Policing and Crime Bill

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

I am aware that some Bills are driven by the civil service and some are driven by No. 10, but this Bill is driven by the Home Secretary, and I congratulate her on that. I have worked closely with her over the past few years in many of the areas covered by the Bill, and I know that she has held meetings at the Home Office with a variety of interested parties who, in the past, may not have had access to the Home Office. I also know that she has hosted conferences, including, in 2013, a conference with Black Mental Health UK at the QEII Centre to discuss policing in respect of, in particular, African-Caribbean people with mental health problems. Once again—and I am not ashamed to say it—I congratulate the Home Secretary on bringing the Bill to the House.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris). He is the unsung hero of the debate on mental health, both in the context of the Bill and when the Secretary of State for Health is addressing the House. He is chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on mental health, a job he has done for more than two years, and he has been dogged and determined in pursuit of many of the reforms that are contained in the Bill. He is a great man, and we are all lucky to have him here today.

We need to be clear that we cannot simply will places of safety into being. I know that the Home Secretary understands that. We cannot just shut our eyes and think really hard and hope that it is all going to be all right. There is a need for the political drive and determination to provide them, so that people can be looked after and treated with respect during their time of crisis.

The Home Secretary is absolutely right to say that a police cell is no place for an ill person. Being ill is not a criminal offence. Being ill and black is not a criminal offence, but we know that people of African Caribbean descent who are suffering a mental health crisis are more likely to be subjected to force, to be detained or to be subjected to a community treatment order. That is not right. We need to address these unfairnesses in the system, because they are ensuring that a large number of people who need our help are frightened to engage with those who are able to offer it, because their experience up to this point has been so unsatisfactory. That is one of my pleas today.

We cannot make demands on the police to change the way they do things in providing places of safety unless we actually provide places of safety. My experience of the police is that, in most cases, they want to do the right and proper thing by the people they are protecting and looking after. Most police officers are left distraught at the idea of having to take an ill person or a young person to a police cell as opposed to putting them into the care of healthcare professionals in a hospital or a place of safety that has a bed to offer them.

This is not in the Home Secretary’s gift, but the truth is that there are not enough beds in this country for mentally ill people who are suffering a real crisis. There is nothing more boring than Members of Parliament standing up in this place and saying, “Well, I’ve been warning about this for years”, but I am going to be boring because I and others have been warning about this for the past 10 years. My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and I were warning about it before being joined by my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis in this place six years ago. We need more beds, and I hope that the Home Secretary will be uncompromising in her discussions with colleagues in the Department of Health to ensure that they are in a position to support our police officers in doing the right thing and the best thing.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a great speech. Would he advocate the introduction of interim places of safety in some police stations, so that people can be put somewhere that is not a cell while they are on their way to hospital?

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend is genuinely trying to be constructive and to find a way forward, but I just do not think that police stations are the right place to take ill people. It might be unavoidable in some circumstances, but we need to minimise those circumstances. All too often a police cell is used as a place of safety, but that is not right. However, I entirely accept the spirit in which he made his intervention.

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[James Morris]

The Minister makes an excellent point. We need greater integration between policing and health. It should not be part of policing for police officers to make crucial decisions about an individual’s psychiatric state.

[Bob Stewart]

Street triage sounds ideal and superb. Am I correct in assuming that the psychiatric nurse and the police officer both have negotiator training? My hon. Friend mentioned an incident in which someone was threatening to throw himself off a roof. Is negotiation part of the training of the street triage team?

[James Morris]

Such teams find themselves in extremely difficult and often dangerous situations, in which they have to deploy negotiation skills, as well as assessing the condition of an individual. That is vital work being done at street level.

I very much welcome the changes and the reduction in the time that somebody can be detained under the Mental Health Act but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne and others said, we should aspire to reduce it further to less than 24 hours. We should seek an appropriate length of time for somebody to be assessed psychiatrically for the nature of their condition. The reforms in the Bill should be considered as part of a cross-government approach to dealing with people with mental health problems.

The changes that the Bill introduces should be seen not in isolation, but in the context of the availability of places of safety, which my hon. Friend talked about. The £12 million or £14 million identified by the Home Office in conjunction with the Department of Health is a start, but we need much more emphasis on further funding to provide acute psychiatric places, including the roll-out of liaison psychiatry in accident and emergency departments.

The crisis care concordat introduced by the previous Government has been an effective mechanism for bringing together various partners to improve crisis care. Much more work across government is needed to increase its effectiveness.

Although the number of deaths in custody has not been high, some of those have been of people detained under section 136 of the Mental Health Act. We should be mindful of the issues raised by the use of restraint by police officers in such cases. I highlight that to the Minister as an issue that needs to be considered. There is some evidence that in certain circumstances the police have used excessive restraining powers when dealing with people under sections 135 and 136 of the Act.

