Oral Answers to Questions

George Eustice Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Let us be clear: it is no secret that the handling of contracting of translation services could have been better, and lessons have been learned. However, that service is now delivering to a very high standard and saving the taxpayer millions of pounds. The Opposition simply do not get that we have to take tough decisions to save money to deal with the mess they left behind.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

9. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the small claims procedure.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mrs Helen Grant)]

In April, the Government increased the limit in the small claims track from £5,000 to £10,000, with the aim of ensuring that more claims are resolved in a way that is accessible, proportionate and cost-effective.

[George Eustice]

I am grateful for that answer and welcome the raising of the threshold from £5,000 to £10,000, but a constituent of mine has highlighted some of the difficulties people have enforcing some judgments. My constituent had a judgment in his favour for £475 against a tradesman who failed to complete a task, but never received the money; he found that his only remedy was to incur further legal and court costs. Does the Minister agree that we need to review enforcement in such cases where payment is not made?

[Mrs Grant]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Our “Solving disputes in the county courts” consultation considered reforms to the attachment of earnings order and the third party debt recovery order. We support those reforms and will implement them as soon as resources allow. Changes have been made to the charging order and order for sale procedures, which will help both creditors and debtors.

Leveson Inquiry

George Eustice Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Harman]

I will press on with my comments, because many hon. Members want to speak.

That is the core reason why Leveson concludes that statute is, to use his word, “essential”. However, to follow up on the point made by the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), all that any statute would have to do is set out criteria about what independence means and check once every three years that it is still independent—that is all. The oversight body—the one prescribed by statute—would have no role in hearing complaints, no role in deciding whether they are justified, no role in laying down penalties, and absolutely no role in deciding anything that does or does not go into a newspaper. That would be down to the independent self-regulator set up by the industry.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Lady for giving way. Does she agree that under Lord Leveson’s proposals, the recognition body would be an independent body that assessed whether the self-regulator was adequate, but that under the current Government proposals it would be the Secretary of State, as a single, lone politician, who is set to stand in the shoes of that recognition body and make that decision individually?

[Ms Harman]

That is a very good point, and I wish I had thought of it myself. [Laughter.] I think, in fact, it was my idea.

Let us be clear: having a statute to guarantee that is not some incidental add-on or optional extra to Lord Justice Leveson’s report. It is a complete contradiction in terms for people to say, “I want to implement Leveson, but without statute.” Leveson says that statute is “essential”.

Let us imagine the Leveson proposals on self-regulation without statute. Although I am sure that even if any new body started off being independent, without statutory oversight there would be no guarantee it would stay that way. It is inevitable that once again it would become controlled by the press, with editors marking their own homework—that has happened again and again. Why should we believe that we can carry on in the same way and that things will somehow be different? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. None of the other suggestions gets anywhere near answering that fundamental point of how to guarantee continuing independence.

Let me turn to Lord Hunt and Lord Black’s proffered solution. They claim that what they put forward is a truly independent system with tough sanctions. However, on closer inspection, it is a different story. They say that there would be an independent chair and board, but they could all be fired—the chair and the whole board—by the press barons just giving notice in writing. Lord Hunt and Lord Black say there would be tough sanctions, with penalties of up to £1 million, but then they say that those sanctions would be determined by the press barons. How is that independent?

Some have suggested that we do not need new statute because we could get a judge to appoint a new body, but a judge would not be able to do that without a statute. Many opponents of Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations have said that we must not have statute—that it crosses the Rubicon and would pose a fundamental threat to our democracy. I want to address each argument against statute in turn. The first is that any statute affecting the press automatically ends a free press. We have heard that a lot in recent days, but there is surely an irony and a contradiction in that, for was it not the press themselves who asked my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) for their inclusion in section 12 of the Human Rights Act 1998? Is that not amendable legislation? Was it not the press themselves who asked for a new defamation Act? Is that not amendable legislation? The first argument—that any law mentioning the press undermines freedom—therefore does not and cannot hold.

