Police

David Ruffley Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I believe that chief constables—including, notably, the chief constable of Cheshire—are committed to maintaining the quality of their front-line service, and to finding new ways of delivering that service, in the light of the reduced resource that they confront.

The police do important, often difficult and sometimes dangerous work, and we should continue to value police officers and staff. I appreciate that changes to pay and pensions are difficult for them, but reform is necessary. The changes in police pay will not reduce basic pay, and, crucially, will help to protect police jobs, keep officers on the streets, and fight crime. Together, the changes in pay and conditions will save half a billion pounds a year on top of HMIC’s savings.

The second way in which savings beyond those identified by HMIC can be achieved is through forces working together, harnessing their collective buying power and rationalising where duplication is wasteful and inefficient. The 43 forces of England and Wales have between them 2,000 different IT systems and 300 data centres, and employ 5,000 staff, yet—as officers frequently tell me—the IT systems in forces are still not good enough. We are therefore enabling forces to introduce better, more cost- effective IT arrangements, for instance through the proposed new ICT company.

[Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

In the context of smarter and better procurement, can the Minister give us an update on the HMIC figure, which suggested that if all the 43 forces were as efficient procurers as the most efficient, £1.5 billion a year could be saved?

[Nick Herbert]

My hon. Friend has made a good point. HMIC savings were predicated on forces becoming as efficient as the average. One of the points that the Government have been making is that there is no reason why we should not raise force performance to the level of the best. That is not some arbitrary target; we know that some forces are already achieving greater efficiency. We believe that there is potential for at least £180 million of savings per annum through ICT. Forces have already made substantial savings. Police spend was some £73 million lower last year than in 2009-10, and there are opportunities for forces to go further. We are using the national buying power of the police service—indeed, the whole public sector—to do things better and more cheaply. We are requiring the police to procure more and more equipment together. Those changes alone could save a further £200 million per annum by 2014-15.

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[Nick Herbert]

If the right hon. Lady agreed with that herself, why does she remain committed to these 20% cuts? That is what she is committed to: the HMIC savings plus the pay savings, the procurement savings, and the savings her shadow police Minister has identified through overtime. All of that adds up to far more than 12%. [Interruption.] She is shaking her head in denial, but that is the truth of the matter. The Opposition are pretending that they are not committed to the same level of cuts, but when pushed, they have to admit that they are. Police officers will know it, and the public will know it. The Opposition cannot credibly campaign against cuts when they remain committed to these levels of reductions in spending themselves.

[Mr Ruffley]

According to the House of Commons Library, if we take the spending review presumption that police authorities will choose to increase the precept at the level forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility, there will not be a 20% reduction by 2015; instead, there will be only a 14% reduction in real terms.

[Nick Herbert]

My hon. Friend is, of course, right. If forces choose to increase the precept, under the OBR expectation, the reduction would be less than 20%. Even if all forces froze the precept for the next three years, the reductions in police force budgets would be less than 20%. There is not a single force in the country that is facing a 20% reduction in budget. This is another way in which the Opposition either fail to understand what is going on or seek to present a different picture to the public.

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[Yvette Cooper]

I am afraid that the Policing Minister is living in fantasy land. His figures simply do not add up, because 16,000 police officers are going as a result of his plans. We have made it clear that pay restraint was built into the Labour Government’s proposals from the beginning and we have supported it since; we need pay restraint to deliver the 12% savings. But if we want to protect the number of police officers, we need to have 12% savings and not 20% savings.

The Minister will also know that when HMIC carried out its report that projected that 16,000 officers would be lost, the pay freeze he introduced was already in place. So HMIC has taken into account his pay freeze in saying that 16,000 officers would go and front-line services would be hit. That is happening across the country.

The right hon. Gentleman needs to get in touch with what is happening in police forces across the country, because his coalition partners and Back Benchers are. What are they saying? Across the country—from London to Lancashire, from Norfolk to Devon—MPs are campaigning against cuts and against station closures. Listen to this, from an MP campaigning to stop station closures:

“With well-known faces out on the beat, and a high police visibility, residents clearly feel safer, and crime goes down. Residents…value and cherish their local police team, and don’t want to see their numbers cut.”

