Prisons Policy/HMP Long Lartin

Chris Davies Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

I fully understood the question posed by the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey). Would we rather have a situation in which interventions in the community work and people do not end up in custody? Of course, yes. Would we rather invest there before people ended up in custody? Of course, yes. In this country we have a presumption against custody, but after several repeat offences, judges have no choice but to send a person into custody. That means we have obviously got to improve the work that happens in our community, but we cannot arbitrarily let people out of prison, which is what I assume the question of the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) to be about.

[Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend update the House not on his aim but on the actual latest recruitment figures for prison officers and explain how that will help improve safety and security in these troublesome areas?

[Mr Gyimah]

The 868 net new prison officers is not an aim: these are people who have been trained, who are on the payroll and who are being deployed on wings as we speak. We are on track to deliver the target of 2,500; the commitment is do that by the end of next year. We are making rapid progress, but there is still a long way to go in bringing stability and order to our prisons overall.

Police and Fire Shared Services

Chris Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Amanda Milling]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. He succinctly summarises the benefits of sharing and integrating services, and of collaboration.

[Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for introducing the debate. I agree with all her wise words, but one of the greatest difficulties we face is public perception. When the public sees services amalgamating, buildings closing and a police station based in a fire station, they see a loss—they do not see the gain. Our job as MPs, and that of police and crime commissioners and others, is to deal with that perception and put a good case over, which says that they are gaining rather than losing.

[Amanda Milling]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. In Staffordshire, I had to face the public when fire engines were being removed from fire stations. There is a point in having the frontline. It is all about ensuring that we protect the frontline and enhance its services so that our communities are, and feel, safer and safer.

I was talking about the Minister’s response to a recent question. The Home Secretary supports the idea of greater collaboration—as does the Prime Minister. On 11 September, the Prime Minister outlined, in his “vision for a smarter state” speech, his support for collaboration, and he gave Hampshire as an example of where emergency services have brought functions together to save millions of pounds a year. In Staffordshire, there has been resistance to greater sharing, collaboration and integration, but I wholeheartedly welcome the Government’s proposals. All the evidence suggests that reform is required and this is an opportunity to create police and fire commissioners.

The proposals set out in the Government consultation could provide a platform and a road map for creating such commissioners over the next few years, ahead of full elections for them in 2020. I simply ask the Minister to consider, as part of his work in the cross-ministerial working group, to consider the mandatory introduction of police and fire commissioners by 2020.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. My speech goes on a lot longer than 70 seconds, so I shall leave it where it is. I agree with most of what has been said. It is clear that first and foremost our blue-light services must be not buildings or machinery, but people on the frontline. That is what the general public want and what our voters are after, and the Government must give that priority.

In areas such as mine—I represent the largest rural constituency in England and Wales; it is 85 miles long—the reality is that we must have a mix of services. We have first responders; it may be the fire service that responds, doing a marvellous job and saving lives. The crew may not be putting fires out when they do that, but they save lives doing the work of paramedics. They have trained accordingly and keep people alive until the paramedics arrive. There is a need for this crossover, and thank goodness we have it. I will sit down within the 70 seconds, but I want to pay tribute to the blue-light services and to the Government for having the consultation. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) for securing this debate.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

May I also pay tribute to Mr Berry and Mr Smith for keeping their remarks brief? I am sorry, Mr Davies, that you did not have as much time as I anticipated. I remind newer colleagues in particular that if they want to speak, they have to put their names forward. That allows the Chair to introduce a formal time limit, rather than an informal one, as exampled in the past few moments.

Dyfed Powys Police Helicopter

Chris Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby, in my first debate after being reconfirmed as Minister with responsibility for the police—and now for crime, too, including organised crime. I am at both the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice—buy one, get one free, apparently. On a serious note, it works very well being the Minister both for the police and criminal justice.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) on securing this debate. If I were the MP for his constituency, I would probably call for a debate on this subject as well; I hope he understands exactly where I am coming from on that point. However, I am not an expert or a police officer—I do not believe there is one in this Chamber, unlike in the old days, when there would have been one—so I take my advice from the frontline.

I will try to address some of the issues raised, but if hon. Members do not mind, I will not address the personal attacks on the police and crime commissioner. I do not think they were appropriate for this Chamber, when we are trying to work together. The PCC is duly elected; when the next elections come, perhaps the party political stuff will start—who knows? At the moment, however, I am sure that he is trying to do the best job he can for the people he represents, as we all are in this Chamber.

[Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for allowing me to intervene. As someone who represents a very rural constituency in the Dyfed Powys area, I thank the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) for securing the debate, because it is absolutely vital that we discuss this issue.

Will the Minister comment on just how hard our police and crime commissioner has worked to get benefits out of this system? I understand that the helicopter broke down—the gearbox had to be replaced—and was off-air for three weeks, during which we did not have any cover in Dyfed Powys. Under this new system, we would have cover constantly. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr spoke of criminals escaping into the night, but said that we would have 24-hour cover under the new system, whereas there had been just 12-hour cover, so if anything, we will have a better system and larger coverage.

[Mike Penning]

My hon. Friend has been reading my speech—or perhaps he wrote it for me. He is absolutely right. As my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) said in his intervention and short speech, we need to get away from the constabulary boundaries—the old, artificial boundaries—as NPAS has done. The truth is that the helicopter was offline extensively; it was not available 24 hours a day. There will be facilities now; there will be more cover. The North Wales, Birmingham, South Wales and Avon and Somerset forces will all be providing cover, so with this new scheme, we have broken away from saying, “This is ours. You can’t have it, and if you do, it’s going to cost you a small fortune.” The police have bought into that, and it is a really important thing to have done.

There are obvious and understandable concerns. I remember when I did a review of the coastguard and everybody said to me, “This is a very dangerous situation”, but just because we had things in a certain way, it did not mean that that was right. The changes that we made to the coastguard stations have worked, not least—interestingly enough—because we get more cover at times than we had before.

It is not for a Police Minister or a Member of Parliament to tell the police their operational duties or how they should run their forces. We can only dream of having the sort of expertise that they have.