Secondly, it is argued that the statute that Leveson proposes amounts to regulation of the press by a ministerially appointed quango, but this is not direct regulation of the press. The statute would only guarantee the system of self-regulation. It would remain voluntary to join, on the basis of incentives. In that, it is similar to the system in Ireland, which has been in place since 2009. As the Deputy Prime Minister helpfully reminded the House last Thursday, it covers all the newspapers operating in Ireland, which volunteer to be part of the Irish Press Council, which—heavens above!—includes the Irish editions of the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Star, The Sun, The Sunday Times, The Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Mirror. If that really posed a threat, where were the protests in Ireland? Why have those newspapers signed up? The UK editors say that any press law would end freedom of speech, so why have they not chained themselves to the house of the Taoiseach? The Foreign Secretary says that any press law in Britain would undermine freedom—and, indeed, democracy—around the world, so why has he not summoned the Irish ambassador for a dressing down? The Culture Secretary—

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[Mr Whittingdale]

It is our job in this House to persuade the victims that what is now in prospect is a different regime that would have the necessary teeth to prevent the kind of abuses they suffered. I believe that that is the case, and that we have a duty to get that message across to them.

Let me take us back to the report our Select Committee produced in 2010. We clearly said that we needed a new body, which needed to have

“the ability to impose a financial penalty”

when the press had failed, and to have a responsibility

“for upholding press standards generally”—

things that the Press Complaints Commission was never equipped to do. We went on to say in that unanimous report of the Select Committee two years ago:

“We do not accept the argument that this would require statutory backing, if the industry is sincere about effective self-regulation it can establish the necessary regime independently.”

Earlier this year, I chaired another Committee, a Joint Committee of both Houses on privacy and injunctions. Again, we looked at these matters in some detail. That body, too, reached a conclusion that

“the current system of self-regulation is broken and needs fixing.”

Again, that Committee recommended a new independent body with stronger powers. The report went on to say —this was supported by Labour members of the Committee —that

“should the industry fail to establish an independent regulator which commands public confidence, the Government should seriously consider establishing some form of statutory oversight”,

but it went on:

“At this stage we do not recommend statutory backing for the new regulator.”

[George Eustice]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Whittingdale]

My hon. Friend was a member of the Committee who I know did not agree with that particular conclusion, but I will give way.

[George Eustice]

On precisely that point, a number of us here who sat on the Committee did indeed disagree with that and feel that there needed to be some statutory underpinning. Will my hon. Friend inform us how narrow the margin was when it came to endorsing this report at all?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I think I have the figures. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: the Committee divided at the end—10 in favour, and 7 against. I would point out, however, that among the seven were Lord Black of Brentwood and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who I think my hon. Friend will find are not necessarily totally in agreement with his particular viewpoint.

The Hunt-Black proposals are no longer on the table. I agree with Lord Leveson that they were not sufficiently independent. It is clear that the new body has to be completely independent of the press, and it has to have a board that does not have serving editors on it. There are elements where a new body could have some kind of statutory support. Some hon. Members may have seen the comments of Shami Chakrabarti, who talked about how a body could have statutory recognition. I would draw the House’s attention to the submission made to the Leveson inquiry by Lord Hunt, in which he pointed out that the Irish Defamation Act 2009 contains a provision that recognises the activity of the Irish Press Council and allows the courts to take account of

“the extent to which the person adhered to the code of standards of the Press Council and abided by the determinations of the Press Ombudsman and determinations of the Press Council.”

That seems to me entirely sensible. It is a way of giving the press incentives to join such a body. However, Lord Hunt went on to say:

“I do not believe this in any way crosses a ‘red line’ for those of us who have serious qualms about a statutory regulator: the Press Council in the Republic of Ireland may be recognised in a statute, but it is not created by it.”

That, essentially, is the difference in this matter. It is a question of whether we trust the press to establish a truly independent body with real powers that will be able to punish breaches of the code, and that the press will abide by it, or whether we believe that the press will not go along with that, and that therefore there must be statutory support. It is not a question of powers; there is no difference between what is on the table in terms of the powers available to the body and what Leveson recommends. It is merely a question of whether we trust the body, and the press, to go along with it. If we do not, we support the idea of statutory regulation. However, we must be clear about the fact that starting to legislate over the press would be a huge step for us to take.

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[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

I, too, begin by drawing attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I receive remuneration for a regular column in PR Week—but hon. Members will realise that that has not had any influence on my opinions on these matters.

A number of hon. Members have alluded to the long history of failure on this issue. I am conscious that I have only 10 minutes in which to speak, but I do wish to reflect on some of that history because the House has not always been very good at learning from the mistakes of the past. This story begins in 1949, with the first royal commission advocating the setting up of a royal commission and saying that Parliament should do something about the issue. Four years later nothing had happened, so the Labour MP C.J. Simmons, a former journalist, introduced a private Member’s Bill, which forced the industry to say that it would now act. In withdrawing his Bill, he said:

“I give warning here and now that if it fails some of us will again have to come forward with a Measure similar to this Bill.”—[Official Report, 8 May 1953; Vol. 515, c. 806.]

