Agency to create a more powerful national crime agency, which will tackle organised crime and protect our borders. We will phase out the National Policing Improvement Agency and scrap Labour’s plans for a statutory police senior appointments panel. We will discuss with the Association of Chief Police Officers the way forward in its role as a professional leadership body.

Fourthly, we will make the police more efficient at force, regional and national levels so that front-line local policing can be sustained. To this end, we are already consulting separately on police procurement regulations to get better value for taxpayers’ money.

Fifthly, we will unleash the power of community pride and civic responsibility, so that people can come together to cut crime. We will therefore look for a cost-effective way to establish 101 as a single police non-emergency number so that it is easier to report crime and antisocial behaviour. We will also do more to encourage active citizens to become special constables, community crime fighters and members of neighbourhood watch groups.

There is nothing inevitable about crime. That is why we are determined to press ahead with these reforms, which demonstrate our determination to undo the damage of the Labour years, put the people back in charge, and rid our communities of crime, antisocial behaviour and disorder. I commend the statement to the House.

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

The statement should be entitled, “Policing in the 21st Century: How to make the job harder”. As usual, the Home Secretary trots out her infantile drivel about the last Labour Government, probably written by some pimply nerd foisted on her office by No. 10.

The Home Secretary said that she aims to undo the damage of the Labour years. That damage was recorded in the Home Office’s statistics on 15 July. Here it is: overall crime is down by 50%, violent crime is down by 50%, property crime is down by 55%, the murder rate is at its lowest level since at any time over the past 20 years, and the chance of being a victim of crime is at its lowest level since records began in 1981—21.5%, down from its peak of 40% under the Conservatives. That is the damage that she is seeking to undo—the kind of damage that any Government would be proud of.

The Home Secretary is about to have her budget cut by at least 25%.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Thanks to you.

[Alan Johnson]

Thanks to us, the hon. Lady says from a sedentary position. I remind her that we were making the police a priority and guaranteeing the funding for record numbers of police officers.

Last week’s report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and the Audit Commission made it plain that any cuts above 12% were bound adversely to affect front-line policing. Soon we will learn how the Government plan to restrict the use of the DNA database and CCTV, and thus make it harder for the police to catch criminals. Today we have the final part of the triple whammy—structural upheaval through the imposition of elected commissioners and the abolition of the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Perhaps the Home Secretary can tell me which chief constables, which police authority chairs or even which local authority leaders support the replacement of police authorities by a single elected commissioner. Sir Simon Milton, when he was the Conservative head of the Local Government Association, said that:

“there are already people elected at local level to represent the community and be advocates over a range of services—they’re called councillors”.

Is not the Home Secretary setting up, in Sir Simon Milton’s words,

“a parallel and potentially conflicting system with a competing mandate”?

Sir Hugh Orde has said:

“Every professional bone in my body tells me”

that having elected commissioners

“is a bad idea that could drive a coach and horses through the current model of accountability and add nothing but confusion.”

The Conservative chair of the Association of Police Authorities has said that the idea appears to be driven by dogma, and Richard Kemp, the leader of the Liberal Democrat group on the Local Government Association, has said that the vast majority of the 3,700 Lib Dem councillors—a figure soon to be drastically reduced at the next election—oppose an elected commissioner. Does the Home Secretary not think that the narrower the remit of the position, the weaker the case for having the occupier of that position decided by ballot?

How will the Home Secretary safeguard the operational independence of the chief constable? As the APA has pointed out, police authorities have done a great deal over the past few years to ensure that the public understand their role and that police authority members are properly equipped and trained to operate effectively. There is a clear argument for enhancing and increasing the role and responsibility of local government, so that local councillors have a clear mandate for holding the police to account. That is the route that we should be taking, rather than this unnecessary, unwanted and expensive diversion. Can the Home Secretary tell me whether the LGA is right when it states that the elected commissioners will cost £50 million? What is her estimate?

The coalition agreement talked about refocusing the Serious Organised Crime Agency, not eliminating it. That organisation was formed only four years ago, and the structural upheaval then took years to settle down.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

It was yours.

[Alan Johnson]

It was our structural upheaval, I agree completely, but that is what occurs with any reorganisation. To put people through another structural upheaval four years later is simply madness.

In 2006, SOCA was wrongly described as replicating the FBI, and reports over the weekend gave the same description. Does the Home Secretary think it is accurate? She will be aware of Sir Paul Stephenson’s John Harris memorial lecture recently, which rejected the FBI option. Sir Paul set out a model built upon SOCA, not upon replacing it, and his national federated model has much to commend it. Why is the Home Secretary not pursuing that alternative?

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre does fantastic work. To build upon that work, we were moving it away from SOCA to be a non-departmental public body. Will the Home Secretary continue that process, and if not, why not?

Will the dedicated border force replace the UK Border Agency, and how many jobs will be lost as a result of these initiatives in SOCA, the UKBA, the National Policing Improvement Agency and elsewhere?

We have yet to hear a word from this Government about how they plan to cut crime. All we have heard is how they will cut officer numbers, prison places and police powers. Today, the Home Secretary has managed to reannounce at least three decisions that we had already taken in government. She says that she will mandate beat meetings to challenge the performance of neighbourhood policing teams, having scrapped the policing pledge drawn up by chief constables themselves to provide exactly that mandate.

The Home Secretary inherited the Department when crime had fallen substantially, public confidence in the police had never been higher and public concern about antisocial behaviour had never been lower. She says she is pursuing bold policies; in fact she is pursuing bad policies. I was pleased to see the Government’s U-turn on anonymity for rape defendants; elected commissioners need to go the same way.

[Mrs May]

I have to say to the shadow Home Secretary that I find his complacent attitude in relation to what has happened over recent years rather surprising. As far we are concerned, we do need to fight and cut crime, but our streets can never be too safe and we will not be complacent about the antisocial behaviour and crime that still blight the lives of too many people in this country.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about the damage that is being done, but I will tell him when damage is done to policing in this country. It is when, as Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary reported last week, at any one point an average of only 11% of police officers are out on our streets. It is when the average police constable is spending only 14% of their time on the streets and 22% in filling forms. The Labour Government did that damage over 13 years.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the DNA database. It is extraordinary that he is still willing to defend a Government who wanted to put innocent people’s DNA on the database, but were not willing to ensure that they had the DNA of all the people in prison on that database.

The right hon. Gentleman asks who supports the decision to have directly elected commissioners and elected representatives of the people. He will find some support from the following quote:

“we will legislate to strengthen the democratic link with the public by introducing local, directly elected crime and policing representatives.”—[Official Report, 17 July 2008; Vol. 479, c.435.]

Those are not my words, but those of the right hon. Gentleman’s predecessor as Home Secretary, the right honourable Jacqui Smith.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about the need to publish figures. Of course, we will in due course publish figures in relation to the police commissioners as well as the business case for the national crime agency. He mentioned its role and the need for it. Only two weeks ago in the Police Foundation lecture, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, raised the need for us to strengthen the tasking and co-ordination of response to serious organised crime. That is what the national crime agency will do. It will also deliver our commitment for a border police force and strengthen our ability to protect our borders.

On the shadow Home Secretary’s comments about cuts in budgets, I simply refer him to two things. First, he seems to have forgotten that, in the words of the former Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury, “There is no money left.” Secondly, it would be helpful for the House to know that yesterday, on Sky News, the shadow Home Secretary confirmed that, in a Labour Government, he would have cut police budgets.