That is no rogue Back Bencher straying from the line—that was the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone). I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker, because I did not notify the hon. Lady that I was going to refer to something that she, as a Home Office Minister, had said, which is a convention I like to respect. I had expected, however, that Home Office Ministers would be on the Front Bench to support the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, but it turns out that the Home Secretary cannot even convince her own team, never mind the country, that what she is doing to the police is right.

By the way, where is the Home Secretary? Where is she, on the day that she expects Parliament to vote for the biggest annual cut to police funding for generations?

[Mr Ruffley]

I respect the right hon. Lady, but she must be aware—her memory cannot be failing her that much—that throughout the previous Parliament, the Minister of State responsible for policing always opened this debate and the shadow Minister, which was a post I held for a time, always responded. She knows that full well.

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman will also know that in the previous Parliament the Government were not introducing the biggest cut to policing for generations and not taking responsibility for it. Last year, when a Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government introduced the biggest cuts to council funding in a generation, the Secretary of State came to the House to debate it and to defend it. The Home Secretary has not done the same.

The Home Secretary has a history of hiding. Yesterday, she had to be forced to the House to tell us what she was doing about Abu Qatada, and when our borders were breached, she went to ground. We have not seen her do a proper TV or radio interview for nearly six months. She is hiding from the media and hiding from this House. We miss her. We have hardly seen her since her conference fiasco with Catgate. I know she is keen on all things feline, but even Macavity used to appear once in a while. We urge her to come back. Once again, we are left with the poor old Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, with his smokescreens and his fantasy figures—hung out to dry by the Home Secretary again.

The Minister obviously has not been talking to the Prime Minister, because today the Prime Minister claimed that the proportion of front-line police officers has increased. Today we heard from the Minister that the number of front-line officers might be cut, but the Prime Minister said that the proportion has increased. That is not true, is it? I ask the Minister to confirm whether he believes it is true that the proportion of front-line police officers has increased.

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[Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

Speaking as a former special adviser to the Home Secretary at the time of the Sheehy reforms in the 1990s and as a shadow police Minister in the previous Parliament, I think it is worth putting on record that policing is about leadership and that leadership from the top at the Home Office has indeed been supplied by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and her deputy, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice. They have shown a great deal of skill in negotiating a very difficult settlement for the police. The Winsor review has been an important contribution to getting more for less from the police budget. One does not have to talk up the Home Secretary’s book on this; the facts are quite clear. Part 1 of Winsor, which went to arbitration, has gone through with the support now of the Police Federation, and that is no mean feat.

I shall not spend too much time rebutting the number crunching of the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). Even her own party accepts that there must be constraints on public spending, and that extends to the police force. Why? Because as a result of the economic crash in the previous Parliament, this country is now spending £120 million a day on debt interest alone. That cannot go on and public spending control is something that any responsible Government would have to put in place. The police force and the public understand that stark fact. I have yet to meet a police officer or a constituent who thinks the country can afford significant real-terms increases in police services.

On the total Government grants before us today, we see that the reduction in Government funding including specific grant allocations will be 4% in 2011-12 and 5% in 2012-13. They will be lower in 2013-14 at 2% and lower still in 2014-15 with a 1% reduction. Across local government there has been a reduction in the amount of funding allocated to specific grants, and some of the specific grants that police authorities have historically been used to receiving, such as the crime fighting fund and the basic command unit fund, have been absorbed into the police main grant.

Let us not forget that real-terms gross revenue had increased every year from 1996-97 to 2007-08. Those were very big sustained year-on-year increases. Sadly, they were spending increases that were allocated when we did not have the money on a sustainable basis. It was a boom time in the economy and the previous Government were spending money that they did not have.

