Police

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

It was not. A very large cheque was given but nothing was received in return by way of reform.

The creation of the NCA and the College of Policing and the abolition of the National Policing Improvement Agency, which I do not think functioned particularly well, and of the Serious Organised Crime Agency are examples of where the Government have got it absolutely right. We have a new landscape of policing, but I wonder whether this is the time to go ahead with such widespread cuts while knowing that to get the new structure up and running successfully it must be well resourced. The worst possible thing is to have new structures without providing the money that is necessary for them to do their job. I hope that if those organisations require additional resources they will be given them.

I bumped into Keith Bristow recently as he was coming out of the Home Secretary’s office and I reminded him that he had not appeared before the Committee for a while. He told me of all the NCA’s successes. He is very much a hands-on person and will go on operations, and he invited the Select Committee to join him on an NCA operation. The problem with SOCA was that we never knew what it was doing as well as we know what Keith Bristow and the NCA are doing. Why? Members of the NCA tell the press that they are going to raid someone and everyone turns up and we all know the good work that the agency is doing.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way on the critical subject of the NCA, and I welcome the information it provides. In Northern Ireland, we are significantly handicapped by the fact that the necessary measures have not been implemented to allow the agency to operate in Northern Ireland. The border stops at Stranraer and Liverpool for us because the Northern Ireland Assembly has failed to agree a way forward for the agency’s operation. Does he agree that this House must get to grips with that and protect all its citizens all the time?

[Keith Vaz]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I went to Belfast on his invitation, where I met Matt Baggott, to whom I pay tribute as I understand that he has just announced that he will leave the police after many years of service. It is right that the NCA should cover the whole of the United Kingdom and we should not have a situation in which a separate deal must be made with the Police Service of Northern Ireland. I hope that the hon. Gentleman and the Chairman of the Committee for Justice in his Assembly will persist in their efforts to ensure that the NCA covers the whole of Northern Ireland.

I say to the Minister—I know that he is deep in conversation with the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose)—

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[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I apologise for arriving late to the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I am sure you will forgive me because I was at a debate in the other place on the future of the currency in Scotland after 2014, and that is an important issue for us all.

I welcome the reality-check speech by the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), and it is important that we pause and carry out a reality check regarding policing budgets in our constituencies and how that affects us. Let me say at the outset that I miss the voice of the former Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East. It was in debates such as this that he really made his mark because he knew the subject so well. His expertise was honed in Northern Ireland when dealing with policing and police infrastructure there, and we miss his wisdom in these debates.

Northern Ireland’s policing is going through a significant change. Our Chief Constable has announced that he intends to step down in September this year after five years of service, which means that we have to open up a new policing competition. No doubt many current deputy chief constables and police chief constables across England, Scotland and Wales will look at the opportunity offered by the job of Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Our last three Chief Constables were brought in from services on the mainland, and the position offers a significant opportunity that needs to be strongly considered.

I pay tribute to the service of Matt Baggott and what he brought to policing. He was Mr Community Police Chief Constable, and he brought important principles of community policing into our service and on to the books and activities of our police officers, and we should pay tribute to that. I also pay tribute to our Deputy Chief Constable, Judith Gillespie, who has announced her retirement in the spring this year after 32 years of service. She became the highest-ranking female police officer ever to serve in Northern Ireland, which is a huge credit to her and the service she has given. Indeed, she did not take what could have been a lucrative severance package a few years ago, because she wanted to serve her community instead. That in itself should be marked and paid tribute to.

I want to bring key issues of national significance to the attention of the Minister. The National Crime Agency, under the management of Keith Bristow, is a very important development that we support, and I am glad that the House supports it too. What concerns me gravely is that it is being prevented from having operational power in Northern Ireland, because insufficient pressure has been applied by the Minister, or by his team, on the Northern Ireland Executive to sort this matter out. While there is a significant willingness by Unionist parties and the Alliance party to sort it out, they are being checkmated by the nationalist and republican agenda—indeed, it is those people who benefit from the fact that the NCA is not operational in Northern Ireland. They benefit because some of the people they previously ran with—serious and organised criminals—have a free run as the NCA has not been extended to Northern Ireland. Smuggling, prostitution, cross-border crime are not being ignored, but they are not being given the complete, full and proper attention that the NCA could give.

Importantly, our policing budget is being stretched, because our own police officers have to deal with those issues. I, and many politicians across this House, have met Keith Bristow, and I know the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has met him. He has indicated his willingness to be held to account by the current policing infrastructure in Northern Ireland, so that he can give certainty and transparency to the concerns—some legitimate, many fictitious—that some nationalists have raised. It is important that we put that willingness to be held to account on the record. If the NCA continues to be blocked from operating in Northern Ireland, I echo the words of the Northern Ireland First Minister when he spoke to the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs when it met in Northern Ireland. He said that this House should take the matter by the throat and insist that the NCA is put in place, over the head of the Assembly if necessary. Everyone is suffering as a result of what has happened and we should deal with it.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman recall that he and I served on the Committee that introduced the NCA? Is he disappointed, as I am, that the assurances of the Minister have not been fulfilled? The comments that the hon. Gentleman is making now are the same as those he made in that Committee.