In 1962, a second royal commission told the press that it needed to toughen up self-regulation:

“We think that the Press should be given another opportunity itself voluntarily to establish an authoritative General Council…We recommend, however, that the government should specify a time limit after which legislation would be introduced.”

In 1977, there was a third royal commission on the press, after more failure. It said:

“We recommend that the press should be given one final chance to prove that voluntary self-regulation can be made to work.”

Let us fast-forward to 1990 and the Calcutt committee. At the time we were told:

“This is positively the last chance for the industry to establish an effective non-statutory system of regulation”.—[Official Report, 21 June 1990; Vol. 174, c. 1126.]

In 1993, the Calcutt review said that the Press Complaints Commission was not effective and recommended a tribunal backed in statute.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend could describe the problems that these great reviews were looking at. We now look back at what was happening in the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s and, in particular, the ‘70s, when my father was editing a national newspaper, as great examples of fine newspaper work, so what were these commissions dealing with? Is it not actually unnecessary to keep on quoting from these reports, because there was not a real problem in those days?

[George Eustice]

Each and every one of those commissions and inquiries was sparked by the abuse of unaccountable power, and I would say that that is what we are seeing today. People sometimes say, “It was a newspaper that exposed phone hacking.” They are right—one newspaper exposed phone hacking—but Lord Leveson is very clear on this: none of the other papers exposed it, and there was almost a conspiracy of silence. He says:

“There were what are now said to be rumours and jokes about the extent to which phone hacking was rife throughout the industry, but (with one sole exception) the press did nothing to investigate itself or to expose conduct which”,

if it had involved anybody else,

“would have been subject to the most intense spotlight that journalists could bring to bear”.

That one exception was Nick Davies from The Guardian, who wrote a story on 9 July 2009 saying that the huge scale of the settlements being paid to some people in respect of phone hacking suggested that a cover-up had taken place. What did the Press Complaints Commission do about it? Did it then think, “Perhaps we should take a second look at this and investigate it”? No, it did not. As Lord Leveson points out, the PCC “condemned the Guardian” for running the story, which is extraordinary. I think that the Leveson report was a good report.

[Mr Lilley]

My hon. Friend has criticised the press for the fact that insufficient of them exposed hacking, but can he confirm that the Leveson report—if implemented in full, as he supposes—would not have stopped this sort of hacking, and would not expose it and would not have powers to do so, as Lord Leveson makes absolutely clear? So what is the relevance of my hon. Friend’s argument?

[George Eustice]

I do not think Lord Leveson does make that clear. The new body that he recommends would have powers of investigation, and that would deal with the culture which led to this criminality.

The central recommendation of Lord Leveson’s report, which we must not lose sight of, is this:

“In order to give effect to the incentives that I have outlined, it is essential”—

not preferable or helpful but essential—

“that there should be legislation to underpin the independent self-regulatory system”.

I agree with Lord Leveson on that, because throughout his inquiry one question simply would not go away: how do we make a reality of independent self-regulation without some kind of underpinning in statute? In other words, “How do you create the incentives to be part of a body that can fine you and deliver stiff penalties against you?” There was no question but that Lord Hunt and Lord Black failed to answer that test. At one point, Lord Black was suggesting that we could perhaps restrict membership of the Press Association and that people who did not sign up to this new body could be denied access to Government briefings or to accreditation for events. That would be very much a closed shop system, which Lord Leveson completely rejects.

The truth is that to make this work we will need some kind of statute, because the contract system outlined by Lord Hunt would be inherently unstable. It was suggested that the contracts should last for no more than five years, but such contracts, which require what the legal profession calls a constant supervision, are very difficult to enforce in a court. After five years, newspapers would walk away from that system and we would be in the same boat as we are in now.

If the industry has failed to come up with an answer that does not require statute after 18 months of thinking about it, what does the Secretary of State think that it will come up with in the next six weeks? I am deeply sceptical that it will come up with an answer.

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend and other colleagues have made much about the need for a change of culture, but does he not accept that we cannot legislate for that? Culture must be dealt with by agreement from all parties.

