Counter-terrorism

Ed Balls Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary what the Government’s policy is on 28-day pre-charge detention.

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

The Home Secretary is in Budapest at an informal meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council, so I will be responding on her behalf. As the Home Secretary, Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister have made clear, the first duty of any Government is to protect the British public and we will not do anything that risks our security. The arrests of individuals for terrorism-related offences before Christmas, the cargo bomb plot in October and the bombings in Stockholm in December have all demonstrated that the threat from international terrorism remains a serious one.

On 13 July last year, the Home Secretary announced that she was renewing the current order for 28-day pre-charge detention for six months, while the powers were considered as part of a wider review of counter-terrorism powers. As the Home Secretary will be giving a full statement to the House on Wednesday on the outcome of that review, it would be wrong of me to pre-empt her statement by giving details of the review today.

This Government are clear that the power to detain terrorist suspects for up to 28 days’ detention before they were charged or released was meant to be an exceptional power—that was always Parliament’s intention. But under the last Government, it became the norm, with the renewal of 28 days repeatedly brought before the House, despite the power rarely being used. Since July 2007, no one has been held for longer than 14 days, despite the many terrorists arrested since then. That is a testament to the efforts of our prosecutors, our police and our intelligence agencies.

As I said, the Home Secretary will, next Wednesday, announce to the House the findings from the wider review of counter-terrorism and security powers. She will set out the detailed considerations of the Government in determining whether the current regime of 28 days should be renewed and, if not, what should be put in its place. In the interim, I can announce that the Government will not be seeking to extend the order allowing the maximum 28-day limit and, accordingly, the current order will lapse on 25 January and the maximum limit of pre-charge detention will, from that time, revert to 14 days. We are clear that 14 days should be the norm and that the law should reflect that. However, we will place draft emergency legislation in the House Library to extend the maximum period to 28 days to prepare for the very exceptional circumstances when a longer period may be required. If Parliament approved, the maximum period of pre-charge detention could be extended by that method.

In the Government’s announcement on the wider review, the Home Secretary will set out what contingency measures should be introduced in order to ensure that our ability to bring terrorists to justice is as effective as possible. This country continues to face a real and serious threat from terrorism. That threat is unlikely to diminish any time soon. The Government are clear that we need appropriate powers to deal with that threat but that those powers must not interfere with the hard-won civil liberties of the British people. There is a difficult balance to be struck between protecting our security and defending our civil liberties. The outcome of our counter-terrorism powers review will strike that balance, and it is this Government’s sincere hope that it will form the basis of a lasting political consensus across the House on this fundamentally important issue.

[Ed Balls]

We are in the unusual constitutional position of having the Government make an announcement in response to an urgent question on a vital matter of national security. I shall return to that issue at the end of my comments.

First, I agree with the Minister that keeping the public safe and striking the right balance between security and the protection of liberties is a vital task facing any Government. That is why when I became Home Secretary—[Interruption.] When I became shadow Home Secretary, I told the Home Secretary that it was our intention, as a responsible Opposition, to support the Government on issues of national security and on the review of counter-terrorism powers. That was on the basis that decisions were made on the basis of evidence and were in the national interest, and that there was an orderly process.

That is still our intention, but this process has not been orderly—it has been a complete shambles. I am not referring only to the way in which this review has been delayed and delayed—it was first promised, last July, to be completed by the end of last summer. Nor am I referring only to the countless and very detailed leaks and briefings to the BBC on the outcome of the review. Such leaks have continued over the weekend—following my point of order of eight days ago—including to The Sun on the funding of surveillance. I have to say that this is no way to make announcements on vital issues of national security.

There is a third reason, which is the reason for this urgent question today. When the Home Secretary announced her review in July, she extended 28 days pre-charge detention for a further six months until 24 January and she said to the House:

“After that, it will be up to me as Home Secretary to come back to the House to ask for a further extension, to let the limit fall to 14 days, or to present new proposals that reduce the limit but introduce contingency arrangements in extreme circumstances.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 1007.]

The Home Secretary has not come back to the House. I said that we would support a change on the basis of the evidence. There has been no evidence. There are no details of contingency arrangements. We are told that there will be a statement on Wednesday, but the policy on 28 days collapses by default on Monday.

In the absence of the Home Secretary, will the Minister tell the House what will happen on Monday if a terror suspect is detained? What will be the period of detention? Do the police and security services agree that this power is now not needed? Is that in the evidence in the as yet unpublished review? Do the Government really intend to let this happen by default, with no statement, no announcement and no evidence presented to the House? I must say that this is a deeply arrogant way for the Government to treat this House. It is a shambolic way to make policy on vital issues of national security.

Should not the Minister go away, come back this afternoon to make a proper statement, publish the evidence and allow right hon. and hon. Members to ask the questions that should be asked, rather than allowing the Government to treat them with such contempt?

[Damian Green]

I am sorry that I shot the shadow Home Secretary’s fox before he stood up with what was clearly a pre-written statement that did not bother with anything I actually announced—[Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman asked a question; I gave a substantive answer. He seems to object to that. I have come to the House of Commons to give a substantive answer to a question. I can understand why the noisy and excited Opposition Front Benchers are confused by this process, because under their Government there was never any substantive answer to an urgent question. It clearly came as a huge shock to the shadow Home Secretary that he actually had an answer, because it was clear from the rest of what he said that he had not listened to any of it.

The right hon. Gentleman’s substantive point was that he wanted the counter-terrorism powers review earlier. I think that in his more serious moments he might recognise that, rather than rush a review of something as important as counter-terrorism powers, it is important to get it right. In this area of vital national interest and the security of our country, the Government will not be driven, as his Government too often were, by the media agenda. We will take the right amount of time and get it right.

The right hon. Gentleman’s other point was about process. He had the cheek to talk about process in relation to counter-terrorism powers. I shall not take any lectures on process from the party that tried to use pre-charge detention as a political tool, that tried to impose 90 days detention, then 60 days, then 42 days—a party that, when that proposal was turned down by the House of Lords, finally and grudgingly settled for 28 days. The shambles of counter-terrorism powers was precisely illustrated by the disasters of the previous Government.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about the timing of when he will get the evidence. If he ever paid any attention to the proceedings of this House, he would have heard my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House announce last week that the Home Secretary would make the statement that I have just talked about next week. I announced earlier that the statement would be made on Wednesday, but there is an underlying serious point that the House needs to address, which is the importance of balancing the security of the British people with the need to maintain our civil liberties. We need no lectures on that from the right hon. Gentleman. One of the most damaging failures of the Government in which he was a leading figure was an inability to strike that balance between security and civil liberties. At every turn, the Labour Government trampled on civil liberties, not just with their attempt to impose 90 days detention but with their databases on children and their ID card scheme. No amount of sanctimonious bluster from the Labour party can disguise their shocking record on civil liberties and security. This Government will repair their mistakes in that area.

My final thought for the right hon. Gentleman is that he said in his blog last week:

“I want to support the Home Secretary in reaching a new consensus about counter-terrorism policy”,

I am afraid that nothing he has said today has illustrated that what he claimed to think last week is what he actually thinks this week. He should go away and think hard about the serious nature of his job.

Temporary Immigration Cap

Ed Balls Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on Friday’s High Court decision on the temporary immigration cap.

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

In June, when the Government announced that we would consult on how to implement a permanent limit on economic migrants, we also said that we would impose an interim limit until the permanent one took effect. This was to avoid a surge of applications in anticipation of the permanent limit.

The interim limit was given effect through changes to the immigration rules that were laid before Parliament, and on which an oral statement was made. On Friday we received the judgment that the changes announced provide an insufficient legal basis for the operation of the interim limit. The judgment was based on a technical procedural point known as Pankina grounds. The Court decided that this meant that more detail about the manner in which the limit is set, including its level, should have been included in the immigration rule changes laid before Parliament.

I would like to make it clear that the judgment of the Court was concerned solely with the technicalities of how the interim limits were introduced. It was in no way critical of, or prejudicial to, the Government’s policy of applying a limit to economic migration to the United Kingdom, either permanently or on an interim basis. The policy objective of a limit in migration has not been called into question, and I am now considering what steps are required to reapply an interim limit consistent with the findings of the Court. Tomorrow I will be laying changes to the immigration rules that will set out the details that the Court required. This will enable us to reinstate the interim limits on a clear legal basis.

The House will be interested to know that tomorrow I will also be laying changes to the rules to close applications under the tier 1 general route from outside the United Kingdom immediately, as the original level specified on this tier has been reached. I can reassure the House that the policy of using these limits as part of our overall policy of reducing net migration is unchanged.

[Ed Balls]

On 28 June the Home Secretary herself came to the House to announce, without consultation, an immediate and temporary cap on non-EU migration. Details of the cap were then posted on the Home Office website, but not presented to Parliament. On Friday the High Court ruled that the Home Secretary’s actions were, in fact, illegal. Lord Justice Sullivan said:

“There can be no doubt that she”—

the Home Secretary—

“was attempting to sidestep provisions for parliamentary scrutiny…and her attempt was for that reason unlawful.”

As a result, the Government’s much-heralded cap—deeply unpopular with business—does not today exist. As Lord Justice Sullivan said,

“no interim limits were lawfully published…by the secretary of state…there is not, and never has been, a limit on the number of applicants who may be admitted”.

In the light of this chaos, it is surprising that the Home Secretary has not chosen to come to the House to answer for her actions, so let me ask the Minister for Immigration two sets of questions.

First, on the consequences of the error, can the Minister tell the House what the status is of those who applied under the illegal cap but were rejected? Will their applications now be granted retrospectively? Can the Minister tell the House how many more migrants he expects to enter the UK because of the failure to implement the cap? In the light of that, is it still the Government’s target to cut net migration to the tens of thousands by 2015, as the Prime Minister pledged before the election, or is this mistake one reason why the Home Secretary is trying to water the target down to just an “aim”?

Secondly, on how we got into this mess in the first place, did the Minister and the Home Secretary ask for and receive legal advice before the summer about the legality of the temporary cap and the rushed way in which they were introducing it? Is it correct that he and the Home Secretary were warned by officials and lawyers that there was a risk of legal challenge if Parliament was bypassed in that way? If he and the Home Secretary did disregard legal advice, did they have the support of senior Home Office officials in so doing? Finally, will the Minister now agree to lay before Parliament all the legal advice on which the decision to proceed was based, to dispel the impression that he and the Home Secretary have acted in a reckless and chaotic manner, and to show that she has nothing to hide?

