Grenfell Tower Fire Inquiry

Debate between Damian Green and Karen Buck

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I reassure the hon. Gentleman that the taskforce is an independent body that will report to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, not to Kensington and Chelsea Council.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Pursuant to that point, will the First Secretary clarify whether the recovery taskforce has any executive authority whatsoever, or is it purely advisory?

[Damian Green]

It is an advisory panel, not an executive one, reporting to the Secretary of State. That is the proper way to proceed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Damian Green and Karen Buck

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I do agree. My hon. Friend makes exactly the right point. The way to cut crime is to have police officers deployed correctly, not to have buildings open that in many cases very few people ever visited.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

In addition to losing more than 200 police officers, in Westminster, three out of the four police stations north of Oxford street are closing. This is not just a question of access for reporting crime, although that can be important, but of community bases from which safer neighbourhood teams can operate. Does the Minister agree that the Mayor’s consultation proposal of surgeries of one hour a week to replace those police stations represents a massive reduction in police accessibility?

[Damian Green]

No, I do not. The hon. Lady says that front counters are important for reporting crime, but only one in eight crimes are reported that way, so they are not as important as they used to be. She needs to accept that a more flexible approach to making the police accessible—for example, by making them available at regular times of the week in places where people are anyway—is much better than having them sitting in police stations that we know many people will never visit.

Metropolitan Police Service

Debate between Damian Green and Karen Buck

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Streeter. I echo others in congratulating the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr Thomas) on securing the debate, and I echo his tribute to the Metropolitan police and to the police as a whole on the remarkable job that they continue to do. The right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) spoke about their performance, in particular during the Olympic and Paralympic games, when forces from throughout the country worked together in London to deliver the biggest peacetime policing operation in our history. That was a huge and undeniable success.

I will start on one of the things the hon. Member for Harrow, West said that I agreed with. He will not be surprised to learn that there were not many, but there were some. I completely agree with him and the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee on the importance of diversity in police recruitment and retention, and I have two concrete things to say in response.

I was pleased earlier this week to help launch the College of Policing, a new body set up with support from across the House to increase professionalism within the police, to improve standards and to share best practice. Clearly, one of the areas in which the college will have fruitful work to do will be on practical ways to improve diversity, which is obviously a particularly important issue for the Met. As has been said, chief officers as well as Ministers in successive Governments have said that something needs to be done. There has been no lack of push to do it but, so far, there has been a lack of sufficient success in doing it. I hope that the college will help to achieve that.

The shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), made a point about money. I admire the elegance of his phraseology: when the previous Government were organising something, he used the words “savings” or “reductions”, but when this Government do it, it is “cuts”. They are exactly the same, and wrapping it up in nice language does not make any difference.

When we came to office, we set the police a challenge to cut crime while playing their part in reducing the country’s record deficit, which the right hon. Gentleman’s party left us. In the case of the Metropolitan police, the response to that challenge is being ably led by the Mayor of London and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. We know about some of the difficulties that the Met has faced in meeting that challenge. They have been brought up by many hon. Members during the debate, but we also know that it is fundamentally determined to address those difficulties, and that it is being successful in doing so.

In November 2012, the Metropolitan police submitted a plan for a balanced budget and stated its intention to transform the service, prioritise the front line, and maintain officer numbers. The Mayor’s office for policing and crime is consulting on a draft policing and crime plan and estates strategy. I regret the way that the consultation has been criticised by various hon. Members during the debate. It seems to me that we should all welcome the deputy mayor’s visits to London boroughs to hear local concerns as a model of consultation.

[Ms Buck]

It is right that we can have a mature debate about police premises and the best way to base the police in the community, but given that the Mayor said categorically that police stations and counters would not close until alternative provision had been found, why have we gone through an entire consultative process with no alternatives being offered, merely being asked to comment on 65 station closures?

[Damian Green]

I will come to station closures. I take the point, which has been raised by the hon. Lady and other hon. Members. I want to deal with it.

The consultation includes commitments about not only the level of resources that the Met will have at the front line but—this point has been neglected but needs to be injected into the debate—how those resources will be used. At the forefront of the Met’s plans is the Met change programme, which is being used to transform how operational policing is delivered in London. The programme has several strands, including plans to deliver a flatter management structure, thereby putting more constables on the beat, engagement with the supply services market to examine new ways of delivering the services they provide in areas such as human resource, technology and finance, and plans to release under-utilised assets.

I hope that hon. Members agree that the Met’s recently issued plans show that it is looking at a transformational approach to the way in which it delivers policing in London. Everyone has observed that London is a fast changing city that is difficult to police, so it needs to keep ahead of the curve. Clearly, there has been great interest, not just in the debate, but across London about the closure of police stations. As has been said, decisions about the number of stations and their operating hours are matters for the Mayor and the Commissioner. I am sure that many hon. Members will contribute to the consultation.

It is important not to confuse buildings with quality of service provided to the public. Fewer than 50 crimes a night are reported at front counters throughout the Metropolitan police area. Since 2008, the number of crimes reported to those front counters has dropped 20%, and internet and e-mail reporting is up by 32%. That shows how changes in the modern world must be reflected in changes in the way the police deliver their services.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

Indeed, and as the right hon. Gentleman knows, one part of the MOPAC plan is to increase the number of police constables, so there will be more visible policing. The background that the right hon. Member for Delyn mentioned in passing—he is honest enough to know that it must be the background to the debate—is that crime is falling, but someone coming to this debate cold would not recognise that fact from the tenor of the debate so far. It is a straightforward fact that crime is falling, and that includes a 3% reduction in police recorded crime in the Metropolitan police area in the first two years of this Government between 2010 and 2012. That refutes any suggestion that reduced budgets and fewer officers inevitably make the public less safe.

[Ms Buck]

Does the Minister accept that the reporting of crime at police counters or contact points is marginal to the argument that most of us have about the police presence in the community? People want safer neighbour teams and police to be rooted in their neighbourhoods so that they do not end up having to report to a police station at the far end of the borough and, as is usually the case, the most deprived neighbourhoods are left behind.

[Damian Green]

I have just addressed that point. There are two things: the response to crime and preventing it, and the quality of day-to-day contact. That is why finding innovative ways of placing the police regularly in parts of the community where thousands of people go may prove to be a better way of establishing those contacts than the traditional way. I have seen that in action. The other week, I was in Newport in Gwent visiting a mobile police station in a supermarket car park. People of all ages and from all backgrounds were coming up and talking to the police naturally. That is extremely important.

The matter must also be looked at against the background of falling crime. Crime in Harrow—the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) introduced the debate—is down by 1.6%. We heard an impassioned speech from the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) who must be aware that crime in Hammersmith and Fulham over the past year is down by 4.7%. In the interests of fairness, it is important to put that context in place, because the Metropolitan police are doing an extremely successful job in vast parts of the city.

I shall deal with one or two of the detailed points that have been made. Various funds that were mentioned have been rolled into the community safety fund, which is worth £90 million in 2013-14. The allocation of that within individual budgets is the responsibility of local areas, and in London the deputy Mayor. A point was made about abstraction of police constables, and overall the Met intends to increase the number of police constables.

The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) asked about the use of dead children’s identities, which of course shocked all of us—