Policing

Debate between Alan Johnson and Julian Smith

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson]

Indeed; It was a retro week.

We can now all celebrate that success. The Conservative party—I do not include the Liberal Democrats in this criticism—argued year after year that the statistics were wrong. I remember the Prime Minister standing at the Dispatch Box in opposition saying that crime was not falling but rising, and that when they came into power they would change how the statistics were correlated, but they have done absolutely nothing. They have changed the name of the British crime survey to the England and Wales crime survey, but the statistics are collected in exactly the same way.

That is why the Prime Minister was able to celebrate a 6% fall in crime this year in his tribute speech to that great woman, “Laura Norder”, on Monday. That figure was based on exactly the same formulation of statistics that he once criticised. We should recognise that the momentum of falling crime seems to have continued into this Government, whereas crime doubled under the previous Tory Government between 1979 and 1997, with violent crime increasing by 168% and burglary by 405%. The downward trend has been maintained. It is crucial that all our constituents understand why that has happened and how we can ensure that crime and disorder continue to fall.

When Tony Blair became Prime Minister, he held a meeting with civil servants in the Home Office. They told him that if the economy was successful, crime would increase, and that if the economy was unsuccessful, crime would increase. No matter which way the economy went, people believed that it would inevitably rise. That counsel of despair convinced successive Home Secretaries until Michael Howard’s appointment that rising crime was an inevitability. The economy is weak now but crime has continued to fall, just as it did in the 2008-09 recession when it went down by 9%. We can compare that with the recession in the ’90s, when it went up by 16%. There is no doubt that advances in technology have helped. Car thefts have reduced dramatically thanks to computerised security systems and CCTV has been an effective tool—it is of course not the whole answer—as has the DNA database.

Police reforms have made the biggest contribution to the dramatic reduction in crime. People trot out the tired old phrase, “The police are the last unreformed public service,” but anyone who has been a Member of this House over the past 20 years will have seen a huge change in policing. The principal change has been the move away from a reactive force, whose main preoccupation was to respond to crimes that had already been committed, to a force with a role more in keeping with Robert Peel’s original concept of a police force, whose primary objective was the prevention of crime and the maintenance of what he described as “public tranquillity”. It was the “Life on Mars” culture of the 1970s that took police away from communities and off the streets and challenged the Peel ethos, whereas the introduction of the dreadfully named crime and disorder reduction partnerships and neighbourhood policing—a huge change in how the police operated—did the most to restore it.

Over 15 years, we have moved from a police philosophy that stated that antisocial behaviour and low-level crime were nothing to do with them to a recognition that the police have an important role to play in working with other agencies to tackle such behaviour, which has a far greater impact on people’s perception of crime than some more high-profile offences. We have moved from an era in which domestic violence was considered to be nothing to do with the police and to be a matter for the adversaries to sort out to its being a major focus of attention for police forces across the country. Plenty of evidence suggests that that concentration on domestic violence has had a far wider impact on the reduction in other crimes.

In that context, I believe the Government have made a mistake in cutting the number of warranted officers. The work the police do on crime prevention in schools, in homes, as part of family intervention projects and in youth clubs and hostels will suffer as a result of those cuts and the partnerships that require the police to work together with local authorities, the NHS and the voluntary sector to tackle the underlying causes of crime will be placed in jeopardy. I predict that such cuts will eventually feed through to the crime statistics, to the detriment of our constituents across the country.

The Minister mentioned privatisation, and in the context of what is happening in Lincolnshire, the west midlands and Surrey I am bemused and amazed that the Home Office has not stated categorically that the tasks of patrolling our streets, the investigation of offences, and arrest—together with the use of firearms and the control of public disorder—must remain with police officers. Of course there can be co-operation with the private sector in other spheres, but that is what the police want to see and the reassurance has not been given.

[Julian Smith]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the four Yorkshire forces could do much more to share and reduce costs? In his role as a local MP, will he call on those four forces to get their acts together?

[Alan Johnson]

Yes, I do. I completely agree and that was in our White Paper when I was Home Secretary in November 2010. I also believe that there are too many police constabularies. Charles Clarke tried and failed to reduce the number of constabularies, and we need to do it.

The late, great Conservative head of the Local Government Association, Sir Simon Milton, said that through the police and crime commissioners the Government were introducing

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

I believe that is true. I do not agree with Lord Blair, but I think that the public will register their disquiet by failing to turn up at the ballot box. I sincerely believe that after November’s elections, the Government will need to rethink the question and that part of the solution might be to recreate a form of machinery to run the police authorities that represents all parts of the patch. That should not be done by only one person and, if we elect anyone, we should elect the chair of that organisation. I also think that there should be closer working on prisons, probation and fire services so that there can be joined-up accountability for a wide range of these issues.

I genuinely welcome the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice to the Dispatch Box. I think he is a good Minister. He had an unfortunate experience with the police a few years ago, which always reminds me of the Tom Wolfe quote:

“A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.”

The right hon. Gentleman has a huge role to play in improving the relationship between the Government and the police. It is in a terrible state, and I believe that if the right hon. Gentleman works hard, with all the charm for which he is famous, he could make a great contribution to dealing with crime and disorder in this country.