Damian Green
Main Page: Damian Green (Conservative - Ashford)Department Debates - View all Damian Green's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Hanson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, as that is part of the Conservatives’ record. One of the things that we will be campaigning on outside London in these elections is their appalling record on cutting police throughout England and Wales.
Today’s debate is a chance for us to try to engage the public in these elections to ensure—if this is possible—a good turnout. The Government’s record, to date, has been appalling. Hon. Members should listen not only to me, but to the former chief constable of Thames Valley police and head of the soon-to-be-dissolved National Policing Improvement Agency. He said:
“If you could have constructed a manual on how not to conduct an election, the Home Office have managed to tick off just about every element of it, including holding it in November, which is almost guaranteed to be dark and poor weather.”
He continued:
“So there are significant problems with getting a decent turnout…If they get elected on a 15% turnout it’s going to be pretty shocking.”
On 13 December 2010, the Home Secretary said at the Dispatch Box:
“With a strong democratic mandate from the ballot box, police and crime commissioners will hold their chief constable to account for cutting crime.”—[Official Report, 13 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 708.]
However, only last month, research commissioned by Victim Support showed that 90% of people questioned had no idea what this role entailed or what it did. On Monday, a survey by the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners suggested that 85% of people either knew “not very much” or “nothing at all” about this election—nearly two in five knew nothing about it whatsoever. The same survey, only this week, showed that the number of people asked who were certain to vote was 15%. The Minister of State, Home Department, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), whom I believe is to wind up today’s debate, even though he cannot be bothered to come to hear the opening speeches—
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)
I should say, in defence of my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane, that he is, as we speak, disengaging himself from the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which had summoned him to appear before it. So he is fulfilling a parliamentary obligation at the moment.
Mr Hanson
The Ministers need to establish the facts on these matters. If the relevant Minister cannot reply to the debate, perhaps another Minister, such as the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) could wind up instead.
Let us put that aside, because the key issue is that the Home Office Minister responsible for crime reduction, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane, said at his party conference, only two weeks ago, that a turnout of under 20% would not be acceptable. We face these November elections with awareness still at a very poor level, and we also have a new electoral system, one not normally used for these elections. The Electoral Commission has summed up the situation in its most recent briefing in September, where it said:
“It is important that voters have sufficient information about the voting system, the issues and the candidates that are standing in elections…This will be particularly important for the PCC elections because these are completely new elections, for a new role. In addition they are happening at an unusual time of year, using a voting system (the Supplementary Vote) that most people will be unfamiliar with.”
It went on to say that although it will be carrying out its functions in highlighting the elections, its
“preferred option—a booklet with information about the candidates to be sent to voters in each police authority area – is not going to happen.”
The Government have ignored the Electoral Commission’s advice on turnout for these elections, so I would be interested to know from the Minister what sort of modelling the Home Office has done on turnout and what it feels it might be. When we examine every local election since 2006, which were held in May, we find that there was an average turnout of 37%—that is twice what the Electoral Reform Society suggests turnout will be on 15 November. Its modelling suggests that the turnout will be as low as 18.5%, and it has said that these elections
“threaten to result in the lowest turnout of any nationwide election in British history.”
If that is the case, the fault will lie with the Minister.
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)
I thank the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) for his kind words at the start of his speech, and I agree with him about the police. This Government recognise the vital job that the police do to protect the public. The courage and dedication of the thousands of men and women who work in police forces across the country make them outstanding. Police officers risk their lives in the line of duty every single day, and this year, more than ever, we have been reminded of the dangers they face. The tragic deaths of PC Ian Dibell, PC Fiona Bone and PC Nicola Hughes show just how brave our officers can be and the debt of gratitude we owe them all.
This year, with the Olympic and Paralympic games, we have seen the best of policing, but in the response to phone hacking and Hillsborough real questions have been raised about integrity and accountability, and we are determined to get to grips with both.
Before I talk about this Government’s positive agenda for policing to introduce reforms to deliver a more professional service responsive to the public and accountable for their actions, I want to address some of the points made by the right hon. Member for Delyn. He reminded us that his party opposed the introduction of police and crime commissioners—the introduction of democracy into police accountability. This is a fascinating conversion, because when Labour was in power the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), who was then police Minister, said that
“only direct election, based on geographic constituencies, will deliver the strong connection to the public which is critical”.
He was absolutely right then and the Labour party is absolutely wrong now.
The right hon. Member for Delyn also had the cheek to complain about privatisation, on which I do not need to quote his Labour predecessors on policing, because I can quote him. In 2009 he said that he was “very relaxed” about police collaboration with the private sector and that the police had Labour’s “blessing to do so”. His remarks should be put in that context; he thought something completely different three years ago.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
Will the Minister confirm that the previous Government’s consultation was on whether the whole police authority, not just one person, should be elected? Will he also confirm that it was a proper consultation and that because of the outright opposition of parties of all persuasions in local government the proposals were dropped?
