Policing and Crime Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

Absolutely. I agree with the hon. Gentleman. That point was also raised by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, and I am sure that the Minister will also put forward an argument for putting in place a means of making those measurements.

Having said all that, I am curious about the lateness of the arrival of the new clauses. The Minister referred positively to the consensus in Committee and to the ability of both sides to help each other out to make progress on the Bill. I commend the shadow Fire Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), for arguing for a provision to assess the ability of the fire service to carry out its functions. To the Minister’s credit, he has now tabled the new clause and the new schedule to address that issue.

I mentioned in an intervention my curiosity about whether the Government had considered the United Kingdom Accreditation Service as a potential vehicle to carry out the function that is being proposed here. The Minister knows that I had 23 years in the fire service, 13 of which were spent as an operational firefighter, and I participated in drills in the fire station as set out by Her Majesty’s inspectorate. I have to question the value of those drills, because we would train for weeks to get them right but they still did not always go entirely right. I question the value of putting in that amount of rehearsal. I wonder whether all that practice actually made the whole exercise worthless.

We decided to abolish Her Majesty’s inspectorate because of the scepticism and cynicism surrounding it—the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst referred to an old boys’ network earlier—and I would have hoped that the Government would now be proposing something new. However, they seem to be proposing a re creation of what went before. Having moved it to the Department for Communities and Local Government and then back to the Home Office, there seems to be replication so that, along with Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons, we will now have Her Majesty’s inspectorate of fire services.

I look forward to hearing more from the Minister and to listening to the debates in the other place, where I suspect the Bill will get more scrutiny than it has in this place. Public confidence in the fire service is high and has always been high, but the fire service needs professional underpinning and validation not only for public confidence and value for money, but for the safety of firefighters who put themselves on the frontline to protect the public. I look forward to a more extensive debate when the Bill goes to the other place, and to some comments from the Minister when he sums up. This is a positive step forward, but we need to make sure that the fire service can demonstrate to its own satisfaction, to our satisfaction and to that of the public that it is equipped, resourced and able to do the job we all admire it for doing and want it to carry on doing in the future.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

May I first apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker? Although I was in the Chamber for the Minister’s opening speech, I had to chair a Delegated Legislation Committee—you were kind enough to put me on the Panel of Chairs—so I am sorry that I have not been present for the whole of this debate.

I want to speak to new clause 23, which was so ably introduced by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier). I understand that it will not be pushed to a vote, that there will be a review in relation to PACE and that the Minister has listened carefully to all the arguments that have been made. If we are to have a review, there is an opportunity—I will use my brief remarks to talk about it—to have a debate in this country about face coverings generally. Many people in our country feel that it is quite un-British, and is not necessary for any reason, except in exceptional circumstances.

I do not want to suggest that we should take heavy-handed, universal action to prevent people from covering their face in this country, because that is also in a sense un-British. Fundamentally, as a nation, we actually believe in the freedom of people to live their lives in the way that, for whatever reason, they want, so long as they do not alarm or intimidate others. I know that other countries—for example, France and I believe Belgium, which are perfectly moderate, sensible, freedom-loving countries—have decided to ban face coverings in public, but we probably do not want to proceed in that way in this country.

If we are to have a review, I believe that this is an opportunity to have a debate. I certainly join my hon. Friends who have expressed concern about certain situations in which people feel intimidated, such as in the environs of a hunt, an animal research laboratory, or a demonstration outside Parliament. People are of course entitled to demonstrate—nobody is denying that—but it is very intimidating for the police and the public to see people engaged in demonstrations with any kind of face covering.

I understand that it is perfectly possible under present arrangements for the authorities to issue written instructions so that a police constable can require people to remove their face coverings and all the rest of it, but I would like us to go further. I suggest that the way to deal with this problem is to say—in a particular situation that might be threatening, intimidatory, violent or confrontational on both sides—there should certainly be a right for a police constable to require somebody to remove a face covering. It should be possible for a chief constable to have such a right, as well as to lay down general prohibitions against face coverings.

It should also be possible—there should be a public debate about this, because I know that there are different points of view—for the Home Secretary to issue a ban against face coverings in certain situations or in particularly sensitive geographical places, such as the central areas of the cities of London and Westminster, the central part of our capital city, which is sensitive for all sorts of reasons, or in hospitals, schools, law courts and doctors’ surgeries. I know not everybody in the House will agree, but many members of the public are concerned about this.