Prevent Strategy

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that we need to ensure that those who break the law are dealt with appropriately. We need to ensure also that we challenge the ideology—or, the perverse ideology—that people use to lure others down the road of radicalisation and into violent acts and into terrorism. In terms of the Prevent point of view and the very clear counter-terrorism aspect of the strategy that we have identified, that work will be done in a number of ways. In the Prevent strategy, we set out how we will deal with issues such as the internet and the use of the internet to radicalise people, but it will also be done through work with individuals who are identified as vulnerable.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I am very disappointed at the tone that the Home Secretary has adopted today. She has been extremely partisan in her comments. It is very easy to talk tough on these issues, but what practical support will she give to women and to young Muslims to develop the skills and confidence to tackle that pernicious ideology? In particular, what will she do about the £4.2 million that the research, information and communications unit in the Home Office spent last year? It is supposed to be developing a counter-narrative, but I for one have not seen one useful piece or product of research and information that RICU has produced. At the same time, the money for communities has been slashed, but we have a real responsibility to support people in our communities, so that they have the skills to tackle this pernicious, political ideology that is all too prevalent.

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Lady is correct to say that it is important to ensure that individuals are able to tackle this perverse ideology, and part of Prevent’s work with individuals will be precisely about that—about enabling people to understand the perversion of the ideology.

In relation to dealing with the wider aspects of community participation and cohesion, however, including looking at the involvement in society more generally, as we would like, of women from particular communities who are often not able or encouraged to do so, the Department for Communities and Local Government is looking at that issue in the integration strategy that it is developing.

We refer to RICU, which was set up under the last Government, in the strategy. I fully accept the right hon. Lady’s point about communication, which is extremely important; that is why we are looking at the role that RICU plays in it.

Quilliam Foundation

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to contribute to the debate. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) not only on securing the debate, but on his thoughtful, wide-ranging and incisive contribution. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who clearly has experience in these matters. He has raised some important issues, particularly on the plurality of voices, which we need as a society, on what are always contentious and very often sensitive matters. This debate is an opportunity not just to recognise the work that Quilliam has done, but to explore some of the complexity of this area and how Government might go forward.

We are here to highlight the situation in which Quilliam finds itself. I intend to concentrate on that in my remarks, because we need to press the Government for results as much as we need to have a general debate. In my experience, as with a number of groups working on this agenda, Quilliam has very often been brave, courageous, and willing to tread where other people have not perhaps been quite so brave. It always wants not just to highlight the threat that our country faces, but to come up with a practical response about how we can tackle that threat and develop a counter-extremist narrative and agenda to ensure that we build the resilience, particularly of our young people, to withstand extremist messages.

We are at a very important moment in relation to this issue. We had a significant speech from the Prime Minister a couple of weeks ago at the Munich security conference, which marks something of a turning point. He was very firm that the Government cannot tackle these issues alone. Government need help from a wide range of organisations from civil society, the Muslim community and communities across the spectrum. Government can do certain things, but the power to tackle an extremist narrative always comes from the community itself, which has to feel empowered, supported and backed up by Government in order to take on that task. The Prime Minister said:

“governments cannot do this alone. The extremism we face is a distortion of Islam”.

That is absolutely right. Islam is about peace, compassion, tolerance and inclusion; it is not about violence and division. The people who peddle messages of hate actually harm Islam in a way that almost nothing else can. The Prime Minister continued:

“these arguments, in part, must be made by those within Islam…let us give voice to those followers of Islam in our own countries—the vast, often unheard majority—who despise the extremists and their worldview.”

If that is our task, and we need others to help us, then it is very sad that we find ourselves having to press almost for the survival of an organisation such as Quilliam. It is that serious. Unless practical steps are taken by Government to ensure that there is some transitional funding for that organisation, I have no doubt that it will simply fold and not be able to conduct its activities. It has already made significant redundancies of a whole range of staff. From experience, I know how difficult it is to create capacity on these very difficult issues. It takes experience, knowledge and—I come back to that word—courage to stand up and be counted, and very often to make enemies, and face personal threats and intimidation. If we lose that organisation, we will lose that enormously valuable capacity that may well be able to be built up in the future. If something is destroyed, however, it is much harder to build up.

[Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)]

As an experienced former Government Minister, my right hon. Friend will know that Departments sometimes have the capacity, when they are reviewing programmes and trying to look at the whole picture, to let things slip through the net. Is there a danger that Quilliam could slip through the net?

[Hazel Blears]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. The debate this morning is an attempt to ensure that Quilliam does not slip through the net, and I know that Ministers in the Department are seized of the issues. We all recognise that these are difficult financial times and that difficult decisions have to be made across the Government, and I want to explore that a little with the Minister, perhaps with some specific questions later. We recognise that these are not easy times. The Home Office, which has taken a significant reduction in its expenditure, clearly needs to economise. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East has set out a specific proposition for £150,000 of transitional funding to enable Quilliam to pursue the other applications that it has made, which ought to get us to a reasonable position. I recognise that having an organisation solely dependent on public funds is not tenable in the long term.

[Tom Brake]

The right hon. Lady has been familiar with the organisation for several years. Is she aware of whether Quilliam was previously given an indication that it should go to other organisations to find funding? If it was but has not been successful in achieving self-sufficiency, the Government would have strong reservations about putting money in again.

[Hazel Blears]

This did not become a significant issue until we were facing the current financial circumstances which pertain across Government. I certainly was not aware of a major drive, which was unsuccessful, to press Quilliam to find funds in other sectors. Clearly, the situation now is that economies need to be made. Quilliam has been put into that pot, but I want to explore with the Minister what other organisations are funded and what cuts have been made—I shall come shortly to the Research Information and Communications Unit. We need a better, broader picture of the total resources available, and what decisions have been made about funding priorities. In a few weeks, we are expecting the Prevent review, which will give us more insight into what the balance of organisations ought to be. We absolutely need a balance.

This is not a partisan issue by any measure—it transcends party politics. It relates to the security and safety of our country, and nothing can be more important than that. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I are pursuing the matter to try to get a reasonable settlement.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East said, I was the Minister with responsibility for counter-terrorism at the time of the 7 July 2005 bombings. Even now, I can feel the sense of devastation and shock that there was across the nation when that happened. People were asking who committed the bombings, why they would want to do that to innocent men and women and their families, and what led them to be prepared to take their own life to fulfil what they presumably believed to be their mission and destiny. I do not think that any of us really understood—we still do not—the many and varied factors that lead people down such a path, that lead them even to contemplate taking such steps.