[Damian Green]

There were, I think, one or two substantive questions in the midst of that bluster. On the right hon. Gentleman’s first point, about why the Home Secretary is not here, it seems perfectly reasonable that if a question is asked about immigration, the Immigration Minister should answer it. He will also be aware that there is a serious counter-terror operation going on today. I would suggest that he and other Opposition Front Benchers who are attempting to bluster their way through this should recognise that fact.

The right hon. Gentleman asked a substantive question about the status of those who applied, but whose applications were not granted. The answer is that, as he is aware, the judgment was handed down on Friday; however, as he does not seem to be aware, the written judgment will not be available until January. Until the Home Office receives that written judgment, it is obviously impossible for us to decide whether to appeal against Friday’s judgment. All the questions that he asked about that are, therefore, simply inoperative until we see the written judgment. I am happy to confirm that, as the Home Secretary has said, it is still our target to bring immigration down from its uncontrolled, unsustainable level under the previous Government. As for the idea of publishing all legal advice given to Ministers, the right hon. Gentleman will be aware that this is a not a practice that was ever followed by the Government of whom he was a member. [Interruption.]

In response to the right hon. Gentleman’s sedentary heckling, I am happy to assure him that the announcement that the Home Secretary made on 28 June was changed as a result of the Pankina judgment, but clearly all legal judgments are open to interpretation. What I will set out in a written statement tomorrow will absolutely clear up the legal issues and address the narrow technical points made by the judge, and will mean that the interim limits can proceed on a completely legal basis. I hope that the House is reassured by that.

Public Order Policing

Ed Balls Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the appalling violence that took place during last week’s protests outside Parliament.

I want first to express my gratitude to those police officers and commanders who put themselves in harm’s way. They showed great bravery and professionalism in the face of violence and provocation. It was this bravery that enabled this House to engage unhindered in democratic debate, and I know that the whole House will want to send them our thanks. I also want to thank Sir Paul Stephenson, who led the Metropolitan Police Service through a difficult operation and who serves London as commissioner with distinction.

Hon. Members may find it useful if I recap last week’s events. On Thursday, 3,000 people assembled at the university of London union to march through central London. By the time the crowd reached Parliament square, police estimate that the number of demonstrators had grown to 15,000. The police maintained a barrier system outside the Palace of Westminster that allowed pedestrian access and the business of the House to continue at all times. Concerted attempts were made to breach the barrier lines. Protestors threw bottles, stones, paint, golf balls and flares, and attacked police with metal fencing.

A cordon was placed around Parliament square, but, throughout, those who remained peaceful and wished to leave via Whitehall were able to do so. A large number of protesters remained, many of whom committed acts of violent disorder, damaging historic statues in Parliament square, breaking windows and starting fires. Sporadic disorder also took place in the west end. It is quite clear that those acts were perpetrated not by a small minority, but by a significant number of trouble makers.

Some students behaved disgracefully. However, the police assess that the protests were infiltrated by organised groups of hardcore activists and street gangs bent on violence. Evidence from the other recent protests shows that many of those who caused violence were organised thugs, as well as students. It is highly likely that that was also the case last week.

I want to be absolutely clear that the blame for the violence lies squarely and solely with those who carried it out. The idea advanced by some that police tactics were to blame, when people came armed with sticks, flares, fireworks, stones and snooker balls, is as ridiculous as it is unfair.

We have a culture of policing in this country that is based on popular consent and trust between the police and the public. That must continue.

Thursday’s police operation involved 2,800 officers. More than 30 officers were injured, of whom six required hospital treatment. All six have been discharged from hospital. Forty-three protesters were injured.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has begun an independent investigation into the incident that left one protestor seriously injured. Right hon. and hon. Members will understand that it is not appropriate for me to comment further on that incident while the IPCC investigation is ongoing.

The Metropolitan police have confirmed that 35 people have been arrested so far. I expect that number to rise significantly as the criminal investigation continues. I confirm that there has been a good public response to the police’s request for information on the 14 key perpetrators of violence, photographs of whom were published on Sunday. The Met will continue to publish pictures of key individuals in the week ahead.

I also want to inform the House about the attack on the royal car. The House will be aware that on their way to an engagement in central London, the car carrying the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall was attacked by several protesters. There has been much speculation about the Duchess being struck through the window of the car. I understand that some contact was made.

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has ordered an urgent review of the royalty protection arrangements that were in place on the night, which is due to report by Friday 17 December. Hon. Members will understand that, for security reasons, the public details of the report may be limited. I will await the findings of that review before deciding what, if any, further action is needed.

The Prince and the Duchess have already expressed their gratitude to the police. I am sure that the whole House will join me in condemning all the acts of violence that took place last week. I call on the organisers of the protests unequivocally to condemn violence as well.

The Government are determined to protect the right to peaceful protest, but violence is absolutely unacceptable and the perpetrators of that violence must be brought to justice.

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

All Labour Members understand and share the dismay, anger and injustice that are felt by hundreds of thousands of students and young people at the deeply unfair hike in tuition fees and the abolition of education maintenance allowance. All Labour Members also share the Home Secretary’s anger and outrage at the way in which last Thursday’s legitimate day of action was hijacked by a small but significant minority bent on provocation, violence and criminal damage.

The whole country was shocked and appalled at the cowardly and despicable attack on the car carrying His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, and the Duchess of Cornwall. The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the Home Secretary have our full support in taking all the steps that are necessary to bring the perpetrators of that violence to justice.

Scenes of mass violence and protest on our streets are sights that all in this generation hoped we would not see again. We all have a responsibility—from student leaders and police chiefs, through to politicians and Prime Ministers—to do everything we can to avoid such confrontations in the future: we have to keep the peace. Here, there are lessons to be learned, and I have some detailed questions for the Home Secretary that I hope she can answer.

I start by saying that I agree wholeheartedly with the Home Secretary that the right first step is to await the report of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and to resist jumping to any hasty conclusions. There is clearly a difficult balance for our police leaders to strike between containment to control violence and ensuring that the innocent are not caught up, harmed or held for lengthy periods. If there are individual cases in which police officers overstep the mark, the right first step is for the IPCC to investigate, as is happening in the case of Mr Meadows. The commissioner is right to demand that all police officers must display their identification at all times.

It is important, too, that we recognise the bravery and commitment that our police officers showed last Thursday in the face of extreme provocation and physical danger. Without their professionalism and restraint, there would have been many more casualties.

I wish to ask the Home Secretary about royal protection, prosecutions, resourcing and police tactics. On royal security, given that this was the fourth time in a few weeks that a protest descended into violence, did she personally ask for and see a thorough assessment of the security of the royal family and other key individuals and buildings in advance of last Thursday’s protests? At a time of rising security threats, and with the royal wedding coming next year, will she agree to shelve the cost-cutting review of royal security that is currently on her desk? When she sees the report from the commissioner on the particular lapse in royal security last Thursday, will she commission a new and wider review of the current level of threat to, and the security needs of, the royal family, including cars used for travelling around London?

On the protests more widely, people were appalled to see on their TV screens pictures of protestors urinating on the statue of Winston Churchill, swinging on flags on the Cenotaph or causing widespread criminal damage. It is important that those who commit violent acts are brought, and are seen to be brought, to justice, so will the Home Secretary tell the House not just how many protestors have been arrested but how many have actually been charged following these and earlier disturbances? It is important that we know that fact.

On resources, the Met deployed 3,000 officers last Thursday. On the day when the Home Secretary is announcing the biggest peacetime cuts to police funding in more than a century, can she confirm that next year and the year after, our police will still have the resources to police major events and keep our communities safe? Given that the biggest cuts in police budgets and numbers in London and across the country are scheduled to fall in the year of the Olympics, can she explain why, despite previously telling the House that the £600 million budget for Olympics policing and security would be protected, she is now seeking to cut it to £475 million—a 21% reduction that will put further pressure on police budgets—as she has announced this afternoon?

I turn to police tactics and the future use of water cannon and rubber bullets. Will the Home Secretary agree to set aside her own views and respect the operational judgment of the head of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Sir Hugh Orde, that the use of water cannon and rubber bullets in protests would be a blunt instrument and very difficult, and would risk escalating matters and doing more harm than good?

Finally, given that we have Second Reading of the police Bill this afternoon, and that for the first time we will have a single elected individual with the power to direct policing, can the Home Secretary tell the House what would happen if, in future, an elected police commissioner were to make a manifesto commitment to introduce water cannon and rubber bullets? Who would decide how best to keep our streets safe—the chief constable or the politician?

[Mrs May]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s comments about the police who so bravely stood up to the demonstrators and ensured that Parliament was protected last week during the demonstrations, and indeed the police who took action and policed London during the demonstrations that occurred on two previous days.

The right hon. Gentleman asked me a number of questions, including about royal protection and whether there should be a wider review in future. We regularly examine the provision of the protection scheme for members of the royal family, and indeed the protection that, as he will be aware, the Metropolitan police provides to other individuals in the UK, including a number of politicians such as members of the Government. It is important that that is done. It is also important that we clearly identify what happened in this incident and whether any issues need to be addressed as a result, and factor that into any considerations in the review of royal protection.

As the right hon. Gentleman will be aware, the number of people who have been arrested is varying, and is a moving feast. If I may, I will update him on the number of people who have been charged, but he will recognise that it will be changing over time—

[Mrs May]

Information will be provided to the office of the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) separately. We will do that to ensure that he knows the figure. He mentioned resources, but I have to say to him that, as someone who worked closely with the Chancellor and the Prime Minister under the previous Labour Government, and who has made something of a name for himself on the issue of figures, he really needs to pay a little more attention to the figures—[Interruption.] He says he is not asking about that, but he specifically asked me about Olympic security, and said that we would no longer be providing the £600 million we had set aside for that purpose.

[Ed Balls]

indicated assent.

[Mrs May]

I see that he is nodding. I refer him to the written ministerial statement on police funding that was tabled in Parliament this morning:

“Safety and security for the 2010 Olympics and Paralympics is a priority for this Government”,

and a £600 million funding envelope will remain available for this purpose.

[Ed Balls]

Read on.

[Mrs May]

I am very happy to read the next bit. The right hon. Gentleman does not understand this, and it tells us quite a lot about his and his colleagues’ attitude to funding. That £600 million has been protected; he said that it had not been, but it has. It has been possible, through efficiencies, to look at the amount we currently consider it might be necessary to spend, and we go on to say that we are confident that we can deliver this for around £475 million, but we are protecting—[Interruption.] Oh, so the right hon. Gentleman does not believe in trying to save money! That tells us a lot about him.

The right hon. Gentleman also mentioned the general issue of resources, and, yes, the funding allocations for individual police forces have been announced in the written ministerial statement today. I simply remind him that the Metropolitan police, in dealing with the incidents and demonstrations that took place last month and this month, are largely operating on the budget that was set by the Labour Government.