[Andrew Percy]

My hon. Friend refers to the increases in spending in central Government grant, but does he recognise that much of the increase in spending locally came directly from local taxpayers through massive increases in the police precept—in my area 500% over the course of the previous Government—and that, similarly, is not sustainable and fair on local people?

[Mr Ruffley]

Council tax as a proportion of the total police spend that all police authorities have will be about a quarter for 2011. It was half that—12%—in 2001-02, so the statistics bear out the experience that my hon. Friend has had in his police authority.

Returning to the historical increases, there was another interesting statistic that the Home Affairs Committee calculated. Between 2000 and 2008 the real-terms increase in total police spending was a whacking 20%, so I suggest, and I am sure Government Members would agree, that the police are looking at historically high real-terms spending figures over the past 10 years, compared with what they have ever had in the past. The shadow Policing Minister is chuntering from a sedentary position. Does he want to intervene?

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He will know that there was a 43% reduction in the number of crimes and the number of victims over that time. The two might well be related.

[Mr Ruffley]

I do not agree with the rather heroic numbers that the right hon. Gentleman gives for falls in crime, and I would not necessarily attribute that to brilliant Government policy. I would attribute it to hard work by police officers on the ground. He claims too much for himself, but that is not untypical of Labour politicians.

Funding was made available in the spending review to help police authorities deliver a council tax freeze in 2011-12. Should every authority participate in the freeze, it is estimated that they will receive a total of around £75 million in each of the next four years to compensate for the income that they would otherwise have raised from council tax increases, and funding for this is pencilled into the settlement.

Before moving on from the national police totals, I want to touch briefly on the claim made by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford that this is a 20% cut—she is obviously trying to get the soundbite off the runway. I think that she was referring to the published grant totals, but were she to look at total police spending and not just the grant figures, which means putting council tax into the equation and taking into account the Office for Budget Responsibility’s assumptions on forecast levels, she would see that the total police budget will clearly reduce spending by the end of this Parliament not by 20%, but by 14%, which is much nearer the 12% figure she coughed up for Labour’s plans. Therefore, we are not too far apart if we look at everything, rather than just the bits of the financial equation she was inducing us to look at. She gave us only half the picture.

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

My hon. Friend, in making his case, properly draws attention to the 14% real-terms cut, but does he recognise that, because of the pay freeze and reforms to police terms and conditions, the actual cut to policing services will be significantly less?

[Mr Ruffley]

I certainly do. My right hon. Friend the Policing Minister gave a tour de force earlier when he explained in detail exactly how we might achieve more for just a little less spending. I reinforce the fact that between 2000 and 2008 there were heroic real-terms increases, and they have not gone away. We are not wiping away from the baseline the very high totals that were accrued, sadly, on the back of money that we subsequently discovered the country did not really have. Nevertheless, this is by no means some hacking-off-of-limbs strategy, and I think that it does a disservice to a grown-up debate to suggest that it is a bleeding-stump strategy.

I would like to say something about my local police force in Suffolk. Suffolk has the second lowest cost per head for policing out of the 43 forces in this country. It has an historically low crime rate, because by and large we are a very civilised and well-behaved county, which is why I am particularly proud to represent a Suffolk constituency. I acknowledge that the chief constable, Simon Ash, with whom I have a fruitful and friendly dialogue, is concerned about the effect that the spending constraints we are considering will have on his force. I do not agree with him, but it might be useful to remind ourselves of the composition of police spending in Suffolk.

The general grant from the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government to Suffolk for 2011-12 was £76.9 million. Specific grants added to that were £4.4 million. The council tax precept was £41.4 million, and fees and other charges were £6.4 million. That means that just over £129 million was spent in the current financial year on keeping Suffolk safe. The savings that the force has made in the past two years are quite instructive. The actual savings for 2010-11 totalled £2.6 million—consider that as a percentage of the £129 million spent overall last year—and the forecast annual savings for the current financial year are even higher, at £3.9 million. Projected savings for the four years from 2012-13 to 2015-16 are as follows: £7.3 million, £3.7 million, 2.3 million and £0.9 million.

