Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

That is an important initiative. We have several initiatives in our prisons, including the Clink Restaurant and the Bad Boys’ Bakery, which does excellent baked goods—I think I mentioned it last time. There are huge opportunities in catering and cheffing, in which we have skill shortages. We can do a great deal with apprenticeships to make sure that people are trained up to take on those roles on release.

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

14. What steps she is taking to review the capability of (a) HM Prison Service and (b) contracted-out prisons to respond to incidents of concerted indiscipline.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

All prisons, both private and public, face the same challenges to safety and security. We are continually reviewing and supporting prisons across the estate to mitigate and manage serious threats and incidents.

[Mr Shuker]

On how many occasions in the past year have private prisons required the support of the public Prison Service to deal with prison indiscipline?

[Mr Gyimah]

Mutual assistance across both sectors is in place in the event of an incident to provide immediate support to those prisons in need. Private sector prisons can therefore provide support to public sector prisons—and vice versa—in the event of a serious threat or incident.

Police Funding Formula

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate and it is not lost on me that quite a self-selecting group of MPs has turned out today, all of whom will probably try to follow a similar formula of saying that the funding formula does not respond well to the challenges of their communities. The cumulative nature of the speeches, however, should not necessarily detract from the veracity of their argument. Clearly, across this House, many of us have deep concerns about our police forces and about how they are treated under the current regime. There are winners and losers and, dare I say it, in the Chamber today there are more losers than usual.

I am no different from other Members. For me, the acid test of whether a funding formula is truly fair is Bedfordshire. We have lost 171 officers since 2010, and the number of police community support officers has halved from 108 to 53 in that period. In my community in Luton, where we face all sorts of challenges, the effect of those cuts is that neighbourhood policing is practically non-existent. In 2012 we had PCs working alongside PCSOs in Luton. In other words, we had proper neighbourhood policing. That was true of many other parts of the county too.

The old police authority, looking at the scale of cuts coming through, proposed to remove those officers and to cut PCSOs. When the police and crime commissioner was elected in 2012 he put a halt to that process and protected numbers, but, with £20 million of cuts defined, they had to go. The police and crime commissioner in Bedfordshire has said:

“The impact in Luton is no different from the rest of the county. We’ve had no choice other than to strip away preventative, problem-solving neighbourhood policing everywhere to the barest minimum because the alternative is even worse. But current projections mean we need to find £11 million savings and this may mean reducing the establishment by 44”

in the next three years.

The chief constable, Jon Boutcher, estimates that Bedfordshire needs another 300 officers even to reach the average number in police forces in the country. Why? We are the county with the fourth highest gun crime, the fifth highest serious acquisitive crime and the seventh highest knife crime figures in the country, but we get by on just 169 officers per 100,000 population. To put that in context, the average is 232 across all forces, rural and urban, and the Metropolitan police, about which we have already heard, has 388 officers per 100,000. In simple terms—it is easy to get lost in the numbers—the residents in Luton whom I represent, if treated as though they were, say, 20 minutes down the train line in north London, could expect an additional 482 officers protecting them. That is the scale of the gap.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman echo the fact that the demand for policing in Luton is not restricted to the people of Luton? It is felt by the rest of the people of Bedfordshire, including in my town, Bedford. Bedfordshire is just not large enough for the rest of the county to chip in for those additional requirements in Luton, as the hon. Gentleman is so clearly outlining. Will he emphasise to the Minister, who I am sure is hearing this, that this is not a partisan view of the funding for Bedfordshire police; this is a cross-party view of the specific needs of Bedfordshire police in the future.

[Mr Shuker]

I am extremely glad I took the intervention, because the hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, which he has made alongside me and the four other Bedfordshire MPs, both Conservative and Labour, to the Policing Minister, who has kindly given us an audience in the past and, I hope, will do so in the future to make the point that ours is essentially an urban force that is funded as a rural one. The nature of Luton in particular and of Bedford and some of the smaller areas to the north of the county, means that there is a huge disparity in levels of crime, especially the crimes that I mentioned. I will continue to make this point.