[Ian Paisley]

I thank the hon. Lady for saying that. I am delighted that she was listening to me in Committee—I thought we just spoke in this place and that no one actually listened. I am sad that my words were not heeded. We had a commitment from the then Minister with responsibility for policing to get something done and to sort the problem out. Well, it is not sorted out. We have a significant gap in policing national crime. That does not just affect Northern Ireland; it affects what these people do when they export their terrorism here to mainland Britain and on to Europe. We have a national responsibility to sort this matter out, and to sort it out fast.

I was delighted that the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, was the first Chair of that Committee to visit Northern Ireland for about 20 years. He paid significant attention to this matter and met the Justice Minister at Stormont and the Chairman of our equivalent Select Committee, Mr Paul Givan. He went through the key issues with him and said that he and his Committee wanted to see the NCA operating properly and effectively in Northern Ireland. I will leave that matter with the Minister and I hope he will pick it up.

We have significant national crime problems in Northern Ireland and that is what I want to focus on in the rest of my remarks.

[Andrew Percy]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The motion relates to England and Wales and the hon. Gentleman has spoken for a considerable time solely about policing in Northern Ireland. He has just told us that he wishes to go on speaking about Northern Ireland, but the motion in the name of the Secretary of State states:

“That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales)…which was laid before this House…be approved.”

There is no mention of Northern Ireland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Paisley]

I do not believe that I have strayed from the issue. I have been talking about the National Crime Agency, which operates in the whole United Kingdom and whose budget is decided exclusively by this place—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) might have a bit of a giggle at that, but it is an important issue that affects criminality and how criminals operate in this country. He should know better. A so-called friend of Northern Ireland should know better than to try to raise a frivolous matter in this debate. I am surprised, because it is not a joke.

The National Crime Agency is a national issue, and the big issues of criminality that affect Northern Ireland have implications here. Of the drugs that circulate around Manchester and Liverpool, most of the cannabis is grown in Northern Ireland. Last year, 42 cannabis farms were discovered in Northern Ireland. Most of the trade was not in cannabis dealing or for smoking the drug in Northern Ireland: cannabis was brought to Liverpool on ferries and boats to be used in this part of the country. Hon. Members should wake up to that reality. The National Crime Agency is not operating as effectively as it should be operating in my part of the kingdom, so the hon. Gentleman and his constituents will face problems. He should recognise that. I am angry about that point, and it probably shows. It is just as well that I am on this side of the House and that there is a red line in front of me; I can tell the hon. Gentleman that.

Fuel smuggling is another important issue that is cross-border and cross-jurisdictional. Because of fuel smuggling in Northern Ireland, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Exchequer here lose £600 million a year. That is not a paltry sum. It is enough to run most of the hospitals in Northern Ireland. That is another national issue that is dealt with by HMRC and should also be dealt with by the National Crime Agency.

I now focus on how we pay to deal with national crime. There are 43 police services operational in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Only the Police Service of Northern Ireland picks up the tab for national security policing in its jurisdiction. That is wrong. That tab should be picked up nationally, in the same way that it is picked up for Manchester and Liverpool, here in London and in Scotland. The fact that it is not is putting policing in Northern Ireland at a significant disadvantage. This year, we are running a deficit of £30 million in policing, and next year that will increase to £57 million. In the next spending round, the figure will rise to about £200 million.

I urge the Minister, when he goes back and speaks to his Cabinet colleagues—the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister—to make the case that this issue should be brought into the centre. Expenditure on dealing with national crime issues and terrorism should be paid for centrally, not locally. If we could get that budget paid for centrally, the current budget for Northern Ireland would allow us to employ the additional police officers that we need.

The Police Federation in Northern Ireland says that we are short of 1,000 officers. The Chief Constable says that he would like to run a competition to get another 300 to 500 officers, so we need to recruit a number of officers that is somewhere in the middle of the two figures. The only way we can achieve that is by addressing the deficit in our budget. None of the other 42 police services operational here is asked to pay for national security. Why are the police in Northern Ireland asked to pay for national security? We are not only dealing with Irish-based terrorism but with national criminality—and with Islamic terrorist activity as well. We pick that tab up too, and that is wrong.

The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee mentioned additional equipment for police officers and the wearing of cameras. They are expensive, but I believe they are useful and should be routinely deployed on police officers, not only to protect them from false allegations, but to ensure that civilians are protected whenever they come across police officers.

I agree thoroughly with the points made by the hon. Member for South Dorset. He made the point clearly that we need more bobbies on the beat. The more bobbies we have on the beat, the more we will see that they disrupt crime and play a very effective role.

I want to focus on an issue that has left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth—plebgate and its impact. Plebgate has left the police in London looking rather poor because of how officers approached a Member of Parliament. It is important that the employment in the Cabinet of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) is remedied soon. This is the appropriate place to make that point.