[George Eustice]

I agree and I am coming on to that point. We will deal with the culture by having a credible regulator, not by saying that the police should be kicking down the doors of newsrooms as a matter of routine.

Let me tackle some of the myths. The Prime Minister said that by introducing such legislation, we would be crossing a Rubicon. As many other Members have pointed out, that argument is incorrect. We already have a Defamation Bill going through this Parliament that has cross-party support and even the support of the press. If the principle of legislation is in itself inimical to liberty and freedom, where were the freedom fighters when that Bill was going through? It was passed on Second Reading without even a Division.

Section 12 of the Human Rights Act 1998 refers to freedom of speech so, as the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) pointed out, such a provision has already been accepted. Some say that mentioning the idea of freedom of speech in a Bill compromises it because a future statute could take it away, but we already have it in the Human Rights Act. The US has the first amendment, which is a statute that protects freedom of speech. The Government rejected the same argument when they introduced the Bill that became the European Union Act 2011, when many Government Members said that a sovereignty clause meant losing one’s sovereignty. The argument was not accepted at that time and we should not accept it now.

Some say introducing legislation would be too difficult and far too complicated. I had a look back at the original private Member’s Bill introduced by C. J. Simmons, the Labour MP and journalist, and it is just six pages long. It is very simple and merely sets up a body, which is broadly what we are suggesting now. A couple of weeks ago, we had the Second Reading of the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill, which is just 16 pages long and performs a similar function—in fact, it is a more statutory Bill than we would need in this case. I shall be on the Public Bill Committee and I am told that it will be very short. The Defamation Bill, which is very complicated, was no more than 32 pages long. I do not accept that introducing legislation is too difficult.

Some say that such questions are for the birds in the age of the internet and things are difficult because blogs can do whatever they like. I fundamentally disagree with that argument. The changes coming from the internet mean that it is vital for this House to revisit the legislation. Just as some internet news sites, such as The Huffington Post, have already opted to be part of the PCC, if we could get the incentives right under a new body, we could get online credible news organisations wanting to be part of the kitemark system because it would give them protection. By enacting legislation, we would create the incentives that would enable internet-only news sites to take part.

As Lord Leveson points out, we should not encourage a system in which the newspapers engage in a race to the bottom with blogs that have no credibility. If newspapers are to survive, they must carve out a new role for themselves—they need a niche and some additional credibility. Just as people expect of broadcasters a different standard and character of journalism from that which they expect of newspapers, we should reach a situation in which people expect a different character and standard of journalism in newspapers from that which they might get on some blog sites. I do not accept the argument about that, either.

Some say that all we really need is for the police to do their job. It is curious that those who say that the statutory underpinning about which I am talking would lead to a chilling effect on journalism go on effectively to advocate a system that requires the police to kick down the doors of newsrooms, launch dawn raids and arrest journalists almost as a matter of routine. We should not be comfortable with the fact that dozens of journalists will face trial next year. We as a House must recognise that there was a culture in the press that enabled those crimes to take place. We should not collude in the argument that it was just a few journalists and that we should just lock up a few people from The Sun; we must recognise that there was a failure in the culture that we must tackle.

Let me finish by recommending a way forward to those on the Government Front Bench. Lord Leveson says that the ball is now in the politicians’ court. My view is that since any Bill would fundamentally be about freedom of speech, we should have a free vote. To use some of the terminology that I have read so often over the past few weeks, I think that it would be wrong for Parliament to be muzzled or gagged. We should have a free vote. I am conscious that many Members of this House have a strong ideological objection to the idea of any form of statute and they should have the right to have their say in a free vote, but Parliament should also be allowed to reach a rational and measured conclusion on the recommendations of Lord Leveson’s report.

I recommend that we accommodate the Prime Minister’s wish to give the industry six weeks to come up with a proposal. After that six weeks, we should have a free vote in Parliament to decide whether to introduce a Bill in the next Session. That motion should be binding and if Parliament as a whole believes we need some kind of new Bill, we should enact one in the next Session. I must stress that that would not necessarily mean taking forward everything in the Leveson report. I know that there are concerns about Ofcom, so let us see whether we can find a way around that. There are concerns about data protection, so we could exclude some of those elements. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) mentioned concerns about the scope for third party complaints, so perhaps we could limit that scope to systemic problems in newspapers rather than individual stories or concepts. There are ways around all the problems, but I am certain that we need statutory underpinning to make self-regulation work.

