Police

Debate between Hazel Blears and Susan Elan Jones

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Commons Chamber

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

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). It is fair to say that we do not always see eye to eye on a range of issues, but it is always interesting to listen to his point of view, which is always well backed up by a scientific approach that he embraces—I find it very useful indeed.

I rarely speak in the House at length on policing issues, partly because I spent three years as police Minister and I do not think that reprising my experience is terribly helpful for Members in that same role. Today, however, I have made an exception, because I am becoming increasingly worried about the direction of travel of our police service. Part of my concern is about finance, but many of my concerns are about the stresses and strains on neighbourhood policing. This is not particularly about my introducing neighbourhood policing; this is about neighbourhood policing being such a fundamental change to the way in which we did policing in this country. I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee that there was reform during our period of government, and neighbourhood policing was the biggest bit of reform that we introduced. It is now established not only in this country—for all time, I hope—but increasingly in other European countries and countries across the world, where it is recognised that sustainable policing must be done with people, not to them. It must be done with consent, gathering the community around who then become the eyes and ears of the police. Much more intelligence is obtained that way, and the police become far more effective in fighting crime.

Convincing the police service that neighbourhood policing was not a fuzzy, warm community development project but a hard-headed reform to make the police service more effective was quite a job in changing culture. I well remember that when I started talking to chief constables about neighbourhood policing and how we needed to build relationships—to get to know the head teacher, the shopkeepers, the children and the people in the community—some of them looked at me as though I was from Relate marriage guidance, talking to them about relationships. When I hear our shadow Minister talking in the House today about the need to have relationships, it shows how far we have moved on police culture—recognising that relationships are often far more useful than the traditional tools of policing.

I am speaking in this debate because I am very concerned about what is happening to our police service. Greater Manchester’s force has had a fantastic record over the past 10 to 15 years, but we are now seeing cuts totalling about £135 million over the five-year period between 2011 to 2015, and already 1,000 police officers have had to go. Sir Peter Fahy, who is a very respected chief constable, just as he was when he was at Cheshire during my time as Minister, and who is scrupulously non-partisan and non-political, has said:

“When I took the post the force had 8,200 officers and it is now just below 7,000. We are now on our way to 6,400—and that’s incredibly painful.”

Sir Peter Fahy is not a man to cry wolf and everyone in the House should take notice when he says that this process is incredibly painful.

It is fair to say that crime, antisocial behaviour, drugs and family breakdown were the scourge of our community of Salford and Eccles 15 years ago. It was incredibly difficult to attract business and investment to the city because of the huge amount of crime that was going on. People did not feel that the police were in control of the neighbourhoods; they felt that the criminal gangs were in control of the neighbourhoods in my city. That caused massive unemployment and a huge amount of family disintegration. Some 15 years ago my city was in a terrible state, but the fact that we have a grip of crime is the most fundamental reason why it has become a much better place to live. It is why we have been able to attract investment, such as the MediaCityUK—home to the BBC and ITV—and the regeneration programmes we have seen happen. It is one of the reasons why we had, until recently, the fastest falling level of youth unemployment in the whole north-west and why we get £200 million from visitors to Salford—who would ever have thought that it would be a tourist destination, with people wanting to come to our city? It is also why we have more people employed in the MediaCityUK area than we had when it was at its height as a docks.

Those are amazing transformations. Probably the single biggest issue was getting a grip of crime, making people feel safe in their homes, and tackling drugs and some of the serious and organised crime gangs that we had in Salford. We have been incredibly successful. Yes, the figures over the past three years have continued to be good on some of those crimes, but they are not as good as they were on burglary—we saw burglary go down by 54%—and some of the other crimes.

I saw a worrying statistic from Greater Manchester police this week which showed that antisocial behaviour has started to creep back up. Antisocial behaviour, before it was even defined by the previous Labour Government, was sometimes dismissed as petty or low-level crime—the sort of crime that we almost have to accept if we live in an inner-city environment. We had a massive drive to tackle antisocial behaviour, with a whole new set of powers and the Respect campaign. We said that we wanted to be on the side of decent people in communities and to drive out the antisocial behaviour that made people’s lives such a misery. There was long-term harassment and really serious crime, which could not be dismissed as low-level incidents.

