Police Officer Safety

Andy Burnham Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

I hope the hon. Gentleman recognises that the point I am making is that the police deserve our protection and that the sentencing is in place to ensure they have the right protection. Sentencing is not only about protection, but ensuring people who commit an unacceptable offence against a public servant feel the full force of the law. I will come on to that in a bit more detail.

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

I do not doubt the Minister’s sincerity and fine words, but there is a gap between them and the reality. Today, I spoke to Bryn Hughes, the father of Nicola Hughes, who, as the Minister will know, was murdered in Greater Manchester a couple of years ago. I do not know if he has seen the Daily Mirror today, but the headline is “Cop killer’s life of luxury behind bars”. What message does he think that sends out to people who commit these appalling acts against police officers? I do not doubt his sincerity, but he needs to act on the reality, which is that those people are not being treated harshly enough.

[Brandon Lewis]

I will hold my hands up and say I have not read the Daily Mirror today. I appreciate that that might be a shock to the right hon. Gentleman, and I will make sure I read it later. That offender is in prison. I am happy to look at an individual case and talk to colleagues at the Ministry of Justice about what is happening in that prison, if he thinks that there is an issue, but it is clear that the offender went to prison and it is right that people face the full force of the law. I was slightly surprised by comments made by the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. If the right hon. Gentleman speaks later, perhaps he could outline why the data she referred to as being haphazard were not dealt with in 13 years of Labour government. I will come on to that in more detail in a moment.

We will continue to provide the Sentencing Council with data and evidence on assaults on police officers, as the council reviews its guidelines. We need to better understand the circumstances surrounding assaults. The College of Policing has provided financial support to fund a project, as the hon. Lady rightly outlined, led by Hampshire police to gather and analyse a sample of internal records of assaults against officers. I am working with ministerial colleagues across the Government, such as the Solicitor General, on a range of these issues to ensure that individuals are appropriately prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I fully agree that we need better data to help us to understand the scale of assaults on police officers. We have been working for some time to improve the numbers available.

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[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

The outstanding speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) was a truly memorable parliamentary occasion, as was the fine speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch). I do not often say this, but the other side of the Pennines has a lot to be proud of, including even the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). To elicit from him an emotional reaction and support for the Labour party is a truly big achievement, and my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen has managed that today.

This is an important and well-timed debate, because it provides me with an opportunity to put into proper context the recent work that I have been doing on policing. I am sure that some people might see challenging past injustice as in some way anti-police, but nothing could be further from the truth, and I am glad to have the chance to say that. I am pro-police, and I want to do whatever I can to strengthen the position of those out there on the frontline.

There are three ways in which we can do that. The first relates to police numbers and funding, and the second to protecting police officers through the powers we give them and through sentencing. The third is that we can build public trust in our police force by challenging past misdeeds. Unresolved past injustice can infect the present and unfairly leave a cloud hanging over officers on the frontline. It is right to remove it.

I want to touch on each of those three issues briefly. First, on funding, I am afraid that the Minister is wrong to say that the police budget has been protected. It has not been protected; it has been cut in real terms. Greater Manchester police’s revenue support grant was cut by £8.5 million this year, and the precept powers that it was given raised only £3.5 million. Let us get these facts straight, because otherwise the public will get confused. About 1,800 officers have already been lost from the frontline. We cannot take these cuts anymore. A story in The Mail on Sunday over the weekend said that the thin blue line of Greater Manchester is the thinnest of them all—it is the thinnest in the country. The cuts cannot continue. We need a commitment from the Government to honour their promise of no real-terms cuts to police budgets, because that has not happened.

Secondly, on protection for police officers, body-worn cameras need to be introduced now, because they can protect police officers today. We need a debate about the greater use of Tasers, and we really need to look at sentencing. I have mentioned the Dale Cregan situation previously, but there are other examples. An off-duty police officer, Neil Doyle, was killed in Liverpool. His attacker also committed a violent offence against two other individuals, but he only got three years and will soon be moved to an open prison.