Approximately 60% of the savings in Suffolk over the comprehensive spending review period will be achieved through collaborative working and better procurement, particularly with Norfolk constabulary. That really bears out the statements that my right hon. Friend the Policing Minister made earlier. Suffolk is finding 60% of the savings not through vicious head count cuts to uniformed officers—over half the savings are the result of smarter thinking, which I think should have been done before now. In the last Parliament the totemic collaborative project was between Essex and Kent, which was the example everyone cited, but the Norfolk and Suffolk model undoubtedly equals that, because it is delivering the savings that should have been delivered many years ago.

What about the number of uniformed officers? This is extremely politically sensitive—some might even say toxic—and much has been made of it by Opposition Members and Front Benchers. To provide some perspective, in my police authority area the number of full-time equivalent uniformed officers, as at 31 March 2009, was 1,291. At March 2010 it was 1,246 officers, and in March 2011 it was 1,241. The next set of figures is quite instructive. The chief constable argues that by 31 March 2015, if the one-year council tax freeze grant is accepted from April this year, the number of uniformed officers will be 1,189. Even if the council tax freeze grant is accepted, he predicts a reduction from 1,241 to 1,189. He says that if a council tax increase is approved from April 2012, the reduction would be fewer than 10 officers. If we go the council tax increase route, the number will fall from 1,241 to 1,232. He is arguing, as he has said in the regional press, that there will be a reduction in the number of police officers in Suffolk.

The figures are not hugely welcome from my point of view, because I believe neither that we should increase council tax in Suffolk, nor that the chief constable needs to reduce the number of officers by the magnitude he suggests, and he argues that officers will have to be lost whichever route is taken. I firmly believe, and agree with the Government, that visible policing is not a direct function of the numbers alone. There is not a positive correlation of one between the number of officers and excellent policing.

The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford was perfectly right to say that we needed 16,000 officers on the streets when the London riots were at their zenith, but those were, by and large, extraordinary events. We certainly did not necessarily need more police officers in order to get 16,000 on the streets. Many of us thought that rather bad management by the then leadership of the Met meant that it took three days or so to get 16,000 uniformed officers on the street. They existed, as we have more than 140,000 uniformed officers in Great Britain, so getting 16,000 Met officers on the street was not purely a numbers game; they were there already.

[Andrew Percy]

The shadow Home Secretary’s local chief constable at the time of the riots said that the issue was not about numbers, and he went on local TV to say that he had no issue with numbers and had, in fact, got enough numbers to “invade a small country”. Those were his exact words, on Yorkshire TV.

[Mr Ruffley]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

If the hon. Gentleman is so clear in his mind that the number of police on the streets does not necessarily correlate with the effective combat of crime, will he explain why the Liberal Democrat election manifesto—I realise he was not responsible for it—promised 3,000 more police on the streets?

[Mr Ruffley]

I am delighted to respond to both points.

First, I did not say that the number of police officers on the streets does not matter, but I will make it clear that the number of uniformed officers in any force does not equate to the number of police officers on the street; we absolutely can have more visible police hours on the street with a theoretically smaller number of police officers, and I shall explain how that comes about. Let me repeat: we can have more visible police hours on the street with fewer officers than we have now, and if the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton will bear with me, I will explain to the House how that is possible.

Secondly, on the Liberal Democrat manifesto, let me say why the party political to-ing and fro-ing is not terribly productive or profitable. The right hon. Gentleman’s party is campaigning—it would appear, from today’s debate—against the reductions in policing, which, it says, are cutting the number of uniformed officers and really will not do, but I just remind him of what the previous Labour Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), said on “The Daily Politics” just before the election. When he was asked whether Labour could guarantee that the number of police officers would not fall if it formed the next Government, he replied really rather elegantly, that no, he could not guarantee that police officer numbers would not fall. Most of us have a great deal of respect for the right hon. Gentleman, who has one other virtue, which is clear honesty. He was not guaranteeing that more officers would be paid for if Labour won the election; he was not even promising that the same number would be retained.