The right hon. Gentleman commented on tactics, and he mentioned rubber bullets. I do not think that, so far, either I or anybody on this side of the House has suggested the use of rubber bullets. I will clarify the position on water cannon. It is of course the responsibility of the Home Office to set the legal parameters for measures that can be used by the police, and, as I speak, water cannon have yet to be approved as a piece of equipment that can be used by the police. Then, senior police officers have the operational responsibility to decide what equipment they use, currently in agreement with police authorities and, in future, in agreement with police and crime commissioners. In relation to London, that decision would be agreed with the Mayor of London, who is the equivalent of a police and crime commissioner. I think that that mixture of legal oversight, professional discretion and democratic consent has to be right. However, I do not think that anyone wants to see water cannon used on the streets of Britain. As I said in my statement, if the right hon. Gentleman heard me, we have a different attitude to the culture of policing here in the UK. We police by consent, and that depends on trust between the police and the public. A range of measures is available to the police, and I do not think that water cannon are needed.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about police and crime commissioners, and said that, in future, they would have the power to direct policing. In advance of our debate later this afternoon, may I tell him that that is precisely what the police and crime commissioners will not have? Operational independence of the police chiefs will be maintained with police and crime commissioners, and if he does not understand that he obviously does not understand the Bill we shall debate later.

The police did a good job last Thursday, as they have done at previous demonstrations. They did make some errors, as the commissioner admitted, in relation to the first day of student demonstrations. We should thank them for all that they do to ensure that Parliament can carry on its debates unhindered by protesters.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Ed Balls Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am about to come on to exactly that point. The right hon. Gentleman asks whether it is appropriate for such individuals to belong to a political party of which a police officer cannot be a member, but one could argue that the same position already exists: Home Secretaries are elected under political banners. I actually trust the people of this country on elections.

I shall return to that point, because police and crime commissioners will give the public a real voice in policing. They will ensure that what the public care about is taken seriously, and that local people’s priorities are the priorities of the police. I thank ACPO for its constructive engagement in the reform process, and the Association of Police Authorities will have an important role to play until police and crime commissioners are introduced. We will continue working with the APA until that point. We have consulted widely with the public and with key partners, such as the APA and ACPO, through the consultation document “Policing in the 21st century: reconnecting police and the people”, which was published earlier this year, and in other consultation with them. We have listened to their views and amended our proposals accordingly.

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

On consultation with the Association of Police Authorities, there is a letter in The Guardian today—[Interruption.] It is signed by the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour leaders on the APA, and it says:

“There is no evidence that PCCs”—

police and crime commissioners—

“will improve the service the public receive, and every reason to reject this proposal.”

Why has the Home Secretary failed to persuade Conservatives on the APA that her proposals are good proposals?

[Mrs May]

Comments about turkeys and Christmas might be appropriate at this point, and I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman think about that.

[Ed Balls]

Is the right hon. Lady really calling Mr Rob Garnham, the highly respected chair of a police authority, a turkey? Should she not withdraw that remark?

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] His hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd can even do the turkey noises for him.

Let me explain my earlier comment. It is very straightforward. We have had discussions with the APA about the future of police and crime commissioners, and it is no surprise that police authority members are not as convinced as we are about setting up PCCs, because when they are set up, police authorities will be abolished. That was my point, but I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will give us the benefit of his views.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Balls]

Turkeys voting for Christmas? May I quote Sir Hugh Orde, of the Association of Chief Police Officers, who said:

“Every professional bone in my body tells me it is a bad idea that could drive a coach and horses through the current model of accountability for no added value but plenty of confusion”?

Is the Home Secretary calling the head of ACPO a turkey as well?

[Mrs May]

No, I am not. Had the right hon. Gentleman been listening, he would have heard me say already how grateful we are for our constructive engagement with ACPO. We have listened to its comments on the introduction of police and crime commissioners and amended our proposals accordingly.

To return to the point about democracy, first, I see no reason not to trust the British public. We trust the public and we trust democracy, so I see no reason to constrain democracy by vetting or by excluding candidates we might think are extremist. The British public have shown over the years that they are perfectly capable of stopping extremists where they should be stopped—at the ballot box.

Secondly, although the whole point of our reforms is to improve the local accountability of the police, that in no way means that cross-boundary challenges such as organised crime, terrorism or other national policing issues will be neglected. Police and crime commissioners will be supported by a new strategic policing requirement to help them to hold their force to account for all its policing, and they will have a duty to collaborate with other police forces and other agencies, including the new national crime agency, on issues that cut across force boundaries. I am clear that the structures that we are putting in place must address national policing issues as well as local ones. Commissioners will also be required to work with other forces to simplify the arrangements for procurement and back-office functions in order to improve efficiency and achieve better value for money.

Thirdly, let me reassure the House that the introduction of police and crime commissioners will in no way affect the operational independence of the police. Commissioners will not manage police forces.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

I am happy to confirm—this is at the heart of the matter, and I know that Opposition Front Benchers have been trying make something of the issue—that we are very clear that police and crime commissioners should not be able to appoint political advisers from public funds. I do not believe that that would be right. That is the intention behind what we are doing and this Bill.

[Ed Balls]

It is very important to be clear when we make statements in the House. It is not the case that Opposition Front Benchers have been trying to make something of the issue. At a meeting of the APA, the Policing and Criminal Justice Minister said that the first decision he would make if he were elected a police and crime commissioner would be to appoint a political adviser. Did he say that? Can the Home Secretary confirm that? If he did say it, can she tell him he was wrong to say it and that it is not in fact true?

[Mrs May]

I have just checked with my right hon. Friend and he is absolutely clear that he did not say that. I say to the right hon. Gentleman, who seems to think that the issue has suddenly arisen in the last minute, that the document that summarises the consultation responses to “Policing in the 21^st century” states clearly on page 13, at paragraph 2.12:

“Whilst the PCC will be able to appoint staff to advise and assist them, all staff must be appointed on merit and will be politically restricted posts.”

[Interruption.] Hon. Members should wait. It goes on to state:

“Party political office holders and active party members will not be able to be appointed to the PCC’s staff.”

Our intention is absolutely clear.

The running costs and day-to-day expenditure of police and crime commissioners will not be any greater than that of police authorities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill because it introduces an expensive set of reforms which will do nothing to bring the police closer to the communities they serve; because it risks a single elected politician remote from the frontline overruling operational policing decisions, thus ending one hundred and seventy years of tradition of police independence from politicians; because it gives insufficient attention to the risks of police force collaboration being undermined by the creation of individually elected police commissioners; and because the Government has indicated that it will implement this expensive and disruptive reform in the same year as the Government is making the biggest annual cut to police funding as set out in the Spending Review.

Protecting the public and giving people confidence that they can live free from the fear of crime and antisocial behaviour is the first duty of Government. On the front line in the fight against crime are our police and police community support officers, who do a difficult, sometimes dangerous job with great professionalism. We should start by congratulating our police, who, in record numbers, under Conservative and Labour Governments since 1994, have delivered a 50% fall in crime. We congratulate them on that achievement. We will support the Government, where we can, to ensure that our police have the resources and the powers that they need to do the job.

It is right, too, as the Home Secretary said, that the police must be close to the local communities they serve and be responsive to the views of local communities in order to be accountable to the taxpayer. I pay tribute to the reforms made in recent years by Labour Home Secretaries who have introduced neighbourhood policing, which has ensured that the police are embedded in our communities. That is an achievement of which Labour Members can be very proud.

However, we will argue in Committee that there is more that we can do to deepen that accountability at the force level and at the neighbourhood level to ensure that the police are properly and fully responsive to local communities. I have to say to the Home Secretary that the approach to police accountability that the coalition is pursuing in the Bill is absolutely not the answer to that challenge. Indeed, the judgment of the Association of Police Authorities, which said that elected police commissioners are the wrong reform at the wrong time, is looking more prescient by the day.

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

Will the right hon. Gentleman cast his mind back to the cuckoo months of the previous Prime Minister’s Administration, when the then Home Secretary, the former Member for Redditch, considered the idea of elected chiefs of police and then discarded it, not because of politicisation or fears about cost, but because of lobbying from Labour councillors who did not want to lose their lucrative positions on police authorities?

[Ed Balls]

I merely draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the excellent House of Commons research report on the Bill, which makes it absolutely clear, in terms, that the then Home Secretary rejected that proposal because it would lead to the politicisation of our police, which is exactly why we are opposing these measures.

Look at the storm that is now gathering around the Home Secretary. Over the past few days, we have seen the events in Sweden—[Interruption.] Hon. Gentlemen mock the events that are happening. We are seeing a rising terrorist threat. We saw the events of last Thursday and the statement that we had to have this afternoon about disorder on our streets. We have the Olympics coming up the year after next, with the Home Secretary now proposing to force through a 20% cut in the Olympic policing budget.

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman raised the Olympic security budget in his response to my statement earlier. I refer him, yet again, to today’s written ministerial statement on police funding allocations, which says that we have protected the £600 million expenditure on Olympic security. In fact, we think that what is needed can be done more cheaply than that, but we are protecting the £600 million. Will he now withdraw his accusations?

[Ed Balls]

I will do no such thing, and I will tell the House exactly why. We are consistently told by the Home Secretary that she has protected the counter-terrorism budget. What she means by “protected” is that it is cut by only 10%, unlike the police budget, which is cut by 20%. That is what the protection is all about.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I note that the Policing Minister’s letter says that he hopes to make savings and not to use the £600 million. Today’s Birmingham Mail points out that despite an earlier promise that the Pope’s visit would be subject to a special grant for security, that grant was never provided, and west midlands police have virtually exhausted their contingency for special events. If that happens around the country, how can the Government possibly hope to make savings on the Olympics?

[Ed Balls]

I do not know the answer to that. When I spoke to my right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell), the shadow Olympics Minister, about it this afternoon, she said that she was assured that any reduction in the £600 million budget would be briefed on in advance with the details of the savings, but she has had no such briefing. It looks to me as though the commitment to keep £600 million in principle was rushed in at the weekend.

The reality of the position is that the Home Secretary is seeking to achieve a 20% cut which will further stretch Policing around our country at a time when the largest cut in our police budgets in peacetime history over the past 100 years has just been announced. In the west midlands and Greater Manchester, 2,500 officers are already set to lose their jobs, not to be appointed, or to be removed through regulation A19 powers, with equivalent numbers among PCSOs and other public staff. Other forces around the country will be considering today’s announcement of 20% real-terms cuts. The health budget was broadly flat, although falling slightly; the schools budget was broadly flat, although falling slightly; and the defence budget was cut by 8%. People around the country are asking where the Home Secretary was and how come the police budget was cut by 20%.

