Crime and Policing

Caroline Flint Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson]

This is a very different issue from that of elected mayors, because they have a broad remit. We introduced elected mayors, and we agree that the Mayor of London should chair the police authority. The trouble is that he finds doing that too hard, so he has stepped down and his unelected deputy is now chairing it. We agree with the Mayor chairing it, however; that is very important.

To answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, I believe, as do many other Members on both sides of the House, that the narrower a post’s remit, the more difficult is the argument that we should elect someone to the post by individual ballot, which I presume is why the Government are not suggesting electing the local leader of the health service or the local chair of an education authority. This is a fundamental argument. If there is a broad remit, part of which is policing, election is fine, but if someone is being elected to a post that addresses only one narrow remit, then I think it is wrong. I have serious concerns about this, and the Flanagan consultation showed that they were widely shared.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that one of the problems with having elected police commissioners—or whatever they are going to be called—is that policing organised and serious crime, which we do not necessarily hear about on our doorsteps but which reaches into our communities, will get deprioritised and will not be attended to as seriously as it should be?

[Alan Johnson]

I think that is absolutely right, and on this there is no difference between the Front Benchers. The Government refer in their White Paper to the “golden thread” of connectivity. That is a very important point; indeed, Sir Paul Stephenson made it in a recent speech. It is more and more the case that police forces have to co-operate across borders to tackle terrorism, cybercrime and serious organised crime.

Several generations of police reformers in the USA have regarded the British model of insulation from political control as a solution to their problems of corruption and partisanship. They also consider that the fact that America has literally hundreds of police forces makes their job really difficult. The point is that they cannot go back—once this kind of measure is introduced, that is it; there is no return. I therefore think the Government are being extremely foolish in going down this route. They suggest that there will be no political interference and that the commissioner’s powers will be little different from those invested in a police authority now, which begs this question: what is this upheaval for?

The Government say there is the problem of the invisibility of police authorities and we agree, as do the APA and the LGA. That is why so much effort is going into addressing that invisibility issue without jeopardising either the effectiveness of the really good people involved, who have served their communities well, or the crucial principle of the operational independence of chief constables.

I think there is a better solution and I offer it to the Government in a spirit of political generosity. If the Government are wedded to some measure of direct accountability, I believe a solution might be direct elections for the chair of a police authority while leaving police authorities in place and certainly not causing this huge upheaval—[Interruption.] I am sorry, but I did not catch the sedentary comment of the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice; if he wants to intervene he can. I think that such elections would be a far better way forward and that the Government should seriously consider that alternative. Instead of the eight-week consultation period, the Government should opt for 12 weeks at least so that these issues can be properly debated. I also believe that if they decide to plough ahead with this they should at the very least give the local population a chance to decide in a referendum whether it wants to maintain the current system or move to a single directly elected commissioner.

On police powers, I say in the same spirit of political generosity that the Government should maintain the DNA legislation, which they supported in the pre-election wash-up, until 2012 when the database will have been in operation for six years. At that point there should be a review of the actual evidence, instead of us just having the projections that inform both our model of six years and the random guess plucked out of the air, which is how Scotland came up with the three year option. Then we can decide properly on the relative merits of the two models. Otherwise we are going to wipe all the DNA information from the database after three years and find out after six years that it is irrefutable that we needed to maintain that information for that length of time to catch murderers and rapists.

The Government should also not reduce the number of public-space CCTVs. I do not wish to interfere with the CCTVs outside Mrs Smith’s house at 42 Acacia avenue. We do not need to reduce CCTV coverage in public spaces.

On the most important issue—on police funding—the Home Secretary has to fight her corner to ensure that policing and security are prioritised in the comprehensive spending review and that cuts in the police budgets do not exceed 12%. As this Government’s honeymoon period draws to a close, they are vulnerable on many issues, none more so than crime and security, where the issue is not about political vulnerability; it is about the vulnerability of our citizens as they seek to go about their daily lives. Despite the successes of the past 15 years, from Howard to Johnson, the battle against crime and disorder has to be stepped up, not scaled back. I warn this House and Members on the Government Benches that the Government are taking the wrong approach and that by refusing to listen and consult they demonstrate not their commitment to civil liberties, but their failure to protect the most important civil liberty of all: the right to be safe from crime and disorder.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Burley]

I think better outputs are possible with fewer officers if they are better directed and not spending their time doing administrative, bureaucratic and ultimately futile tasks that do not benefit the public in any way.

