Policing (England and Wales)

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As a Member of Parliament who also represents a rural community—220 square miles of glorious Hampshire countryside—rural crime is at the top of my list, too. The hon. Gentleman will know that across the police and crime commissioners community significant effort has been put into a rural crime network, and I will be keen to sit down with them in the months to come to see what more can be done. It is worth pointing out that although specific aspects of rural crime—whether that is poaching, machinery theft or whatever—are perhaps different, too many of our rural communities are now plagued by the sort of crime that we became used to seeing only in metropolitan areas. One of my key priorities is that forces that have large rural communities recognise that dealing with serious violence has to be top of their list, just as it is in London, Manchester or Liverpool.

The police must now play their part. To ensure that they deliver, we have attached a number of expectations to the settlement: first, we expect to see continued efficiency savings by the use of collaborative procurement through a new commercial operating model, BlueLight Commercial; secondly, we expect forces to work with us to develop an approach to drive maximum value from the funding spent on police technology; thirdly, we expect forces to use the uplift in their core grant funding to cover the wider costs and infrastructure improvements needed to accommodate and deploy the additional officers effectively; and finally, we expect forces to improve productivity through digital, data and technology solutions, including mobile working. Through the National Policing Board, the Home Secretary and I will personally hold the sector to account for the delivery of improvements.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I realise that the Minister will naturally focus his resources on uniformed officers—we understand that—but I wish to ask about technical capability, particularly in relation to revenge porn. I introduced a private Member’s Bill that would have made it a criminal offence to distribute people’s private explicit sexual images without their consent. That is now illegal, but it is not clear that the police have the resources or capability to deliver on the law, because thousands of cases are reported and only a handful go to court. There are also legal issues relating to the showing of malicious intent and not having anonymity of victims. Will the Minister ensure that the capabilities are there and work with other Ministers to ensure that the new online harms Bill enables more prosecutions of these hideous crimes?