[Mark Tami]

My right hon. Friend is talking about massive cuts across the piece. Does he agree that the £50 million that the Government are prepared to spend on electing police commissioners could be put towards front-line officers?

[Ed Balls]

As my hon. Friend knows, the Association of Police Authorities estimates that 600 officers’ jobs could be saved with the money that will be spent on the unnecessary election of police commissioners. We hear nothing from the Liberal Democrats, who all stood on a manifesto commitment of 3,000 more police officers, not 20,000 officers being cut.

[Mark Tami]

I am reliably informed that I was wrong. The figure is not £50 million, but £136 million, despite what the Home Secretary said.

[Ed Balls]

I am happy to accept my hon. Friend’s clarification on that point.

The context for this legislation includes the largest cuts to policing that we have seen, police officers losing their jobs through A19 powers and a freeze on recruitment across the country, at a time when the security threat is rising. The Home Secretary and the business managers have chosen the day on which the cuts have been announced to ask for support for the risky experiment in police accountability that is elected police commissioners. The coalition has no mandate and no evidence base for that reform. It has not done a proper consultation and it has failed to win the active support of either the police or the public.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

Before the election, when the then Home Secretary was asked whether he could promise that police numbers would not be cut under Labour, he replied “No.” Is not that and this nonsense about the Olympics budget why nobody is listening to the right hon. Gentleman as shadow Home Secretary?

[Ed Balls]

No. I know that the hon. Gentleman knows about Treasury matters, but he ought to read his brief a little more carefully before making such interventions, which reveal his lack of knowledge on our position.

[Matthew Hancock]

rose—

[Ed Balls]

I will answer the hon. Gentleman’s previous erroneous intervention before I give him a second go to see whether he can do better. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, an independent body, said that it was possible to make reductions of 12% in the central Government grant over four years, without cutting front-line policing, as we heard last week. The Government are pushing through savings not of 12% but of 20%, and they are doing so not over four years but by front-loading them, so that the biggest cuts are in the first two years. As police authorities say, it is impossible to make such cuts without cutting front-line policing capability. If what we proposed was being done, cuts to front-line police numbers—indeed, cuts to all police numbers—would be avoided. Under the coalition, there will be cuts to front-line policing. No Government Members were elected on such a manifesto, and they will be held to account in the coming months and years. I happily give way to the hon. Gentleman so that he can have a second go.

[Matthew Hancock]

I do not mind being held to account for sorting out the nation’s finances. The right hon. Gentleman should answer the question. He said that my intervention were erroneous. When the previous Home Secretary was asked whether he could guarantee to protect police budgets from being cut, did he not say, “No”?

[Ed Balls]

The hon. Gentleman knows the answer to his own question. He can wave his arms around in a histrionic way, but the reality is that the previous Home Secretary said that he could not guarantee the individual decision of every chief constable of the 43 forces. However, he said that on the basis of a 12% reduction over four years, there would be no need for any reduction in police numbers. Under the coalition, the Police Federation estimates that 20,000 officers will be cut. We know that 1,100 officers will be cut in Birmingham and that 1,400 will be cut in Greater Manchester. The difference is that under our proposals there would have been no cuts to police numbers, and under the coalition proposals there will be cuts in every constituency and in every police force in the country. Those cuts will be made worse by the additional expenditure on the ridiculous and flawed proposals before us.

[Michael Ellis]

Am I correct to say that the shadow Home Secretary admitted that £1 billion of police budget cuts had to be made? If so, where would he make those cuts?

[Ed Balls]

If, rather than framing his intervention, the hon. Gentleman had listened to the previous one, he would have known the answer to his question and would not have had to bother asking it. HMIC said that a 12% reduction in the central Government grant over four years was deliverable without cuts to front-line policing. That advice has not been taken by the Government: they have gone not for 12% but for 20%, and it will be front-loaded on the first two years. The coalition policy will mean not 3,000 more police officers, but visible, front-line police officer cuts in police forces up and down the country. That is not the manifesto on which Government Members were elected, and they will be held to account.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the cuts not be more savage in particular areas? In police forces such as South Wales, the work that absolutely must be done, such as policing major sporting events, looking after the Welsh Assembly and the continuation of anti-terrorism work, will not be cut, meaning that the neighbourhood policing that happens in ordinary people’s streets will end up being cut?

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[Ed Balls]

I hope that that will not be the case. The chief constable of West Yorkshire police has said the opposite to me. His priority will be to protect neighbourhood policing, if possible.

That point brings me to a smear that has been propagated regularly by those on the Government Front Bench. On the basis of the HMIC report, they claim—in my view erroneously—that only 11% of policing has been visible at any one time and that the other 89% has somehow been wasted on bureaucracy and form-filling. The fact is that 50% of that 89% comprises the policing of organised crime and domestic violence, criminal investigation departments, and work on drug and alcohol policies. Perhaps such policing is not done in neighbourhood teams, but it is vital nevertheless. It is discounted by those on the Government Front Bench as waste and bureaucracy. Frankly, that is an outrageous slur.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

The right hon. Gentleman has admitted that he would have cut police funding by £1 billion a year, which is the HMIC proposal, and that under his proposals, there would have been no cut in police numbers. Will he explain how he would achieve £1 billion of savings?

[Ed Balls]

I fear that we may be wasting time by going over the same point, but I will explain it again. HMIC said that a cut of more than 12% in central Government funding would lead to a cut in visible, front-line police numbers. The coalition is cutting central Government funding not by 12% but by 20%. As the previous Home Secretary made clear, on the basis of the HMIC report, savings could be made in procurement and through collaboration—precisely the sort of cross-force collaboration that will be undermined by elected police commissioners. It is possible to do that without cuts to front-line policing. It is the Minister’s 20% cuts that will lead to a reduction in police numbers, as is accepted universally by police officers across the country.

[Mr Hanson]

I hope to help my right hon. Friend. As he knows, I was the Minister with responsibility for policing in the previous Government. The £1 billion that we sought to save was made up of £500 million to £600 million from overtime and shift patterns, several hundred million pounds from police procurement of things such as helicopters and uniforms, and savings through back-office staff mergers. All those savings could have been made without cutting front-line policing. The HMIC report shows that the additional £1 billion that is being taken out by the Government will damage front-line policing.

[Ed Balls]

My right hon. Friend is making the point that the previous Home Secretary would have fought his corner for the police and Home Office budgets. In the spending review, the Home Secretary did not exactly lead the police chiefs up Downing street, as the Secretary of State for Defence did with the defence chiefs. We heard nothing—not a squeak. The Home Secretary calls what we ended up with a fair settlement, but it is a deeply unfair settlement, compared with that for schools, health and defence, that hits the police disproportionately with spending cuts. Police chiefs around the country ask me, “Where was the Home Secretary?”

[Charlie Elphicke]

I have been listening to the right hon. Gentleman for the past 10 minutes, and I have yet to hear a credible alternative plan. All we have is another blank sheet of paper.

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[Ed Balls]

What the hon. Gentleman will not hear from us is support for a reform that a former Met commissioner has today said is

“without any intellectual underpinning or historical understanding”.

It will weaken police accountability by making it more personalised and less representative of local communities, and it will overturn a 170-year tradition of independence in policing by empowering one elected individual to direct police priorities, fire chief constables and hire political advisers to do his bidding. It will make cross-force collaboration harder, not easier, and it will divert millions of pounds—the equivalent of 600 police officers—from the front line to new elections. It is a flawed reform that will waste millions and do nothing to reduce crime, so we are very sceptical about giving the Bill a Second Reading.

[Mrs Moon]

South Wales police currently have a police authority that contains cross-party representation from the leaders of a number of local authorities as well as people who are independently selected. How can it be said that there is greater democratic accountability when one person is directly elected than when there is cross-party representation from across the whole police authority area?

[Ed Balls]

I do not know, and that is one of the flaws in the Bill that we will need to investigate in Committee. As I understand it, that problem was why the Liberal Democrats did not support the policy. They rejected it in their policy documents in the past two years, stating that

“police authorities must be representative of the whole community, including women and ethnic minorities, which is why we reject…plans for elected sheriffs.”

That was why they rejected the policy in the first place.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman has described the current situation as “non-optimal”. May I ask him what he means by that term and what his own plans for reform are, or is he doing just what his leader is doing and bringing nothing but a blank sheet of paper to the Chamber?

[Ed Balls]

As I said at the beginning, we will propose amendments in Committee to strengthen accountability at force and neighbourhood level, but in a way that is consistent with an approach to policing that respects political independence and ensures broad-based accountability across an area. Concentrating power in one individual will lead inevitably to political interference, and it will be impossible for one individual to represent, for example, the individual point of view of every town and community in West Yorkshire.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ed Balls]

Oh, go on.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his patience with me. In Kent, the police authority’s idea of accountability seems to be to sue people who question it for libel, which I regard with serious concern. That should not be done with public money. The Library report to which he referred states that two thirds of the public said that they did not know who to go to if they had a complaint, and that 59% said that it was very difficult to have a say on how their area was policed. Surely an elected police commissioner would be more responsive.

[Ed Balls]

I do not know whether the Library report quotes the Conservative chair of the police authority in Kent, who, as I understand it, totally disagrees with the hon. Gentleman and says that the proposal is flawed and will not work. It will not be properly representative.

Bizarrely, the coalition came along and proposed the abolition of police authorities, but then realised that it was a flawed policy. It then decided to reinvent police authorities and give them a new name so that they would be called panels rather than authorities. The problem of representation needs to be solved, because it is serious.

[Hazel Blears]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that visibility and accountability have to be balanced with the integration of services, particularly with local authorities and other partners? Partnership working in policing has been shown to work over the past few years, and a single elected commissioner could well tear the system apart and lead to much less effective policing on the ground.

[Ed Balls]

I agree, and effective accountability really ought to happen in the main in the basic command unit. We need to ensure that the police are accountable to their community, but that they can demand support from the local authority, the health service and the other agencies that are vital to tackling the causes of drug crime and wider youth crime. All that will be ripped up under the Government’s proposals, and we will end up instead with one elected person for a massive area, who will be able to visit each ward perhaps once every other year. That is not local accountability at all.

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman has just said that a single elected individual could rip apart the policing in an area. Is that what he would say to Bill Bratton, who was the single elected individual who increased the detection of crime in New York and Los Angeles?

[Ed Balls]

The shadow policing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), read out to me earlier the views of Bill Bratton on the Conservative proposals and the risky and reckless way in which they are drawing conclusions from the American experience. Bill Bratton said:

“What I would suggest is create your own experience; don’t try to learn from us—seriously.”

