Community Policing

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lucas]

I do beg his pardon—the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs. In that case, I will congratulate him even more. He has always been civil in his dealings with me. I am sure that we will cross swords, if not today then in the future, but I welcome him and congratulate him on his elevated status.

I try to keep it quiet in this place that many years ago I was a solicitor in private practice. It is often not a good idea to advertise the fact that one is a lawyer. I worked as a solicitor in criminal law in north Wales in the late 1980s and the 1990s and, as policing is one public service that has improved beyond all recognition in the past ten to 15 years, I regret that in those days I considered that it was not of the standard that it should have been.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does he agree with me that North Wales police is one of the most successful police forces in the country, and has the lowest crime rate?

[Ian Lucas]

My hon. Friend is already stealing some of my speech. He is well aware of the vast progress that has been made in north Wales, through an effective, successful and engaged police force. When I was first elected to this House in 2001, it was not unusual for councillors to have very little contact with their local police service. There were certainly no structures in place to enable local communities, through councils, to work effectively with the police service. I am pleased to say that the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 put in place the building blocks for that to change, and local authorities and police services now work together to combat crime. It is extraordinary that before that date there was so little engagement between those two large public sector organisations, at a time when criminal behaviour issues were one of the most common reasons for constituents visiting my office.

The establishment of community safety partnerships—as we call them in Wales—created a forum within which the general public, councillors, police officers and others involved in the criminal justice system could work together, identifying problems of concern to the local community and devising actions to address those problems. One major step was the establishment of a system of community beat managers. I seem to recall that north Wales was ahead of the game on that, establishing community beat managers responsible for council wards. The managers were identified police officers, who, it was hoped, would stay in place for about three years and get to know the area they were policing very well. When I was first elected, if a crime-related issue was raised in my surgery I often had difficulty finding a point of contact in the local police. That all changed with the establishment of the community beat manager system, and I now have a list of community beat managers for particular wards on my wall and know who to contact directly when an issue arises.

Community beat managers do not, of course, operate on their own. The Police Reform Act 2002 introduced police community support officers, who have also been extremely effective in helping to improve policing on the ground. I think that that Act is inspired legislation because I see exceptional police community support officers operating in Wrexham, individuals whose commitment goes way beyond that which is set out in their contracts. They are now an essential component of a successful criminal justice system. They function as an early warning system and as a community service, working as a team to safeguard the communities within which they operate.

In Wrexham, we go even beyond the people who get paid to police. We have an unusual, albeit developing, group of people, who work hard to assist the criminal justice system. We have special constables, as do many other places, but we also have a group called street pastors. I am not sure if the Minister is aware of these individuals. In Wrexham, they are a group that is linked to local Churches and which has functioned for about three years. They work particularly at weekends, when the town centre gets a little livelier than even the Strangers Bar does on occasions. There must be about 30 street pastors operating with the police in Wrexham, and their calming influence is effective in taking the heat out of incidents that could lead to the commission of crime.

As I was preparing for this debate, I looked at the national Street Pastors website and saw an example of exactly the type of thing that happens. Someone posted a thank you on the website, and happened to refer to Wrexham. Sometimes these things are meant:

“My 20-year-old daughter is in her 3rd year at Chester Uni, training to be a Children's Nurse. Last night she went out into Wrexham with 3 of her friends to celebrate passing all her exams and assignments and to look forward to her last and final year of training. On leaving the nightclub in the ‘early hours’, the 4 girls were all ‘shoe-less’ from dancing and celebrating all night, and all a little ‘worse for wear’! This morning she presented me with a pair of purple flip flops. She told me that when the girls left the club they were greeted by some Christians, who gave them the flip flops to walk to the taxi rank, fastened their shoes around their necks and were ‘very kind’. I am writing to say THANK YOU SO MUCH. Your Street Pastor Scheme is fantastic.”

The street pastors in Wrexham are all volunteers, and they work very closely with the police and the community support officers to make the streets of Wrexham even safer.

Much of the credit for the success of community policing in Wrexham should go to a recently retired inspector whom I would like to mention by name: Inspector Chris Beasley. He worked extremely hard in Wrexham and was always very open to new ideas, such as flip-flops and street pastors. He was receptive and imaginative in his policing, and as a result established a tremendous reputation in the town. We are very proud of the police service that we have built up over many years in Wrexham, and also more broadly in north Wales.

[Chris Ruane]

My hon. Friend rightly sings the praises of his constituency and his county. Is he aware that Denbighshire, where my constituency is located, is the third best of the 376 crime and disorder reduction partnerships in England and Wales? That is partly down to the legislation that our Labour Government introduced, partly down to the funding, and partly down to the excellent co-operative working that we have in Denbighshire.

[Ian Lucas]

If I was not aware of that before, I certainly am now. My hon. Friend is always full of imaginative ways of intervening and promoting his constituency, as he has just done.

I have set out the excellent work that has been done, but my concern is about the future. The extension of community policing has taken place against a backcloth of increased investment in our police service, including an increase in the number of police officers, the introduction of community support officers, and Home Office support for the street pastors scheme. Unfortunately, under the Tory-Lib Dem Government, that support has already been reduced.

Today the newspapers in north Wales carry details of an interview with the local chief constable, who talked of the £1.4 million reduction in this year’s budget, which has already happened for north Wales. He says that

“the suggestion from David Cameron is that this could be increased to 40 per cent over the next four years. This would mean cuts of £30 million coming out of our budget.”

He goes on:

“Eighty-two per cent of our money is spent on staff so even if we stopped using computers and walked everywhere we would have to cut staff numbers.”

Those staff are the community beat managers and community support officers that I mentioned. Those individuals have achieved the progress in policing and in making safe the communities that I represent over the past decade. I am, therefore, extremely concerned to hear my chief constable saying that he cannot deal with the proposed reductions in expenditure without getting rid of some of that staffing.

That is a major concern, but not just from me—I am already receiving representations from councillors in my constituency. My good colleague Councillor Michael Williams of Gwersyllt has told me that good work in combating antisocial behaviour in his ward is under threat. He tells me that already community beat managers are not being replaced. He represents a community of up to 10,500 people who now have only one community beat manager, whereas previously they had two.