Damian Green
The Opposition, who were then in government, expressed a view, changed their mind and have now changed their mind again. I am fascinated that the right hon. Gentleman did not address the issue of privatisation, which started under his tenure as Home Secretary but which I assume he is now prepared to attack as a loyal supporter of his party’s Front-Bench representatives.
What we have heard so far is the Labour party’s central obsession with spending more money. The right hon. Member for Delyn has made no admission that the Opposition are, in fact, committed to the same level of cuts as this Government, or to any level of cuts at all. There was no honest admission that police numbers would have gone down under their plans, and no expression of regret for the 25,000 police officers stuck in back-room functions under Labour’s top-down management of the police service. Most of all, there was no apology for causing the financial mess that led to these cuts in the first place. We have had no transparency or apology from the Labour party, and just one solution—spend more money. It is as clear as ever that Labour is not learning and is not capable of learning.
We cannot even credit the Opposition with being consistent on that point. As we have heard, the police and crime commissioner elections will deliver accountable policing that responds to public demands. Labour Front Benchers are arguing for both more and less spending at the same time. They complain about what they describe as the waste of money on holding elections, which is an interesting attitude for a democratic party, at the same time as they argue that we should spend £30 million more on publicising the elections. I suppose that they could, with intellectual coherence, hold one or other of those views, but they cannot hold both of them at once, as they appear to want to do.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
What is the Minister’s prediction for the election turnout on 15 November and what does he regard as necessary to give the candidates a mandate?
Damian Green
I will address the PCC elections in a moment. Unlike the right hon. Member for Delyn, I want to start my speech by talking about policing, which is what this debate is supposed to be about.
At the start of the spending review, the service was spending more than £14 billion a year. It is only right that the police make their contribution to the savings that are needed, while ensuring that the quality of service that the public receive is maintained and, where possible, improved. This can be done and it is being done. By changing the way in which police forces work, getting officers out of the back office and on to the front line and stripping out bureaucratic processes, officers can be freed up to do the job they joined to do—to fight crime and protect the public. This is what forces up and down the country are doing. The House does not need to take my word for it; the independent inspectorate of constabulary has said so.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
Not only is the Minister cutting more than 300 police officers from the Leicestershire force by 2015; he is also cutting back-room staff, which will force more officers into the back room. The Minister is a reasonable man, so will he give me a prediction? By 2015, will crime go up or down in Leicester?
Damian Green
I do not need to give the hon. Gentleman a prediction, because I can tell him what is happening to crime in Leicestershire. Crime in Leicestershire is down 5% under this Government and I hope that he will welcome that change.
The inspectorate has confirmed what Ministers have said all along—that the front line of policing is being protected. We know that chief constables are prioritising the front line, because they plan to increase the proportion of officers on the front line from 83% in March 2010 to 89% in March 2015. Protecting the front line does not mean staying exactly the same, it is about the service that the public receive. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary says that the service is being maintained, and I hope that Opposition Members will have the politeness to listen to it.
Andrew Percy
May I take the Minister back to policing numbers? My dearly valued colleagues from the Labour party in Humberside will be able to confirm that police numbers there fell in 2007, for the very same reasons that he has outlined here today, and there was zero opposition among local Labour politicians.
Damian Green
As ever, my hon. Friend points out the inadequacy of Labour arguments in Humberside and elsewhere. Since he brings up the subject of numbers, I am happy to tell him that in this Government’s time in office, crime in Humberside has fallen by 12%—a particularly good performance, I think he will agree.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
That is all very well, but will the Minister actually answer the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) put to him? How are front line police officers expected to be able to get out on to the streets and be visible to the public if the back-office functions upon which they rely so deeply are being cut?
Damian Green
I would guess from all I know of the hon. Lady that she opposes any use of the private sector in back-office functions, but that is the way to release warranted police officers, who are trained to be on the streets. Her party goes back and forth; in government it was in favour of the use of the private sector, but in opposition it has retreated to its comfort zone and opposed it. Under both the previous Government and the current one, many police forces have shown—
Damian Green
May I finish answering the previous intervention before I come to the hon. Gentleman?
Many police forces have shown that one way to get more officers on to the front line is through more flexible and better use of back-office and middle-office staff. Now I have pleasure in giving way to the hon. Gentleman.
Steve McCabe
I am extremely grateful to the Minister and apologise for interrupting.
Given the importance that the Minister attaches to the democratisation that comes with commissioners, does he accept that where commissioners have a mandate from the public to oppose certain types of privatisation, whether in the back office or the front office, the Government should respect that?