He went on to explain exactly why the American policing model does not translate into a British context, and why it is dangerous to draw such a conclusion.

[Alun Michael]

I am interested that my right hon. Friend has read the evidence given by Mr Bratton, who went on to say that telling all 43 police authorities that they had to be managed in the same way was an experiment. He contrasted that with the plethora of different ways in which things are done in the States, including the variety of experiences that he had had himself.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Balls]

He did say that, and I am glad to receive my right hon. Friend’s praise for reading the evidence given to the Home Affairs Committee. I do so on behalf of the shadow Policing Minister, who read it in even greater detail.

The question of new panels points to another flaw in the Bill. There is one area in which the Home Secretary has agreed that the panels actually will have power, and it is the one in which we would think an elected police commissioner ought to have legitimacy—the setting of the precept. Rather bizarrely, on abolishing police authorities and establishing the panels, the one power that the Home Secretary gives the panels is to veto any proposal for a rise in the precept by the elected police commissioner. The commissioner will not have the power to set the precept without veto from the panel, and apparently will not be involved in operational policing, so it is not clear what they will be able to do. They will be even less powerful than the police authorities are at the moment.

I will not go into detail on the issue of political advisers, because we have done to death the mistake of the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice in saying to The Guardian that staff of the policing and crime commissioners will not be able to be members of political parties. It is absolutely clear that he is wrong about that and that they will be so able.

The Home Affairs Committee report is very instructive on the matter of operational responsibility. The problem is that one individual will be elected solely on a policing mandate and will stand alongside a chief constable. That makes the definition of operational responsibility very important. As I asked the Home Secretary earlier, what will happen if a commissioner is elected on a mandate of, for example, abolishing speed cameras or introducing water cannon—if the Home Secretary allows that—and the chief constable says, “No, in my judgment that is not required operationally”? Who will decide? I am afraid that the lack of clarity on that issue raises the spectre of politicisation in certain circumstances. That will need to be discussed in Committee, because the Home Affairs Committee was right to say that without a proper definition, a memorandum and a way of getting the situation clear, there is an inevitable risk of politicisation, which is exactly the fear of police chiefs across the country.

The final point that we hear regularly is that London is somehow a model. Of course, in London the Mayor is elected not for policing but for a wider range of powers. He tried to get involved in the hiring and firing of commissioners, but decided that it was inappropriate because it risked politicisation, and had to stand aside for his non-elected deputy to take over responsibility for the matter backed by a police authority of elected members from the Greater London authority with proper powers. The Home Secretary invents reasons why the model that she proposes cannot apply to London, but the reason is that it has been tried there and did not work.

I want to address some of the wider issues in Bill. They cover only one third of the clauses, and our intention, where possible, will be to seek consensus on these proposals. The Bill contains a number of changes to the licensing regime and to powers for councils that build upon, rather than reversing, the licensing reforms of the past decade. If the Bill receives its Second Reading today, we will clearly need to examine the proposals in detail in Committee, but we will support extra powers to enable local communities and the police to keep public order to ensure that people can enjoy a night out in a safe and secure manner.

We will look into the proposals on drugs in detail, but at this point, we cautiously welcome the temporary banning orders that the Home Secretary is proposing. However, there is a suggestion, in the changes to the role of the advisory committee, of a move away from evidence-based policy making on drugs. That gives us some cause for concern, and we shall need to look closely at the matter in Committee. As we heard from the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), the devil will be in the detail, as it was with the reform of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. We will look closely at the detail of the proposals in Committee.

We will also probe the details of the clauses on universal jurisdiction in Committee. The Opposition believe strongly in the importance of universal jurisdiction, and we will support the proposed changes to make it work more effectively in each of the relevant areas. We will seek to achieve consensus in Committee, but, as I have said, these measures add up to less than one third of the clauses in the Bill, and as far as the policing issues are concerned, it has been very hard to be the shadow Secretary Of State.

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

I should first declare that I am a member of the Kent police authority and that I support our abolition. I should also correct the right hon. Gentleman: our chair is not a Conservative. On the issue of operational independence, surely Ministers have made it very clear that there should be no interference by politicians on matters of individual investigation or arrest. Does he not agree, however, that it is quite proper for there to be democratic oversight of the broader issues of strategy and of the setting of budget priorities?

[Ed Balls]

I fully agree about the importance of that middle tier of political accountability for chief constables. What I and many other experts fear, however, is that if one individual is elected on a direct mandate for policing, it will be very hard indeed to prevent their supposed mandate from crossing operational dividing lines. That does not happen now, because each police authority—half of which comprises independents, the other half of which is indirectly elected—covers a number of areas and often comprises a number of political parties. They ensure that there is a collective sense that operational responsibilities are properly respected. I have no doubt that some elected police and crime commissioners will want to respect operational independence, but I have no doubt that individuals might be elected on a mandate that explicitly crosses that line. Unless that element of the Bill is sorted out quickly, we will end up with an expensive politicisation of policing in this country that will overturn 170 years of policing tradition.

I have looked carefully to find support for the Bill. I have already quoted Sir Hugh Orde and ACPO. I have also quoted the Association of Police Authorities. Police superintendents take the same view, as do Liberty and the Local Government Association. I have spoken on this matter at two conferences where I have urged anyone in the room who supports the proposals to identify themselves to me privately afterwards, because no one will dare admit to it publicly. As a member of a responsible Opposition, I want to know the arguments, yet nobody will come forward. It is very hard indeed to find anyone who supports this policy.

As a result of assiduous research by our shadow team, however, I have identified three organisations that support the proposal. The first is a think-tank called Policy Exchange. Yes, it is the think-tank that was founded by the Secretary of State for Education, and the think-tank that said that the solution to unemployment in the north was for people to move to the south. Mr Blair Gibbs made the case for these commissioners on behalf of that organisation. He was in fact chief of staff to the Policing Minister between 2007 and 2010.

The second organisation is called Direct Democracy, which included in its book “Direct Democracy: An Agenda for a New Model Party” a chapter on the case for independent police commissioners. Yes, that is the Direct Democracy that was founded by the hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) and by the Tory MEP Mr Daniel Hannan—he who described the NHS as a “60-year mistake”. Unfortunately, the chapter in the book was authored by the Policing Minister himself.

The third organisation is a think-tank called Reform. In its 2009 pamphlet, it also advocated this policy. Yes, the Reform think-tank is now headed by the former Tory central office head of political research, and it was founded by the Policing Minister. So there we have it: a former chief of staff to the Minister, a chapter written by the Minister and a think-tank founded by the Minister. Unusually for the coalition, the Minister responsible for the policy actually supports it, which is quite a turn-up for the books.

[Mr Burley]

The right hon. Gentleman has been talking about operational independence for the past five minutes. Does he not agree that, when Tony Blair summoned all 43 chief constables to a knife crime summit in Downing street and urged them collectively to do more about knife crime, he was illustrating exactly the way in which politicians could constructively influence the police?

[Ed Balls]

Of course the hon. Gentleman is right: Prime Ministers should take an interest in these matters, and I am sure that the Prime Minister of the time did that while fully respecting the operational independence of the police. The present Prime Minister is an advocate of individually elected police commissioners; in fact, it was in his 2005 manifesto. It is always good for the Home Secretary to support the Prime Minister if she can, but sometimes, as I know, it is important to say no. I am afraid that, on this matter, she has been remiss in her duties. It would have been much better if she had said to the Prime Minister, “I am very sorry, Prime Minister, but a policy that sounded good in opposition is deeply flawed and unimplementable in government.”

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned three organisations that support the proposals for elected police commissioners. I should like to read him a quote from a fourth:

“And with local meetings, new elected police representatives, and online crime mapping, people will have more information and more influence over what their local team is focused on.”

That quote is from the Labour party website, www.labour.org.uk.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Balls]

As I have said, we are looking carefully at this proposal. We have investigated it in detail, and we have concluded that it is a bad idea because it risks politicising our police and it is a waste of money. The money would have been better spent on police officers on the front line. We had a record number of police officers, and now we are seeing the biggest cuts in peacetime history.

[Chris Bryant]

Is not the absolute proof that the Government know that these are to be politicised posts the fact that the Bill allows for the Home Secretary to make provision for the candidates for the posts to be included under the terms of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000? They will effectively become politicians; they will be party nominees.

[Ed Balls]

As I understand it, though, the drafting of the Bill has not taken into account the fact that funding needs to be restricted on third-party campaigning. This issue needs to be cleared up and properly brought into line with other political elections. We know that the matter will be politicised by those on the Government Benches, because they have said so.

It is the job of the Home Secretary to stand up for public safety, to fight for police numbers and to resist barmy political reorganisations that get in the way of progress. Instead, we have seen her standing back and giving in to the Chancellor on huge and disproportionate cuts to policing, and being steamrollered by the Treasury into proposing front-loaded cuts. We have seen her stand at the Dispatch Box and recite a script that was written by the Prime Minister before he was Leader of the Opposition, back in 2005. To agree to any one of record police cuts, front-loading of cuts or a risky change to political accountability would be a foolish thing to do, but to sign up to all three at the same time is very reckless indeed. That is what the Home Secretary has done over the past six months in the job. It is time that she got some operational independence and started to do the job that she was appointed to do. She must stand up for our police and our communities, and resist these barmy proposals. We oppose giving the Bill a Second Reading.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

I strongly agree and the Home Secretary said exactly the same thing today. Such tactics are a matter for the operational responsibility of the police, but such major decisions have to be agreed with the police authorities that hold them to account locally.

My hon. Friends the Members for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) and for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) made good speeches supporting our plans to toughen alcohol licensing. I welcome the Opposition’s support for those measures, but what a far cry it is from the claims of the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell) that Labour’s 24-hour drinking laws were about

“enriching the quality of people’s lives.”

How naive that was. We have seen the result of those laws—violence and disorder in our city and town centres. So, Labour now repudiates its ill-judged experiment with the so-called café culture, but it is clearly going to oppose the measures on police reform for opposition’s sake. That is not the position of the former Minister with responsibility for policing, the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), however. Based on the notes I have seen, I think she made a thoughtful speech on the importance of accountability, although we may differ on the particular.

The shadow Home Secretary’s arguments against our proposals for police and crime commissioners are deeply unconvincing and he keeps getting things wrong. He attacked our statement on police funding today and got the numbers wrong. Last week, he said that the inspectorate of constabulary’s figures were “corrupt and erroneous”, but was then forced to retract those words. Today, he told the House that police and crime commissioners would have the power “to direct” policing, but that is simply wrong. Chief constables will retain control and direction of their forces, as it says in clause 2, which he should read. We are determined to protect the operational independence of chief constables. Police and crime commissioners will be able to set the policing plan with the agreement of the chief constable but they will not direct policing and nor should they.

