Police

David Ruffley Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

Given that the right hon. Lady has presided over this budget in her time, she knows perfectly well that money is not taken from one budget and given to another. One of the big things that the City of London police do is to fight cybercrime and fraud. People in Salford, like those in my constituency and in every other constituency, want the police to be as effective as possible in fighting fraud and cybercrime. That is why that money needs to be spent.

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

My right hon. Friend will have looked at the Opposition’s commitments on funding, so will he help me? Will they match our spending totals for policing and the police grant settlement or will they do something different? I am completely in the dark.

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend, as ever, puts his finger on the right point. The shadow Chancellor is saying that an incoming Labour Government would cut departmental spending, but all the mood music from those on the Opposition Front Bench is that they would increase public spending. That is a central incoherence at the heart of Labour policy. I hope that in his response, the shadow policing Minister will clear that up and answer my hon. Friend’s very good question.

Despite having been in post for just over a year, police and crime commissioners have contributed to the transformation of policing. The recent National Audit Office report confirmed that PCCs are driving improvements and value for money in a way that unelected police authorities could not. Their engagement with the public is much greater than that of the old police authorities. For example, one PCC has seen an 800% increase in the volume of correspondence compared with what the police authority received. PCCs have also been at the heart of reform and have embraced new technology. For example, my local force in Kent is using predictive policing, which combines historical data with predictive algorithms to identify the areas that are most likely to be affected by crime, thereby helping it better to allocate resources and target the deployment of officers.

As the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee pointed out, we have set up the College of Policing to increase the professionalism of the police. I am grateful for the support of the Home Affairs Committee for the College of Policing. I want policing to be regarded as one of the great professions, alongside the law and medicine. The college will produce an evidence base on what works and lead a transformation in how police officers and staff do their jobs. The college will soon publish the first ever code of ethics in the history of British policing. Given that we have just been discussing the ongoing Hillsborough process, I am sure that the House will recognise the importance of that code of ethics. It will be a clear declaration of the principles and values that are expected of all police officers. It will ensure that officers act with high ethical standards in all their conduct.

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[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is right. After the 2007 crash, all parties faced the question of how to make reasonable economies. The 12% proposal, which was carefully thought through and which we embraced, would not have put the front line at risk. A 20% cut has put the front line at risk. In addition, the fabric of partnership working is being stretched ever further and our communities are increasingly feeling the consequences.

The Government’s delay in announcing the threshold was unacceptable and has meant that police and crime commissioners were left in the ludicrous situation of having to propose their police precepts, under a statutory duty created by this Government, without knowing whether they would have the power to implement them. We have heard a lot about localism from the Government, but calls from police and crime commissioners for clarity about funding were repeatedly ignored in Whitehall.

Now that we have seen the settlement, I cannot say that it makes up for the hold-up by the Government. The Conservative party and their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, are cutting police funding by 20%. In the last three years, that has already resulted in the loss of more than 15,000 police officers. I have seen firsthand in Birmingham and the west midlands some of the finest police officers one would ever want to meet or work with forced out under the A19 rule.

The loss of 15,000 officers was more than the experts predicted and a higher number than HMIC said would be safe. But the Government plough on regardless with this settlement. It is not only wrong in itself: it is increasingly damaging police morale. The pressure being put on our police by these unsafe cuts is starting to take its toll. Just last weekend, we learned that 800 police officers are off work on full pay as a result of stress-related sickness, costing the taxpayer millions of pounds every year. Just last year, police officers took 250,000 days off because of stress-related illnesses, a 15% increase over the three years up to 2013. Chief constables are blaming staff cuts for the staggering rise in sick days for depression and other mental issues.

In government and in opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn, the distinguished former police Minister, said that some reductions in expenditure were necessary, given the economic circumstances, but as hon. Members have said today, we agreed with HMIC that a cut of 12% could be achieved without harming front-line policing. As we said at the time—it is important to remember this—a reduction of 12% over a Parliament, and of around £1 billion a year by the end of the Parliament, would have involved making tough choices if we were to succeed in protecting police numbers. Such tough choices included cuts in overtime, reform of procurement, collaboration, and altering shift patterns, but we believed then and believe now that that was the right approach, and that those savings were and are possible.