We are better informed than we were then. Several organisations that have been active in this field have helped the Government and policy makers to come to a better analysis of the factors that lead people to extremism, but we do not have all the answers. I entirely accept that, although some of the measures in the Prevent programme were successful, some were less successful, but what we were doing in that area was innovative and, in many ways, experimental.

I have spoken to people in the United States, France, Germany and countries across western Europe who say that this country has been at the forefront of trying to drill down to determine what the factors of extremism are, and how to build resilience among young people so that they can resist such messages. My sense is that those other countries are just beginning to take the first steps. Indeed, that was reaffirmed for my right hon. Friend and me when we went to the United States just last week. Many of the Congressmen and women and Senators acknowledged that they are very much at the beginning of thinking about a counter-radicalisation strategy, whereas this country is well ahead. This country’s position has been aided enormously by the different groups that we have funded to help us. They have had programmes and have been able to develop an evidence base about the best way to counter extremism, and the Quilliam Foundation has been at the heart of that process for the past three years at least.

As everyone knows, Quilliam was formed by Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz, both of whom had been in the grip of extremists. They had been right at the heart of Hizb ut-Tahrir and knew what it felt like to travel down that path. Therefore, their voices and the voices of others at Quilliam who have been able to set out the emotional process that happens to people on that journey have been enormously powerful and valuable in working out strategies to counter extremism. They were certainly instrumental, when I was the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, in my decision to set up the Young Muslims Advisory Group and the Muslim Women’s Advisory Group.

It was the first time in this country that we had people at national level who were able to advise Ministers about what it felt like to be a young person in the community with strong feelings about foreign policy and contentious issues, and with the many pressures that face them at that time of their life. What could the Government do to try to help them to grow up with a sense of this country’s values but also, of course, their important personal identity and heritage? The Muslim Women’s Advisory Group was a fabulous opportunity to find out about women’s lives, and how women could influence the young men in their families to withstand the extremist narrative. We can celebrate the huge amount that we achieved, but, obviously, we have much more to do.

Going around the country after 7/7 with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East was probably one of the most testing experiences I personally have ever undergone. The sense of anger, bewilderment and shock in communities was palpable, but the message that came across to me time and again was that the overwhelming majority of people in the Muslim community totally rejected the violence that had taken place, and believed that killing innocent people was never justifiable. Unfortunately, the extremism that leads people to contemplate and sometimes adopt violence is with us now—there is no getting away from that—and is likely to be with us for many years to come. Life has changed, and we ought to recognise that the circumstances are very different. That is why it is so important that we have the capacity to tackle that ideology and the way in which people seek to groom others to take the path of violence.

I want to mention a report which I think is relevant to this debate. “Fear and HOPE”, which was published last week by the Searchlight Educational Trust, is about the new politics of identity. Many people who are susceptible to extremist narratives are struggling with their sense of identity: who am I, where do I fit in, where do I belong, what is my value set?

The report, which was based on 5,000 interviews of people across the country who were asked more than 90 questions, provides some fascinating results and evidence. What gives me optimism and hope is that there is widespread rejection of political violence. It is interesting that the vast majority of people who were questioned considered white anti-Muslim extremists to be as bad as Islamist extremists. That tells me that a core part of our communities and population are basically saying, “A plague on both your houses. We want no part of extremism, whether far-right extremism, Islamist extremism or anti-Semitism—we reject all that.”

It gives me great hope for the future that if we can build, sustain and make that heart of our community strong, it will empower and give confidence to young people to say, “I reject the extremist narrative. I reject such ideologies and share the broad values of this country.” That prize is so precious and valuable that the investment of £150,000 to enable Quilliam to move to other sources of funding over the next few months is a small price to pay, considering the scale of the challenge that we face. I absolutely agree with the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington that we need a broad range of organisations to help with the agenda at every part of the spectrum. It is without doubt that Quilliam has been prepared to be at one end of that spectrum, to speak out, not to be intimidated, and to state the case for pluralism, inclusion and British values of democracy, tolerance, free speech, and particularly the rights of women. It has been extremely effective in doing that.

Obviously, we must support other organisations, and I will come to that, but it is only three years since Quilliam was established, and to have gained its reputation in the world within that period marks it out as a special organisation that has helped us to build that evidence base. Its report on radicalisation on campuses was extremely good and contained a series of recommendations. We know that there is a problem on some of our university campuses, and the report’s practical recommendations could help us significantly. It produced a report on the use of the internet to promote Jihad. We are now seeing preachers such as al-Maliki on the internet urging people to take matters into their own hands without having a group around them, and to carry out individual acts of terrorism. That report on the use of the internet was a good piece of work. The role of television in influencing young minds is crucial.

Quilliam has produced excellent reports, and done project work—for example, its work in Pakistan, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East mentioned, which was funded by the Foreign Office, with road shows prepared in challenging and sometimes intimidating circumstances to make the case fearlessly. It has a tremendous record. It is seeking other sources of funding. It recognises that the current situation cannot continue ad infinitum, but it must be given the chance to do that work.

I have some questions for the Minister, and if he cannot answer them during the debate, I would appreciate it if he got back to me later. The Research Information and Communications Unit was established in the Office of Security and Counter-terrorism in the Home Office three or four years ago. My recollection is that that was a fairly well resourced unit. It received contributions from the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Home Office, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and it brought together a series of people with the skills to develop a counter-narrative, to publish documents, and to do research and much of the work that Quilliam has been doing.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I remember a conversation I had with a senior Minister about the setting-up of RICU. My understanding is that there was an analogy between it and the operation set up at the onset of the cold war to try to counter communist subversion and propaganda. Either such organisations do the work themselves, or they do the research and support other non-governmental organisations that will go on to the front line and fight the ideological battle. I do not think I have seen anything to suggest that RICU is fighting that battle under its own banner on the front line. If it is not doing that itself, why is it not perpetually committed to the support of other organisations such as Quilliam which are prepared to go into the front line?

[Hazel Blears]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, to which I hope the Minister will respond. The comparison between the funding of RICU and the funding that we are asking for in this debate would be illuminating. It is clear that there is a straightforward and simple al-Qaeda narrative, which is that the west is at war with Islam with a feeling of victimhood and grievance. That must be countered, and it is my understanding that that was a core part of RICU’s responsibilities. I would be grateful if the Minister let us know what its resources are, what the product is, what it has been working on and, indeed, whether it can fund other organisations.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady is making an important speech, and I entirely agree with the broad thrust of what she is saying about Quilliam’s importance. Will she go into a little detail about the discussion she might have had with that organisation about where it sees its diverse sources of funding coming from if it does not come simply from the Home Office, and a time frame for when new sources would come into play if the Home Office were able to continue some of the funding that it is planning to take away?

