Policing (Devon and Cornwall)

Dan Rogerson Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

I am grateful for this opportunity to raise policing in the Devon and Cornwall force area. Many people do not consider the police in detail until such time as we need to call on their support, services and advice. Complaints against the police are occasionally brought to the attention of MPs. As with all services, there is a tendency to focus on negative reports—people do not often take the trouble to come to their MP’s surgery to express their admiration and gratitude for a service—but hon. Members appreciate and are incredibly grateful for what police officers, police community support officers and police staff do in their constituencies to ensure that there is a great deterrent to crime and community engagement on tackling and resolving problems confronting that community, and that those who commit crimes are detected.

Devon and Cornwall is the largest force area in England—it is more than 180 miles from one end to the other. Fortunately, it is also one of the safest places to live and work. Recorded crime has been low in recent years in the area compared with other parts of the country, although in recent months, there are signs of a reverse in that trend. Perhaps we can expect that at times of economic hardship—sadly, we have seen crime rise in such circumstances in the past. That reverse is at an early stage, and we must keep it under close review.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that Charles Cross police station in my constituency is one of the busiest police stations—if not the busiest—in the whole of England, principally because of drug and alcohol abuse?

[Dan Rogerson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point on one of the pressures on the police. That problem requires close cross-agency working, including health and social services, and local housing officers. The police have a great demand made of them from cross-agency working and they also have a huge contribution to make.

As I was saying, Devon and Cornwall police cover a huge area. It is mix of urban areas, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out—it includes Plymouth and other larger settlements—and rural areas. Another characteristic of the force is that its officer base is at the higher end of the age profile, which is somewhat driven by the high number of transfers into the force area. That brings with it the benefit of experience and a range of skills, but it also changes the characteristics of the force. Officers have raised that with me.

Devon and Cornwall police are highly thought of: according to studies, 68.7% of those who responded said that the force was good or excellent, placing it second out of the 42 forces, and 90% expected to be treated respectfully by the police, again putting them second. As I have said, it is also one of the safest places—in fact, in the top 10—in the country.

We are, however, in a time of deficit reduction, and the Liberal Democrats and our Conservative coalition partners have signed up to doing the right thing, which is to tackle the deficit left to us by the previous Government. Sadly, no one from Her Majesty’s Opposition is with us, but they have admitted the need to tackle the deficit. Of course, though, they are now in the happy position of being able to claim that they would not make a single cut to a single service when they are being debated in isolation, while claiming that they would still tackle the deficit, if over a slightly longer period.

The Government, on the other hand, must deal with deficit reduction as it manifests itself on the ground, which means cuts in public spending. The police service, like other services, has had to bear its share, although, as was made plain to me by officers and former officers, some feel that it has been made to take more than its share of the burden of deficit reduction. In Devon and Cornwall, as in other forces, it will mean a cut in police staff—the number of officers—and therefore in the force’s ability to deliver the full range of services they have been delivering in recent years.

[Mr Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD)]

An unintended consequence that could have severe implications in Devon and Cornwall is the simultaneous cutbacks in the Ministry of Defence police force, which will put pressure on the civilian police force to move into areas that, in the past, they relied on the MOD force to police. Dartmouth is an example, and so too is Plymouth. I am extremely worried that there might be a double-whammy effect from the necessary austerity measures.

[Dan Rogerson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There has been close working between MOD police and the local constabulary, and as those pressures are brought to bear on the MOD police, changes in working practice will be inevitable.

Perhaps the cuts in Devon and Cornwall are compounded by one or two aspects of the funding formula. First, the formula does not take into account, as some other public funding formulae do, the huge influx in the number of visitors. In the summer, the population of Devon and Cornwall increases dramatically. I no longer represent the town of Newquay, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert), but I did once, and I saw at first hand the huge explosion in population. That was welcome, because of the money it brought to the local economy, but it also increased the pressure on policing.