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[Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)]

I start by paying tribute to Lord Leveson, his staff and those who facilitated the process. The report is a magnificent piece of work, professionally undertaken. I appreciate the words in the report, in which he clearly rules out any wrongdoing by my party and the Murdoch group. He draws a line and rejects the smears on the former Culture Secretary. I raise that right at the beginning, because much of this debate is about redress. Time and again, there were smears on the party of which I am a member and on the former Culture Secretary without redress, yet some days after publication, I have not heard a hint of an apology from the Opposition.

I put on record my deepest respect for the victims of much of the media wrongdoing. They have been extremely dignified. It took great courage to go into that arena, which for many of them is not a normal place of work, and speak publicly.

I am concerned about the idea of creating laws to regulate the free press in this country. I used to be a tutor in communications. The idea of a free press holding politicians to account is a cornerstone of democracy. The idea of us politicians creating a piece of legislation and then regulating ourselves in some way is extremely dangerous and undermines democracy.

I expect the leaders of all parties to attempt to find a solution. As was pointed out earlier, it is strange that having picked up a 2,000-page document—some 1.4 million words—the Leader of the Opposition wholeheartedly accepted all that in one go, within a couple of hours. That is not a considered approach. The Prime Minister did not reject the report outright. He said that he had concerns about it and that he wanted to consider it and to facilitate a debate. The idea that one party has moved out of the debate is as ridiculous as the Leader of the Opposition accepting 1.4 million words in a report that he had acquired a couple of hours before.

It is important that we create a body that holds the press to account and gives full redress to victims of its often disgraceful behaviour. I want to give an example in which I saw first hand some of the behaviour of the media. Back in 2000 I was chair of social services in Bradford. One day I received a phone call saying that the News of the World had been watching a house and had a story in which it had identified individuals, including a grandmother, who were prostituting the children in the house. This was on a Friday and the newspaper wanted a statement from us.

We gave a statement, and then we wanted to know where the children were. The News of the World refused to give us the address on the basis that the article was an exclusive, and if it gave us the address, the exclusive would be lost and other newspapers would get the story, on which it had spent a considerable amount of money and time. I rang up the deputy editor or the acting editor at the time and said, “These are children we’re talking about, and you’re talking about money and profit. I want the address. You don’t have to give it to me—give it to a police officer or whoever, but we want this.” We had some banter about that and I said, “If you don’t, I will ring every newspaper up and tell them you’ve got an exclusive, and that effectively you are allowing the potential continuation of the rape of children just to maintain that exclusive.” Within a short period of time they rang the police and we got the details, but it was an awful situation.

The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) mentioned professional behaviour. The example I have given was one of immoral and deeply unprofessional behaviour by the individuals concerned, but we cannot legislate for immoral behaviour. What we can do is address the management and challenge it. It is that failure that I think needs to be challenged. However, I do not think that those children would have been found had it not been for the newspaper’s excellent investigative work. My concern is that we could create something that will somehow stifle really good investigative work of the type that helped those children out of that terrible situation. It is the same investigative attitude that addressed the issue of MPs’ expenses.

A few months ago, a political correspondent for national TV collared me and asked how the Leveson inquiry was going down in my constituency. I said, “To be honest, the vast majority of people out there already thought that newspapers were corrupt.” The fact that the newspapers were hacking, bribing people and following dodgy practices was nothing new to them. We might be obsessed with it, but it is not the subject of pub talk, because people already have a very low opinion of newspapers. Indeed, the only group of people they have a lower opinion of is us, so the idea that we are going to create a regulatory body to look over the people they already have a low opinion of is a little self-indulgent on our part. That will not give the public confidence. This is about addressing the unprofessional behaviour of newspapers and ensuring that an independent body is in place.

[George Eustice]

On the basis of my hon. Friend’s analysis, does he think that the House is wrong to take action to curb corrupt practices in banks, for instance?

[Kris Hopkins]

As was said earlier, much legislation has been put in place to deal with that, yet banks are still engaged in corrupt practices. Legislation is already in place to address all the issues that have been raised, whether intrusion, hacking, bribery or the police being too close to journalists. What we have to do is give prosecutors the confidence to pursue those issues, because we politicians have been somewhat concerned about not upsetting the newspapers and have not been using the legislation already in place to pursue those individuals.