This is not a dry argument about formulae. Last week I sat in the house of my constituent Mrs Patel. She is a shop owner. Just before Christmas she was attacked, dragged to the back of her shop and cut by a man wielding a knife. That vicious attack has robbed her of her work and her confidence, and has left deep scars not just mentally but physically. There is only one thing more horrendous than the attack on Mrs Patel in her shop: it is the fact that just a few short years ago, in the same shop and in the same way, her husband was violently attacked and stabbed to death. She wants to know why the officers who used to patrol the area where her shop is and where she lives are not patrolling any more. Her son wants to know why it took so long during this violent attack for a police car to respond. He wants to know why the man who subjected her to such a terrifying attack—who put a knife against her throat and who, it was clear to her, was attempting to send her to the same place as her husband—was not apprehended in the midst of it. The debate is not, therefore, just about a formulae; it is about my constituents’ safety and their ability to live their lives without fear of threat.

The argument I advance—that fair funding for Bedfordshire is the acid test for the new police funding formula—is backed up by the context. As I said in response to the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), Bedfordshire is an urban force funded in a rural way. Luton and, to a lesser extent, Bedford face vastly different challenges from the rest of this rural county. Despite the obvious electoral benefit of moving significant resources into urban areas, it is to the credit of the Labour police and crime commissioner, Olly Martins, that he has, given the challenges, been able to move forward with plans that still provide for a significant rural presence.

As a community, we face all sorts of challenges. We face down extremism daily. The far right—the English Defence League, Britain First and associated groups—regularly target our town. At just one protest last year, a group of about 150 or 200 drunken men led to a policing bill of £320,000, which had to be picked up locally. Of course, there is also the ongoing challenge of infiltration by extremists of the Muslim community.

We also have to defend major transport infrastructure, with London Luton airport, which is in my constituency, carrying upwards of 10 million passengers a year. The east midlands and west coast main lines pass through the constituency, as do the two principal roads between London and the north. Despite all that, Bedfordshire has to get by on similar police funding and, therefore, with similar police strength as Dorset—we have heard about that already—Sussex and Hertfordshire.

Only one thing that could undermine my argument, so let me pre-empt it: a failure since 2010 to make significant changes, efficiencies and innovations in the way in which Bedfordshire operates. In other words, we could have buried our heads in the sand and said, “The problem is purely the Government cutting spending.” However, that is simply not true.

The force has already made £25 million of savings, and it expects to make another £11 million in the coming three years. Under the leadership of the police and crime commissioner, the tri-force alliance between Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire should produce about £10 million of savings for Bedfordshire alone. A bid is in with the Home Office police innovation fund to support blue-light collaboration with fire and ambulance services. There is increased use of special constables to support Community Watch, and new technology, including smartphones, slate personal computers, automotive telematics and even drones is being rolled out to save money and police time.

At the same time, we have seen increased transparency—for example, through the use of body-worn cameras—which is vital to maintain the community’s involvement and the sense in which they are protected by the police.

[Richard Fuller]

The hon. Gentleman talked about the cost savings between Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire. That is about cost sharing, but does he agree that there is still the revenue that accrues to Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, which is significantly in excess of the financial resources that come into Bedfordshire? It is such a pity that we are not able to encourage those counties to draw together with us. Would he like to hear the Minister’s thoughts on whether there could be Home Office proposals to push forward greater collaboration and greater sharing of revenue as well as costs?

[Mr Shuker]

Absolutely. There is far greater space for collaboration. Equally, however, there are challenges for a force such as Bedfordshire, and I have not painted a particularly rosy picture of our finances and the challenges we face. There needs to be Government influence over these measures—these things cannot just be left at local level. Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire have had two good police and crime commissioners who have been keen to work with Bedfordshire and have made really decent strides in doing so. Ultimately, however, they are accountable to their own residents for making sure that they get the best deal possible.