I welcome the broadening of the definition of a place of safety under section 135, which can mean somebody being kept in their own home, or in close proximity to where the crisis incident took place in order for them to be assessed appropriately.

These are changes which many people have called for over many years. I am very pleased that the Home Secretary and the Front-Bench team have listened to the representations made by police officers on the ground and by health care professionals. The way we treat people in a state of mental health crisis says much about the sort of society we want to build. These are significant steps in improving our approach to dealing with people in mental health crisis, but they are only one part of the story.

We need to do more work to achieve parity of esteem between mental and physical health, and we are some way along the route. The Government have made a series of welcome announcements on mental health in the past few weeks, particularly on crisis care and community care, but we must go further. People in mental health crisis should receive compassionate care. They should be taken to an appropriate place and dealt with with dignity and humanity, which is very important to the way that we treat mental health in Britain today.

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[Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

It is a real pleasure to take part in today’s debate, and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to speak. I welcome the Bill. I will focus on part 1, which outlines the measures to encourage greater collaboration between the emergency services. I have spoken about that several times in this place.

Encouraging greater collaboration between the blue light services makes perfect sense. Across those services, there is a common and joint purpose, and they have significant synergies. They serve and protect our communities, ensuring we are safe and secure, often in the most difficult of circumstances. For that, we must be incredibly grateful, because they often put their own lives at risk to protect us.

As several hon. Members have said, each service faces change in terms of demand and new challenges. Crime is falling, but the nature of crimes is changing. The number of incidents that fire and rescue services attend is falling, thanks in part to the fire prevention work that they undertake, but there is increased demand for the ambulance service. It is therefore right to review the way in which the services operate.

There are some excellent examples of collaboration between blue light services across the country, such as co-location of offices, shared training, joint communication centres and joint operations and fleets. The common benefit of such collaborative models is that they deliver savings and, more importantly, better outcomes for the public. The issue, I am afraid, is the lack of consistency across the country in collaboration. The overall picture can best be described as patchy.

While I am pleased to report that in December, Staffordshire fire and rescue authority agreed to undertake a review of the ways in which it could work more closely and collaboratively with Staffordshire police, I am disappointed that it took so long—about six months—to get to that position. In the meantime, fire engines were removed from both my local fire stations in Cannock and Rugeley, as well as from other stations across the county. I therefore welcome the statutory duty for blue light services to keep collaboration opportunities under review, as is set out in clauses 1 to 5.

The Bill goes a step further on collaboration between police and fire services, which I welcome. Clauses 6 and 7 extend the remit of police and crime commissioners to include responsibility for fire and rescue services. I have called for that provision and secured a Westminster Hall debate on the topic last November. It will therefore come as no surprise that I am particularly pleased to see it in the Bill.

The introduction of police and crime commissioners has created greater transparency and democratic accountability in policing by replacing the unelected and unaccountable police authorities. The public can exercise their approval or, equally, their disapproval of a PCC’s guardianship at elections, judging them on both the police precept and the local policing and crime performance. PCCs have the opportunity to review and set strategic priorities to respond and adapt to local needs, and must manage that within a challenging financial landscape.

PCCs have had to reform and look at ways to innovate and create efficiencies to protect and enhance front-line policing. For instance, the police and crime commissioner in Staffordshire, Matthew Ellis, has not increased the police precept, but has created savings and better outcomes for the public by introducing technology so that police officers can spend more time out on the streets, rather than behind a desk. The performance of PCCs has depended on reform. With more transparency in terms of data, such as crime trends, their performance is open to public scrutiny.

There is now only one exception in respect of local direct accountability: fire and rescue authorities. Although the authorities are made up of elected councillors, they are not directly elected to their positions by the public, but simply appointed. It is important that that is not confused with democratic accountability. To take Staffordshire as an example again, the fire and rescue authority has increased the precept, even though, as I understand it, it has significant reserves. It is time for change. That is why I welcome the extension of the remit of police and crime commissioners to include the responsibilities of fire and rescue authorities. Extending the transparency and accountability of fire and rescue services, and applying the same principles that have been applied to the police, will rightly enable the public to scrutinise their performance too.

The governance and single employer models will take collaboration to another level and, in essence, will see the integration of the management and back-office functions of the two services. However, it is important to note that they will remain operationally distinct. No one is suggesting that police officers should fight fires or that fire officers should arrest criminals. The integration that will come about through PCCs taking responsibility for fire and rescue services will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the services.