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[Mr Buckland]

I take my hon. Friend’s point about the boundaries that are being set. My point, however, is that there is a parallel between existing statute and what I believe is being proposed. I do not view statutory underpinning as somehow creating an entirely new set of constraints within which journalists will have to work. This is not, in my opinion, analogous to the difference between prescribed rights and general liberties that may be defined by their boundaries. My hon. Friend and I often agree about the distinction between different types of law and the tension that exists between them, but I do not believe that we will end up in that situation.

[George Eustice]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is wrong for the press to support statutory regulation when it protects their commercial interests and oppose it when it protects the interests of civil society?

[Mr Buckland]

I think that the Homer Simpson approach that we often observe—the contradictory approach that is taken to so many issues—is worrying, and demonstrates an inconsistency. I simply ask those who say that existing laws provide adequate protection for members of the public why we allowed ourselves to get into a position in which, in effect, a culture of impunity existed in certain parts of our print media. I think that Lord Justice Leveson deals very comprehensively with the reality of the law as it stands.

As I have said, the press operate within a framework, but when play is made of the criminal law, the context within which that law operates is far too often ignored by those who cite it. First, when it comes to criminal complaints there needs to be a victim and some form of complaint, which will come about either when the complainant goes to the police or when the police themselves have some intelligence or information about an alleged crime.

The problem in the context of, for example, telephone hacking or bribery is that very often the victims do not realise that they are victims for many years. That was certainly true in the case of some of the victims of telephone hacking, who became aware of the emergence of private and sensitive information into the public domain via the newspapers, and then began to suspect even their families and friends of having breached a confidence before realising, or being told about, the grim reality. The same can be said of bribery: those who have lost out as a result of it will not necessarily know of the wrongdoing at the time, and may not know of it for many years.

There are issues relating to the way in which evidence can be gathered. We know, and rightly stress, the importance of exemptions when it comes to journalistic material. Also, the police will naturally prioritise the individual offences, such as violence and dishonesty, while the issues raised in this inquiry have in recent times dropped low down the list of priorities. As Lord Leveson says, the mere fact that we now have lengthy investigations into telephone hacking and bribery does not necessarily mean that the police have always been able to conduct such inquiries. In fact, the co-operation of News International has made all the difference in that respect.

Much has been said about defamation. Like the Versace hotel, the law of defamation is open to all, but it is too expensive, and we as parliamentarians must support the ordinary person to get cheap and effective redress of any grievance through a robust independent regulatory system, which must be underpinned by statute.

Policing (Devon and Cornwall)

George Eustice Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There has been close working between MOD police and the local constabulary, and as those pressures are brought to bear on the MOD police, changes in working practice will be inevitable.

Perhaps the cuts in Devon and Cornwall are compounded by one or two aspects of the funding formula. First, the formula does not take into account, as some other public funding formulae do, the huge influx in the number of visitors. In the summer, the population of Devon and Cornwall increases dramatically. I no longer represent the town of Newquay, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert), but I did once, and I saw at first hand the huge explosion in population. That was welcome, because of the money it brought to the local economy, but it also increased the pressure on policing.

In the health service, bills can be re-charged to primary care trusts in the areas from which patients originate. Of course, it is not so easy for the policing formula to charge local police authorities for the work carried out on behalf of citizens who happen to be in the south-west of the United Kingdom for that period. As the Government consider police funding, however, there might be an opportunity to make the base formula take that issue into account.

Secondly, there is the issue of the funding formula as currently constituted and its assessment of the funding level that each force should receive. As I understand it, Devon and Cornwall force could receive an extra £4.9 million were they to receive their full allocation, as one would expect, under the formula. The reason they do not is the damping mechanism, which ensures that forces seen to be overfunded do not lose out in short order on a lot of funding to benefit forces such as Devon and Cornwall in the correct manner. I would, however, like to see a mechanism that shows that some progress is being made on the funding due to Devon and Cornwall. If that £4.9 million were to be made available, it would equate to 100 officers, which would make a huge difference to the programme of change and to the cuts being delivered as a result of deficit reduction.

Under the area cost adjustment, areas seen to be high cost—I could stray into the controversial topic of regional pay, but I will resist the temptation—are given extra funding. This spreads out from London as one heads westward. Sadly, it peters out around Dorset, so the Devon and Cornwall force does not benefit from area cost adjustment, whereas other forces in the south-west do. Yet again, I would suggest, there is an element of unfairness there.