I want to signal not only the innovation that has gone on in Bedfordshire but my own willingness to explore innovation on, dare I say it, a statesmanlike basis rather than merely withdrawing into oppositional politics. It is important that through this process we get the funding of Bedfordshire right, first and foremost, and then we can look at further collaboration down the line. The police and crime commissioner in this area has the third cheapest operation in the country. In his first three years in office, he saved more than £200,000 in comparison with the old police authority. This is not a case of a profligate police and crime commissioner trying to make a particular case to Government.

This issue has spanned the terms of Labour and Conservative Governments. Like the Home Affairs Committee, we welcome the Minister’s willingness to engage to get the funding formula right. We are doing all the things that we are being asked to do, and doing the right thing by our residents. Everything that would be expected of Bedfordshire is being done. The acid test of this police formula is whether Bedfordshire and other significantly disadvantaged forces are properly funded, alongside other police forces. It is now time for the formula, the Minister and the Government to do right by us.

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[Sarah Champion]

I wait for that day four years from now. If the hon. Gentleman gives us four years to plan for it, we will come back to him with a proper answer.

[Mr Shuker]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Sarah Champion]

Yes, she will—while she finds her place.

[Mr Shuker]

I can assure my hon. Friend that that was not at the forefront of my mind. She talked about the need for fair funding from the Government and at a local level. One issue I am aware of in Bedfordshire is that when people seek to introduce a referendum to make sure we have better funding locally, the police and crime commissioner must apparently be completely neutral. We could compare and contrast that with the situation in the European referendum, where the Government certainly are not neutral.

[Sarah Champion]

My hon. Friend makes a very fair point. I am not going to get involved in the EU debate at this point, but parity across all our systems is something we should be trying for.

The police and crime commissioner for my force, South Yorkshire, has said:

“The Government recently announced that there would be no cuts to police funding next year. This was a little misleading. What has now become clear is that the police grant will be reduced by £1 million and there will be no provision for inflation—such as increases in salaries and additional demand on police services, which comes to about £7-8 million.”

The Tory police and crime commissioner for Devon and Cornwall said:

“policing still faces considerable challenges and some tough decisions as we move forward. We estimate that, to break even, we will need to save £13million over the next four years; only then with further savings can we plan to invest in transformation to address the emerging threats with less resources.”

These cuts mean that thousands more officers, PCSOs and police staff will still go. The more serious and complex crimes seen in the 21st century are expensive and time-consuming to investigate, prosecute and prevent, such as child sexual exploitation, terrorism and cyber-crime. These 21st-century challenges demand a modernised, more responsive and better equipped police service, not a smaller one.

Equally crucial is co-operation with other agencies, yet as they too come under strain, the police yet again pick up the pieces. The Home Affairs Committee’s report emphasises that

“demands on the police were increasing due to cuts to other public services.”

As local authorities deal with relentless Government cuts, they are struggling to provide specialist support to victims, to engage in preventive work with communities, and to protect vulnerable groups, particularly out of hours. Sara Thornton of the NSPCC told the Committee that the police were being used

“more and more as society’s safety net”

and that

“after 4 o’clock on a Friday the police are around, but nobody is ever very clear about who else is around”.

In the face of these massive and growing challenges, not only are police budgets being cut, but cuts are being made with characteristic unfairness to less affluent regions. High-need, high-crime areas are shouldering the burden of cuts. West Midlands and Northumbria police forces, for example, have been hit twice as hard by cuts as Surrey. The current complex formula for funding the 42 police forces in England and Wales has been called

“unclear, unfair and out of date”

by Ministers. We therefore welcomed it when last year, under pressure from the police and from Labour, the Policing Minister finally agreed to change the formula. However, instead of improving the situation, what followed was a chaotic, opaque, unfair and ultimately completely discredited review of the existing formula. In the words of the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Devon and Cornwall, as quoted in the report,

“given the fundamental importance of this policy to the safety and security of communities across the country we do not feel that consultation has been carried out in a proper manner”.

The review faced two unprecedented threats of legal action by forces. It was roundly criticised by police and crime commissioners from across the political spectrum. Unbelievably, the shambolic review ultimately had to be totally abandoned because the Home Office miscalculated funding for forces, using the wrong figures. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East for giving examples. The data error meant that funding for forces had been miscalculated by as much as £180 million for some areas. As the report says, the omnishambles

“would be amusing if it were not so serious”.