[Bob Stewart]

Forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I had to leave the Chamber for 30 minutes earlier. Does my hon. Friend agree that although the services will be distinct operationally—policemen don’t do fires and firemen don’t do policing—it would be good sometimes if they were on the same radio network, particularly when an incident is called in?

[Amanda Milling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Co-responding would bring better responses to certain incidents, particularly emergencies.

The efficiency and effectiveness of the services will be improved by cutting out the duplication in back-office functions, procurement, management and offices. Significant savings could be made from integration. Our PCC estimates that in Staffordshire alone, about £4 million of savings could be made by integrating management and back-office functions.

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[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I broadly welcome this Bill, and I will touch first on its proposals for mental health services and then on some broader issues, including those raised by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling). Credit must go to the Government for addressing police interaction with those who suffer from mental health conditions. Is this issue the fault of the police? No, it is not. In many cases, they are picking up the failure of the rest of society, but they have specific powers that the Bill proposes to change with regard to sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983.

Sections 135 and 136 are unique because they give the police powers to remove the liberty of somebody who has not committed an offence or been suspected of doing so. Section 135 is used if someone is suspected of a mental disorder that could lead to them becoming a danger to themselves, not being kept under control, or being unable to care for themselves. A magistrate can authorise a warrant for police officers, with a doctor or another mental health care professional, to carry out an assessment and enter someone’s property, and to evaluate them and section them for up to 72 hours.

Section 136 refers to people in a public place and states that a person who is

“suffering from mental disorder and to be in immediate need of care or control”

can be taken to a “place of safety” if it is felt that they or others need to be protected. There are clear reasons for such provisions, but I think they have been made worse by the non-joined up approach to dealing with people who have mental health issues. Is that the fault of the police? No, it is not. The steps taken in the Bill will help, but will they solve the problems? No they will not, because until we hard-wire mental wellbeing and mental health into public policy, these problems will continue to exist.

Under the 1983 Act, a “place of safety” includes a hospital, a police station, an independent hospital, a care home, or any other suitable place. Clauses 59(2) and 60 move away from the practice of taking people to police stations. For example, clause 59 will allow someone to be kept at home, although I understand from talking to mental health professionals that that already happens in some cases, which I welcome. Not using the default position of taking someone to a police cell must be welcomed. Clause 60 states that a suitable place of safety could be someone’s house or flat, or another place that a responsible management deems suitable. I have some problems with that because it puts the onus on the police to decide what is a safe place, and I do not think that is fair on the police officers in attendance.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is a friend, for giving way. Not only does the police officer have to consider what is a safe place, they probably also have to decide how ill the person is with whom they have come into contact. That must be very difficult at times.

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[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to come so far down the batting order because we get to hear what everyone else has to say, and I was particularly pleased to hear the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). He and I were brought up in the same city at the same time, although we obviously had different reactions to the years of Militant and Derek Hatton, with me being radicalised in one way and he, unfortunately, the wrong way.

It is a great pleasure to support this Bill because it finishes the job of policing reform. When I was deputy Mayor for policing in London I was, of course, in the thick of it during the great years of policing reform that saw the creation of police and crime commissioners. In many ways, I am the Home Secretary’s very own Frankenstein’s monster because I was the first creation of the Bill that reformed the governance of policing to produce the statutory deputy Mayor for policing in London.

One thing that frustrated me immensely in doing that job was my inability to compel, cajole or encourage some of the other people who were sitting in the same control room, rushing to the same emergencies, flashing the same blue lights—effectively doing broadly the same job—to collaborate. It seems extraordinary, does it not, when those people seem to work so closely together, that we have to legislate here to compel exactly that collaboration between forces that are in the broadest sense doing the same things.

I therefore believe that the Bill provides a big opportunity to establish and embed among the security forces the idea that they should all work together much more closely. I shall go through some aspects of the Bill and I shall add some tweaks and nuances along the way, in the hope that Ministers might consider what I have to say later in the Bill’s progress. Collaboration is one important element in that context.

One service in particular—it is not an emergency service—gives us an opportunity to include it in the family of collaborative services dealing with emergencies and crime in their widest sense. I am talking about probation. It is often the case that police officers deal with exactly the same human beings as does the probation service, yet at the moment the collaboration between the two is broadly voluntary. I would like the Minister to consider the idea that probation should be included in this compulsion for collaboration, alongside some of the other emergency services, because I think it could have a big impact on criminal justice generally.

[Bob Stewart]

As I listen to my hon. Friend’s description, I am thinking of an incident on the ground. I am reflecting on the fact that without proper co-ordination, there might not be anyone in charge. I assume that SOPs— standard operational procedures—will automatically appoint someone in charge. That will be decided very quickly at a major incident.