To continue the comparison with the private sector, Sainsbury’s employs 150,000 people in this country and is creating 5,000 new jobs through store openings this year because of—not despite—saving £4 million this year in administration costs by moving its entire staff recruitment process online. Tesco’s has just taken £3 million out of its cost base, simply by rationalising how meeting rooms are booked. Those successful businesses are competitive because they are fit and lean, constantly seeking ways to reduce costs and inefficiencies while giving the best service to the public.

[Caroline Flint]

When police forces were inspected for outcomes, often, in terms of reducing crime, they were doing well in those categories, but one area where they did not do quite so well was communicating with the public. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the police should spend more resources on communicating, or should they spend their resources on police officers fighting crime?

[Mr Burley]

I think the police should spend their resources on fighting crime. Communication will follow if they are doing a good job and the public are happy.

My question is this: if the private sector can make those efficiencies while giving better services and products, why can the police not do the same? What exactly are all the extra police we are constantly told about spending their time doing? As we have heard, Home Office figures have revealed that police officers spend more time on paperwork than on patrol—just 14% of police officers’ time is spent on patrol, compared with 20% on paperwork. Of the 81,000 officers who patrol our country, including detectives, traffic police and neighbourhood watch teams, just 17,000 will be on duty for an average eight-hour shift. With 14% of their time spent on patrol, only 2,400 officers are out and about at a given time—just one in 58 of a record number of police officers is patrolling the streets at any one time. No wonder Jan Berry, former chairman of the Police Federation, commented:

“People hear about a record 143,000 officers and it sounds a lot, but the reality, as these new figures show, is quite different. The Government obsession with targets and data collection, as well as the failure to provide an effective system to share information, has resulted in officers spending less time on the beat and this can only be at the expense of the public.”

Even way back in 2001, a study by PA Consulting for the Home Office found that police officers were spending as much time in the police station as they were on the streets. For five hours a day—more than 50% of the time that the officers were on a shift—they were sat in the station. The study also found that most of the time spent in the police station was spent dealing with incidents and making inquiries; only 17% of police officer time was spent on reassurance patrol; and only 1% of police time was spent proactively reducing crime. The study also unearthed a startling statistic: if the amount of time a police officer spends on the beat could be increased from one fifth to two fifths, the police presence on the streets of England and Wales would effectively be doubled, without a single extra officer being recruited. Clearly, there is considerable scope to free officers to spend more time out on the beat, and a massive dividend to be gained from doing so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

I open by saying that I agreed with much of the contribution of the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans). It is interesting that both he and the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) talked about good practice being carried out by police officers in their communities. On that basis, it is clear that the Labour Government have not totally prevented good practice over the past 13 years.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) and other colleagues have said, we would never say that everything is perfect. There will never be a perfect way to tackle crime, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) said. However, when it comes to challenging crime and antisocial behaviour in our communities, the cup is half full, if not even more. There has been a change in attitudes towards law and order over a number of years.

I welcome the examples of best practice that have been given, and they have occurred partly because of the direction that the Labour Government provided. We were more focused on community policing and on the police working with other organisations, whether they are local authorities or, as the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth said, football clubs. In making important changes, we recognised that tackling crime and disorder in our communities could not be the preserve of police officers alone.

As a former Home Office Minister, I feel frustrated about the challenge of making best practice more mainstream. I was interested when I listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), because as a Home Office Minister back in 2003 I visited Wales. That was some years ago now, but I saw there examples of the type of community and neighbourhood policing that we have thankfully seen in England in recent years. There was an attitude and approach in parts of Wales that was not being picked up elsewhere at the time. Although I have the greatest regard for many people from the Association of Chief Police Officers whom I have met over the years, I believe that it has failed as an organisation to see best practice and say, “This is what we should have more of.”

I link that point to one about accountability. I would not like Government Members to characterise Labour Members who are passionate about tackling crime in our communities as being anti-accountability, or as believing that the current structure of police authorities is perfect. I have said in previous contributions that I am not a cheerleader for the idea that everything is absolutely great.