[Hazel Blears]

I am grateful for that question. Until recently, Quilliam was in a position to become self-financing in a short time. It had offers of funding, but we then had the recession, which has unfortunately affected all of us, including charitable donations. We have also had the events in the middle east. I understand that some support was pledged from organisations with middle east connections, but that has not been possible because of recent events. It now has a number of applications with charitable foundations that are active in building capacity, resilience and counter-narratives. It has some applications with individuals who have a long track record of support in this area. It is optimistic about being able to obtain funding. It may not be at the same level as in the past, which is why it has made some redundancies—it wants to cut its cloth according to its resources—but it is optimistic about being able to continue with a core facility and to build from there. That will depend on its reputation and the worth of its product, and rightly so. It should be out there and showing it to people.

I would be grateful if the Minister told us what the RICU budget is, what the overall budget is this year for the Prevent strategy and—I know that there will be a review—what it is likely to be, what other organisations are active in developing the counter-narrative and the counter-extremism part, as opposed to some of the good community work that goes on, and how much funding is provided to external organisations. Much of the Prevent review will be about project funding, and Quilliam absolutely accepts that that is where it needs to be in future. Will the Minster confirm that applications for project funding from the Quilliam Foundation will be considered in exactly the same way as applications from any other body-on the strength of the project that it is putting forward?

We could make decisions on such issues that we may live to regret later. It is so much more difficult to recreate something than to help it to continue to exist. I entirely support my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East in his bid for £150,000 to enable the organisation to have an effective transition. Nothing is more important than keeping our country safe, and I believe that the Quilliam Foundation plays a major role in that objective.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

There are indeed, and I will come to exact figures in a second.

The funding provided to Quilliam has been unique, not only in its scale but in its scope. It has been used not just for projects and programmes but, exceptionally, for significant overheads and running costs. The Government agree that Quilliam deserved some support in the past, and we continue to believe that Quilliam is capable of useful work. However, following a review of all the organisations, projects and programmes supported as part of the Prevent strategy, Home Office Ministers have taken the decision to end funding for Quilliam’s running costs from the end of this financial year. Clearly, that is the heart and purpose of the debate.

I say to the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East that there is an offer on the table to Quilliam of tens of thousands of pounds to cover the next few months of basic operations. He and the array of distinguished ex-Ministers on the Opposition Benches will recognise that this not the place to conduct detailed financial negotiations. I want to assure him and everyone who has attended the debate that there is an offer. It would be foolish for me to start negotiating here; I will merely gently observe that the £150,000 transitional money referred to by several right hon. and hon. Members is actually more than the total Home Office money given to Quilliam over the past 12 months, as decided by the previous Government. I would not want anyone to leave the debate with the thought that £150,000 is a small percentage of what Quilliam might have expected to receive. It is actually more than the total budget received from the Home Office in the past year.

[Hazel Blears]

Will the Minister give an indication of when Quilliam was first told that it would need to replace the Home Office funding with funding from other sources?

[Damian Green]

In December. My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East asked for specific numbers. The trajectory of Home Office direct funding for Quilliam is quite clear. In 2008-09, it was £665,000; in 2009-10, it was £387,000; and in 2010-11, it was £145,000. There was a clear trend in the direction agreed with by everyone who has spoken in the debate: that is, that Quilliam does good work but that a think-tank of that kind should not be reliant for its core running costs on Government funding.

Counter-terrorism Review

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend has made an extremely valid point. The Government will indeed be rigorous in their efforts to increase the number of countries with which we have agreements about the deportation of terrorists, so that we are able to deport them rather than their remaining in the United Kingdom.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

As the Minister responsible, with the then Home Secretary, for taking the control orders legislation through the House, may I say that I deeply resent the implication by some Government Members that we welcomed the opportunity to incarcerate people without trial? Control orders were always an imperfect solution to an unprecedented terror threat.

Recently, in the High Court, Mr Justice Wilkie said of the subject of a control order that he had renewed:

“He was and remains prepared to be a martyr in an attack designed to take many lives. He remains highly trained, security conscious and committed.”

Does the Home Secretary feel personally confident that the measures that she is introducing will protect the British people from people like that?

[Mrs May]

I have announced these measures precisely because we recognise the need to take action against a small number of people of the sort described by the right hon. Lady whom it has not been possible to prosecute or deport. I am confident that our measures will do the job that is necessary, preventing and disrupting terrorist activity and ensuring that we can keep people safe.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the point and for highlighting the work of Devon and Cornwall police on Operation Lakeland, which led to the conviction of six men jailed for sexually abusing girls in Cornwall. I would be happy to meet her and the detective inspector to learn from their experiences. She will be aware of the thematic review that the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre is undertaking in relation to this area of policy. I am also discussing with the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), some of the significant matters highlighted by the recent report by Barnardo’s.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

T2. Contrary to the assertion of the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, the chief constable of Greater Manchester, Peter Fahy, has said that £134 million of cuts will have a significant effect on front-line policing. He has gone on to say that police stations across Greater Manchester will now have to close. Does the Minister think that police stations are front-line? Will he tell us which police stations in Greater Manchester will close and when?

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

The closure of police stations is an operational matter for the police, but the right hon. Lady should know perfectly well that under the previous Labour Government some 400 police stations closed. What responsibility does she accept for that?

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I will shortly deal with part of the point that he makes.

Earlier today, we announced police force funding allocations. These ensure equal treatment across all forces, as each force will receive the same percentage reduction to its core Government funding. At the same time, we are giving the police service greater freedom than ever before over how to use its resources. With this new budgetary freedom, police and crime commissioners will be able to make real decisions about funding local priorities.

Concerns have been expressed about placing this degree of power in the hands of one person. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made the point about an individual representing, in some cases, a large area with competing and different requirements within it. The Bill will ensure that there are appropriate checks and balances on those powers.

At the core of our proposals is the establishment of new police and crime panels. These will ensure that there is a robust support and challenge role at force level, and that the decisions of the police and crime commissioners are tested on behalf of the public on a regular basis.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) about the ability of a single individual to be visible and accountable in an area such as Greater Manchester, with 2.5 million people. Is it not the case that the police and crime panels which the right hon. Lady proposes are remarkably similar to the police authorities, which have been criticised time and again for lack of visibility and lack of accountability?