In the health service, bills can be re-charged to primary care trusts in the areas from which patients originate. Of course, it is not so easy for the policing formula to charge local police authorities for the work carried out on behalf of citizens who happen to be in the south-west of the United Kingdom for that period. As the Government consider police funding, however, there might be an opportunity to make the base formula take that issue into account.

Secondly, there is the issue of the funding formula as currently constituted and its assessment of the funding level that each force should receive. As I understand it, Devon and Cornwall force could receive an extra £4.9 million were they to receive their full allocation, as one would expect, under the formula. The reason they do not is the damping mechanism, which ensures that forces seen to be overfunded do not lose out in short order on a lot of funding to benefit forces such as Devon and Cornwall in the correct manner. I would, however, like to see a mechanism that shows that some progress is being made on the funding due to Devon and Cornwall. If that £4.9 million were to be made available, it would equate to 100 officers, which would make a huge difference to the programme of change and to the cuts being delivered as a result of deficit reduction.

Under the area cost adjustment, areas seen to be high cost—I could stray into the controversial topic of regional pay, but I will resist the temptation—are given extra funding. This spreads out from London as one heads westward. Sadly, it peters out around Dorset, so the Devon and Cornwall force does not benefit from area cost adjustment, whereas other forces in the south-west do. Yet again, I would suggest, there is an element of unfairness there.

We face the challenges of policing across a diverse, geographically widespread peninsular environment, the funding for which is, sadly, deficient in a number of respects. I fully accept that this is an historic issue—it is one that this Government have inherited, but I look to them to consider some of the issues so that they might be resolved in the future.

The cuts manifest themselves in planned cuts to the sworn officer base from 3,580 in 2010 to 2,810 in 2015—a 21.5% reduction, with 700 fewer officers. At the same time, there is a reduction in police staff of about 500. This puts pressure on the ability to deliver such services as specialist traffic police and accident investigation—not during the middle of the day, but perhaps over weekends and late at night, reducing the ability to examine the scene of an accident in detail. We could be looking at some reduction in the excellent community policing performed by the neighbourhood teams, and another stretched resource is response cover. That is particularly challenging in rural areas, as response times can be affected when areas are stretched. There are also more specialist areas of work—in diversity, for example—and there will inevitably be a reduction in the vehicle fleet infrastructure and estate. As I said earlier, we accept that some of these cuts had to come because of the strategy for dealing with deficit reduction. It is important, however, to look at how we can support the chief constable and those who have to deal with these issues on the ground.

It would be fair to say that, because of the financial challenges, police morale is pretty low. They are doing a fantastic job, but they are concerned about the future of the service and about their own careers. A few months ago, I attended a meeting in Launceston—I pronounce it that way for the benefit of those taking notes of our proceedings—and more recently in Bodmin, when I had discussions with a number of officers who work on the front line. They are feeling it pretty hard at the moment. They are concerned about the level of reduction in the number of officers and about one or two other changes under consideration at the moment and how they might impact on them.

Let me refer briefly to the pensions issue; it is not my main focus this evening, but as with those working in public services elsewhere, this is a matter of concern—particularly to officers who have served for some time and are worried that things might change during their period of service. With the Winsor review in mind, there is concern about pay, particularly about how a mechanism based on incremental points and length of service is going to be changed, while a skills threshold will also be introduced. For someone at the top of the constable scale, that could represent a reduction in pay if they do not qualify for the skills threshold. In the longer term, there is the problem of moving towards a different framework, while those serving for some time are also worried about possible loss of earnings through a structural change that does not reflect their policing career and their abilities.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

Police officers have raised such concerns with me as well. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that he disagrees with the Winsor proposals, or does he accept that such measures are necessary to modernise and reform the police force and make it more responsive to the needs of today?