I shall explain briefly what I mean by “visible hours on the street”. There is a shocking statistic from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary—it was true under the previous Government and was still true last year—and it is that at any one time only 11% of the police officers in this country, of whom there are more than 140,000, are available for visible policing on the street. That is an amazing statistic: only one in 10.

The question is, how can we get more police visible on the street, given that there are more than 140,000 of them? There are two ways. First, we should reduce bureaucracy. Now, I do not suggest for one second that reducing bureaucracy will make up for the current tough public spending round, but the Government have already taken incredible steps in their first 18 months in office. They have abolished the policing pledge, the public service agreement targets, more than three dozen key performance indicators, the fatuous local area agreement targets and the stop and account form, which in fairness the previous Government had also proposed.

The current Government have also streamlined stop and search procedures. In addition, they have made changes to health and safety, and in addition to that they have abolished the quite nonsensical target, which police thought unnecessary, of drug tests for 95% of those arrested on trigger offences. That is quite an impressive reduction of bureaucracy in a first few months, and there is more.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the introduction of police and crime commissioners will also bring more rigorous oversight to police budgets? From the perspective of north Yorkshire, where our local police authority spent £250,000 on legal proceedings against the chief constable, that will be a welcome move later this year.

[Mr Ruffley]

I am confident—it is my hope and, indeed, expectation—that with one person we will engender a greater and sharper sense of focus and accountability, which we lack under the current regime of 17-person police authorities.

[Mark Reckless]

Is my hon. Friend also aware that in a unanimous report the Home Affairs Committee came to the same conclusion, supported I believe by its five Labour members, that a single elected individual, instead of a diffuse police authority, will increase the focus on finding savings and is likely to drive out costs in policing?

[Mr Ruffley]

Yes, and to those who say that a single individual will not necessarily have the skills to provide leadership and to be a good manager and forensic accountant, the straightforward rebuttal is that one would expect someone who was going to be up for re-election after four years to have their mind focused on what the electorate wanted and to bring in people who could help with that work. At the end of the day, the mandate given to an individual, and the knowledge that they are accountable to the people, should certainly focus the mind—not the minds of 17 people in a diffuse police authority, but the mind of one individual, who will certainly be accountable as police authorities are not so accountable at the moment.

On the ways in which a smaller number—not a hugely smaller number—of officers can deliver more police hours, I must say that they will be required to spend less time during the average shift in a police station and more time visibly on the streets. I have said that reducing bureaucracy is one way in which we can square that circle, but the Government’s future work, which I know my right hon. Friend the Policing Minister is driving forward personally, involves a streamlined crime recording procedure. The previous Government undertook such work, to which I shall be generous and pay tribute.

The four-force pilot involving Leicestershire, West Midlands, Shropshire and Surrey created a more streamlined and time-efficient way of recording incidents, with police officers given the discretion, over a certain range of offences, to write shorter reports. I should like to see that regime become absolutely standard throughout the 43 forces, so it would be useful to hear how many have adopted it.

There is more to be done on rolling back statutory charging. It is ridiculous that for quite a slew of offences a charging sergeant has to ring up the Crown Prosecution Service to get permission on some triable-either-way offences. It is fair to say that—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I am very concerned that the hon. Gentleman is in danger of taking more time than the Front Benchers. That is not good for all those hon. Members who have waited a long time. We are on a time limited debate, which finishes at 3.47 pm and we have another 10 speakers to get in, so I hope that he is now coming to the end.

[Mr Ruffley]

I take note of what you have said, Mr Deputy Speaker, and shall bring my remarks to a conclusion; they were coming to a conclusion anyway.

The second way in which we can get the police to spend more hours visible and out there, so that people are aware that they are around, is greater collaboration. I will not repeat some of the initiatives that the Government—this Home Secretary, this Policing Minister —have driven forward, but that work goes ahead in Suffolk, delivering the efficiency savings that can be ploughed back into the front line. As I said, the savings could amount to £1.5 billion out of the total police budget if all the forces became as efficient as the currently most efficient one. That money could be ploughed back into the front line to obviate the need for any significant reduction in uniformed officers.

