Policing

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

We want the police to investigate crimes and a tragic death of that sort. I am very sorry to hear of the case that the hon. Gentleman raises. I shall go on to refer to violent crime later in my speech.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend congratulate Hampshire constabulary, which has 96% of police out on the beat rather than stuck in back offices, because of efficiencies and reorganisation which have led to an 11% reduction in crime?

[Mrs May]

I absolutely do congratulate Hampshire police. I have visited Hampshire police. It is one of the police forces that has been at the forefront of using technology to help it investigate crime—through the body-worn video cameras, for example, and the tough tablets that they have taken out with them. They are also working very closely with the fire service and doing everything to ensure that they have been making savings and improving the service to the public.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

I hope to be able to speak within five minutes. I would like to echo the thanks of everyone else to the police, and particularly to those in Hampshire, where our constabulary has been leading the way in channelling resources to the frontline. The force faces some particular challenges, to which I will return, but it does a fine job and I want to pay tribute to Chief Constable Andy Marsh and all his staff.

There has been a fall in crime of 11% over the last five years, and 96% of police are on the frontline. I hope that when the final funding formula is drawn up, it will recognise that Hampshire has already made the transition to becoming an efficient and responsive force. Hampshire should not be penalised when other forces, as we have heard, still need to catch up. It is very welcome that the Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice accepted this point in a speech to the House at the end of the last Parliament.

Across the country as well as in Portsmouth, we have seen a fall in crime since 2010, and I am sure that it will continue as society grows stronger under our long-term economic plan. This has coincided with a period of budgetary pressure on police forces across the country; as we have heard, some forces have responded better than others. I welcome the initiative to put senior officers in closer touch with local authorities by sharing facilities. In Portsmouth, we now have our chief inspector and her team in our civic offices—much closer to the city council team, including community wardens, that play such an important part in helping the police.

It makes equal sense to pool facilities and resources across the emergency services wherever this is possible, and both Hampshire fire and rescue service and Hampshire constabulary are leaders in that development. Hampshire has set up H3, which merges all the back-office staff and functions along with the county council. Sharing these resources makes sense, as more money can be spent on front-line services rather than replicating back-office functions. This has meant £4 million going back into front-line services. I know that some authorities are doing the same, but not all. I urge them to follow the example of this scheme. I know the Policing Minister has visited Hampshire and that as a former firefighter he was most impressed to see this. The early implementation of body-worn cameras by Hampshire police has had a dramatic effect in reducing violence towards officers, and on confrontational behaviour generally when officers attend an incident.

Like the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy), Hampshire faces unique policing challenges. Some 85% of the area is rural, yet Portsmouth has the highest population density outside London. As a Member who represents an urban constituency, I was saddened to learn that rural crime is a huge problem. The farming industry in Hampshire is intensive and advanced, and there is a worryingly good trade in stealing equipment and shipping it out of the country through Southampton. That is a particular challenge for Hampshire, as it is for a handful of other forces that cover ports that have a rural hinterland.

I am especially keen to work with the police, local authorities and public health bodies on drug harm reduction and crime prevention, and I welcome the sustained fall in drug crime in Hampshire’s crime statistics. This year’s figures up to September show an almost 14% fall in reported drug crime. The police force has been running an excellent campaign against psychoactive substances in recent weeks—an issue that I campaigned on before my election to this House. Criminality from the drug trade is fought by street-level police intelligence. I welcome the shift towards getting rid of those drugs, something that the Government have promoted through the Psychoactive Substances Bill.

The Prevent strategy is working well. Six men went to Syria three years ago, but none has gone since. The police team have spent a lot of time with the families affected, and the Prevent team works closely with the Bengali community. I welcome the continued commitment of funding for counter-terrorism policing, which I am sure has stopped further young people travelling to join terrorist organisations. We now have more officers on the beat in Portsmouth as a result of the reforms, and I look forward to working with the police at all levels, from chief constable to police officers, as well as our valuable police community support officers, whose contribution is much valued.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Drummond]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

I will not give way at the moment.

Like Hampshire, other forces have real skills. I know the marine service in Hampshire does excellent work, and we need to look carefully at how it is funded in this difficult funding situation. Other forces around the country are starting to work with other blue light services. In Northamptonshire, the very forward-thinking PCC is not only bringing the fire service alongside the police, but is talking very closely to other blue light services, particularly the ambulance service.

In Hertfordshire, which is my own force, I have one of the best chief fire officers in the country. He must be, because just under 10 years ago he helped to put out Buncefield. He was the chief fire officer at Buncefield, which blew up half of my constituency. He is the chief executive of the PCC’s office, so he and the PCC can work closely together, keeping costs down and making sure that that approach is the way forward. We can see not only where that is starting to work, but how other forces can learn from the work being done in places such as Hampshire and Northamptonshire.

During the course of the debate, I did not want to interfere in Scottish National party Members’ little personal disagreements with Labour Members, but I thought that I might just help them a bit now. In an intervention earlier on, I think the lead spokesman for the SNP mentioned the effect that VAT is having. [Interruption.] Well, whichever SNP Member it was because, to be fair, one of them did. There was a bit of whingeing—that is what it is called in my part of the world—about VAT.

During the debate, I decided to take a look at why the Scottish nationalists are so worried about the fact that they cannot get their VAT refund. As they put their business plan together for combining the fire and police services in Scotland, including the savings they thought they would make, they took into consideration the fact that they would not be able to claim VAT back and would not get VAT refunds. I therefore find it strange that having done their business plan in 2012 and brought it in, they come to the House today to complain about the Chancellor not giving them their VAT refunds.

We heard a contribution from the Welsh nationalists earlier, with a lot of talk about the Silk commission and its recommendations as to whether or not policing should have been devolved. There was no agreement on the Silk commission by the political parties in Wales in respect of whether policing should be devolved. That is the situation. When they are trying to agree on what was going on, it is important that we get the facts absolutely correct.

As Members on both sides of the House have said, in the 21st century we need to make sure that the money of the taxpayers who send us here is spent correctly. We need to make sure that we continue to have the best police force in the world. We need to make sure that the public have trust in the police force in this country. It is imperative that the people elected to this House to represent their communities do not scare them with estimates of how many police they will lose, whether they will be attacked on the way home and whether there are different situations going on. Nobody knows exactly what the funding will be. Some Members have conflated the spending review, the funding formula, the chiefs looking at where co-operation can take place and whether some forces would like to amalgamate formally—I do not know whether that is the case, as no business plans are on my desk—or informally, as West Mercia and Warwickshire have done, very successfully. A lot more work could be done across the country, but we should not, as politicians, stand in Parliament and scare our constituents by saying that the police force in this country is going to collapse or that crime is dramatically rising, because it is not.

It is fundamentally wrong for an Opposition party to campaign against cuts and then for Opposition Members to come to this House to tell us that they would have a 10% cut—if people were stupid enough to elect them. That is seriously dangerous. As with their policy on PCCs, they have no policies. Vera Baird and Paddy Tipping clearly won the argument in the Labour party, saying that it should reverse its policy and there has been another huge U-turn on PCCs. Now the Opposition have said, with all their colleagues behind them, “The cuts the Tories have made over the last five years are terrible. They are massively affecting policing in our community. Oh, by the way, we will cut it by another 10%.” It is an absolutely ludicrous position. Anybody with any sense will not be going through the Lobby with the Labour party. The Scots Nats are not going to go through with the Labour party, and that tells me something.

Question put.