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. As he knows, a gold commander will be appointed, and more often than not it is the senior police officer in charge of the incident. Control is taken, certainly in London, through the control room, in tandem with the fire office and other emergency services required. The system already operates in emergencies, and the fact that we are having to outline that in legislation seems extraordinary, although nevertheless necessary.

When I was chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, I was astonished by the sheer time involved in dealing with complaints. There were reams of paper and endless committee meetings. My hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (James Cleverly) sat through hours and hours of many of those complaints hearings, some of which were frivolous and some not, but all of which, hopefully, were taken seriously. Any measure that streamlines the complaints system should be welcomed by all, police officers included.

I think that the idea of super-complaints is a knockout. As chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority and deputy Mayor for policing, I would receive, endlessly, what were essentially super-complaints from charities and other organisations claiming that systematic problems involving the police needed to be addressed. If we could find a way of organising mini-inquiries into some of those issues—which is, essentially, what super-complaints would be—we might secure quicker resolutions.

One of the big issues, which the police themselves resolved in the end, was the investigation of rape. It became clear that the way in which the police investigated rape was seriously deficient, and that rape victims were not being dealt with properly at the front end—the inquiry desk at the police station. Once the mounting voices of complaints became so loud that the police had to do something, strangely enough, we secured change straight away. I think that if a charity involved in women’s welfare, or indeed men’s welfare, were able to lodge a super-complaint—rather like the Office of Fair Trading, or the Competition and Markets Authority—the issues could be resolved much more swiftly.

There is no doubt that one of the things that have undermined confidence in the police is the idea that someone can resign just before being subject to disciplinary action. We have seen police officers do that time and again, and they are often in collusion with a leadership that does not want to become involved in a significant inquiry into someone’s conduct. The extension by 12 months seems about right to me. There might be a case for 24 or 36 months, although I think that a lifetime might make matters more rather than less complicated. The extension beyond retirement is certainly welcome.

There will be rejoicing across the land at the final abolition of the Association of Chief Police Officers, in word if not in deed. It is great to see ACPO finally erased from the statute book, for all sorts of reasons. However, there is one small tweak that I would quite like the Minister to consider. One of the duties that are to be transferred to the new Chief Officers Council, or whatever it is called, is the requirement to co-ordinate the national police response to national emergencies. I was on the eighth floor of Scotland Yard on the Monday night of the 2011 riots, listening to the present Metropolitan Police Commissioner—who was then acting Deputy Commissioner—ringing all his mates in the police forces and asking whether they had any spare coppers to deal with the riot as 22 of London’s 23 boroughs went up in flames. It became clear to me that the idea of voluntary co-ordination was never going to be entirely seamless. I think that devising some method of compelling police forces, in extremis, to send officers to the aid of cities, or other areas, that needed them—rather than that being done on the basis of an understanding between police forces—would be useful for future resilience.

I welcome the proposed changes in the treatment of 17-year-olds in police custody. I think we are slowly beginning to realise that 16 and 17-year-olds are in a particular position of vulnerability: that they are still children in the eyes of the law, but are being treated inconsistently with that. The changes in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 that will allow them to be treated as children, and given the protections that are afforded to children, are extremely welcome. They weave into a general theme, which is building up in the House and which has been mentioned earlier in the debate, concerning the status of 16 and 17-year-olds in the law generally. Like the Children’s Society, I believe that we should extend protections to that group.

I also think that we should consider extending child abduction warning notices to 17-year-olds, because they are often useful in that context. Either during the later stages of this Bill or during the stages of a sentencing Bill, if one is forthcoming, I shall be looking into the possibility of protecting those children through a general aggravated sentencing framework relating to offences against children, as well as the possibility of extending sentencing for child cruelty.

I greatly welcome the extension and strengthening of licensing conditions. I think that it is a fantastic move. As we all know, alcohol is an enormous driver of offending, and an enormous absorber of police time. The recent pilot trialling the alcohol abstinence monitoring orders in Croydon was so successful that the Minister has extended it to the whole of London, and we hope that it will subsequently be extended to the rest of the United Kingdom. However, there are a couple of tweaks that I would like the Minister to consider, because I think that they could make this tool really effective.

The first of those tweaks relates to police bail. Conditions apply to it, but, at present, none of them is a requirement to abstain from alcohol. I think that a huge volume of work that is currently dealt with in magistrates courts and beyond could be removed if the police could offer offenders the option of police bail on condition that they wore an alcohol monitoring bracelet for one, two or three months. If offenders breached that requirement, they would effectively be breaking the terms of their bail, and could end up in the criminal justice system as they did before. Vast swathes of paperwork in the magistrates courts would be reduced at a stroke. The police would have the power to manage alcohol on a real-time basis in their own communities.