Huge warning bells ring for me when I see a statistic that shows that that sort of crime is now beginning to break through again. I look at some of the evidence around the statistics, the veracity of which people are beginning to question. Lord Stevens has said that we could be on a tipping point for another rise in crime. If we start to see crime rise again in places such as Salford and Eccles, all of that good work over the past 10 to 15 years will be at risk. The business investment will be at risk. People will feel that it is not the kind of community in which they want to live. I am absolutely determined not to say that we need more money. I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) will ask me the same question he asked my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). Yes, money is tight, and that means that hard decisions must be made. I would have supported a 12% cut, not a 20% cut, but we could argue that for the whole afternoon. There were things we could have done through collaboration and better procurement. Those were all on our agenda for making those cuts. In hard times, we have to use creativity, innovation and imagination. I am afraid that I am not seeing enough of that in the present Government’s approach.

When I was Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, I used to say to local government that, in order to face the coming years of austerity, we would have to have community budgets and a Total Place organisation in which all the public sector pooled its budgets, rationalised its inspection regimes, shared the same targets and had a system whereby all that public money, whether it was for policing, regeneration or whatever, was in the same pot. We thought that that was the way to survive these years of austerity without having an absolutely disastrous effect on our public services. We said that to local government, and if I get a chance in the next debate, I will reinforce these matters for the Secretary of State.

Local government has stepped up to the plate. The 10 authorities in the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities have a community budget; they are pooling resources. The police in my area have co-location with the local authority, the health service and mental health. We have a system of sharing information, which is the multi-agency system for data sharing. It is in that way that we have been able to survive some of the tremendous cuts.

The Minister will know about Operation Gulf in Salford, which has been going on for three years. It tackles the serious crime gangs—there are at least 32 of them—and it has had amazing success. It has won the Home Office national award for an operation over the past two years. Much to my delight it has put some serious criminals behind bars for a good number of years, and it has done that because it has used smart policing, imagination and creativity. It has taken the Al Capone approach: if we cannot get the criminals on the particular crime we want them for, we can get them on money laundering, employing illegal immigrants and not having tax on their cars. The police can be in their face every single day of the week, and that is the way we get results. They have been able to do that because they have had co-operation from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the local authority, the Department for Work and Pensions, the mental health services and every other bit of the system. That is the kind of creativity that is required now and over the next few years. It would mean central Government saying to local government, “Get your act together. Pool your resources. Get yourself in shape. Line yourself up. Have a strategic objective, and that is how you make an impact.”

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

It is fascinating to listen to my right hon. Friend speak on this subject. When we talk about how to provide policing at a time of great cuts, we must also consider the creativity that will be necessary in rural areas. Does she agree that rural police forces will need to get together and think creatively?

[Hazel Blears]

I do indeed. Part of the challenge facing police services is the need to deliver in many different environments and circumstances. We must consider sparsity and the difficulty of travel. In more rural areas, for example, the need for technology and communications is perhaps even greater than it is in concentrated inner-city areas. Again, creativity in the use of technology is really important.

In Greater Manchester we now have this top-slice application to the innovation fund. The chief constable is working on redesigning Greater Manchester police to see how we can get through the next few years, and I absolutely support him in that. In the process, he has taken one of my superintendents, Wayne Miller, off my Salford beat. I wish Wayne well in his new role in that change project. I want to place on the record the fact that he has been a tremendous superintendent. He brings with him real hands-on experience of neighbourhood and community policing and will make a great contribution to the plans for the future.

My chief superintendent, Kevin Mulligan, has recently retired. He was the architect of Operation Gulf. He is a fantastic, hands-on police officer who has done a tremendous job. He has made several arrests on his own and goes out policing on new year’s eve and Christmas eve—that is the kind of dedicated officer he is.