[Mrs May]

No. I shall come on to describe some of the powers of the police and crime panels. That democratically elected individual is essential, restores a link between the police and the public, and makes sure that at those elections the public are able to have their say about what their police and crime commissioner is doing in terms of the responsibilities of the police. To those who raise the issue of representation of the full area, which is the point made by the hon. Member for Rhondda, I repeat the figure that I gave earlier in my speech: only 8% of local authority wards are currently represented on the police authorities, so the police authorities are not providing representation on the same basis as some of those who call for their continuation would argue.

[Hazel Blears]

rose—

[Mrs May]

I see that the right hon. Lady is eager to jump up again. I will take this intervention, then I will make progress.

[Hazel Blears]

I am very grateful to the Home Secretary, because those issues have obviously tested many Home Secretaries over the past few years. Has the right hon. Lady given any consideration to electing those local representatives, who would then be visible, accountable and have a local mandate?

[Mrs May]

Yes. Indeed, the right hon. Lady’s own Government looked at the possibility of electing police authorities and rejected it, but we are sure about what we are doing through the police and crime commissioners and the police and crime panels. The panels will comprise locally elected councillors and some independent and lay members, who will be able to veto a commissioner’s proposed precept by a three-quarters majority and veto any candidate a commissioner proposes for chief constable by the same majority. The public will also be given opportunities to scrutinise the performance of their police and crime commissioners directly, through enhanced local crime information, including street-level crime maps.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Balls]

I do not know whether the Library report quotes the Conservative chair of the police authority in Kent, who, as I understand it, totally disagrees with the hon. Gentleman and says that the proposal is flawed and will not work. It will not be properly representative.

Bizarrely, the coalition came along and proposed the abolition of police authorities, but then realised that it was a flawed policy. It then decided to reinvent police authorities and give them a new name so that they would be called panels rather than authorities. The problem of representation needs to be solved, because it is serious.

[Hazel Blears]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that visibility and accountability have to be balanced with the integration of services, particularly with local authorities and other partners? Partnership working in policing has been shown to work over the past few years, and a single elected commissioner could well tear the system apart and lead to much less effective policing on the ground.

[Ed Balls]

I agree, and effective accountability really ought to happen in the main in the basic command unit. We need to ensure that the police are accountable to their community, but that they can demand support from the local authority, the health service and the other agencies that are vital to tackling the causes of drug crime and wider youth crime. All that will be ripped up under the Government’s proposals, and we will end up instead with one elected person for a massive area, who will be able to visit each ward perhaps once every other year. That is not local accountability at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this Second Reading debate on what I believe to be a very important Bill. The issues are close to my heart, not just because, like the Policing Minister, I struggled with the tension between visibility, accountability and performance for the three years for which I was Policing Minister, but because I know how important those things are to my constituents in Salford and Eccles and to communities across the country.

There is undoubtedly a problem with the visibility and accountability of police authorities. I believe that the public are entitled to know much more clearly who is responsible for setting policing priorities as well as ensuring that chief constables address the issues that are important to local people in an effective way that achieves the best value for money. It is a complex set of tasks for any police service, but over the past few years we have done pretty well. We need to do more, however. Having a safe community not only transforms life for ordinary people but affects business, investment and economic transformation, and that is why it is so important.

Let me make it clear that I believe that if local people are given the chance to elect their police representatives, they will do so sensibly and rationally and that the spectre of their electing an extremist candidate is unlikely. It is the responsibility of people like us, in this House and elsewhere, to ensure that, in any direct elections, we get involved, campaign on a proper platform, reflect the people’s priorities, offer political leadership and support our citizens in making their democratic choices. I have always trusted the public and they often—in fact, nearly always—get it right.

I have real concerns, however, about the idea of electing a single individual who is not connected to the rest of the local governance arrangements for the provision of public service. I would be interested to hear from the Minister when he responds to the debate whether he has really considered that issue. Evidence shows that what has worked in policing in the past few years is the integration of services—for example, in family intervention projects and tackling antisocial behaviour—and joint working between agencies, particularly between police and the criminal justice system. On Friday, I visited a new pilot in Greater Manchester of intensive alternatives to custody, which involves embedding police officers with probation and family support workers—again, involving integrated services. Approaches such as the co-location of key staff and the sharing of data have been part of the direction of travel that has led to effective policing.

That is the direction in which all public services are moving. As part of the previous Government, I started the Total Place work to bring all public services together. It is called community budgeting under this Government. I do not mind what it is called, but it is the most effective way to provide services. It is designed to break down barriers, integrate staff, set joint priorities, pool budgets and get more for less. If the move to having a single, elected police and crime commissioner means setting the police apart from the rest of that system, I honestly believe it will be a seriously retrograde step.

[Ms Louise Bagshawe (Corby) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that the call for elected police commissioners came precisely because the public do not feel that the current system, integrated or not, is serving them? Is not there a need for the public to have a single voice?

[Hazel Blears]

Indeed, and I am about to put forward an idea that would meet many of those concerns. One way of achieving the greater visibility for policing that the hon. Lady talks about would be having a directly elected person in each local authority area who would be responsible for local policing but would also have a duty to operate within the rest of the local public service framework to mobilise all those resources to make communities safer. Those directly elected local commissioners could act collectively at force level to hold chief constables to account and to provide direct, local links to their communities. I am genuinely concerned about the ability of a single police and crime commissioner to be visible and accountable to 2.5 million people across Greater Manchester in communities as diverse as those in Rochdale, Wigan, Stockport, Oldham, Manchester city centre and Salford. I wonder whether the Minister has considered having directly elected local commissioners. There is all the rhetoric about localism, but then this policy of having a single police and crime commissioner for millions of people. That is not localism.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Is not the right hon. Lady effectively making the case for an elected official for each basic command unit? In such a system there would not be co-ordination between different parts of Greater Manchester, because those people would compete with one another for resources and to work and co-operate with other state agencies. That would be a recipe for duplication, expense and confusion.

[Hazel Blears]

It is a difficult circle to square and I shall suggest how we might address some of those issues. There is no perfect system, but I do not believe that having a single person who is supposed to be visible and accountable to millions of people will work.