Conversely, the Government’s approach—they have ignored the HMIC advice and cut police funding by 20%—resulted in the loss overall of 15,383 police officers in the first three years of this Parliament, which is more than even the most apocalyptic predictions and proof that going beyond 12% meant cutting police officers, not waste, as my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) has said. The Home Secretary has said:

“Crucially, all the savings that I have set out can be made while protecting the quality of front-line services.”—[Official Report, 23 May 2011; Vol. 528, c. 714.]

She has repeatedly said that, but 10,460 bobbies have gone from our streets since the general election.

[Mr Ruffley]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the concept that falls in crime are determined not only by the number of police officers on the beat, but by how they are organised? It is not just a numbers game.

[Jack Dromey]

I totally agree. Numbers are crucial, but how officers are best deployed is too. I have seen at first hand inspiring examples—I am sure the hon. Gentleman has seen the same in his constituency—of developing relationships with parts of the community in an intelligent way and doing things in a smart way with other partnership agencies, and of sharing buildings and back-office resources. That was at the heart of the 12% HMIC proposal—it said that we should be better and smarter, but cutting 20% is going too far, too fast, with unacceptable consequences for the front line.

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

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) says “cuts”, which he has not promised to reverse; we say “reform”. We have the most reforming Home Secretary in the last 50 years when it comes to running and managing the police. When she entered office, she cleared away hundreds upon hundreds of Labour targets—key performance indicators, public service agreements; targets were coming out of constabularies’ ears—and she said, “We’re going to have one target—to cut crime”. And she is delivering on that target. Crime is down 10% since this coalition came into effect.

As the shadow police reform Minister in the last Parliament, I had occasion to study the history of police reform. What strikes me about the current plans is how coherent and effective Ministers have made their proposals. First, we have introduced locally elected police and crime commissioners, the idea of which was criticised even before it had begun. There was sniping about the low turnout at elections, but let us remember that 5 million people voted in those elections—5 million more than ever voted for local police authorities—and a single focal point of accountability for local people is now a reality.

My own PCC, Tim Passmore, in Suffolk, has frozen the police precept two years running, is driving collaboration with Norfolk constabulary and believes that we should, as other Members have said, look at forcing new savings from police service budgets by amalgamating and collaborating with other blue-light services. We have heard that fire services should be part of the PCC’s remit, and Mr Passmore is arguing hard for that. Also, we need to think much more imaginatively about the sharing of overheads, not just with the fire service, but with county councils. In my own area, it is shocking that the East of England ambulance service trust has four control rooms and mini-headquarters. Those should be sold off and joined up with the other blue-light headquarters of the police constabulary in Suffolk and the fire service.

The police reform agenda that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has begun contains some very coherent national themes. The new National Crime Agency brings coherence to level 2 crime, protective services and fighting organised crime, while under the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims, we have a new focus on increasing productivity among police officers. The numbers game that the Labour party wants to play simply will not wash. It talks about the loss of up to 15,000 uniformed officers since 2010, but it has not pledged to find the money to reinstate those officers, and there is a reason it probably should not bother: it is not just the number of officers that will lead to reductions in crime and better crime prevention; it is how those officers are deployed.

[Hazel Blears]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the reforms relating to serious and organised crime and the NCA depend on the success of neighbourhood policing, because the golden thread of intelligence, which every force relies on, starts at the community level? Unless we have that intelligence feeding all the way through to serious and organised crime and into counter-terrorism, we will lose that connection, and that requires numbers. We cannot build relationships unless we have people on the ground doing that job.