[Dan Rogerson]

I bow to the hon. Gentleman’s understanding. He may be more of an expert on these issues than I am. However, I have been guided by discussions with serving officers, among whom there is a range of opinion. Some feel strongly that the status quo should continue, while others are open and sympathetic to change as long as it reflects performance and the reality with which they live from day to day. They fear that the proposed reforms may not entirely pass that test. I wanted to share the views of those local officers with the House for the Minister’s benefit.

One issue that has been brought to my attention is that of the starting salary, which will rise as a trainee moves towards becoming a constable, but may still be lower—at least at the beginning—than that of a police community support officer. Points have been made about their respective roles. There is also the issue of unsocial hours. It has been pointed out to me that the new way of rewarding officers for working at night may create perverse incentives. For example, officers who had been rostered to do evening work for which they were to have been be rewarded might be worse off if some of those hours were shifted to the daytime so that they could make a court appearance. That strikes me as a rather strange state of affairs.

We are understandably asking the police service, as we are asking other public services, to bear down on cost and deliver the most efficient service possible, and to deal with cuts in numbers. We should ensure that other changes that we are calling on the service to make at the same time pass the test—that they constitute the most efficient use of resources, that they will provide incentives and rewards for good performance, and that they will not act as a disincentive and further undermine the morale of the service.

The key points that I hope that the Minister will take on board relate to funding. The damping mechanism means that some areas are being overfunded and some underfunded, a process with which we are all too familiar in Devon and Cornwall in the context of other public services. There is also the issue of the area cost adjustment versus the huge costs of delivering a service across a rural area such as ours.

Given all the changes that we are asking police forces to make in order to bring about some kind of modernisation of the service, I should like to be reassured that we are listening closely to those on the ground who will have to live with those changes, so that we maintain their trust and good will. We are very fortunate to have a band of officers who are committed, who want to make a real difference in their communities, and who want to protect the public and community safety. I hope that when we reach the end of this period of change, we shall have a police service that is fit for purpose and does the best that it possibly can with the resources that we are able to give it, but which also motivates its members to give of their best.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Dan Rogerson Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mike Crockart]

I will make it very clear that I do not support the hon. Gentleman’s proposal, although there is an outstanding question and some further work is required. Employment law would look on the ability to dismiss someone without an appeal as being dubious at best, so there is possibly a legal aspect to look at. However, when we look at the powers in the Bill on the suspension and removal of chief constables, we see that the situation is not quite as simple as the hon. Gentleman makes out. It is not just a case of the police and crime commissioner wanting to get rid of the chief constable and his being gone the next day. A long, public process—six weeks—is kicked off, involving the panel, notifications and representations.

I do not believe for a second that any police and crime commissioner would set out on such an open and public process without a very strong case for the dismissal of a chief constable. To do so would lay the commissioner open to a very high level of public scrutiny. I cannot see a publicly elected official opening themselves up to that level of scrutiny without sufficient cause. The process that the Bill lays out will effectively stop that situation ever arising.

To conclude, the Bill brings public accountability of the policing function out from the shadows. Community safety, and the fight against crime and disorder, deserve nothing less.

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart), who has followed this Bill throughout its passage. He served on the Public Bill Committee, as did other right hon. and hon. Members who are in the Chamber, and he has clearly devoted a huge amount of thought over recent weeks and months to what aspects of the Bill need to be amended. Given that I am arriving at this late stage of the debate, I am grateful for the benefit of his thoughts, just as I am grateful to other hon. Members for their contributions.

My hon. Friend referred to his work with the Plain English Campaign on simplifying the language of financial products and so on. For new Members and perhaps those of us who are less familiar with speaking in debates on Lords amendments, he also pointed out how important it is to ensure that we get our terminology right. In that light, I am rising to speak to amendment (a) to Lords amendment 80, which is in my name and those of my hon. Friends. Other Cornwall Members who are in the Chamber are very sympathetic to the proposal, although their names are not appended to it, and we heard another hon. Member raise this issue at Question Time.

The hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), with whom I had the pleasure of spending some time to discuss the Academies Act 2010, said that he did not want to intrude on any private grief in Devon and Cornwall. I can assure him that it is not grief, and nor is it private—we are here discussing the matter in public. It will not come as a surprise to him or anyone else that concerns have been raised in Cornwall, which is represented by a unitary authority that brought together the functions of the previous six district councils and Cornwall county council to form one body. The concern is that, as of right, we would have only one representative on the police and crime panel or crime and police panel—whichever way round it goes.

[Nick Herbert]

Police and crime.

[Dan Rogerson]

I defer to the right hon. Gentleman, who has lived and breathed the panels for a long time.

As we have heard, in neighbouring Devon, where they still have district councils, every council will get representation on the panel, as I understand it, regardless of the huge disparities in population between some of the smaller district councils in Devon and the Cornish unitary authority and the unitary authorities in Torbay and Plymouth—the major city on our peninsula. The message coming strongly from members of the public and elected representatives—in the form of Cornwall councillors—is that they are deeply dissatisfied that this issue has not been resolved to the point where they feel that all areas are getting equal representation. I am sympathetic to that.

The Minister has set out, very helpfully, the possibility of using co-option. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) said, that has been pressed for a while, and I am delighted that the Government have responded by allowing this flexibility so that local circumstances can be accommodated. We are familiar with the police authority model—I accept that it is a different type of body—under which geographical areas are represented. We want to ensure a range of views on those bodies, and co-option has been used to ensure that people from different backgrounds, for example, are represented on those organisations. That is important. Before the census this year, people in Cornwall pressed for the opportunity to recognise their Cornish identity and for it to be enumerated in the census. I was delighted when a friend of mine sent me a picture of her son’s data-monitoring form in Hertfordshire, where they were able to circle “White, Cornish”.

I am departing from the point a little, but I am merely trying to make the point that those of us in Cornwall who are proud of our Cornish identity would not want to feel that we were being given less of an opportunity to put our point across than our neighbours in the most westerly English county, Devon. Amendment (a) would give a bit more of a steer on how the power of co-option could be used to ensure that such concerns are dealt with. I do not think that the amendment goes far enough to reassure everybody in Cornwall that there is equality of opportunity in seeking representation on the panel, but given where we are in the passage of the Bill, it is as far as we can go while still being in order, given what is in Lords amendment 80.

I want to ask the Minister about the Secretary of State’s discretion to approve or not to approve the pattern of co-option that members of a panel put to her. Clearly she could decide to reject a series of proposed co-options on the basis that they did not reflect adequately the geographical make-up of that policing area. The Minister pointed that out, helpfully, although I hope that it would not be necessary. As the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) said, we would hope that the members of the panel who were there as of right would seek automatically to use the power of co-option constructively to secure proper representation. Hypothetically, however, should they not do so but instead seek further to entrench the position of their communities with regard to the make-up of the panel, it would be reassuring to know that the Secretary of State could have regard to the need to secure equality and therefore reject the co-options.

However, it occurs to me that were such a panel happy not to alter the geographic balance, it might simply not put forward any co-options at all. That is the fear, although we are dealing with a hypothetical situation, and I imagine—indeed, I hope—that, as the hon. Lady said, those appointed under the Bill as it stands would not seek to do that, but would listen to our debate today and to the debate out there in the community, and would reassure people by using the power of co-option in the way that the Minister has suggested would be helpful. Therefore, my question for the Minister is: if those panels decided not to go down the co-option route, what message could be sent to say that the Secretary of State would be looking to them to act in that way? What discussions might the local authorities have among themselves prior to the constitution of the panel to address some of those concerns?

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend is making a comprehensive and thorough argument for the depth of feeling of people in Cornwall. He is getting to the essence of the issue, which is that we would prefer to have our positions in Cornwall by right, along with our colleagues from Devon and the Isles of Scilly. Therefore, our great desire is to have it made crystal clear this evening—so far we have been unable to achieve this—that we will have our positions by right and that the Secretary of State will make every effort to ensure that we truly are represented fairly on that panel.