I understand that the police and crime panels, which are to be made up of local authority representatives and which will be remarkably similar to the police authorities that have been criticised for their lack of visibility, will have the power to advise and scrutinise the work of commissioners, but would it not be better if those local representatives were elected and therefore had a direct local mandate and accountability? I am very concerned that there will be a lack of consistency between the plans and strategies of local authorities and the health service, plans on tackling drugs and the possible crime plans of the police and crime panels. The local reps could come together and pool the sovereignty of their elected mandates to consider issues of serious, organised and trans-border crime—issues that are properly the concern of whole force areas. Currently, there is concern that police and crime commissioners will concentrate almost solely on very local issues, because of the electoral impetus, and that they might ignore some trans-force, serious and organised crime issues as well as national priorities.

It is inevitable that commissioners will be pressed to prioritise local, visible neighbourhood policing. I do not argue against that, as there is no greater advocate in the House than me of neighbourhood policing. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and I drove a culture change through the police service to ensure that neighbourhood policing was properly valued and rewarded. Hon. Members will remember that 10 years ago the sexy end of the police business was going out in the squad car with the blues and twos blazing and a helicopter circling overhead. People thought that was real policing. It was not entirely dissimilar from Gene Hunt’s kind of policing and it took a great deal of effort to bring the police back to tackling antisocial behaviour, closing crack houses and tackling prostitution on our estates. That was the really important part of policing for local people. I believe that the police get that now and know that being visible in their communities is hugely important to restoring and improving local people’s confidence, but we still need to keep the pressure on to make sure that that happens.

Some crime is not immediately visible to people on the streets, but is hugely important to address—whether it is counter-terrorism, serious and organised crime, the emerging problems of cybercrime, drug enforcement or tackling knife and gun crime. All that work needs to be done. The Home Secretary can talk about the national policing priorities in the Bill, but there is no provision for those second-tier regional priorities. In my own area, Salford, we have just had a fantastic operation called Operation Gulf, which entailed the long-term surveillance of organised crime gangs, using a range of powers—not police powers, particularly, but bringing in, for example, the Department for Work and Pensions to examine tax and benefits fraud, working with the Security Industry Agency, and investigating illegal protection rackets and pubs that have been used for organised crime. All that is not immediately visible to people on the street, but it is tackling those serious criminals who are role models for many of my young people. It is about confiscating their assets, and it is long-term police work that costs money. I worry enormously that a police commissioner will not give that the priority that it needs.

In the short time left to me, I shall say a word about the people whom we ask to carry out all that work on our behalf. We spent a long time trying to get a proper skill mix within our police service, recognising that we do not need fully warranted officers to do every single job in the service. Peter Fahy, the chief constable of Greater Manchester, has been a tremendous champion of work force modernisation. When I met him last week, he was desperately worried that with the very severe cuts that we have to make in such a short period of time, the people who will be most vulnerable are the PCSOs and the civilian staff who, because of their employee status, can be made redundant, unlike police officers.

I worry that we will go backwards, rather than forwards. We have got police officers away from being escort officers, custody officers or scenes-of-crime officers, and we have got them on the front line. As a result of cutting so quickly and so deeply, we will find uniformed officers again in the back-office doing file preparation or escort duties. That is utterly ludicrous. It is a backward step which will lead to much less effectiveness in our service. Our chief constable must get rid of 3,000 people over the next four years. He has said publicly that that will affect front-line policing. As a result of the speed at which it needs to be done and the arcane employment regulations in the police service, we will find ourselves making the wrong decisions about effectiveness.

The public will judge success not simply by elections. They will judge it by what happens on their streets and in their communities. If they can go to bed at night and not wake up with the fear of being burgled, if they can get up in the morning and find that their car has not been slashed and trashed, that will be the sign of success. Accountability, as commissioners will find, will be a pretty tough thing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

Labour’s manifesto at the last election proposed referendums five times over—on the alternative vote, on reform of the other place, on mayors, on further powers for the Welsh Assembly and on the euro. Did Labour Members advance arguments against those democratic pledges on the grounds that they would cost money? Of course not. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) pointed out, of course there is a cost to running elections. Police authorities do not have that cost because they are not democratic. That is exactly what we want to fix.

[Hazel Blears]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Herbert]

For all Labour’s objections, one could be forgiven for forgetting that the previous Government twice proposed to democratise police authorities. So what happened? They backed down, twice. That is the difference between the previous Government and the coalition. The Opposition retreated from reform at the first whiff of opposition and we are determined to see it through. [Hon. Members: “Give way!”]

One thing is clear. Those on the Opposition Front Bench may be opportunistically opposing this reform, but we know what they really think about the need for it.

“Only direct election, based on geographic constituencies, will deliver the strong connection to the public which is critical.”

Does that sound familiar to the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker)? It should do. He said it just two years ago.

Is that too long ago? Let us look at what the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) said just two weeks ago. He told the Home Affairs Committee that “the present accountability of police authorities was not optimal.” What a masterpiece of understatement. If police authorities are sub-optimal, what proposals does he have for reform? None. He is silent on the issue. Today the right hon. Gentleman admitted that “there is more we can do to deepen accountability at force level.” What? He will not say. He is against reform of the governance of policing, but he is for it, just as he is against cuts while admitting that he would cut police budgets by more than £1 million a year. Apparently these can be delivered without losing a single police officer. That is what he said today.

Aviation Security Incident

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am happy to tell my hon. Friend that work is already under way with the Yemeni Government. Indeed, following the attempted Detroit bombing on 25 December, measures were put in place under the previous Labour Government, and have been continued under this Government, to work with the Yemeni Government and to provide them with various levels of support, particularly around airport security, which was crucial to the attempted bombing of that plane. That work is being funded by the Foreign Office and will be continued. More widely, the Foreign Office has been part of the Friends of Yemen group, bringing in others to ensure that we do all we can to provide the sort of support that the Yemeni Government need in their battle against al-Qaeda, and to help us to fight al-Qaeda, too.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

The devices were clearly designed to wreak havoc and cause a massive loss of life. I am sure that the country has breathed a sigh of relief that they were detected in this way. The right hon. Lady recognised that intelligence and the sharing of intelligence were key to what has happened. Will she reassure us that our international relationships are robust and strong enough to ensure the maximum sharing of that intelligence? Will she also, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) has indicated, reflect on the fact that the comprehensive spending review says that there will be a real-term reduction in counter-terrorism funding for the police? In the light of such circumstances, I ask her to reflect on that position.