Damian Green
Yes, I do. We are in favour of democracy, and I accept that it is possible that police and crime commissioners will be elected who will do things with which I disagree. They will be democratically elected and have the mandate to do what they do, and if they get it wrong they will answer to their electorate in four years’ time. That is the point of democracy.
Damian Green
May I make some progress? I am conscious of your warning about going on too long, Mr Speaker.
The Opposition said that because of the cuts, emergency response times would increase, but they have held up. They said that neighbourhood policing would suffer, but there are more neighbourhood officers now than there were in May 2010. Most importantly of all—it is at the heart of the debate—they said that crime would go up, and they were wrong. Crime has gone down by 10% under this Government. That is the situation across key crime types, with recorded violence down 13%, burglary down 7%, criminal damage down 22%, vehicle crime down 15%, robbery down 5% and knife crime down 9%.
Much has been made of the situation in the west midlands. I know that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) will wish to know that crime there is down by an impressive 13% since the election. I hope that west midlands Members of all parties will welcome that.
Labour has been proved wrong on all its key claims. Police reform is working, and crime is falling. I am grateful to the Opposition for giving me the opportunity to point that out today. They were wrong to claim that forces faced 20% cuts. No force faces cuts of that level.
Mr Thomas
The right hon. Gentleman referred to reports by HMIC, so he will presumably be familiar with the concerns that it made clear earlier this year about the future performance of the Metropolitan police, given the cuts that the Mayor of London is likely to push through. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that there is even more concern, particularly in the suburbs of London, about rumours of significant closures of police stations and custody suites and mergers of borough commands?
Damian Green
The hon. Gentleman has not quite got with the democratic project yet. As he knows, policing in London is the responsibility of the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor. The hon. Gentleman had his chance earlier this year to put his arguments against the Mayor of London’s crime policy, but those arguments failed. The people of London voted to re-elect the current Mayor of London, and he has an excellent Deputy Mayor who is dealing with those matters.
Damian Green
I will give way one more time as the right hon. Gentleman is a former Home Secretary.
Alan Johnson
I am grateful to the Minister, but I thought I just heard him say that there are no cuts of 20%. In his speech last Monday, the Prime Minister said,
“in real terms, central police spending cuts are around 20 per cent”.
Does the Minister disagree with the Prime Minister?
Damian Green
No. The right hon. Gentleman should listen to what I say. The claim is, I think, that forces are facing 20% cuts, but no force is facing cuts of that level. As he knows as well as anyone in the country, the police service receives about a quarter of its income from the police precept element of council tax, the exact proportion—[Interruption.] I am glad that I am able to educate the Labour party about how the police are funded in this country. That funding is not all from the Home Office; some of it comes from the police precept. As the right hon. Gentleman and, I hope, those on the Opposition Front Bench know—although there is no evidence that they do—the exact proportion that comes from the precept varies from force to force, and the level at which it is set is, I stress, a matter for individual police and crime commissioners to decide. In short, no force has seen anything like a 20% cash reduction.
We on this side of the House have long argued that there is no simple link between police numbers and crime rates, and I am happy that that view is shared by the Home Affairs Committee. The figures I have quoted show that that view is correct and widely accepted—the one place it has not yet been accepted is inside the Labour party.
Let me turn to the elections for police and crime commissioners. On this side of the House, we are getting behind our candidates and campaigning hard to ensure that the elections are a success and that the public get the PCCs they deserve—hard-working, dedicated people who want to deliver for their communities and improve policing. Opposition Members should decide whether they support or oppose the elections. I assume that they support them, and I am delighted that the right hon. Member for Delyn has said that he does. A huge number of former Labour Ministers are standing, determined to make 15 November the night of the living retreads.
The confusion on the Opposition Benches is summed up with a pleasing touch of nostalgia by a dispute between Blair and Prescott. Prescott is having an argument with a new Blair, Lord Blair, who is arguing that people should not vote—I think that is disgraceful, and I hope the Labour party will agree that to tell people not to vote in a democratic election is deplorable. [Interruption.] I am glad that the right hon. Member for Delyn disagrees with Lord Blair. I hope that will continue and that everyone in the Labour party will condemn Lord Blair for what he said, not least because, as we have seen in recent articles, Lord Prescott is—of course—campaigning in his unique and energetic fashion around Humberside.
The introduction of PCCs is the most significant democratic reform of policing ever. It will introduce greater transparency and accountability to a service of which we are all rightly proud, but which can sometimes be too distant from the public it serves and fail to reflect adequately their concerns and priorities. As I told the House in a debate last week, only 7% of the public know what a police authority is. That figure represents a huge failure in democratic accountability, because it is the job of a police authority—as it will be of a PCC—to spend the public’s money in a way that guarantees that the police in that area are doing what the public need. It is impossible to do that when 93% of the public do not even know what police authorities are.