The message must go forth from this debate that in a tough economic climate, the spending reductions against historically high levels of police funding are not fatal to the fight against crime. The police must do more with less. The public want them to; they want the police to spend more time on the streets and less time behind their desks. In that spirit of cheerful optimism, I commend the Government’s policy and announcement today.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I will now have to put a time limit on speeches. I am sorry to hon. Members waiting to speak; they must take the matter up with others. There is now to be a 10-minute limit, although that might have to be reduced.

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[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

In August, Birmingham was hard hit by outrageous and unacceptable behaviour that saw communities terrorised, but led by our admirable chief constable, Chris Sims, police officers restored order. They were truly heroic. They were the thin blue line protecting communities from rioting and robbery.

What was absolutely wrong, however, was Conservative Ministers returning from holiday in their Bermuda shorts seeking to take the credit despite having had nothing to do with the work of restoring order to the streets. What was absolutely wrong was crazy talk about baton rounds, water cannon and bringing in the army, which would have led to a downward spiral into yet further violence. The police were right to reject such nonsense and instead defend the British model of community policing. They, themselves, have learned painful lessons from history, from Scarman, through Macpherson and onwards, that we can only police the community with the support of the community. It was Chris Sims who said that had it not been for that support, his officers would have struggled to restore order.

When Labour was in government, we, together with the police, made a real difference—they, on the one hand, evolving that unique model of British community policing, and us, on the other hand, investing in the police service, resulting in nearly 20,000 additional police officers and 16,000 extra police community support officers. The consequence was a 43% reduction in crime. We were the first Government in history to leave office with crime falling rather than rising.

What is also absolutely wrong—I ask Government Members to search their conscience on this—is to break a promise. The Liberal Democrat Leader said, “Vote for me and you will have 3,000 extra police officers on the beat.” Not one Conservative Member went to his or her constituents and said, “Vote for me and I’ll cut the number of police officers on the beat.”

The consequences in the west midlands are serious. Twelve hundred police officers are going. We have heard some creative accounting and fantasy figures, but may we return to the real world of what is happening at the sharp end? Some 634 officers have gone already, most of them forced out under regulation A19, and among them are some of the most outstanding police officers in Birmingham and Britain. There is Tim Kennedy, a detective with one of the best records of tackling acquisitive crime and a high detection rate; Tony Fisher, who put away, first, a robber who had stolen from pensioners at cash points for 13 years and then a machete-wielding robber of local shops for 17 years; Dave Hewitt, an outstanding neighbourhood sergeant; and Mark Stokes, the acknowledged national expert in designing out crime on our streets and estates. Sixteen officers are going from the counter-terrorism squad, including the head of counter-terrorism and the head of crime. All are being forced out against their will. They are some of the best officers I have had the privilege of working with—I am proud to call them friends—but they are being forced out at the age of 48 or 49.

To add insult to injury, some of the officers forced out under A19 were approached after the riots by G4S, which was brought in to help deal with the post-riots investigations, and asked whether they would like to come back and work as a police officer once again, but this time for G4S, actually costing the taxpayer more. We also had some absurdities, such as when the community in Quinton was told, “We’ll no longer be able to keep open the front office”—where the public come in and interface with the police—“but perhaps we could, if you were prepared to man the police station yourselves.” Where will it end? Next the Government will be asking local communities to arrest criminals themselves.

We have heard repeatedly from the Government—I quote the Home Secretary—that “We can make all these savings while protecting the front line.” However, let me set out what we have discovered is actually happening on the ground, right now, in the west midlands. Thirty-two front-line police officers—some of the best still serving—have been taken off the front line and put into the back room, because the police are having to cope with cuts on an unprecedented scale and at an unprecedented speed. As a consequence, there are two detectives in Birmingham South who are off the front line and into the back office; three in Sutton Coldfield—off the front line, into the back office; four in Birmingham South, Bournville neighbourhood—off the front line, into the back office; four in Coventry—off the front line, into the back office; eight in Dudley—off the front line, into the back office; and 11 in Solihull—off the front line, into the back office. They include one officer, in Birmingham South, Bournville, who has been taken off the front line and put into a back office to do filing, in the post-riots filing system.