[Mrs May]

I have already responded on counter-terrorism policing. In answer to the first part of the right hon. Lady’s question about our relationships with international partners, let me say that on intelligence gathering and the sharing of intelligence, the working with international partners is absolutely crucial. We have a particularly close relationship with the United States. Since this incident took place, I have spoken twice with my direct opposite number, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. The Prime Minister has spoken to President Obama, and other contacts are taking place with the United States. We are also conscious of the fact that we need to enhance information sharing and working with other partners across the world. For example, last week I was in Pakistan, talking to the Pakistani Government about how can enhance our relationship in the battle that we all fight in dealing with terrorists and the terrorist threat.

Crime and Policing

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson]

It is great to hear Conservative Members accepting that crime has fallen, as they spent so long dancing around the issue under the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). They were told off by the UK statistics authorities and by everyone who looked at the matter. Some people in the police force are looking askance at what this Government are doing. I mentioned the record under the previous Conservative Government. The hon. Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) is right that the conviction rate needs to be tackled as well, but under the previous Conservative Government, it was not just the conviction rate and the detection rate that had not been tackled, as crime reached 4.6 million—a doubling—under the Tories. There was a 168% increase in violent crime and a 405% increase in burglary. Of course, the Labour Government can be criticised for aspects of what happened over the last 13 years, but what no Conservative Member can do is to suggest that somehow crime has gone up when that was in fact their legacy. If Britain were ever broken, it was broken between 1979 and 1997. The statistics I am citing are not mine; they are the Home Secretary’s.

The death of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter last year shocked this House and shocked the country. It had a profound impact on me as the incoming Home Secretary. That is why I wanted to intensify action. There is no evidence from this tragic incident that it is time to move beyond the ASBO. All the evidence, summarised so astutely by the coroner in that tragic case, showed that the police and local authority in Leicestershire were acting as if they lived in the pre-ASBO era, when no powers existed. One police officer said at the inquest that antisocial behaviour was nothing to do with the police. He was wrong. It is certainly not the responsibility of the police alone, but the police are responsible for it. That police officer was wrong, but 13 years ago, he would have been right. We have to be careful not to return to those days. The Home Secretary speaks of the need to tackle the root causes of this kind of behaviour as if she is unaware of Sure Start, free nursery education, family-nurse partnerships, family intervention projects, the education maintenance allowance, the huge increase in apprenticeships, the 30% increase in the number of kids from deprived areas going to university and all the other measures introduced by the Labour Government—yes, to be tough on the causes of crime, as well as on crime itself.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is providing us with an excellent list of the range of powers available to deal with the very complex issue of antisocial behaviour. It is not just about enforcement, as it is also about tackling the causes. Does he agree that the victims of antisocial behaviour disproportionately live in the poorest parts of our communities in Britain? Someone living in a nice leafy suburb behind a gated community might not appreciate the misery still caused by antisocial behaviour. That is why we need the powers to deal with the problem.

[Alan Johnson]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who did a great deal during her time at the Home Office to pursue this agenda. I think that all social strata can suffer from this problem, but she is right in what she says about poor areas. That is why we must never go back to the days when the typical response to this problem on the Labour Benches was saying that we should not get involved in it. We did; we have; it succeeded. We pioneered restorative justice. We began linking drug treatment to prison sentences. We trebled investment in prison education. As a result, reoffending is down by 20% and youth reoffending by nearly 25%.

The Home Secretary said in her July speech that for 13 years people had been told that

“the ASBO was the silver bullet that would cure society’s ills”.

I want her to give me one example—just one—of a Minister ever making any such claim. We never did. It took a whole range of measures to deal with the spiralling crime that we inherited, and that is what we did. As usual, the only thing wrong with the Home Secretary’s pronouncements is the facts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

What I will confirm is that yet again, in this debate, we have seen from those who made up the Labour Government an unwillingness to accept what people out there see and feel on their streets. It is about issues of crime and levels of crime in this country that are not acceptable. Whatever the right hon. Gentleman says about the figures, I think that figures such as those that I quoted earlier—26,000 victims of crime a day and nearly 900,000 violent crimes a year—are not figures to be proud of. They are figures that we need to deal with. We need to do more and that means unfettering the police and allowing them to get out on the streets and to do what they should be doing, which is dealing with crime.

[Hazel Blears]

The right hon. Lady is right that there is always more to do in tackling crime. The Labour party has never been complacent about how important these issues are to the British public. However, does she not accept that there is now the lowest risk for more than 20 years in this country of becoming a victim of crime? Of course we are not perfectly safe but we are an awful lot safer than we used to be under previous Governments.

[Mrs May]

I am disappointed in the line that the right hon. Lady has taken. She made an important and valid point earlier in her intervention on her right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary about antisocial behaviour and the important fact that all too often the perception of antisocial behaviour is worse in deprived communities and those communities that are among the poorest and most vulnerable in our country. My point is very simple: none of us can be complacent about levels of crime in this country. We need to find the ways in which we can reduce crime and in which we can help the police to do their job.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Burley]

I think the police should spend their resources on fighting crime. Communication will follow if they are doing a good job and the public are happy.

My question is this: if the private sector can make those efficiencies while giving better services and products, why can the police not do the same? What exactly are all the extra police we are constantly told about spending their time doing? As we have heard, Home Office figures have revealed that police officers spend more time on paperwork than on patrol—just 14% of police officers’ time is spent on patrol, compared with 20% on paperwork. Of the 81,000 officers who patrol our country, including detectives, traffic police and neighbourhood watch teams, just 17,000 will be on duty for an average eight-hour shift. With 14% of their time spent on patrol, only 2,400 officers are out and about at a given time—just one in 58 of a record number of police officers is patrolling the streets at any one time. No wonder Jan Berry, former chairman of the Police Federation, commented:

“People hear about a record 143,000 officers and it sounds a lot, but the reality, as these new figures show, is quite different. The Government obsession with targets and data collection, as well as the failure to provide an effective system to share information, has resulted in officers spending less time on the beat and this can only be at the expense of the public.”

Even way back in 2001, a study by PA Consulting for the Home Office found that police officers were spending as much time in the police station as they were on the streets. For five hours a day—more than 50% of the time that the officers were on a shift—they were sat in the station. The study also found that most of the time spent in the police station was spent dealing with incidents and making inquiries; only 17% of police officer time was spent on reassurance patrol; and only 1% of police time was spent proactively reducing crime. The study also unearthed a startling statistic: if the amount of time a police officer spends on the beat could be increased from one fifth to two fifths, the police presence on the streets of England and Wales would effectively be doubled, without a single extra officer being recruited. Clearly, there is considerable scope to free officers to spend more time out on the beat, and a massive dividend to be gained from doing so.