Damian Green
I am spoilt for choice but I think that the hon. Lady has had a go, so I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Wayne David
Does the Minister agree with the Minister of State in the Home Department who said at the Liberal Democrat conference that a turnout out of 20% in elections for PCCs would, “not be good”?
Damian Green
My hon. Friend will speak later in the debate, and can no doubt speak for himself. Up to now, and until next month, the public have been unable to do anything about the failures of police authorities. PCCs will have a clear incentive to perform better than that, because if they fail to represent their communities, engage properly and deliver on their priorities, the public will tell them what they think at the ballot box.
Policing matters to the public and people want their forces to respond to their concerns. The advertising campaign that the Home Office has been running this month will be seen by 85% of the public. It tells them how to get more information—[Interruption.] Labour Members have problems with people getting information online, but people can get information online at www.choosemypcc.org.uk, and anyone who wants a printed booklet can get one by calling the freephone number from the advert. Everyone registered to vote will also get the number on a polling card through their door, and the Electoral Commission is writing to each household with information on how to vote. Whatever the Opposition want to say, no one who wants information in the elections will be denied it.
Damian Green
As the website goes online only tomorrow, it will be quite difficult for people to phone now. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, nominations closed only this week, and the final day for people withdrawing from the election was today, so the candidates will have their information out only tomorrow.
Many hon. Members have asked how many people will turn out to vote. We do not know, but however many do so, every PCC will have more legitimacy to make important decisions on what the police do and how the local budget is spent than unelected, unaccountable and largely invisible police authorities.
Julian Smith
The number of chief constables and ex-chief constables who face criminal investigations is going into double digits—I am thinking of Grahame Maxwell in North Yorkshire and the problems in Cleveland. Will chief constables be held to account much better under the new regime?
Damian Green
It is extremely important that chief constables are held to account, but equally important is the transparency with which they are held to account. That will now be the job of visible, public and democratically elected figures. Among the many bodies to benefit from this advent of democracy will be senior police officers. Many institutions in this country have had to become more transparent in recent years—not least the House. In the long run, it does the institution good to be held to account more publicly.
The policy fits into wider police reform. For too long before this Government came to office, the Home Office interfered too much in local policing and cared too little about national threats. The introduction of PCCs is a step along the road to reversing that trend, and the creation of the National Crime Agency to focus on serious and organised crime nationally is another. That did not exist under the previous Government, but it should have, and it will exist under this Government. PCCs will not just focus just on their local area, but will have a duty to co-operate in dealing with national threats under the new strategic policing requirement, which this Government also introduced.
We are determined that the police will have the powers they need to tackle crime. That includes enhancing professionalism with the creation of the new college of policing. We have today announced that Chief Constable Alex Marshall of Hampshire police will be its chief executive. Key to the college’s work will be the sharing of best practice and research into what works at a local level.
We believe in local solutions to local problems and a departure from the central direction and edicts of the past. The antisocial behaviour order was typical of the previous top-down approach that too often failed communities. Fifty-seven per cent. of ASBOs issued up to the end of 2011 were breached at least once, and more than 40% were breached more than once. It simply did not work, which is why we have set out new proposals in our white paper, “Putting Victims First”, for faster, more flexible and effective powers that will provide a real deterrent to perpetrators and better protect victims and communities.
We also believe that a balance must be struck between enabling the police to use vital modern investigative techniques, such as DNA and CCTV, and protecting the rights of innocent members of the public not to be under constant and unregulated surveillance. That is why, through the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, we have put in place a series of sensible and proportionate controls on the use of those techniques. But we are not weakening our response to crime. We are not restricting CCTV—it is an important tool but not the only one—and we will continue to take the DNA of the guilty, including, for the first time, of prisoners, rather than that of innocent people. So we are taking a balanced approach that protects the public and punishes the guilty.
Overall, our reforms add up to a realignment of policing in this country that will free the police from central targets and bureaucracy and will place power back in the hands of local people. The introduction of PCCs will make policing more accountable and responsive, while driving forces to become efficient and to improve continually. The end result will be a trusted, responsive and professional police service that will be continually improving to cut crime.
The motion is backward looking. It could have been written by the Labour party in 2005. Its approach to fighting crime amounts to spending more money, tighter control from Whitehall and ever more interference by the state in the lives of ordinary, decent people. It did not work when they were in government, and that is why this Government are working for a more accountable, more transparent and more professional police service. This is what will lead to further falls in crime, and that is why the House should reject this ill-conceived motion.