Policing

David Winnick Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for, and agree with, his intervention. It is important that we put on record the achievements of the NPIA in certain areas. The fact that organisations are being abolished does not mean that we do not recognise the work done. I will come on to some of those organisations later.

The fact that the location of all the NPIA functions has not been announced remains a concern. I hope that, during his winding-up speech, the Minister will finally give us the list of all the outstanding functions and tell us where they will go. Many of the NPIA functions bound for the NCA will have to move to the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which itself is due to be abolished and co-opted into the NCA by December 2013. This shifting of resources between agencies due for closure, before finally shifting them to the NCA, makes heavy weather of the Government’s important principle of uncluttering the landscape.

SOCA was set up by the previous Government, of which the shadow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), was an active member—one of his roles was that of Policing Minister—and our Committee has been concerned about it for a number of years. In our most recent report on the agency in 2009, we found that its budget of £476 million was used to hire 3,800 members of staff; that it was spending £15 of public money for every pound it seized from criminal gangs; and that it lacked transparency in the way that it operated. Despite improvement in its performance, it is essential that the Government’s new crime-fighting agency be set the correct targets and can use its resources cost-effectively, so that it does not become another SOCA. It is also not clear whether SOCA will be given extra resources to help it manage the NPIA functions during the short-lived transition. I hope that the Minister will offer clarification on that point.

The lack of detail regarding the creation of the NCA was one of the central concerns of the Committee, and that remains the case. We were concerned about the delay in appointing a head of the agency, and the lack of detail on the objectives and—most importantly—the budget of this new policing agency. We welcome the appointment of Keith Bristow as the head of the NCA since the publication of our report. We felt, however, that someone occupying a position of that importance ought to have appeared before the Committee before taking up his formal appointment. We also remain concerned about the lack of detail on his role and objectives. Will he be a civil servant, or the head of the No. 1 crime-busting agency in the country? Will he be Sir Humphrey or Eliot Ness? Perhaps we will find out when he appears before the Committee on Tuesday to answer some important questions.

The Committee still awaits the figures on the agency’s budget. When the Minister first appeared before the Committee on 28 June, I asked his director of finance whether he knew the budget. He replied that it would be a little higher than SOCA’s, which is £476 million. Luckily, he had the Minister next to him, who told the Committee that although the budget for the NCA had not yet been set, the lion’s share of it would come from SOCA. The Minister came before us again on 20 December 2011, following the announcement that the destination of some of the NPIA functions would be the NCA, and he could still not inform us of the budget. This is not a game of “Play Your Cards Right”—a little higher here, a little lower there. We want the figures. Parliament needs to know exactly what the budget of this new agency will be, particularly as it is the flagship of the Government’s new policy.

There remain many areas where the agenda for the future of policing is unclear. One such area is police IT. Despite costing the public £1.2 billion annually, we concluded that

“IT across the police service as a whole is not fit for purpose,”

and that that affected the

“police’s ability to fulfil their basic mission of preventing crime and disorder.”

The Home Office has made rectifying that, through changes to police IT, a top priority.

It was an error of judgment on the part of the Home Office to prevent Lord Wasserman from giving oral evidence to our inquiry. As the author of the police IT review that preceded the Home Secretary’s announcement of the creation of a police-led information and communications technology company, and as chairman of the board setting up that new IT company, he is central to any future plans. He hosts seminars on behalf of Ministers, he speaks on behalf of Ministers, and he advises Ministers. I have received many invitations to seminars that the Minister for Policing was unable to attend, and Lord Wasserman is sent in his place. It appears that Lord Wasserman is, in fact, acting as a Minister, so it is very odd that he has refused to appear before the Committee. I hope that the Minister will have some good news for the Committee, in terms of agreeing to allow him to attend. The Committee unanimously wrote to the Home Secretary again on 20 October 2011 asking Lord Wasserman to come before us and give us answers on the development of the new company. That request was turned down.

One of the areas that the Committee has been focusing on with regard to policing has been the policing protocol.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I know that my right hon. Friend is going through a lengthy period of not being controversial—somewhat like me—but is he coming to the point when we deal with morale in the police force?

[Keith Vaz]

I have a feeling that my hon. Friend has seen a copy of my speech—although I am not suggesting that he popped into my office, which is next door to his—because I will indeed come on to police morale.

[Mr Winnick]

I can assure my right hon. Friend that I have not seen a copy of his speech.

[Keith Vaz]

One thing is certain: my hon. Friend did not write it for me. We will be coming on to police morale in a moment.