[Hazel Blears]

The hon. Gentleman is making some interesting points about efficiency and productivity, but does he accept that much of the bureaucracy is not in the police station, but in the courts system, which ties our police officers into giving evidence, preparing case files and having a huge amount of paperwork? I recommend to him the argument that more effective liaison with the criminal justice system is essential if we are to get more productivity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to this debate addressing issues that affect every one of our communities, and it is a particular pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart), who gave a thoughtful analysis, particularly in respect of big organisations not necessarily having to be remote and the possibility of their being underpinned by responsive local units, which is interesting in terms of policy development.

In common with many Opposition Members, I am disappointed and frustrated by the Government’s decision not to protect the funds for front-line policing. It has frequently been said today that, if Labour had won the election, we would have had to make cuts, and that is absolutely right, but the shadow Home Secretary was very clear that the cuts in the Home Office would have come from changing overtime patterns and from looking at procurement and issues such as effectiveness, productivity and efficiency, and that they certainly would not have come from neighbourhood police teams, police community support officers and all the other things every one of our constituents values. This Government need to think long and hard before cutting the number of police officers and PCSOs, who are the backbone of our police service at local level.

I want to say a few words about the Home Secretary’s recent speech at Coin street, in which she declared that it is time to move beyond the antisocial behaviour order. I understand that this Government are desperate to paint everything they have inherited from Labour as unfit for purpose, but I think that in respect of ASBOs they are putting politics before people. Over the last 13 years as Member of Parliament for Salford and as Police Minister and Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, I have seen at first hand the damage that antisocial behaviour can cause to communities, with gangs thinking that they rule their estates and are the rule of law, and with innocent and vulnerable families being intimidated and harassed. The whole quality of life of a community can be brought down by the actions of a few.

I well remember the days when the police would turn up and officers would simply say, “I’m really sorry, but there’s nothing I can do. I haven’t got the powers to be able to deal with these ‘low-level, petty’ crimes, so there’s nothing I can do to help you and your family.” That is exactly why we introduced ASBOs in the first place—so that they could be part of a range of tools to tackle what were becoming intolerable pressures on communities.

The Home Secretary has talked about antisocial behaviour orders being a top-down, centralised mechanism from Whitehall, but nothing could be further from the truth. The Home Office guidance actually says:

“It is for local agencies to decide on the most appropriate intervention for tackling antisocial behaviour based on…what will work best locally.”

Local agencies do use ASBOs in very different ways: the approach is sometimes very different in inner-city areas, such as my constituency, from the approach taken in some rural areas up and down the country, and that is as it should be. Local agencies, including the local council and the probation service—all those people who work together—should be asking, “What is the problem? What range of tools do we have to deal with it? Where can they most appropriately be deployed?” In some cases, that will involve acceptable behaviour contracts, exclusion orders or parenting orders. We have introduced a good set of tools to tackle these problems, so to try to pretend that ASBOs are some kind of top-down, Whitehall-imposed mechanism is simply wrong.

In Greater Manchester, extensive use has been made of these powers and the result has been very impressive; we have brought safety and security to people who felt that they had been abandoned by the police in the past. In Salford, the level of antisocial behaviour has fallen year on year; since 2006, it has reduced by 22.6%, which is a massive shift. Crime and antisocial behaviour was the biggest issue facing my constituents, but in the past couple of years more people have moved into Salford than have left, reversing a trend of the past quarter of a century. One of the fundamental reasons why people are now moving to the city is that they feel safe and secure. It is a great place to live, and businesses and families are coming to it. Without the powers on tackling antisocial behaviour, we would not have reached that point.

Of course, I would be the last person to say that those powers are a silver bullet or the complete solution, because they are not and they have their flaws. The breach rate is pretty high, but that is going to be the case because ASBOs are often used on people who are out of control, people who are prolific offenders with hundreds of incidents behind them and, as the shadow Home Secretary said, people who have reached the severe end of punishment after many other approaches have been tried. Even so, more than 40% of ASBOs are not breached—the antisocial behaviour stops. Let us also look beyond the headline figures. When action is taken after a first breach, 65% of people stop their antisocial behaviour. The figure is 86% in respect of a second breach and, provided action is taken, after three breaches nearly 95% of people say, “Okay, enough is enough, we are going to start behaving reasonably.” So we have to persevere and we have to give ASBOs a chance to work. In conjunction with the range of other programmes available, including family intervention projects, which have been one of the most innovative things that we have done, bringing all the services together to tackle the underlying problems of antisocial behaviour, ASBOs have meant that we have been pretty effective.

Protecting people so that they can live in peace and safety in their communities has to be the top priority of any Government, and the Home Secretary has to live up to that challenge. If her desire to re-examine the powers on tackling antisocial behaviour is about making things easier and simpler, and about stripping out the bureaucracy, sorting out the criminal justice system and making sure that we are not mired in all of that difficulty, she will have my support in doing that. If, however, it means that we are going to water ASBOs down, diluting them, making them more difficult to obtain and putting obstacles in the way of the police and local authorities, I will oppose that tooth and nail, because our responsibility is to protect the communities that we serve.

We have heard a lot today about the further regulation of CCTV. I am none the wiser as to what “further regulation” means, but I know that CCTV, in my city and up and down the country, has made a huge difference to protecting local people. The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) confirmed that she wanted less CCTV, whereas other Members have said that they do not want that. I am not sure what the coalition view is, but this is beginning to sound like a jigsaw of policies to me and I would welcome some clarity.

In March, an incident in Eccles was caught on CCTV. Six violent males with a huge history of prolific offending were involved in a stabbing, and the information was collected on CCTV. Two of the men were seen in possession of large kitchen knives, waving them around and going into a store. A stabbing took place and no complaint was made—the person who was stabbed did not want to co-operate with the police—and the only possible evidence was from the CCTV. As a result, a prosecution was brought. They were charged with section 18 wounding, violent disorder and possession of an offensive weapon. They were sentenced to two years in prison and received ASBOs on conviction that prevent them from associating in the future. None of that would have been possible without access to the information from the CCTV.