[Rehman Chishti]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that one area that really affects police officers and the public is drink-driving and driving while disqualified? Repeat offenders can only be given sixth months’ custody—it does not matter whether it is a second, third or fifth offence—so we have to review the sentencing on that. My previous private Member’s Bill was designed to increase the maximum sentence to two years. Does he think that that is a good idea and that we should do it?

[Andy Burnham]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. We have always been too lenient on motoring offences, particularly death by dangerous driving.

I was talking about police officers, who need greater protection in law and in the sentencing guidelines. The Police Federation said today that the sentences that are handed out are often inadequate and inconsistent, and they simply do not provide the strong message that is required. We must resolve across the House to strengthen those sentencing guidelines, and I want to make my support for that absolutely clear.

I will finish on the point of public trust in the police. I believe we are all sent here to challenge injustice wherever we find it. Where we have evidence of it, we have a moral duty to act. Failure to do so corrodes the bond of trust between public and police, and it damages policing by consent. The decision on Orgreave this week was, in my view, wrong, and it makes it harder for the South Yorkshire police to move forward. That decision does not help officers in South Yorkshire who are out there on the frontline, because it leaves a cloud hanging over them.

Let me give the House a quick quote:

“Historical inquiries are not archaeological excavations… We must never underestimate how the poison of decades-old misdeeds seeps down through the years and is just as toxic today as it was then. That’s why difficult truths, however unpalatable they may be, must be confronted head on”.

I could not agree more with those words—the words of our Prime Minister to the Police Federation this year. She is right, so what has changed? Why are we now pushing away those things and leaving them unresolved?

The Government have made their decision, but this House should make a different decision. I have today advanced the idea, based on the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), that a Select Committee should look at Orgreave. In my view, that is the right thing to do. I appeal to Members from all parts of the House to back that suggestion, so that we can build trust in our police and give them proper funding and protection.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

I am delighted to be able to speak in this important debate, and I am glad that the Opposition have secured it. I spent nine years as a special constable, during which time I was assaulted—once in a police station, of all places, although not by another police officer. I echo many of the comments that have been made by Members from all parts of the House.

I am particularly keen on sentencing. It is fantastic that Members from all parts of the House are saying firmly that they want stronger sentences for people who commit assaults on police officers. I have stood here many times over a decade or more, as a Government Member and an Opposition Member, and argued that prison works, prison is effective, prison keeps people safe and prison acts as a deterrent. Many times, I have been intervened on by Opposition Members—and, sometimes, by Government Members—who have told me otherwise. There seems to be a strong consensus here, however, and I thoroughly support that.

I thoroughly support the use of Tasers. At the moment, all police officers are equipped with pepper spray or CS gas, as was the case when I started, and a long, retractable stick of metal called an ASP, which is basically a long baton. The problem is that the baton has to be used quite close up, and there is a risk of causing a severe injury by striking somebody in any way with a baton. Police officers are trained to use a baton against the legs and arms, but that is difficult to do in the sorts of situations where those batons are pulled out. The advantage of Tasers is that people can stand 10 or 15 feet away and point it. The vast majority of times when a Taser is used, all the police officer has to do is to draw it and draw to the potential offender’s notice the fact that there is a red dot on their chest. The potential offender will very often desist from whatever they are doing and comply with the instructions they are given, without receiving any injury at all.

When I was a special, there was at one point a debate about the possibility of police officers being armed. I felt that I would never be able to do the job if I was armed with a firearm. I simply could not do that. I have the utmost respect for the highly trained officers who do, but the decision to use it is not something that I would ever want on my conscience. Using a Taser is something else. It is a far less offensive weapon than the retractable iron bar with which all police officers are equipped.

[Andy Burnham]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s argument, but he will be aware of a case earlier this year in Telford where the footballer Dalian Atkinson was killed in an incident. We do not know all the circumstances, and generally I support the use of Tasers, but does the hon. Gentleman not think that that case should give us pause for thought before we go for a major roll-out?

