Metropolitan Police Service

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Lord Hanson of Flint

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) who has done a service to his constituents and to the people of London in bringing this important issue to this Chamber.

The fact that 15 of my right hon. and hon. Friends have attended this debate, plus the hon. Members for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) and for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), shows that they share an interest in the importance of policing in this great city. I have not yet noticed a Liberal Democrat attending this debate. Perhaps they are too embarrassed about their general election pledge for 3,000 extra police officers to turn up in person. We will put that to one side for the moment.

In this debate about the future of the Metropolitan Police, my hon. and right hon. Friends have spoken with passion about their concerns for their constituencies. London is a complex city to police and faces many challenges. My right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) mentioned that the Olympics was an important event. Such international events in this great city are commonplace, week in, week out.

We have heard about the importance of recognising the potential for London’s being a focus for terrorist activity and about the prevention of terrorism. My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) mentioned the river boat scheme. We heard of appalling acts of murder in this city from the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster. We heard about gangs and guns, and of the importance of neighbourhood policing, about which my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) talked. We have heard about the historical hangover of the riots in Croydon from my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed). During his election campaign, I was pleased to go to Croydon police station to see its importance to the community. Historical inquiries were mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Select Committee, who is also present, showing the importance of the debate.

Those are big issues, and policing London is a complex matter. The community reassurance that neighbourhood policing brings to London, which has been mentioned by all my right hon. and hon. Friends, and the cohesion not only to fight crime but to be a presence on the streets of London, to communicate with its citizens, have been important. Many of those matters are rightly devolved to the Mayor, but the central contention of my right hon. and hon. Friends today has been—I put this strongly to the Minister—that the choices made by the Mayor in London are wrong and that the choices made by the Minister on budget and organisation since 2010 have compounded those wrongs and made policing in London much more difficult.

As the Minister knows, we have an honest disagreement about funding. When I was the Police Minister, in the last year of the Labour Government, we planned to make some savings on policing—some 12%—but the Minister’s proposals have meant a 20% cut, which is effectively £540 million lost to the Met budget by 2015, or 4,200 police officers. That is a real challenge. From May 2010 to date, the Metropolitan police has lost 2,285 police officers and, importantly, 1,900 police community support officers. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) mentioned the importance of those numbers, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden.

Police station closures are pivotal. We need to make savings in the policing budget in London, no doubt, but 65 police stations are proposed for closure. Today, my hon. Friends the Members for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and for Croydon North have mentioned the importance of those stations to their constituencies, showing that somewhere someone is getting this wrong. The reassurance demanded by the constituents of my right hon. and hon. Friends on such issues is simply not being given. No doubt the Minister will say that crime is down. I welcome the fact that crime in certain areas is falling, but it would be in certain areas, because, after all, Labour put 15 years of investment in as Mayor and as Government. As pointed out today, however, the rate of crimes solved has also fallen; and the level of recorded crime has fallen, but the level of reporting to police is falling.

The issues are serious, and in drawing attention to them I make no criticism of Bernard Hogan-Howe or the Metropolitan police. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West mentioned their service day in, day out, putting their lives at risk. Indeed, on Saturday, I will go to Southwark cathedral to pay tribute to Paul McKeever, the former chair of the Police Federation, who was a Metropolitan police officer. He knew and had pride in the service that the Metropolitan police provide to this great city. The challenges of the budget cut and of the decisions on how that cut is made have been reflected strongly in what my right hon. and hon. Friends have said today.

[Mr Thomas]

Will my right hon. Friend do two things? Will he join me in congratulating Joanne McCartney, a Labour member of the Greater London assembly, who has led the effort to explore the consequences of the Mayor’s budget cuts? Will he also ask the Minister for particular clarity on the Home Office fund for ending gang and youth violence and on whether it will cease in March 2013, as many of us fear, or whether there has been a rethink?

[Mr Hanson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, because we are not concerned only with the direct police budget. Resources also come through the community safety fund, which was mentioned by right hon. and hon. Members. In the last year that I set it, it was £13.2 million for London. This year, it is £5.3 million, and next year it is disappearing altogether. That is £13.2 million in the last year of a Labour Government but that is now no more, in the third year of a Conservative and Liberal Administration.

Policing

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Lord Hanson of Flint

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

I certainly welcome the fact that the Conservatives have a candidate standing in every area, unlike the Liberal Democrats, who voted for the policy but are not seeing it through and therefore are not committed to it. We in the Labour party have put a lot of effort into selecting candidates, and more than a third of them are women, which is very promising.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Further to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), is not what has happened in London particularly instructive in terms of the context for this debate? Mayor Boris Johnson has presided over almost 1,500 police officers being cut and almost 2,000 police community support officers being lost. Is that not part of the Conservative record and to be regretted?

[Mr Hanson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, as that is part of the Conservatives’ record. One of the things that we will be campaigning on outside London in these elections is their appalling record on cutting police throughout England and Wales.

Today’s debate is a chance for us to try to engage the public in these elections to ensure—if this is possible—a good turnout. The Government’s record, to date, has been appalling. Hon. Members should listen not only to me, but to the former chief constable of Thames Valley police and head of the soon-to-be-dissolved National Policing Improvement Agency. He said:

“If you could have constructed a manual on how not to conduct an election, the Home Office have managed to tick off just about every element of it, including holding it in November, which is almost guaranteed to be dark and poor weather.”

He continued:

“So there are significant problems with getting a decent turnout…If they get elected on a 15% turnout it’s going to be pretty shocking.”

On 13 December 2010, the Home Secretary said at the Dispatch Box:

“With a strong democratic mandate from the ballot box, police and crime commissioners will hold their chief constable to account for cutting crime.”—[Official Report, 13 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 708.]

However, only last month, research commissioned by Victim Support showed that 90% of people questioned had no idea what this role entailed or what it did. On Monday, a survey by the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners suggested that 85% of people either knew “not very much” or “nothing at all” about this election—nearly two in five knew nothing about it whatsoever. The same survey, only this week, showed that the number of people asked who were certain to vote was 15%. The Minister of State, Home Department, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), whom I believe is to wind up today’s debate, even though he cannot be bothered to come to hear the opening speeches—

Police Grant Report

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Lord Hanson of Flint

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

I look forward to the people of Devizes learning that the hon. Lady has voted for £1 million to be cut from their police grant—unless my speech convinces her to vote with Labour Members to oppose those cuts. She asked an important question about what the Labour party would do to reduce the deficit. We went into the election campaign with clear commitments. Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour Members did not oppose the settlement that we debated on 3 February; we agreed the grants for this year in February. For future years, we agreed that we would spend money above the rate of inflation on policing, health and education, and make the savings that we needed through a deficit reduction plan for other matters.

[Mr Thomas]

Does my right hon. Friend remember his visit to Harrow police station in January to hear from yet another borough commander about the need for a new police station to help Harrow police do the job that they need to do? Does he share my disappointment that the cuts will reduce the capital available to the Metropolitan police, and are probably yet another excuse for the Mayor of London to continue to refuse to help Harrow police get the equipment and facilities that they need to do their job?

[Mr Hanson]

Today’s cuts not only reduce the capital budget but take some £28 million from London’s budget. I believe that the Mayor is still one Boris Johnson, who has already agreed not to raise the precept this year. That means a real cut not only, through inflation, on the precept, but in the grant.