If we are to talk about the big society, we need to consider how we can give our communities information about best practice so that they have the power to demand more of it. A bogus argument is sometimes made that communities are somehow so different from each other that nothing can be learned. I do not believe that, and I do not believe in reinventing the wheel. Communities should look to other areas to see what has worked and what has not. Yes, they should make the service bespoke for their area if they need to, but for goodness’ sake, they should seize best practice with both hands. If they want to rebrand it, they can get on with doing so, but they should not be so paternalistic and parochial about their own patch that they cannot see the wood for the trees.

I hope that in our discussions in the months ahead about the accountability of the proposed elected commissioners, we will think beyond simply what such a commissioner can do and consider how to ensure that there is accountability, because chief constables also have to be held to account. I attended a lunch a few months ago, before the recess, at which Sir Paul Stephenson spoke. What he said about a number of issues was interesting, and I was intrigued by what he was prepared to admit. When it comes to bureaucracy—I put my hand up and admit that those in government can always do more about it—he said that too often, he had seen his colleagues at the most senior level add layers of bureaucracy over and above what the Government were asking.

The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth, who has now left the Chamber, talked about officers having to fill out a form to use the bathroom, but I can say with pretty much 100% certainty that that was not a diktat from central Government, even if it somehow emerged in his police force. Although we must consider Government bureaucracy, we must also examine ways in which the forces themselves create bureaucracy. That is clear in procurement, with forces being parochial about having their own design of car or uniform that is different from those elsewhere. I wish the coalition Government the best of luck in dealing with that, because it is not easy. There are incredibly strong vested interests in all areas of public policy, including crime and law and order.

I might be out of sync with my Opposition Front Benchers on this, but whatever went wrong, it was a shame that the previous Government did not get to a better place on creating larger police forces. I absolutely agree with the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart), who talked about a larger force for Scotland while at the same time having local units based on local authority boundaries. I sign up to that. In the last policing debate in which I spoke, I said that people in Doncaster are more interested in what Bob Sanderson is doing—he runs our local police—than in what the chief constable is up to down in Sheffield. The local police force is what counts.

On accountability and neighbourhood policing, I am pleased to report from my experience in Doncaster that although the monthly meetings between the police and members of the community—councillors are also often involved—on how neighbourhood policing teams can best focus on what people are most concerned about had a bit of a rocky start, I am now getting feedback from the police, the public, councillors and those working for local authorities that they are starting to gel and to work. Those meetings are an important part of local accountability, and they are important in ensuring that the police and agencies who work with them understand local policing concerns.

We have heard much discussion of police officers. Departments and outside agencies will face cuts not of 20%, but of anything between 25 and 40% cuts, and we know that 70% of the police budget is spent on paying officers’ wages, so it is impossible that there will not be substantial cuts in police numbers, which I am very concerned about. The Government’s solution—or part of it—is that we should recruit 50,000 additional special constables. I do not know where that figure comes from, but there are currently 15,000 special constables, so expecting an additional 50,000 volunteers is ambitious. The Government also expect those unpaid, part-time volunteers to replace full-time, professional police officers. I worry about that. Special constables make a great contribution, but they are not a substitute. For one thing, they have only to work for a minimum of 16 hours a month, but for another, they must fit their police hours around paid employment and family life. They cannot be required to turn up for work at particular times or on particular days as part of an organised strategy to bear down on the different sorts of crimes that are committed in our neighbourhoods. The truth is that chief constables cannot plan their forces around volunteers.

I agree with my colleagues about CCTV evidence and the DNA database. I am very worried about those tools being undermined, which will undermine police officers’ ability to do their jobs.

Although this is a Home Office debate, we need to touch on penal policy, responsibility for which has been split off to the Ministry of Justice, because punishing crime is an important part of effective policing and dealing with crime in our communities. It is a complicated matter. Prison has many functions, of which rehabilitation is one, but that has not always been carried out as effectively as it ought to have been. However, prison also protects the public from serial and dangerous offenders. We have only to ask police officers to find out about the respite that a community can get if, say, a serial burglar who has committed 40 crimes in a few months is put in prison after everything else has been tried.

We should have an informed debate on policing—it is too important for a back-and-forth debate. I believe that we last had a commission look at the role of the police in 1962, so perhaps it is time to think about another commission. The debate is about more than the deficit; it is about creating a 21st-century police force.