The shadow Home Secretary said that the commissioners will be elected solely to run policing, but that will not be their sole job. They will be police and crime commissioners with wider powers and devolved budgets from the Home Office to fight crime and engage in crime prevention with the local community. If the right hon. Gentleman has such a good case, why does he need to invent objections to the Bill? He continues to assert that the commissioners will appoint political advisers, but we have repeatedly made it clear that we will not allow that. We do not want to politicise policing and we do not want spin in policing. We will not take any lectures about political advisers and spin from the friend of McBride and Whelan.

[Ed Balls]

I do not want to get into personal invective or to drag the important issue of policing down to the gutter. I have been told by a number of people who attended the meeting of the Association of Police Authorities at which the Minister spoke that he said that, if he were elected as a police and crime commissioner, the first decision he would take would be to appoint a political adviser. Was everyone else at that meeting mistaken or has he forgotten attending the event and saying those things?

[Nick Herbert]

The right hon. Gentleman is wrong and our intention is clear—we keep repeating it: we do not want political advisers and we have legislated for that in the Bill.

The Labour party complains about the cost of the commissioners and that complaint was repeated by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). We have made it quite clear that commissioners must cost no more than the police authorities they replace. Yes, there will be the cost of holding the elections once every four years—an average £12.5 million a year. That is less than 0.1% of police spend, and the money will not come from force budgets anyway.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Balls]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Herbert]

Labour’s manifesto at the last election proposed referendums five times over—on the alternative vote, on reform of the other place, on mayors, on further powers for the Welsh Assembly and on the euro. Did Labour Members advance arguments against those democratic pledges on the grounds that they would cost money? Of course not. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) pointed out, of course there is a cost to running elections. Police authorities do not have that cost because they are not democratic. That is exactly what we want to fix.

[Nick Herbert]

For all Labour’s objections, one could be forgiven for forgetting that the previous Government twice proposed to democratise police authorities. So what happened? They backed down, twice. That is the difference between the previous Government and the coalition. The Opposition retreated from reform at the first whiff of opposition and we are determined to see it through. [Hon. Members: “Give way!”]

One thing is clear. Those on the Opposition Front Bench may be opportunistically opposing this reform, but we know what they really think about the need for it.

“Only direct election, based on geographic constituencies, will deliver the strong connection to the public which is critical.”

Does that sound familiar to the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker)? It should do. He said it just two years ago.

Is that too long ago? Let us look at what the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) said just two weeks ago. He told the Home Affairs Committee that “the present accountability of police authorities was not optimal.” What a masterpiece of understatement. If police authorities are sub-optimal, what proposals does he have for reform? None. He is silent on the issue. Today the right hon. Gentleman admitted that “there is more we can do to deepen accountability at force level.” What? He will not say. He is against reform of the governance of policing, but he is for it, just as he is against cuts while admitting that he would cut police budgets by more than £1 million a year. Apparently these can be delivered without losing a single police officer. That is what he said today.

[Ed Balls]

rose—

[Nick Herbert]

On point after point, Labour Members get it wrong. They say that the constituencies—

Hon. Members: Give way!

Oral Answers to Questions

Ed Balls Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

As my hon. Friend knows, we prioritise counter-terrorism funding to policing, and it has received a measure of protection in the funding settlement. We will, of course, continue to prioritise it.

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice is having a busy and rather stressful afternoon. I was hoping to ask the Home Secretary about police funding and numbers—and it looked like he thought that she would answer this question too. In any case, may I ask him about the Home Secretary’s Cabinet-level spending negotiations? I hope that she has filled him in on what went on. This week, the cross-party association of police officers wrote to the Home Office to ask for the spending review settlement for the police—20% front-end loaded cuts, followed by 6% next year and 8% the year after—to be reopened in order to

“avoid long term damage to policing capability”

and to protect the front line. Back in May, the Prime Minister told the BBC:

“Any Cabinet minister…who comes to me and says ‘here are my plans and they involve front line reductions’ will be sent back to their department to go away and think again.”

If the Prime Minister has not told the Home Secretary to go away and think again, will she listen to police chiefs up and down the country urging her to do just that?

[Nick Herbert]

I think that the right hon. Gentleman was referring to the Association of Police Authorities. The House might not have heard that he told the Home Affairs Committee seminar in Cannock on 22 November that this is a tighter environment for police spending and would be under any Government. He admitted that there would be cuts in police spending. We inherited £44 billion of unspecified spending cuts from his Government, and we are having to deal with the deficit, taking the decisions that he has forced upon us.

[Ed Balls]

The deputy to the Home Secretary will have to do a lot better than that. These cuts are front-end loaded and go well beyond the 12% over four years that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary said was do-able. I am pleased that he has not repeated the 11% smear against our police, which he knows is a completely corrupt and erroneous statistic. Hon. Members should look at the numbers. In north Wales, 230 officers are to go; in the west midlands, 1,100; and in Greater Manchester, 1,387. The chief constable of Greater Manchester police said that

“there will be a reduction in frontline police officer numbers”.

The Home Secretary was not willing to stand up for the police in the spending review, and she is not willing either to stand up in the House and answer my questions on the police. She can refuse to answer my questions, but she cannot refuse to answer the questions from police officers and the public all around the country. Today—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We must have a one-sentence question.

[Ed Balls]

I call on the Home Secretary to listen to police chiefs and the public, and I demand that her spending settlement be reopened, that there is an end to front-end loading and that there is a better deal for the police.

[Nick Herbert]

First, may I say that I am absolutely astonished by the right hon. Gentleman’s attack on the figure of only 11% of total police strength being visible and available to the public at any one time? That was the finding of a report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, and if he takes issue with it, perhaps he will speak to the inspectorate. I think it is disgraceful that he should attack the figure in that way. The report stated:

“The fact is that general availability, in which we include neighbourhood policing and response, is relatively low.”

The right hon. Gentleman also quoted the chief constable of Greater Manchester police. In announcing the changes that he was making to the force, the chief constable said that

“the end result will be more resources put into frontline policing and a more efficient and effective service for the people of Greater Manchester.”

Instead of scaremongering in this way, and instead of attacking the correction that we are having to make, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will accept responsibility for bequeathing the deficit to this country that has meant that we have had to deal with public expenditure.

Controlling Migration

Ed Balls Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on immigration.

Controlled migration has benefited the UK economically, socially and culturally, but when immigration gets out of control, it places great pressure on our society, economy and public services. In the 1990s, net migration to Britain was consistently in the tens of thousands each year, but under Labour, net migration to Britain was close to 200,000 per year for most years since 2000. As a result, over Labour’s time in office net migration totalled more than 2.2 million people—more than double the population of Birmingham.

We cannot go on like this. We must tighten up our immigration system, focusing on tackling abuse and supporting only the most economically beneficial migrants. To achieve that, we will have to take action across all routes to entry—work visas, student visas and family visas—and break the link between temporary routes and permanent settlement. That will bring significant reductions in non-European Union migration to the UK and restore it to more sustainable levels. We aim to reduce net migration from the hundreds of thousands back down to the tens of thousands.

On the work routes to entry, all the evidence shows that it is possible to reduce numbers while promoting growth and underlining the message that Britain is open for business. After consulting widely with business and with the Migration Advisory Committee, I have decided to reduce economic migration through tier 1 and tier 2 from 28,000 to 21,700. That will mean a fall of more than a fifth compared with last year in the number of economic migrants coming in through tiers 1 and 2, excluding intra-company transfers.

Business groups have told us that skilled migrants with job offers—tier 2—should have priority over those admitted without a job offer, who are in tier 1. I have therefore set the tier 1 limit at 1,000, a reduction of more than 13,000 on last year’s number. Such a sharp reduction has enabled me to set the tier 2 limit at 20,700, an increase of nearly 7,000 on last year’s number.

The old tier 1, supposedly the route for the best and the brightest, has not attracted highly skilled workers. At least 30% of tier 1 migrants work in low-skilled occupations such as stacking shelves, driving taxis or working as security guards, and some do not have a job at all, so we will close the tier 1 general route. Instead, I want to use tier 1 to attract more investors, entrepreneurs and people of exceptional talent. Last year, investors and entrepreneurs accounted for fewer than 300 people, and that is not enough, so I will make the application process quicker and more user-friendly, and I will not limit the numbers of those wealth creators who can come to Britain.

There are also some truly exceptional people who should not need sponsorship from an employer but whom we would wish to welcome to Britain. I will therefore introduce a new route within tier 1 for people of exceptional talent—the scientists, academics and artists who have achieved international recognition, or are likely to do so. The number will be limited to 1,000 a year.

Tier 2 has also been abused and misused. Last year more than 1,600 certificates were issued for care assistants to come to the UK. At the same time, more than 33,000 care assistants who were already here were claiming jobseeker’s allowance, so I will restrict tier 2 to graduate-level jobs.

We have listened to business and will keep intra-company transfers outside the limit. However, we will place a new salary threshold of £40,000 on any intra-company transfers of longer than 12 months. Recent figures show that 50% of intra-company transfers meet those criteria. That will ensure that those coming are only the senior managers and key specialists who international companies need to move within their organisations.

I should like to thank the Migration Advisory Committee for its advice and recommendations. Next year, I will ask it to review the limit in order to set new arrangements for 2012-13.

However, the majority of non-EU migrants are, in fact, students. They represent almost two thirds of the non-EU migrants entering the UK each year, and we cannot reduce net migration significantly without reforming student visas. Hon. Members and others might imagine that by students, we mean people who come here for a few years to study at university and then go home. However, nearly half of all students coming here from abroad are actually coming to study a course below degree level, and abuse is particularly common at those lower levels. A recent check of students studying at private institutions below degree level showed that a quarter could not be accounted for. Too many students at lower levels have been coming here with a view to living and working rather than studying, and we need to stop that abuse.

As with economic migration, we will therefore refocus student visas on the areas that add the greatest value, and in which evidence of abuse is limited. I will shortly launch a public consultation on student visas. I will consult on restricting entry to only those studying at degree level, but with some flexibility for highly trusted sponsors to offer courses at a lower level. I will also consult on closing the post-study route, which last year allowed some 38,000 foreign graduates to enter the UK labour market at a time when one in 10 UK graduates were unemployed.

Last year, the family route accounted for nearly 20% of non-EU immigration. Clearly, British nationals must be able to marry the person of their choice, but those who come to the UK must be able to participate in society. From next week, we will require all those applying for marriage visas to demonstrate a minimum standard of English. We are also cracking down on sham marriages, and will consult on extending the probationary period of settlement for spouses beyond the current two years.