[Mr Ruffley]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman, and I do not doubt that those movements to the back office have been made, but that is exactly the kind of thing that the Government think is wrong. I wonder whether he could share with us the explanation of the chief constable, who is ultimately answerable for that movement of uniformed officers into the back office.

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). Both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) spoke passionately about their local areas. Notwithstanding the debate over police numbers, I think we all recognise the huge amount of work being done at a local level. I shall start with a couple of local issues, before moving on to the wider national issues.

On the situation in Leicestershire, we will sadly see a reduction in the police grant of almost £4 million. When I spoke to Chief Constable Simon Cole this morning, he talked about a very complicated formula that first gave us the money but then took it away because of the damping element. He, like every police force, will struggle to meet the ambitions that he and others have to achieve the reductions that the Government have put in place.

Last Saturday’s events, when the English Defence League marched through Leicester, remind us that police authorities struggle not only because of the reductions but because of events occurring that cannot be predicted. I want to pay tribute to Simon Cole and to Leicester’s mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, for how they handled that march. The EDL is not welcome in Leicester, but it was given the opportunity to march because we believe in the fundamental principles of freedom of speech. The fact is that the 2,000 police officers who came out on to the streets will cost £800,000. With the possibility of an EDL march in Leeds, the people of Leeds—in the end, it is the taxpayer who will pay—are going to have to pay another large sum. When I intervened on the Minister, I know he said that applications for a special grant can be made, and we will ask him to help us with these costs, because these are not costs of our making; we had to police that demonstration.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington alluded to the recent riots, which reminded me that local police forces have been left with a shortfall. I have figures for the Metropolitan police. I am told that costs under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886 will be £198 million, with a further £78 million for operational policing costs; yet the Home Office will pay only £100 million and £52.7 million for the policing costs, so there is a shortfall of about £20 million for the Metropolitan police. I hope that the Minister will give some reassurance to areas such as Birmingham, and to a lesser extent to Leicester, where there were disorders rather than huge riots, but most particularly to London, that help will be forthcoming from the Home Office, as the Prime Minister promised when I put the point to him during his statement just after the riots. He said that the Government would meet the costs of all the extra issues that arose as a result of the riots; I can give the Minister the Hansard extract if necessary.

I do not want to talk about numbers, as the issue has been well rehearsed eloquently by right hon. and hon. Members of all parties, particularly by the shadow Home Secretary and the Minister. What I want to talk about is procurement, as this is an area in respect of which there will be common cause. IT procurement costs the public £1.2 billion annually. The Minister has told us that the Government are keen to ensure that savings are made. Forces currently have 2,000 separate and bespoke information and communication technology systems that are serviced by 5,000 different members of staff.

The National Audit Office recently published a report on the use of mobile phones, and I declare an interest in having a BlackBerry, although I am not certain that I use all its features. However, in my conversations with the BlackBerry people, they assure me that the BlackBerrys they have given to South Yorkshire police, for example, have resulted in savings of £6 million. This is not rocket science. It was a recommendation of the Select Committee in November 2008 when we said that sufficient funding should be

“made available as soon as possible to enable all frontline officers to have access to”

hand-held devices. We talk about waste and procurement; that would have saved a huge amount of money. We still face a situation in which police officers of different police forces are buying these services from different suppliers and are operating different devices.

I understand that the system in South Yorkshire—I am sure the Minister will be familiar with it—allows the individual police officer to access the police national computer, the warrants database, the electoral roll, command and control, case study records, intelligence briefings, crime tasking, electronic witness statements and shift briefing. That is the sort of thing we need to give our police officers so that they do not spend their time dealing with the bureaucracy of which the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton spoke. We are all against bureaucracy; who wants the police to be filling in lots of pieces of paper?