We face the challenges of policing across a diverse, geographically widespread peninsular environment, the funding for which is, sadly, deficient in a number of respects. I fully accept that this is an historic issue—it is one that this Government have inherited, but I look to them to consider some of the issues so that they might be resolved in the future.

The cuts manifest themselves in planned cuts to the sworn officer base from 3,580 in 2010 to 2,810 in 2015—a 21.5% reduction, with 700 fewer officers. At the same time, there is a reduction in police staff of about 500. This puts pressure on the ability to deliver such services as specialist traffic police and accident investigation—not during the middle of the day, but perhaps over weekends and late at night, reducing the ability to examine the scene of an accident in detail. We could be looking at some reduction in the excellent community policing performed by the neighbourhood teams, and another stretched resource is response cover. That is particularly challenging in rural areas, as response times can be affected when areas are stretched. There are also more specialist areas of work—in diversity, for example—and there will inevitably be a reduction in the vehicle fleet infrastructure and estate. As I said earlier, we accept that some of these cuts had to come because of the strategy for dealing with deficit reduction. It is important, however, to look at how we can support the chief constable and those who have to deal with these issues on the ground.

It would be fair to say that, because of the financial challenges, police morale is pretty low. They are doing a fantastic job, but they are concerned about the future of the service and about their own careers. A few months ago, I attended a meeting in Launceston—I pronounce it that way for the benefit of those taking notes of our proceedings—and more recently in Bodmin, when I had discussions with a number of officers who work on the front line. They are feeling it pretty hard at the moment. They are concerned about the level of reduction in the number of officers and about one or two other changes under consideration at the moment and how they might impact on them.

Let me refer briefly to the pensions issue; it is not my main focus this evening, but as with those working in public services elsewhere, this is a matter of concern—particularly to officers who have served for some time and are worried that things might change during their period of service. With the Winsor review in mind, there is concern about pay, particularly about how a mechanism based on incremental points and length of service is going to be changed, while a skills threshold will also be introduced. For someone at the top of the constable scale, that could represent a reduction in pay if they do not qualify for the skills threshold. In the longer term, there is the problem of moving towards a different framework, while those serving for some time are also worried about possible loss of earnings through a structural change that does not reflect their policing career and their abilities.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

Police officers have raised such concerns with me as well. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that he disagrees with the Winsor proposals, or does he accept that such measures are necessary to modernise and reform the police force and make it more responsive to the needs of today?

[Dan Rogerson]

I bow to the hon. Gentleman’s understanding. He may be more of an expert on these issues than I am. However, I have been guided by discussions with serving officers, among whom there is a range of opinion. Some feel strongly that the status quo should continue, while others are open and sympathetic to change as long as it reflects performance and the reality with which they live from day to day. They fear that the proposed reforms may not entirely pass that test. I wanted to share the views of those local officers with the House for the Minister’s benefit.

One issue that has been brought to my attention is that of the starting salary, which will rise as a trainee moves towards becoming a constable, but may still be lower—at least at the beginning—than that of a police community support officer. Points have been made about their respective roles. There is also the issue of unsocial hours. It has been pointed out to me that the new way of rewarding officers for working at night may create perverse incentives. For example, officers who had been rostered to do evening work for which they were to have been be rewarded might be worse off if some of those hours were shifted to the daytime so that they could make a court appearance. That strikes me as a rather strange state of affairs.

We are understandably asking the police service, as we are asking other public services, to bear down on cost and deliver the most efficient service possible, and to deal with cuts in numbers. We should ensure that other changes that we are calling on the service to make at the same time pass the test—that they constitute the most efficient use of resources, that they will provide incentives and rewards for good performance, and that they will not act as a disincentive and further undermine the morale of the service.

The key points that I hope that the Minister will take on board relate to funding. The damping mechanism means that some areas are being overfunded and some underfunded, a process with which we are all too familiar in Devon and Cornwall in the context of other public services. There is also the issue of the area cost adjustment versus the huge costs of delivering a service across a rural area such as ours.

Given all the changes that we are asking police forces to make in order to bring about some kind of modernisation of the service, I should like to be reassured that we are listening closely to those on the ground who will have to live with those changes, so that we maintain their trust and good will. We are very fortunate to have a band of officers who are committed, who want to make a real difference in their communities, and who want to protect the public and community safety. I hope that when we reach the end of this period of change, we shall have a police service that is fit for purpose and does the best that it possibly can with the resources that we are able to give it, but which also motivates its members to give of their best.