[David T. C. Davies]

It should. We could go into the details of why people sometimes die as a result of Taser use, and it is very rare for that to happen, but that should certainly give us pause for thought. If the alternative is a police officer waving around an iron bar, which could easily strike somebody on the head and similarly injure them very badly or kill them, we have to look at what is the lesser of two evils. For me, the use of Tasers is the lesser of two evils.

I want to go quickly through a couple of other points. I, too, support the use of body cameras. They will enable people to see the problems that police officers face and help to bring more people to justice. I worry, however, that some people may see them as another way of being able to criticise the police. It is very important that people understand two things. First, police officers are under stress when they are threatened by a large group telling them, “We’re going to kill you. We’re going to attack you now.” That has happened to me and, frankly, it creates a certain amount of fear. I could not have admitted that at the time, but it does. Police officers cannot get away from the threat in front of them, and one of the ways they deal with it is to become quite aggressive in their language, and certainly in their gestures and sometimes in their behaviour. People must understand that when they look at camera footage. Secondly, it is a fact that when police officers have finished dealing with such a situation, they sometimes go back into the station and make comments or use language that some people, taking that out of context, may feel is inappropriate. We will have to be grown up and understand that when we look at camera footage.

I worry that the use of cameras by protesters at demonstrations is quite often a means to criticise the police very unfairly. For example, I have seen pictures in national newspapers of police officers looking very fierce and holding up an ASP as though ready to strike somebody. They are doing that because that is what they are trained to do. By the time a police officer has to draw a retractable baton, they are expected to behave in an aggressive fashion. There is no point waving it gently around saying, “Excuse me, sir, would you mind going home now?” By the time that thing is out, people must realise that the police officer means business, and they very often do so. I am worried about the way in which such cameras are used.

I will not be able to sum it up in one minute and 20 seconds, but there is a wider issue, which is the need to consider the whole way in which the police force is structured. It seems to me that we take everyone and train them to be out on the streets, but we can give them only two days training a year in how to use handcuffs, restraints, batons and all the rest of it, which is not enough for those who are going to end up in conflict situations.

I can absolutely say from bitter and true experience—most officers would reflect this—that all the stuff taught during those two days in the gym soon goes out of the window. It all looks very good in training, but once it happens for real, there is just a mass of arms and legs and batons and heavens knows what flying around all over the place, and it does not look good. Yet many police officers frankly do not need to be put in such situations. Those who deal with cybercrime need to be IT experts; they do not need to be able to run after people and catch them. Those who deal with financial crimes need to be accountants. Even those dealing with and investigating serious crimes need to have a lawyer’s mind, rather than be able to run 100 metres in 10 seconds. I sometimes think that we could look at the different jobs being done in the police force and consider whether we need police officers to have all the skills that we currently require them to have. I will not have enough time to go into further details, but I want to say one more thing. It behoves us all as Members of Parliament to support the police, not to pander to groups or organisations that are there to criticise them.

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

May I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) on her fantastic maiden speech? I want to tell her that I thought she did Jo Cox’s memory a fantastic service. The integrity and honesty with which she spoke brought tears to the eyes of many people in the Chamber. The words she said about you, Mr Speaker, and everyone else shows her integrity as an individual and how outstanding an MP she will be for Batley and Spen. I am sure that Jo Cox, if she is looking down on us, and certainly Brendan and all the family will have seen her speech and will treasure it. Her fantastic speech moved all of us.

May I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) on obtaining this important debate? I say that as the son of a man who was a Metropolitan police officer for 30 years.

The Minister has some very real questions to answer at the end of this debate. Let us remind ourselves that we are talking about 23,000 assaults on police a year, which is more than 63 a day. Of those assaults, 8,000 involve an injury, which is some 21 a day. In my police force in Nottinghamshire, there were 45 self-reported assaults and 267 assaults without injury. To me, each of those is an assault not just on an individual police officer, as bad as that is, but on the symbol of the rights of us as individuals to live in a democracy under the law.