It goes on:

“It is deplorable that Home Office officials made errors in calculating the funding allocations for police force areas…As a result of the Home Office’s error, confidence in the process has been lost; time, effort, resources and energy have been wasted; and the reputation of the Home Office has been damaged with its principal stakeholders.”

The mistake meant not only that forces made budgets for the next financial year based on incorrect funding figures, but that they now only know their funding for just one year, unlike local government, which got a four-year settlement. As even Tory PCCs have pointed out, this makes it extremely difficult for forces to make long-term financial plans and innovate on the basis of an unusual single-year settlement, particularly in the context of further budget cuts. As the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee said, to call it a shambles would be charitable.

What have the Government done to rectify the situation? They have secretly consulted their own Tory PCCs, promising to channel funding to those PCCs, who get disproportionately more. Conservative police and crime commissioner Adam Simmons writes in his budget:

“The new funding formula proposals have been deferred to 2017-18…it is not clear at this stage how this will affect the government funding. However, it is expected that this will transfer funding from the urban areas to the more rural, and Northamptonshire may benefit”.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) for pointing that out. Will the Policing Minister confirm whether this will be the case? In addition, what commitments will he give to this House, and to the police, that they will never again be insulted with a sham consultation like that seen last year on something so important and so crucial to the safety of communities as police funding? Our police service needs a fair funding formula and a fair funding settlement. This Government have offered them nothing of the sort.

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[Mike Penning]

Opposition Members can exacerbate that fear, but they cannot deny that I came to the House and ate an awful lot of humble pie because my officials got things wrong. As a Minister of State, I took responsibility for that, and we will go forward to make sure that we get it right. I repeat that there will be winners and losers; that is always going to be the case. Some people will be happier than others.

[Mr Shuker]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

I give way to the hon. Member for Luton North—Luton South; my apologies.

[Mr Shuker]

We are only neighbours; it is fine. I accept that Bedfordshire, like all forces, will not be perfect in every respect, but does the Minister concede, on a point about which I have heard him speak before, that Bedfordshire does not have masses of reserves lying around that it can use to tackle problems? I have heard, for example, that only £2.7 million is unallocated in the four-year medium-term plan. To suggest that in some way—physician, heal thyself—we can fix it without fixing the funding formula would be unfair.

Police Funding Formula

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Monday 9th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

Yes, we have time now to ensure that we consult across the board and that we work closely together. In my statement, I specifically said that we need to get agreement from the chief constables and the police and crime commissioners to ensure that the formula works, and that, I think, is the way forward.

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the Minister on making an apology, as it underlines the importance of the matter. In Bedfordshire, we have the fourth highest level of gun crime, the fifth highest level of burglary, and the seventh highest level of knife crime. We also face a real threat from extremism. We face urban challenges, but we are funded today as a rural force. Even Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary has acknowledged that historic underfunding has been a major issue for the force. Under both the new figures and the old figures, Bedfordshire makes hardly any gain. Does not common sense dictate that there was a flaw with the formula, and will it be corrected?

[Mike Penning]

I say to my parliamentary neighbour that I know his part of the world extremely well. Even though Bedford is not my county, I am very conscious of the pressures it is under, particularly from the Luton policing angle. It is something that we will look at as we go forward.

Probation Service

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

The last two interventions have shown that there is clearly more expertise among Opposition Members than Government Front Benchers. Our FOI questions uncovered that in London 29,813 offenders will be given over to the likes of G4S and Serco. In Surrey and Sussex, 7,313 offenders will now be supervised by the experts that are G4S and Serco.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Sadiq Khan]

Let me make some progress, if that is okay, and then I will give way.