If we look at new technology—I do not know whether a mobile phone is described as such these days—I believe this is the way for us to go forward. Nineteen forces have mobile phones for fewer than 50% of their officers, and according to the National Audit Office only one in five use it effectively. We give out the equipment, but perhaps do not train officers as effectively as we should.

I am all for the Minister mandating collaboration. I know that the Home Office and central Government are reluctant to tread on the toes of individual chief constables, but police and crime commissioners are going to be introduced in November, and I hope they will have a leading role to play on procurement. We need to be in a position not to allow all 43 forces to buy their own equipment. The Minister was here for Prime Minister’s questions when my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) raised the issue that four police authorities were buying Hyundai police cars. Of course, my hon. Friend’s point was about British jobs given that they come from North Korea, but I saw the issue as being primarily one of why all our police cars are not the same; I wondered why, when I went to Kent, there was a different make of police car from those I saw in Leicestershire. This is a no brainer.

I am pleased with what the permanent secretary at the Home Office said. I was glad when she was not appointed the head of the home civil service—not because I do not think she is capable, as I think she is an extraordinarily capable woman, but because I think the permanent secretary to the Home Office is a big job to do. When she came before the Committee she talked about the so-called Argos catalogue—her choice of shop; I do not know whether Dame Helen goes there regularly. We have been pushing for a long time for a catalogue with nationally agreed prices from which everyone buys. Why the previous Labour Government did not do that, I do not know. My defence is that I was the Minister for Europe so I did not have a chance to be in the Home Office. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) did a great job as a Minister, but this is a difficult task, as he will tell us.

[Mr Ruffley]

The right hon. Gentleman’s Committee has done much under his leadership to raise awareness of the efficiencies that can be delivered by police forces from existing budgets. When he talks about mandating collaboration, is he suggesting that the whole of England and Wales should be divided up and that every force should be mandated to collaborate with a neighbouring force or neighbouring forces?

[Keith Vaz]

It could be that; of course legislation allows that to happen. The Minister has told us what he did about helicopters with the National Police Air Service. As I remember, South Yorkshire did not want to share its helicopters but the Government said, “You have to share, because a helicopter is quite an expensive piece of equipment.” I do not care where it is done, and I do not think we should hang ourselves on a hook as far as who should say what, but it is common sense to be in a position where we can do this. I think Dame Helen Ghosh gets it, and that is why the Committee will interview her on a regular basis about her commitment to procurement. We want to see not just the kind of savings we have had so far, but much bigger savings.

Finally, let me speak about police pay and conditions. We all have huge admiration for the police. Tom Winsor will be appearing before the Home Affairs Committee shortly, and I think the Minister needs to take the temperature of the Police Federation and ordinary police officers. He meets them every day and sees them on many occasions, so I cannot lecture him about this, but morale is very low and I think that Mr Winsor has gone too far. We need to be very careful when we deal with police pay and conditions. The previous Labour Government got it wrong—Jacqui Smith got it wrong and so did my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)—when they did not allow the pay rise that the police ought to have been given when the arbitration committee decided that they should have that pay rise. This time, we should make sure that we carry police officers with us in making the massive changes that the Government are putting in place. That is vital because this is the biggest change to the policing landscape we have seen in this country since Sir Robert Peel’s time.

We should remunerate the police well, we should not be mean and vindictive to them and we should not get rid of the most experienced officers. That is something we are seeing in this House, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington mentioned, where some of our most experienced people are being told they have to go. When I say in this House, I do not mean Members of the House, luckily, as I have been here a long time, but those who guard the Palace of Westminster. We need to value that experience. I hope that the Minister will look again at pay and conditions and will try to bring Mr Winsor under a little bit of control. We are dealing not with railways—I know Mr Winsor was the rail regulator—but with real people in real jobs who protect our constituents. They are the people we lionise in times of crisis, and we should reward them properly for the work they do.