I spent a good period of time with our new chief superintendent last Friday. Chief Superintendent Mary Doyle is an incredibly impressive woman in Greater Manchester police. I have no doubt that she is up to the challenge of policing Salford and Eccles, with all the issues we face. She has also been given Trafford, so she now has double the number of people to look after and try to keep safe in our area, double the number of police officers to lead and double the number of police staff. She will be looking after 450,000 people, so her job is actually bigger than that of looking after the centre of Manchester, which has its own chief superintendent. I am worried about that. When we talk about the thin blue line being stretched, we also need to think about leadership capacity, because if we are to be creative and to do innovative things, we need really strong leadership. Chief Superintendent Mary Doyle, impressive though she is, will have her work cut out to try to take policing forward in our city.

What I think really needs to happen is something I raised with the Minister earlier. When we introduced neighbourhood policing, there was extra money available, so in some forces neighbourhood policing was layered on top of the existing response capacity. I hope that the Minister will consider integrating response policing with neighbourhood policing. Yes, we need response policing, because we need to have someone in a vehicle who can go and sort out a particular incident, but the way that they hand over the incident to the neighbourhood team is a misuse of resources. Getting the response police officers to own the neighbourhood as much as the neighbourhood police officers do would enable us to get more for less.

We recently decided to put our criminal investigation department officers out as part of the neighbourhood teams. That was incredibly controversial, because CID officers are not used to that role. However, it has made a really big difference, because our neighbourhood teams now include the people who are good at community and the CID detectives. If we get the response people in there as well, we will have a range of resources that we can draw upon, even when numbers are shrinking, to enable that extra capacity. I ask the Minister to look at some of the things Greater Manchester police have been doing to try to get that capacity to go further.

What I would say to central Government, and I say it to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, is that five years ago I said to the then Cabinet Secretary, Gus O’Donnell, that I was amazed that the success of a Cabinet Minister is judged by how big their budget is, how big their legislation is, and how big a beast they are in the Cabinet jungle. The new world requires people to be collaborative. Why do not several Cabinet Ministers have jointly shared budgets? Why are they not incentivised to collaborate? Why are they not judged on their success in terms of their ability to do teamwork? Why do we still have so many silos in central Government? When we said to local government, “You’ve got to break down your silos”, people there stepped up to the plate. It is about time that we changed the way in which national Government works so that my success as, say, Education Secretary is dependent on another Minister’s success as Justice Secretary or Home Secretary.

At the end of the day, the people who use the public services the most are all from the same families. We know this from the troubled families project, which is making a difference but is still primarily run by one Department. Why do we not have joint commissioning of the services we need to be able to deal with all those families? I could tell Members here and now the top 20 or 30 families in Salford and Eccles who use public services disproportionately, whether it be the police, education or the national health service. That is why we need joint commissioning systems, incentives to collaborate, and, I hope, an end to the days of stand-off bilaterals between Cabinet Ministers who simply seek to protect their own empire and their own Department rather than being prepared to collaborate for the greater good.

My final point is about reform. I am never short of ideas about reform and I like to talk about it. I remember that somebody once said that we are at our best when we are at our boldest, and I have never forgotten that. I make this plea to the Minister and to all Ministers involved in public services. If they want to get the best out of people and to get innovation and change, and if they want to get more for less, they have to be prepared to empower the people at the front line—the people in the service—to be able to make that change. There is a culture in Government—I do not make any allegation in respect of any individual Minister—of keeping power at the centre despite fine words about localism. It is about time that central Government acted in a way where they modelled good behaviour, as any good leader is required to do. If we want to survive these next few years, the funds are inevitably going to be less, whichever Government are in power, and therefore central Government must take a lead in being innovative, creative, collaborative and independent, just as on the board of any company where the directors would be collaborating together for the greater good. I urge the Minister to take that message back to the Home Secretary, and perhaps he could be the champion of innovation and change at the centre.