My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) is right, because compounding this situation is the unnatural carving up of responsibility for offenders on the basis of risk. The public sector will keep the very highest-risk offenders—the Justice Secretary clearly does not trust G4S and Serco with them—and the private sector will have the rest. He does not get it. Again, my hon. Friend is right: risk is not static. In one in four cases, risk levels fluctuate. Each time someone’s risk level fluctuates, bureaucracy and paperwork is involved, but we cannot afford for this to be a slow or cumbersome process, because when risk levels escalate, they tend to do so rapidly. They might stop taking their medication or a relationship might break down, leading to them becoming, overnight, a danger to themselves and others, so the process needs to be swift if the appropriate measures and support are to be put in place.

Can we really see the police working as closely with private companies as they do with probation trusts? Probation trusts often have on-site access to police record computers, which are crucial in assessing, monitoring and supervising offenders. Can we really see the police giving private companies the same access?

Who decides the risk? The Government claim that the decision will be taken by the new national probation service, but the Justice Secretary does not get it. The national probation service will not have a day-to-day personal relationship with offenders, so how will it know? His plans will be clunky, cumbersome and prone to errors, with cases falling between two stools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Shuker]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. He makes the point brilliantly that the issue of low, medium and high risk is one not just of fluctuation, but of staff retention and ability effectively to manage the case load. What will happen in the rumps of the probation services that will be left over—many of whose employees have performed excellently throughout—when they are dumped with the most difficult cases, day in, day out, for 10 or 12 hours a day?

[Sadiq Khan]

We know what will happen: when those offenders cherry-picked by the private sector do better—which they will tend to do, because they will be easier to rehabilitate—the Justice Secretary will say that the public sector is failing because the offenders who will be more difficult to rehabilitate will not be doing as well. We have seen that happen before.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend is right that heritage railways can provide a focus for tourism in local areas. The Watercress line in Hampshire provides that, as does the Severn Valley railway in his constituency. I will continue to do everything that I can to encourage VisitEngland to offer the support that is important, particularly with regard to marketing this fantastic asset of our British heritage.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

T3. Users of social media sites increasingly use them to advertise the sale of sex online. The law in this area is often unclear and contradictory. Will the Department make legal guidance available to social media sites and Members of the House so that we can help to reduce demand for the vulnerable women who are often exploited in this trade?

[Maria Miller]

Whatever is illegal offline is illegal online. Any activity that is undertaken by the sites that the hon. Gentleman talks about should be carefully looked at to ensure that it does nothing to harm people, particularly people under the age of 18 who might be accessing those sites.

Policing

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I begin by paying particular tribute to the officers of Bedfordshire police force who police my Luton constituency, and to the officers who police this place, too. We see so many of them that we sometimes forget to acknowledge them. There are serving police officers putting themselves on the front line to protect us even today in this House. They should be properly respected, but also properly resourced.

I think it was Churchill who said that we shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us. I, for one, having been a Member of Parliament for the last two and a half years, have been incredibly proud to sit in this Chamber. I do not believe that it should be rebuilt in some kind of circular fashion. I believe there is something fundamentally decent and good about the way in which we do our governance in this country, whereby we sit on one Bench and the Government sit on the other, and we try to assume their roles, as they will one day assume ours. That, however, should not be our model for understanding how to do something as complex and as important as policing.

I deeply regret the politicisation of the police, and I deeply regret the fact that we were unsuccessful when we marched through the Division Lobbies to try to defeat those proposals which, in my view, represent the worst of all possible worlds. We are where we are; I acknowledge that. In a moment, I will say a few words about the context of Bedfordshire and the choices people face as they go to the polls on 15 November.

I fundamentally believe that there is something problematic about taking this route to politicise the police in this manner. Why do I say that? The other day, I met my area’s chief constable, who is called Alf Hitchcock—we had some sniggers earlier, but that is genuinely his name. He is a fantastic chief constable. I went to see him to talk about contemporary policing issues, and it was stated that the election campaign would begin to skew our view and our public statements on the quality and standard of policing. This applies not just in the run-up to the election—many of us across the House will have made the link in our own thoughts—but after the election, too, for the subsequent three and a half years. We will start to view our policing through that lens, based on who has been elected and who has not. I hope that we can aspire to a greater place than that in our political life. The reality is that the rules, like the buildings, are shaped and then they will begin to shape us. This model of doing policing will change how we approach policing locally. I deeply regret that.