I pay tribute to the excellent work done by the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood in pursuing the issue of the protocol. In the past, the Minister has been willing to engage with the Committee on a number of issues. I find him a very accessible Minister. He may well be top of the league table, as far as my dealings with Home Office Ministers are concerned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

The debate is taking place in no small measure because of all the work that the hon. Gentleman has done.

I turn to the issue of police morale, which was raised in an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick). For police officers up and down the country, the role and future of the police service have been at the forefront of the national agenda since July 2010. The service will suffer more than 16,000 job losses before the next election, and uncertainty remains over how pay and conditions will be affected by the Winsor review and the ruling this week by the Police Arbitration Tribunal. In addition, there is the two-year public sector pay freeze and the capped 1% increase beyond those two years. We have heard from the Police Federation that the proposals for changes to police pay and conditions will have a detrimental effect on the morale of the police service.

In a Police Federation survey of 43,000 police officers last year, 98% said that they were demoralised by how these matters were progressing. When the issue of police pay has been settled, and when that is coupled with all the other challenges that they face, there could be a fundamental shift in the standards and motivation of police officers all over the country. We would be grateful to hear from the Minister about the progress on that subject, and about any other discussions that he has had with the Police Federation.

I have to say to the Minister—again, this is uncharacteristic of him—that I was very disappointed with the reply that he gave to my parliamentary question when I asked how many times he had met the Police Federation. He gave me no reply. He said that he could not tell me how many times because that is what the previous Government did. That is very odd. I thought that this Government were committed to transparency. When the Chairman of a Select Committee tables a parliamentary question to the Minister of Policing asking when he met officially—not socially or informally—the chairman of the Police Federation, he deserves a reply. I shall take that up with Mr Speaker.

[Mr Winnick]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend recalls that when I—and indeed he—pressed the chief constable of the west midlands on the effect of cuts in that region, he said that it was bound to have an effect. Over the period concerned, cuts in the west midlands will be somewhere in the region of 26%. That is not disputed. It will mean 1,100 fewer police officers and around 1,100 fewer police support officers. That is bound to have an adverse effect on dealing with criminality.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is a distinguished Member from the west midlands, and I accept what he says. That is exactly what the chief constable of the west midlands said to us when we met him about these matters, so they have to be taken very seriously. On the question of the reply, I will take that up with Mr Speaker, because it is a reasonable question for hon. Members to ask. If we accept that we will never get an answer to questions about who Ministers meet officially, then, frankly, there is no point in coming here and no point in tabling questions.

Despite those difficulties, we need to accept that officers in police forces all over the country work extremely hard and are very dedicated. The riots across the UK highlighted the length to which officers will go to protect their communities and to have a positive impact on local areas. Yesterday, along with the Minister, other Ministers and hon. Members, I attended a reception at Downing street organised by the Prime Minister to thank police officers who had taken part in trying to quell the riots. The Prime Minister spoke eloquently about the bravery of those officers. It is right that we realise and recognise that, during these difficult times when budgets have to be cut to some extent, police officers face enormous problems.

In the week after the Stephen Lawrence verdicts, when there has been some criticism of how the police operated during the original investigation, may I give the Minister an example of really good practice? On Boxing day, a young student was shot in the head in Manchester when he was out attending the sales. He was an overseas student. I was involved in this matter, because an e-mail came from India from his family in Gujarat, and they asked me to ensure that things were in order. I am full of praise for the work that was done by Greater Manchester police. I would like the Minister to look at the letter that I have sent to the Home Secretary today. Within seven days, Assistant Chief Constable Dawn Copley and her team in Greater Manchester arrested someone and charged them with the murder. They sent two police officers to India to inform the family of what was happening. When the family came over here, they looked after them and communicated with them on an hourly basis to tell them what was happening. We now have a date for the hearing of the person who is alleged to have murdered Anuj Bidve. That is an example of good practice, which we should acknowledge when we look at what happened in the Lawrence affair; we can see how far forward we have moved in the past few years.

The Government’s changes are the most far-reaching proposals for the police service since the 1960s, and are among the most significant since Sir Robert Peel laid the foundations for modern policing nearly 200 years ago. Ministers must be commended for thinking outside the box in their desire to improve policing in Britain in a radical way. However, the structures must follow their vision for policing in the 21st century. All the Committee is seeking to do in its report is caution the Government to think carefully before putting their structures in place, so that they are fit for purpose and achieve their laudable aim of reducing crime as much as possible, and provide intervention from the centre to guide long-term policing. It is for that reason that we suggest, in the very last words of our report, that change on this massive scale requires clear and strong leadership from the Home Office, and effective communication with the stakeholders involved in this very important process.