[Mr Ruffley]

The right hon. Lady misunderstands me. I am obviously in agreement that the bedrock of British policing, whether it is level 1, 2 or 3 policing, is neighbourhood policing and safer neighbourhood teams. That is a given. I am suggesting that with better productivity among existing uniformed officers we can deliver the falls in crime further into the future that we have seen in the last three years. How might we do that? The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims has talked about the new generation of productivity tools: electronic tablets, computerised forms and body-worn video cameras that will reduce the amount of form-filling back at the station. My right hon. Friend came to Ipswich a few months ago to see a pilot that Suffolk constabulary is running on body-worn video cameras so that police officers can spend less time behind a desk back at the station computing and filling in forms and can instead get on with visible policing on the front line.

In addition, Ministers have created something that was long overdue and which the Labour party had 13 years to create; a police ICT company that has offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy police technology in a joined-up way, so that we do not have 42 forces doing their own thing and wasting money, with interoperability being limited and the power of bulk purchasing completely ignored.

My right hon. Friend touched on the fact that we need to look not just at higher productivity, but at standards in policing. In that, the Home Secretary has been no slouch either. She has instituted the new College of Policing, which has taken a fresh look at how we professionalise the police service at all levels, with better training and an insistence on higher ethical standards. She is talking about direct entry so that very able men and women from other disciplines—whether the armed forces or business—do not have to do the compulsory two years’ probationary constable time before they can ever run a police force.

The Normington proposals, announced a few days ago, will radically reform the Police Federation and will also engender a higher sense of ethical responsibility among the 125,000 police officers that the federation currently represents. We also have the Winsor review, parts one and two of which are controversial as they make changes to overtime, salary levels and entitlements. But Winsor modernises the work force of the police service so that it conforms to the norms of every other part of the British economy, all other public services and the private sector. Winsor says simply that we should not just pay police officers according to time served, pretty much regardless of their performance. Instead, we should reward specialisms and capabilities so that younger officers who are going out and improving their skills, getting better training and producing higher performance, have that reflected in their remuneration. We are doing that in the teaching profession; it would be inexcusable to make the police an exception. Police exceptionalism in this regard is not sustainable in the public services today.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

I would be interested in my hon. Friend’s views on the future of police community support officers who, in my county of Leicestershire, offer a good presence on the ground and are very good at gaining intelligence that they can pass on to police officers.

[Mr Ruffley]

In response to the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), I said that there is general consensus across the House that neighbourhood policing teams and beat officers are the bedrock of British policing, not just in providing reassurance to the local populace but in being a vital source of intelligence, whether on organised gangs, drug dealing or whatever.

I hope that my hon. Friend will have seen a fall in crime in his constituency. The dramatic 10% fall in the last three years suggests that the claims made by Jeremiahs from the Labour party, and some sections of the police service, that the Conservative spending plans would lead inevitably to a spike up in crime have proved absolutely groundless.

I wish to refer to the numbers and to provide some perspective for the benefit of Members, who might be surprised to learn that in the last year of the previous Conservative government, 1996-97, the gross revenue expenditure on policing services was £6.907 billion. Last year it was £12.887 billion. Those are cash figures that do not take account of inflation. But there has been a doubling in the gross revenue expenditure on police services since 1997. I am glad to see the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) in his place; he is an immensely distinguished and wise Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, which has drawn attention to the statistic that I have just produced.

The very idea that a very tight, and necessarily tight, spending settlement will result in the ceiling falling in, in neighbourhood policing collapsing and in crime going up is fatuous. We have seen in cash terms a doubling in fewer than 20 years. Although policing has got more sophisticated and there are no doubt many greater demands on some parts of our police constabulary, it is still beyond belief to think that these are “savage Tory cuts”. That is the stuff of caricature and we should have no more of it.

If one looks at the Home Office core grant—not the overall spend—one will see that in the last year of the Labour government, 2009-10, the core grant was £4.606 billion. This year it is £4.583 billion. I would not think that that is the kind of reduction in core grant that will lead to a diminution in the efficiency of the police. If anything, it should drive up efficiency and productivity. I repeat; Labour, in this debate and before it, has so far as I am aware—I am sure the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington will correct me after the debate—not promised to reverse those necessary reductions.

[Andrew Bridgen]

My hon. Friend talks about reductions. In my county of Leicestershire, recorded crime is down by 25% since 2010.