I regret it, too, because of the door that is opened. Those who are ideologically committed to pushing through the reforms have now fled the scene—on foot or by plane to California. They have taken the view that by putting these reforms in place we would get good-quality independent candidates, but the reality is that with a deposit set at £5,000, that will not happen. In my Bedfordshire police authority area, we have an English Defence League candidate who was arrested this weekend, yet he will still be on the ballot paper because he is out on bail. There is something fundamentally wrong with a system that brings us to that stage, when we are dealing with the people who—day in, day out—defend us and defend the most marginalised in our communities.

To deal briefly with the Bedfordshire context, there are two clear and pressing issues. Others have talked about the impact of 20% police cuts. I believe that we should not elect someone who is a cheerleader for those cuts. I believe we should elect candidates right across the country who say that they will work collectively to put pressure on the Home Office to realise the folly of what it is doing. We should not elect candidates who are simply willing to outsource everything as a solution to those cuts. In Bedfordshire, Olly Martins is the Labour candidate, a fantastic candidate. He has pledged publicly that the option to outsource back-office functions to G4S—the same organisation that got us into such difficulty with the Olympics when the police had to be brought in to bail it out—will be off the table if he is elected. He will stand against the Tories’ 20% cuts.

[Richard Graham]

I want the House to be clear about what the hon. Gentleman is saying about police delivery and police expenditure. In the county of Gloucestershire last year, costs went down by 4% and crime went down by 4%. Would the hon. Gentleman prefer to say to my constituents, “We want to see expenditure up, crime up and your council bills going up as well”? Is that the message he would like to give out?

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[Gavin Shuker]

My answer to that question is very simple. Public safety always comes first, and chief constables are having to make impossible decisions, but I think it reprehensible that the decision to put something as important as policing in the hands of private companies is being forced on chief constables.

Olly Martins is running against a Conservative candidate who has said:

“It is not the be-all and end-all if people don’t see a policeman for five years.”

He added:

“What people do not want is bobbies on the beat.”

I fear that, if a vote is cast and a Conservative candidate is elected, that is exactly what will happen.

This is a high-stakes election, and we know that there will be a low turnout for it. I want to encourage everyone in my constituency to vote, but I fear for where we will end up as a result of these reforms.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

As my hon. Friend has made clear, that case involved a patient who was detained under mental health legislation, under which unescorted leave requires the approval of the Secretary of State, a risk assessment and a recommendation from a responsible clinician. There are no proposals for companies to make such decisions.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister talks about payment by results for companies. It is clear that in his review of probation and payment by results next year, there is significant uncertainty about the role of smaller probation trusts. Bedfordshire probation trust is one of the smallest but best performing trusts. Can he give an assurance that its role will be upheld in any subsequent review?

[Mr Blunt]

The hon. Gentleman needs to understand that we are piloting payment by results in six ways in 20 different pilots to see what is the most effective way of delivering it. It might be by putting the responsibility on probation trusts, prisons, local authorities or chiefs of police. We are looking at all those things and will see what is the most effective way to take payment by results forward in the interests of us all.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I am not sure how many times I can repeat to the right hon. Gentleman that I have said that the Government are considering these matters. I am not going to announce policy on the hoof when very serious issues are raised. It is not proper to make a link between the provisions in the Bill and the case that arose because the restriction on custodial remands in the Bill applies only to magistrates courts and not to the Crown courts—so it would not have affected the case that gave rise to the question.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

5. Whether his Department has undertaken a cost-benefit analysis of the implementation of the office of chief coroner.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

19. Whether his Department has undertaken a cost-benefit analysis of the implementation of the office of the chief coroner.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

An impact assessment for part 1 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 was published by the Ministry of Justice in December 2008. It summarised the full costs and benefits of implementing the coroner provisions in the Act.

[Gavin Shuker]

I am grateful for that answer. Baroness Finlay, working with the president of the Royal College of Pathologists, proposed a model with much lower running costs—just £300,000—than those that the Government are talking about. So will the Minister accept that the costs for the office he is proposing could be reduced?