Police Officer Safety

Debate between Andy Burnham and Lord Coaker

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[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.