[Mr Ruffley]

Those are truly heroic figures and great testimony to the police men and women in the Leicestershire constabulary, to the police and crime panel and to the police and crime commissioner. I have no doubt also that my hon. Friend spends a great deal of time scrutinising and holding the police service in his constituency to account, as do I with my Suffolk colleagues.

In the last year of the Labour Government, Suffolk constabulary, to be parochial just for one moment, saw a principal formula of £41,498,000—again, these are cash figures. In 2014-15, that is projected to rise in cash terms to—wait for this, Madam Deputy Speaker—£43,627,000. If we add in council tax support funding, specific grants and the business rate contribution, which has latterly taken over from the revenue support grant, the total general and specific grants received by Suffolk constabulary in the last year of the Labour Government amounted to £70,969,000. In 2014-15—the year that is the subject of this debate on the grant settlement—the figure is £77,915,000. Total funding for Suffolk in the last year of the Labour Government was £110,335,000; in 2014-15 that will rise to £116,579,000.

I give those details simply to illustrate that this caricature of cuts really does not wash. Although we had 51,000 recorded crimes 10 years ago, Suffolk constabulary posted 38,000 crimes in 2013—a significant fall in our county. Policemen and women in Suffolk deserve the credit for that, which is proof—if proof were needed—that they are doing more and being more productive, against a very tight financial backdrop.

We have had a great deal of shroud waving today and heard a lot of criticism of what should really be a source of celebration—the most modernising package of police reform in over half a century and a clear-eyed and immensely capable Home Secretary seeing through this difficult agenda with much less hostility, criticism and obstruction than anyone would have predicted before the last election. It is in that spirit of purposeful reform, which is embodied in my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, that I conclude my remarks.

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[Mr Ruffley]

If morale and the terms and conditions are as bad as the right hon. Gentleman seems to be saying, is that at all reflected in the numbers of young men and women seeking to join the police service? How is recruitment going?

[Keith Vaz]

That is a very interesting point. I do not know, but I understand that recruitment is not going terrifically well in certain areas of the country, although it is in some. That is why I am concerned about the £1,000 that people have to pay for the certificate in policing. I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about recruitment when he sums up. Of course, rather than young people joining the service, I am talking about very experienced people who want to get out. We need to take that into consideration.

[Keith Vaz]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. That is an issue we must deal with and Ministers must engage with the police service much more than they have done.

I agree 100% with the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds about the revolution in policing. I am not sure that I can get away with being quite as nice to the Home Secretary as the hon. Gentleman was, given that I am an Opposition Member of Parliament. I cannot show favouritism because the Home Secretary appears before our Committee—that of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and myself—on a number of occasions and I must be independent. I agree that there has been a revolution in policing and I am on the record as supporting what the Government have done.

If there was a fault of the previous Government, who presided over a golden age in policing in the amount of money given, it was that no questions were asked and no reforms were required. There was a very large cheque—of course, the shadow Minister was not a Member then—

[Mr Ruffley]

It was not his fault.

[Keith Vaz]

It was not. A very large cheque was given but nothing was received in return by way of reform.

The creation of the NCA and the College of Policing and the abolition of the National Policing Improvement Agency, which I do not think functioned particularly well, and of the Serious Organised Crime Agency are examples of where the Government have got it absolutely right. We have a new landscape of policing, but I wonder whether this is the time to go ahead with such widespread cuts while knowing that to get the new structure up and running successfully it must be well resourced. The worst possible thing is to have new structures without providing the money that is necessary for them to do their job. I hope that if those organisations require additional resources they will be given them.

I bumped into Keith Bristow recently as he was coming out of the Home Secretary’s office and I reminded him that he had not appeared before the Committee for a while. He told me of all the NCA’s successes. He is very much a hands-on person and will go on operations, and he invited the Select Committee to join him on an NCA operation. The problem with SOCA was that we never knew what it was doing as well as we know what Keith Bristow and the NCA are doing. Why? Members of the NCA tell the press that they are going to raid someone and everyone turns up and we all know the good work that the agency is doing.