[Dan Rogerson]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She is absolutely right, and that is the reassurance that people in Cornwall are looking for. Our amendment (a) to Lords amendment 80 is an attempt again to put on record the strength of feeling and the concerns that exist.

There is a wider point, which is that occasionally there are anomalies in legislation—this has applied to Governments historically—which, by their nature, will not apply to the vast majority of cases and are therefore not felt to be at the heart of what that piece of legislation is trying to do. However, as we—I hope—move as a country down the route of localism, where different authorities perhaps decide to take on different responsibilities and powers, it is important that we should have different ways of working locally and that legislation be drafted to take account of that. Perhaps that could be done through secondary legislation, to address specific examples such as Cornwall. I appreciate that there is a concern about time—the Minister will want to move towards the elections for police commissioners, and therefore the appointment of panels—but where only one or two specific areas are affected, following them up through such legislation might be a better approach. It might be too late to do that in this legislation, given how it is drafted, but the message for the Government generally is that, as we have different systems in different parts of the country, we should take the opportunity to pick that up and deal with them separately without holding back the overall thrust of legislation as it applies to the country as a whole.

I am grateful to the Minister for responding to that concern—he has corresponded with people back in Cornwall about the issue. However, I seek a reassurance from him that should the panel not to seek to co-opt, there will be a direction from the Secretary of State or some discussion with the local authorities involved to ensure that the debates that have taken place outside and inside this House—those that we have had this evening, as well as over previous months, in other stages of the Bill’s progress—are taken into account, so that people are reassured and we can proceed to a panel in which people can have every confidence.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friends the Members for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) and for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart). I wish to speak to Lords amendments 69 and 98. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West is leaving the Chamber, but I would just like to tell him that I enjoyed his contributions in Committee, and that when I was on a Home Affairs Committee trip to Turkey, I spent several long bus journeys reading his voluminous contributions, including those on Lords amendment 68. He put the case for the panel being able to veto certain mechanisms with a two-thirds, rather than three-quarters, majority. I was persuaded by his arguments, and I welcome the fact that Ministers have now adopted those proposals.

Police Grant Report

Dan Rogerson Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

I want to clarify something about the deficit from the outset. Labour Members clearly recognise that something had to be done about the deficit, which is why we set out plans to halve it over four years and looked at other areas to see where we could increase growth. What we have here is a Government—a Liberal Democrat-Conservative Government—deciding to cut the deficit harder and faster. That is a choice that the Government have made. In doing so, they are choosing dramatically to take out of the public finances investment that could contribute in some ways to our growth. By taking that money away—whether from local authorities, the police or other agencies—as they have chosen to do, they put us at a greater risk, as many people are now saying, of a double-dip recession. They are also relying on a 40% increase in exports to make up the difference as a contribution to growth. That is the dividing line here. Perhaps the reason why the Liberal Democrat-Tory coalition wants to cut so hard and so fast is that down the road in five years’ time there will be a general election and they want to be able to offer tax cuts to gain re-election. That is really what is going on here.

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

I am interested in the right hon. Lady’s case. What she is effectively saying is that a future Labour Government would have introduced cuts, but not quite yet. Then she criticises the way in which this Government have chosen to tackle the debt. What she is saying is not that her Government would never make cuts, but that they would not make them yet. As we got closer to a general election, her Government would have done the same thing. What she says is absolute nonsense.

[Caroline Flint]

I direct the hon. Gentleman to the £2.6 million of cuts that his area is going to face. There are choices to be made. We said that we would cut the deficit by half over four years, but your Government are suggesting that we go faster and harder, posing the risk of going back into recession, putting more people out of work and affecting employment in both the public and private sectors. We will watch very carefully to see whether the outcomes that you have chosen to pursue are really in the best interests of the country.