When the Minister responds, will she say whether she is satisfied that the law on police officer assaults is satisfactory? In particular, the hon. Member for Kensington (Victoria Borwick) mentioned the Notting Hill carnival. Many of those assaults were by young people who are not covered by the sentencing guidelines on assaults on police officers, which refer to people who are 18 or over.

The House deserves a better answer to the questions from the shadow Home Secretary and others about the Government’s policy on body-worn video cameras and how they will be rolled out. It is not good enough for the Government to turn around and say it is an operational matter. Surely the Government have a view on whether it should be accelerated or encouraged.

[Andy Burnham]

There were 864 assaults on police officers in Greater Manchester last year—a force that is seeing cuts to the frontline. To listen to the Minister this afternoon, one would think everything is rosy, but morale is very low. What does my hon. Friend think the Government need to do to lift morale, because I believe it is dangerously low?

[Vernon Coaker]

My right hon. Friend makes a really good point. The first thing to do is to listen to what police officers are saying. The Government seem to be living in a parallel universe. They say the funding is fine, there is no problem with police morale and there is no problem with police numbers, yet, like my right hon. Friend, we all see very real problems in our constituencies around morale and policing.

As my right hon. Friend says, we see the backdrop of huge cuts to police numbers, with nearly 20,000 cut since 2010. In my force in Nottinghamshire, the number of officers is down by 122 and the number of PCSOs by 62 since 2012. The only response of Ministers to that seems to be that it has no impact whatsoever on policing on our streets.

I want to draw the Minister’s attention to an excellent article in The Mail on Sunday this week, which revealed the really low numbers of police on duty at night, when many of the most serious crimes are committed. It had a table obtained by a freedom of information request with the number of response officers on duty on the nightshift of 9 April 2016. Members of Parliament will be able to look up the figures for their own forces, but Nottinghamshire had just 75 or one per 11,000 people. That simply is not enough.

It is not good enough for the Minister to say that it is an operational matter. Do the Government not have a view on the number of front-line officers there should be protecting the public, rather than turning around and saying, “It’s nothing to do with us. It’s an operational matter”? Surely the Government should take a view on that matter and discuss it with chief constables.

It is important to draw attention to the article in The Mail on Sunday that refers to the number of response officers. It is clear that police safety is put at risk by the increase in police officers having to go out on their own. There are not sufficient officers and it is about time the Government took a view on that, rather than washing their hands of it. I look forward to the Minister’s response on that.

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[Sarah Newton]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I will make sure that members of the Sentencing Council read the record of this debate and fully understand the strong feelings in this House about having really tough sentences for these absolutely appalling and totally unacceptable offences.

I will touch briefly on the issue of equipment to support police officers because that was raised by a number of Members. I want to underline the fact that the Home Office supports chief constables in their operational decisions. This includes the funding of research on and guidance about equipment that might be helpful, including body cameras and spit hoods. I am sure we all agree, however, that the police must maintain their operational independence. It is not for the Home Office to run the police from Marsham Street. Chief constables and police and crime commissioners are accountable to the local communities they serve.

[Andy Burnham]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Newton]

I am afraid that I cannot because of the time.

I want to assure the whole House of the absolute seriousness with which the Government regard assaults on police officers, as demonstrated by the better data that are going to be made available, including the new reporting announced today, through the leadership of the College of Policing. I know that chief constables will continue to do whatever they can to keep their people safe. We will enable them to work confidently to tackle the challenges of modern crime, and we will absolutely continue to support them in doing so.

It is really important to go back to what my right hon. Friend the Minister said right at the beginning of the debate: assaulting a police officer is completely unacceptable. It is indeed an assault on us all and all our society. Police officers should be able to carry out their duties without fear of assault, and anyone found guilty of such an offence can expect to face the full force of the law.

Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.