Finally, we need to restrict settlement. It cannot be right that people coming to fill temporary skills gaps have open access to permanent settlement. Last year, 62,000 people settled in the UK on that basis. Settling in Britain should be a privilege to be earned, not an automatic add-on to a temporary way in, so we will end the link between temporary and permanent migration.

I intend to introduce these changes to the work route and some of the settlement changes from April 2011. I will bring forward other changes soon after. This is a comprehensive package that will help us to meet our goal of reducing net migration, at the same time as attracting the brightest and the best, and those with the skills our country needs. This package will serve the needs of British business, it will respond to the wishes of the British public, and it will give us the sustainable immigration system that we so badly need.

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

Let me start by thanking the Home Secretary for the—rather late—advance sight of her statement, for coming to the House this afternoon in person, and for clarifying the confusion caused by the misleading leak of the contents of her statement to the BBC this morning. The Home Secretary is right to say that migration has made, and continues to make, a vital contribution to the economic vibrancy, business strength and vitality of our country. She is also right to say that it is essential for migration to be properly controlled, for reasons of economic well-being and social cohesion. But the question is: how? The Labour Government put in place transitional controls on EU migration, a suspension of unskilled work permits, a tough but flexible points system to manage skilled migration, and tighter regulation of overseas students. They closed 140 bogus colleges, and imposed new citizenship requirements on those seeking settlement.

At the general election, the leader of the Conservative party proposed to go further in two key respects. First, he proposed a new target to reduce net migration to the

“tens of thousands by 2015.”

To meet that target, he pledged a cap on immigration, which he said would be tougher than the points system. At the time, the leader of the Liberal Democrat party said:

“We can’t come up with promises like caps which don’t work”.

He then agreed to the cap in the coalition agreement. Since then, the Government have been in wholesale retreat, and today they are in wholesale confusion over this policy. The Confederation of British Industry, the chambers of commerce, universities, Nobel prize winners, and UK and foreign companies—large and small—have all highlighted the huge damage that the Government’s proposals would do to investment and jobs.

The Home Affairs Committee and the Migration Advisory Committee have said that the proposed cap applies to only 20% of non-EU migration. As a result, we have had the unedifying sight of the Prime Minister hinting at concession after concession—in the face, we read, of opposition from the Home Secretary, thanks to the excellent public lobbying and guerrilla tactics of the Business Secretary, who, sadly, is not in his place this afternoon. In his use of such tactics, he is less Stalin and more Trotsky—and certainly not Mr Bean.

Today the Home Secretary has come to the House to confirm the details of the retreat. We will keep a close eye on her proposals to see how they affect business and science. None the less, we join business representatives in welcoming her decision to exempt intra-company transfers of workers. What has caused confusion is this morning’s briefing to the BBC that the total cap would be 42,700 work permits. Her officials then had to clarify the fact that there is no such cap on that scale. She has now said that she will allow 21,700 tier 1 and tier 2 work permits, but with no cap on migration caused by intra-company transfers. If the number of intra-company transfers goes up, will she put in place an offsetting cut in tier 1 and tier 2 work permits? If not, and I very much hope that she will not, will she confirm that her supposed cap is a con, a guess and a fig leaf—in fact, no cap at all?

The permanent secretary revealed today that 9,000 jobs will be lost from the Home Office, the bulk of which will be from the UK Border Agency. Will the Home Secretary confirm that she can implement the policy that she has outlined today, and keep our borders secure, with those cuts? On family reunification she had nothing new to say—no target—and on overseas students she announced no action, just another consultation.

I have learned in the past few weeks that it is a mistake to ask the right hon. Lady a long list of questions, but there is one question to which it is vital that she should give an answer this afternoon: is it still the objective of the Prime Minister and the Government to cut net migration to the tens of thousands by 2015? In her statement she repeated the goal, but she omitted to put a date on it. Will she reaffirm the 2015 promise? In recent months—on VAT and tuition fees—the Deputy Prime Minister has got into a habit of breaking pre-election promises. Can the Home Secretary reassure us that the Prime Minister has not caught the same disease? This is a simple question. Is the “tens of thousands” pledge still binding by 2015—yes or no?

[Mrs May]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that response. During the Labour leadership campaign, he said:

“as many of us found in the election, our arguments on immigration were not good enough.”

Listening to him today, I realised that Labour’s arguments on immigration are still not good enough. He made a number of claims about what the Labour Government did on immigration, including the claim that they introduced transitional controls when new member states entered the EU. I seem to remember that when the first tranche of new member states entered the EU, that is precisely what they did not do, despite every blandishment from the Conservatives to encourage them.

The right hon. Gentleman then said that the previous Government took action on the points-based system limits. I accept that, but what happened? They closed tier 3 of the points-based system of entry into the UK, but nothing else, so when tier 3 shut down, the number of student visas went up by tens of thousands. That is why this Government know that when we deal with one part of the immigration system, we must act across the whole of it.

I made the figures for the tier 1 and tier 2 caps that we are introducing absolutely clear in my statement. The right hon. Gentleman asked whether the UK Border Agency could manage the cuts and keep our borders secure with the changes in personnel that will be made, and the answer to that, unequivocally, is: yes, it can.

Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked me to confirm what I said in my statement, which is that we aim to reduce net migration from the hundreds of thousands back down to the tens of thousands—[Hon. Members: “When? By 2015?”] If he is to criticise the Government’s plans on immigration, the right hon. Gentleman must have a plan. So far he does not even have an immigration spokesman, let alone an immigration policy. The British people, who according to his own words felt that Labour was no longer on their side and no longer stood up for them on immigration, will not listen to him until he has an immigration plan.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

I congratulate the Home Secretary on this statement. The shadow Home Secretary has apparently admitted in the media that the Labour party, when in government, made a mistake in 2004 by not applying transitional controls to enlargement of the European Union then.

[Ed Balls]

indicated assent.

[Michael Ellis]

I see the right hon. Gentleman nodding. Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that such transitional controls will be applied to any further enlargements of the European Union?

Points of Order

Ed Balls Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Of course, I commend your chairing. Given that we have just witnessed a U-turn on a U-turn, I am tempted to ask whether you might allow the Home Secretary to start again, but I fear that that might be ruled out of order.

On a more serious point, may I ask whether the Home Secretary contacted you today about the leak of her statement to the BBC? Did she explain why the statement was leaked to the BBC, and do you think it would be appropriate for her to explain to the House why the details of her statement were leaked to the BBC this morning?

[Mr Speaker]

I sometimes wonder whether these generous initial remarks are a ruse by Members to get me on their side, but I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I was not contacted by the Home Secretary about the matter to which the right hon. Gentleman refers, but he makes his point with force and clarity. I am always concerned that the House should hear key announcements first. However, I would say that when different numbers are being bandied around that is sometimes a sign of a matter for debate rather than a point of order. However, I shall keep my eyes and ears focused firmly on these matters because the House must hear first.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. As you have more or less indicated, I think that the Home Secretary—

[Ed Balls]

Shadow.

[Mrs May]

After 13 years in opposition, as the right hon. Gentleman will discover, one sometimes makes these mistakes. The information that the BBC had was wrong and I am happy to say to the House that any information on the BBC first thing this morning was nothing to do with the Home Office.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

The Home Secretary nods assent to that proposition. I hope that such a mistake will not happen again.

[Ed Balls]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

The right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) is insatiable today.

[Ed Balls]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Having heard the Home Secretary’s remarks, I fully accept that it was not her or her Department who made this leak. I hear you saying two things from the Chair: first, that these leaks are undesirable and, secondly, that they are even more undesirable if people get the numbers wrong when they are doing the leaking.

[Mr Speaker]

The question of whether it was or was not a leak remains undetermined. All I can say is that I am Speaker of the House, but I am not Sherlock Holmes. Moreover, as usual, the right hon. Gentleman has used his ingenuity to put his point firmly on the record. If there are no further points of order, perhaps we can come to the ten-minute rule Bill, for which the promoter and some of his supporters have been eagerly waiting.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ed Balls Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

We will hear more from the Home Secretary later this afternoon about the security threat to our country, but I am sure the whole House will want to join me in commending her on the very calm way in which she has handled events over the past few days. I also want to thank her for welcoming me to my shadow role and offering me a detailed security briefing.

On the spending review and its impact on police numbers in the west midlands, at the weekend the Home Secretary said that in the spending review it is important that the Home Office takes its share, and policing is taking its share in that, but given that the NHS budget is rising by 0.4% in real terms over four years and the Defence and Education budgets are falling by 7.5% and 11%, does the Home Secretary really think a real-terms cut in the Home Office budget of 25% and a 20% real-terms cut in the central resource budget for policing constitutes a fair share?

[Mrs May]

May I first welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his post as shadow Home Secretary? I was pleased to be able to welcome him to his new position with a telephone call and, indeed, to be able to update him over the weekend on the recent events that have taken place—they will be discussed in more detail later this afternoon, of course.

I simply say to the right hon. Gentleman that, yes, it is important for the Home Office to be willing to look at playing its part in dealing with the biggest deficit of any G20 nation, a deficit that was left as a legacy to this country by his Labour Government.

[Ed Balls]

Police leaders in the west midlands and across the country will have to decide for themselves whether that was an adequate answer. In the last week, the accountancy firm KPMG has estimated that 18,000 police officers will lose their jobs, and the Police Federation says 20,000, which would mean that 1,200 officers would be lost in the west midlands alone in the next four years. Given the impact these cuts will have in the west midlands and across the country, does the Home Secretary agree with these estimates of deep cuts to front-line policing, or does she think that KPMG and the Police Federation have got their sums wrong?

[Mrs May]

I repeat to the right hon. Gentleman what I said to the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth): the issue of policing and the effectiveness of policing is not just about numbers, which is what he and his colleagues seem to think; it is about how we deploy police staff and the job they are doing out on the streets. I have more confidence in the ability of our chief constables up and down the country, chief constables like Jon Stoddart in Durham, who says that

“our commitment to neighbourhood policing is undiminished”

and the deputy chief constable in Essex who said:

“We are…working on a…new Blueprint for policing…taking the opportunity fundamentally to re-design all aspects of how we deliver our services.”

We are clear that savings can be made without affecting front-line policing. We are doing our bit as a Government in reducing the heavy load of bureaucracy introduced by the right hon. Gentleman’s Government, which will result in police being out on the streets.

Aviation Security Incident

Ed Balls Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the recent airline bomb plot. The House will know that in the early hours of Friday morning, following information from intelligence sources, the police identified a suspect package on board a UPS courier aircraft that had landed at East Midlands Airport en route from Cologne to Chicago. Later during the morning, police explosives experts identified that the device contained explosive material. A similar device was located and identified in Dubai. It was being transported by FedEx to Chicago.

