Police Officer Safety

Debate between Desmond Swayne and Brandon Lewis

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

Let me make a bit of progress before taking some more interventions.

We are publishing these provisional statistics because it is important to shine a spotlight on this issue and help to encourage the sort of discussion we are having here today. However, to improve the accuracy of these data, the Home Office has continued to work with police forces to build on this work, and I can announce that from next year we are asking police forces to provide data on the number of assaults with injury on a police officer as part of their recorded crime data. Creating this new crime classification is an important step in providing a more complete picture of assaults experienced by police officers. This additional information will help chief officers to understand what is happening in their forces and to protect their officers and staff.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will know that here in Westminster we are often accustomed to seeing police officers dressed rather as we would have expected Jack Warner to dress in Dock Green. However, what I think is encouraging is that when we come across police officers out in Hampshire, for example, we find them dressed and protected against the very assaults to which my right hon. Friend has referred. That is vital.

[Brandon Lewis]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point, which goes part of the way to answer an earlier point: it is important that we do not control policing centrally; we should resist the urge to centralise everything on the assumption that we know best. It is for local police forces and local chief constables to know their areas best and to look at what they need to do with their police forces for the benefit of their community and indeed their staff.

It is the responsibility of chief constables, as employers, to keep their workforce safe. In that aim, we fully support their making best use of new technology, wherever possible. Although it is an operational decision for chief officers, the use of body-worn video can be a powerful tool. As rightly outlined by the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington—we do not often agree, but we agree on this—it can provide reassurance to both the police and indeed the public about the way in which both parties are working and acting.

In this vital task of keeping their workforce safe, chief constables are held to account by their democratically elected police and crime commissioners, and supported by the College of Policing, which sets the standards that the chief constables are charged with implementing. That is why I have written today to Chief Constable Sara Thornton, the chair of the National Police Chiefs Council, to encourage forces to adopt the new crime classification as soon as possible. In my letter, I have taken the opportunity to stress the importance that this Government place on police officer safety, as I did in my conversation with her earlier today.