[Anna Soubry]

The right hon. Lady will know that I said that I want fewer CCTV cameras. That should be the aim of everybody in this Chamber, because people should be able to walk the streets free from the fear of crime and from actual crime. That should be our ultimate aim. She makes a big mistake if she thinks that CCTV is some great panacea. In my experience as a criminal barrister, in many cases involving CCTV evidence, I have had clients who have told me that they went down that alleyway to commit the offence because there was no CCTV. The danger of CCTV is that it pushes criminality down the alleyways into other places. The real solution is to tackle the causes of crime.

[Hazel Blears]

Well, I wish the hon. Lady the best of British luck when she goes to her constituents and says, “We’ll do nothing for years and years; we must tackle the issue of the causes of crime.” Of course we must, but if she wants to stand up in front of her voters and say that she wants to see less CCTV in her community, I wish her all the luck in the world in putting forward that argument—it certainly would not wash with my constituents in Salford.

The Government’s policy on DNA is an absolute mistake. The shadow Home Secretary has gone through all the detailed evidence on that and the overriding factor for me is the fact that in Scotland the Scottish police want to change to the system that we were promoting. They see that it makes sense, that it is evidence-based and that it will result in the capture of more serious murderers and rapists. Some 10% of the 800 people who were caught through DNA would have escaped under the Government’s proposed system and the prospect of having 80 murderers and rapists roaming the streets of this country who could have been brought to justice is one that I would find difficult to defend.

The list goes on. Not only will we have cuts to funding, but we will have cuts to police powers on antisocial behaviour, CCTV and DNA. I want to say some words about the most serious threat that faces our communities and about counter-terrorism. What happened on 7 July brought fear to our communities and devastation to many families. I would say to the Government that there is no easy way to combat terrorism. The threat to the UK has not diminished and that is why, when we are considering the review of counter-terrorism powers, we must be extremely careful to get the balance right between security and liberty and must not be tempted to shy away from difficult and sometimes controversial choices, such as control orders, that are not easy but might be necessary to protect our citizens from harm. When the Government are considering that review, I urge them to be prepared to think very carefully about getting that balance right.

We have talked about the cuts in police numbers. I understand that in Greater Manchester that would lead to something like 300 fewer police on our streets, which would have a huge impact in our city.

My final point is about coherence. When we were in government, we did not do everything perfectly. I am sure that we did not succeed in everything that we wanted to do. However, we had a strategy to tackle every level of crime in this country, from antisocial behaviour to crimes against the person, serious and organised crime and terrorism. I do not feel that under this Government we have any kind of coherent strategy in place at all. It is about cuts, about pandering to this lobby and about caving in to this bit of populism. I genuinely feel that, if we are to protect the people of this country and to meet the highest responsibility of Government, we need a proper strategy. We will have less money, fewer powers, less effectiveness, more crime and less safety for the people whom we represent.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

Let us start with what is agreed on both sides of the House. We agree about the importance of tackling crime. Hon. Members of all parties have spoken about the importance of dealing with crime in their constituencies and of making their communities safe. We also agree about the importance of the police in tackling crime and the need to support them. We should all join in thanking the police for the work they do.

Beyond that, however, agreement ended, and we heard two kinds of speeches, reflecting the divide in today’s politics—the divide between this coalition Government and the Opposition who are stuck in the past. It is a divide between the realists and the reformers on this side and the deficit deniers and big spenders on the other side. Government Members understand the importance of, and the responsibility to deal with, the deficit. We understand the importance of organisations, whether they be in the private or the public sector, spending their resources wisely.

We heard good speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) and for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart), reminding us that it is not just the number of police officers, but what they do, that matters. How available are they to the public? We should all be sobered by the report of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, issued just a few weeks ago, telling us that only 11% of the police—about a tenth—are visibly available to the public at any one time. We should ask ourselves the question why. Why is there not greater efficiency in our police service; can the money be spent more wisely? The report also said that higher spending forces are not necessarily better than other forces and it proposed savings by greater use of civilian staff—some forces are doing that; others are not. As the Chairman of the Select Committee recommended, we need better procurement; we also need more effective collaboration and more back-office savings.

[Hazel Blears]

The HMIC figure of 11% of officers being available on patrol has been much discussed today. What is the right hon. Gentleman’s target over the next 12 months? What does he think he can deliver when it comes to having more officers on patrol?

[Nick Herbert]

The right hon. Lady has not understood the new world, has she? We want to move beyond targets. We do not believe that public services are improved by the targets of which she was so fond.

That issue was reflected in the second group of speeches, which called for more spending. Never mind that we spend £14 billion a year on the police—50% more over the lifetime of the last Government. These speeches—not least the right hon. Lady’s—called for more authoritarianism. Never mind about civil liberties: to hell with those, and who cares about the deficit? That was the substance of the shadow Home Secretary’s case.

Policing in the 21st Century

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am happy to give that assurance to my hon. Friend. SOCA has built up expertise in intelligence gathering, but we need to do more. We need to put more focus in this country on fighting serious organised crime, which is what the command within the NCA will be able to do.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary will know that effective policing in this country is absolutely dependent on good intelligence at every level. How will she ensure that the relationships between local authorities and the police, which are essential not only for neighbourhood policing, but for that golden thread of intelligence that goes all the way through to tackling terrorism, are maintained under her proposals?

[Mrs May]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her question and for raising the point about the golden thread that runs through policing. It is absolutely essential that we retain that golden thread from local neighbourhood policing all the way through to the work done at national level to fight serious organised crime, terrorism and so on. However, one of the points of introducing directly elected police and crime commissioners is to ensure that someone in each force has a direct responsibility to the people, which will ensure that they represent the needs of the people in local policing.

Counter-terrorism and Security Powers

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an extremely valid point. It is extremely useful, in the context of this statement and the questions and answers on it, to remind people of what happened at the Labour party conference, and what an abuse of terrorism legislation that was.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary’s statement refers to a review of powers to deal with organisations that promote hatred or violence. Does she recognise that legislation alone is never sufficient to tackle complex issues of this nature? Will she look very closely at the current Department for Communities and Local Government review of the Prevent programme, which is very much designed to make communities part of the solution, not part of the problem? This is a complex, sophisticated and difficult area to tackle, but unless she makes communities part of the solution, we will not make the progress that we need to make.

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Lady makes a valid point. There is a role for legislation, but of course there is a role for activity beyond legislation, and working with communities is an important part of that. The Home Office is indeed working with the Department for Communities and Local Government to assess the Prevent strategy, and to consider how that can best be focused on its proper aims. Part of it is the community-building that she has described, in addition to its counter-terrorism aspect.