Since then, an intensive investigation has been taking place in this country and overseas. Cobra met on Friday to assess progress, I chaired a Cobra meeting on Saturday and the Prime Minister chaired a further Cobra meeting this morning. I am sure the House will appreciate that much of the investigation is sensitive, and the information I can give is necessarily limited. Disclosure of some details could prejudice the investigation, the prospects of bringing the perpetrators to justice, our national security and the security of our allies, but I want to give the House as full a picture as possible.

We know that both explosive devices originated in Yemen. We believe that they were made and dispatched by the organisation known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This group, which is based in Yemen, was responsible for the attempted downing of an aircraft bound for Detroit on 25 December last year. The devices were probably intended to detonate mid-air and to destroy the cargo aircraft on which they were being transported. Our own analysis of the device here—analysis that has to proceed with great care to preserve the evidential value of the recovered material—established by Saturday morning that the device was viable. That means not only that it contained explosive material but that it could have detonated. Had the device detonated, we assess that it could have succeeded in bringing down the aircraft. Our forensic examination of the device continues. We are receiving valuable assistance from a wide range of partners, and the analysis has some way to go.

At this stage we have no information to suggest that another attack of a similar nature by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is imminent, but the organisation is very active. During this year it has repeatedly attacked targets in Yemen. On 26 April and 6 October it attacked and attempted to kill British diplomats based in Sana’a. It continues to plan other attacks in the region, notably against Saudi Arabia. We therefore work on the assumption that the organisation will wish to continue to find ways of attacking targets further afield.

We will continue to work with international partners to deal with this threat. We have for some years provided assistance to the Yemeni Government and will continue to do so. The Prime Minister has spoken to President Saleh to make clear our desire for a closer security relationship. Following the Detroit incident, Ministers in the last Government took the decision to stop all direct passenger and cargo aircraft flying from Yemen to and through the UK. Over the weekend, we took the further step of stopping all unaccompanied air freight to this country from Yemen. That will include air freight from Yemen both carried on courier flights and hold-loaded in passenger aircraft. The small number of items in transit prior to that direction have been subject to rigorous investigation on arrival in the UK, and no further suspicious items have been discovered.

We are now taking further steps to maintain our security. I can confirm to the House that we will review all aspects of air freight security and work with international partners to make sure that our defences are as robust as possible. We will update the guidance given to airport security personnel based on what we have learned, to enable them to identify similar packages in future.

From midnight tonight, we will extend the suspension of unaccompanied air freight to this country from not just Yemen but Somalia. This decision has been made as a precautionary measure and it will be reviewed in the coming weeks. It is based on possible contact between al-Qaeda in Yemen and terrorist groups in Somalia, as well as on concern about airport security in Mogadishu.

From midnight tonight, we will suspend the carriage of toner cartridges larger than 500 grams in passengers’ hand baggage on flights departing from UK airports. Also from midnight tonight, we will prohibit the carriage of these items by air cargo into, via or from the UK unless they originate from a known consignor—a regular shipper with security arrangements approved by the Department for Transport.

We intend that these final two measures will be in place initially for one month. During that time, we will work closely with the aviation industry, screening equipment manufacturers and others, to devise a sustainable, proportionate, long-term security regime to address the threat. Department for Transport officials are already in technical discussions with the industry, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport will chair a high-level industry meeting later this week to discuss next steps. These initiatives are in addition to those that we have set out in the strategic defence and security review.

We are already committed to widening checks on visa applicants to this country. Following the Detroit incident, we are also committed to making changes to pre-departure checks to identify better the people who pose a terrorist threat and to prevent them from flying to the UK.

We are committed to enhancing our e-borders programme, which provides data on who is travelling to this country and which is therefore an essential foundation for our counter-terrorist and wider security work. We have an increasingly active and important border co-operation programme with counterparts in the USA. The Detroit incident led to the introduction of further passenger scanning devices at key airports in the UK.

Cobra will continue to meet through this week. The National Security Council will also consider this issue. We will continue to work closely with our partners overseas.

Finally, the House will wish to join me in expressing gratitude to the police and the security and intelligence agencies in this country for the work they are doing to understand the threat we face and to deal with it so effectively.

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

The whole country has been shocked by the events of the last four days—by the discovery of two concealed and hard-to-detect explosive devices on aircraft, one of which was at East Midlands airport, by the risk that further devices may be at large and by the serious and challenging threat that such terrorist activity constitutes to public safety and our country’s security.

At Home Office questions earlier, I commended the Home Secretary for the calm way in which she has led the response to these threats and chaired and reported on Cobra meetings. I thank her for the Privy Council briefings that she gave me on Friday night and again on Saturday afternoon. I join her in commending our police, intelligence and security services for the brave and vital work they have done over the past few days in close co-operation with allies around the world to save lives, as they do every other day of the year.

It is the job of Her Majesty’s Opposition to ask questions, probe statements and hold the Government to account. That we will do, but we will be mindful at all times of our wider responsibility to support necessary actions to keep our citizens safe and protect our vital national interests. In that spirit, I have questions for the Home Secretary on three issues: the detailed events of the last few days, and the implications for airline security and wider national security.

First, we all appreciate the way in which intelligence and international co-operation are involved. Events move fast, and things are always clearer with hindsight, but at what precise point were the police, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister first told about the potential threat? Were there delays in getting precise information to our security and police officers on the ground? Why was the device not discovered by police officers during the first search? Could earlier information have made a material difference to the search? What operational lessons, if any, will be learned when dealing with such events in the future?

Secondly, the fact that the two live explosive devices were intercepted by an intelligence tip-off only after they had been carried on at least five different planes, three of which were passenger aircraft, raises serious questions about the security of our airspace. Some security experts have referred to cargo security as a potential blind spot. I understand that Lord Carlile drew attention to the potential risks of cargo transit in his annual reports in 2007 and 2008, and that significant actions were taken to improve intelligence and international security co-operation at that time. I also understand that a tougher search method, called explosive trace detection, was introduced for passenger flights last year following the Detroit attempted attack.

I appreciate that this is a complex problem to solve, that a review has been set up and that the Home Secretary has already acted to ban unaccompanied cargo packages from Yemen and Somalia and put in place temporary restrictions on carrying toner cartridges, but what conclusions does she draw about the reliability of current checks from the fact that the device was not spotted on the first check by police experts at East Midlands airport? Will the review consider extending explosive trace detection from passenger to cargo flights, which I believe has happened in the United States? Will the scope of her review cover cargo carried in passenger as well as cargo aircraft? Should we take any other action now to improve the security of cargo coming into, going out of or transiting the UK while the review is undertaken?

The events of the last few days also raise wider issues for national security and our counter-terrorism strategy. It is clear that terrorists operating out of Yemen constitute an increasing threat, as the Home Secretary said. Can she assure the House that the Government are in urgent discussions with the Yemeni Government and our allies around the world with a view to doing more to interrupt terrorist activities at source? Given the wider evidence of a mounting threat, the judgments that will underpin the Government’s current review of counter-terrorism powers are especially important. Although we will reserve judgment until we see the outcome of the review, I have said that the Opposition will seek to support her where we can and that consensus should be our shared goal.

Finally, I must raise the issue of resources. Given that the explosive devices were intercepted through vital intelligence work, is the Home Secretary confident that a 6% real-terms cut in the single intelligence account over the next four years can be managed without compromising such work? Given that the device was discovered by specially trained police working closely with our security and border services, is she confident that a 10% real-terms cut in counter-terrorism policing over the next four years and a 50% cut in capital available to the UK Border Agency will not undermine operational capability?

The Olympics are now just two years away and the eyes of the world will be on our country. Given that the planned 20% real-terms cuts in police budgets is front-end loaded, and that there will be a 6% cut in the year before the games and an 8% cut in the year of the Olympics itself, can the Home Secretary assure the House that the extra strain that police resources will face will not pose an unacceptable risk to fighting crime and our national security? Does she agree with me that in the light of the events of the past few days, the issue of resources should now be looked at again, alongside the counter-terrorism review?

[Mrs May]

May I first thank the right hon. Gentleman for the way in which he has responded on this issue? He is absolutely right that this is a not a matter of party political divide, but one of concern to all of us across the House. It is important that we get our response right, and I am grateful to him for indicating that he will support the Government in the measures that we take and the response that we give. He asked a number of detailed questions, some of which were quite operational in type. I will attempt to answer as many of his questions as possible, but if I do not answer his operational ones now, I will be happy to do so in writing afterwards.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the fact, which I mentioned in my statement, that the initial indication of the device came from intelligence. We do not speak about intelligence sources or say how it came about, but, on timing, I can tell him that the police attended the airport and looked to see what they could find in relation to the device. It took a while before the device was identified as something that contained explosive material. I and the Prime Minister were informed that there was a device containing explosive material at about 2 o’clock on Friday.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to comments from security experts about this being the “soft underbelly”, which is a term that some have used. In relation to cargo and other aspects, I would say that, as I am sure he is aware, we are in a constant battle with the terrorists, who are always looking for another innovative way to get around our defences. Our job, and the job of our security and intelligence agencies and the police, is to ensure that we do all we can to ensure that there are no gaps in our defences. In that context, the work that the Government have already done in introducing the national security strategy and, crucially, in bringing Departments together in our work on security is an important part of that task.

The right hon. Gentleman asked various questions about cargo. The review will cover a number of issues. Obviously, when such an incident takes place, it is right not only that we take stock and that we take action immediately—as we have done—but that we do more work with the industry. As I indicated, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport will be taking that forward, and I can confirm that the review will consider the extension of explosive trace detection, although there are some significant technical issues there. Certainly, however, the review will look at that.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the counter-terrorism review. As he will have heard me say at Home Office questions earlier, final decisions have not been taken on the review. I am absolutely apprised of the fact that the Government, like every Government, need to ensure that the safety and security of the public are a prime concern. We need to rebalance our national security with our civil liberties, but I am well aware that it is our national security that enables us to enjoy our civil liberties. We remain conscious of that.

The right hon. Gentleman then asked a number of questions about cuts to budgets. He asked whether I was confident in the ability of the security and intelligence agencies to maintain their level of work, and to do their vital job in keeping us safe, and I can say that yes, I am confident. On cuts in policing, as he knows, police forces will be able to take money out of non-front-line policing. On border services, crucially, the coalition Government are committed to enhancing our ability to keep our borders secure, through the introduction of the border police command under the new national crime agency we will be setting up.

Finally, of course the Olympics budget is protected, and a significant part of the Olympics security budget, which is protected within the Home Office, relates to Olympics policing.