Data Protection in the Areas of Police and Criminal Justice (EU Directive)

George Eustice Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

I have a number of concerns about the motion. First, it is not just about introducing a directive, because it undermines existing British opt-outs in justice and home affairs; secondly, the Government’s own impact assessment raises serious concerns about the administration costs of the directive; and, finally, on a point to which the Minister alluded, the Government are themselves still undertaking consultation and work in this area. I shall put forward the novel proposal that we make a decision on this matter after that work is complete, not before it has been done.

On our opt-out, under a very unusual quirk of the Lisbon treaty, Britain has what is sometimes described as an opt-in protocol, meaning that by 1 June 2014 we have to make a very big decision. There are about 130 justice and home affairs measures, and we have a right to opt out of each and every one should we want to. We have to opt out of all of them en bloc, and we have to make our mind up within the next 18 months.

We should make that decision now. Let us look at all 130 powers, and let us be very clear that we are going to opt out of all of them en bloc. If we do so, we will have three options: abandon the whole lot but do some bilateral work in the area; agree with some and opt back into them but on our own terms; or do something similar to Denmark by opting into some or all of them but doing so outside the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.

The problem with the directives, as they emerge, is that they subject us to the jurisdiction of the ECJ in a way that we are not subject at the moment. Every time we accept one of the new directives that are put before us, we replace an existing framework decision and lose the power to opt out of that area. The opt-out falls by default, so we should not take such decisions lightly, because the decision tonight is a decision to scrap a British opt-out, not just a decision to wave through an amendment.

One or two Members have touched on the explanatory memorandum, and it is quite damning. Paragraph 25, which relates to domestic processing, states:

“We…consider the impact of this on law enforcement agencies, in particular regarding the administrative burdens it places on them”

could be significant. It continues:

“The Data Protection Framework”—

which went before—

“does not cover domestic processing. We are considering the implications of this.”

Paragraph 28, which relates to data protection and design, states:

“The DPFD did not impose obligations to protect personal data by design and default and their inclusion in the Directive could prove to be a disproportionate cost and burden on the functionality of law enforcement bodies.”

Paragraph 30, on the data breach notifications requirement, states:

“This could add a resource burden on low enforcement agencies and be count-productive if it distracts data controllers from mitigating the adverse effects of the breach.”

Finally, the impact assessment refers to financial implications, and paragraph 33 states:

“The Directive, if adopted as is, poses a number of financial implications. In particular, police and law enforcement authorities would need to comply with specific obligations, such as the requirement to employ Data Protection Officers. We are examining the implications of these requirements further to determine how significant they would be”.

The memorandum is dated 13 February. When I contacted the Ministry of Justice today, it said that it had launched its consultation, but that it had not yet been concluded.

We should have gathered all the evidence together before making this decision. We must question why we are being asked to make this decision tonight, when all the information is not before us. The answer is that there is an arbitrary EU timetable that says that we have to make the decision by the middle of May. This is exactly what is wrong with the European Union: we are presented with these matters, but we are not given time to gather the evidence that we need before we are bounced into making a decision. That is a complete mistake.

I want to return to my first point about our opt-outs. People sometimes say that it is impossible to do anything in the European Union because it is too difficult to renegotiate matters and because treaty changes are needed. This area is the one exception to that: we do not need to renegotiate anything and we do not need a new treaty. Our opt-outs are already provided for. We must not allow the 130 British opt-outs to wither on the vine. We must decide now to opt out of all those provisions and adopt a more strategic approach to the ones that we will accept in future.

Oral Answers to Questions

George Eustice Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

They have the jurisdiction. Britain entertains these personal injuries cases, these actions in tort, against multinational companies that have an adequate presence here in a perfectly open way, but it is still necessary for the costs of a case to be proportionate to the claim. We do not want people coming here and bringing their cases in British courts because the costs available to the lawyers greatly exceed those which could be attained by bringing similar cases in other jurisdictions.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that we need to do more to curb the compensation culture in this country and that one way of doing so would be to ensure that plaintiffs incur some form of financial risk in bringing their case so that they focus their minds on the merits of their case?

[Mr Clarke]

I am glad to say that I agree with my hon. Friend’s every word. There is a compensation culture. We are taking practical steps to get it back to common sense.