Police Funding

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is extremely knowledgeable, as a former Police Minister. He will know that, depending on the police authority or station, 85 different functions could be performed every day in a police station by people from IT experts to those on the switchboard and reception. Of course, the temptation is to remove the back office, but if we do so, those in the front office—the visible police officers—will have to go there, because there will be nobody else to do that work. My right hon. Friend is right to highlight the problems caused by the suggested front-loaded reductions.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that West Midlands police assume in their planning that they will be unable to cope with cuts on the scale being forced on them by the Government without compulsorily retiring up to 400 of the longest-serving police officers under A19, and without a significant reduction in visible policing on the streets—fewer bobbies on the beat—in the west midlands generally and Birmingham in particular?

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is rightly concerned about that. I will be going to Birmingham in a week’s time at the invitation of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak to see how the CSR will affect visible policing.

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[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to speak after the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), who represents an area that I know very well. For many years I led all the unions at the Portland naval base, and I know that it is a fine community and a fine town.

The hon. Gentleman spoke with passion and conviction about the importance of police officers on the beat to both detection and deterrence. My experience of them, in the west midlands, is very similar to his. I have seen at first hand the outstanding work done by the police service there, and, while I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) that the police do not always get it right, I know that the community in the west midlands value their police service. There have been real improvements in recent years, and I have seen the consequences at first hand. Let me give three brief examples.

The first example is this. Nine months ago, in Stockland Green in my constituency, there was a serious increase in crime, including robberies and violent crime. The police mounted a major operation involving not only police officers on the beat, but the highly effective intelligence work behind the scenes that was described by the hon. Member for South Dorset. As a consequence, a number of arrests were made and the problem was dealt with very efficiently.

Secondly, I have seen at first hand how quickly the police respond to serious crimes in my constituency. I say with some sadness that there have been three knife murders in Erdington over the past nine months. It would not be appropriate to comment on the outcome of legal processes that are yet to be concluded, but I will say that the sheer scale of the operation that was mounted, quickly and effectively, in all three cases was hugely reassuring to a community who were rightly concerned about what were very serious offences.

Thirdly, I have seen at first hand the work of the local tasking groups. In Castle Vale, a very fine community in my constituency, the police sit down together with representatives of the local community, and they work together in a highly effective way to target issues of real concern such as antisocial behaviour.

I pay tribute to the work done by police community support officers, whom I have seen on the beat in the Erdington high street area. They are an immensely reassuring presence and they do a very good job, not least in freeing police officers to concentrate on what police officers are best at. I also pay tribute to our chief constable, Chris Sims. Chris is an able leader of the West Midlands police service, although he has had to deal with some problems in it. He is also the national champion of the Association of Chief Police Officers on the issue of bureaucracy—it is common ground that we can reduce back-office costs, for instance—and gives a national lead in the vital areas of forensic science and detection.

Not only is the West Midlands police service of great importance in the west midlands, but it performs those major national functions, as well as supporting other police services. It will play an important role in the run-up to and during the Olympics, and—as the Minister knows—it also plays an important role next door in Warwickshire when big problems arise. Time and again, the Warwickshire police service can count on the tried and tested West Midlands service.

I welcomed this morning’s meeting with the Minister. I hope that, for all the reasons that I have given, he will accept the real concern that is being expressed in the west midlands about the potentially serious consequences of a reduction of up to 2,500—including 1,200 police officers—in the West Midlands police service over the next four years, and of a potential reduction of 400 police officers before 1 April next year.

At the heart of the dilemma facing the police service in the west midlands is the fact that the financial structure in an area of high demand and high need is very different from that in Surrey. More than 80% of the funding of the West Midlands service comes from central Government, as opposed to 50% in Surrey. I hope the Minister will accept that if the Government apply quick and deep cuts indiscriminately to all police services, there will be particularly serious consequences in the west midlands.

The police service in my constituency, in Birmingham and in the west midlands, is already having to plan for the consequences of what it faces—including the compulsory retirement, under regulation A19 of the Police Pensions Regulations 1987, of some of the best long-serving police officers, several hundred of whom may have to go before April next year unless the Government change their mind. It is also planning for a significant reduction in the visibility of policing on the streets in the west midlands more generally and in Birmingham in particular, because it believes that it has no alternative. All that is a result of the scale and speed of what is being expected of the police service in the west midlands.

I know of no police service that is incapable of improvement. Yes, there is a debate to be had about how to reduce back-office costs. When our party was in government, it made clear that it considered that to be necessary. However, I ask the Government to accept a simple reality. Unless they change course, and if in 2011 we see a toxic combination of rising unemployment and falling police numbers in Birmingham, crime will inevitably increase. The first duty of any Government is to ensure the safety and security of our communities, in the midlands and throughout the country. Even at this late stage, I urge the Minister, the Home Secretary and the Government to hear the strong concerns expressed by the people of Erdington, Birmingham and the west midlands.

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[Guy Opperman]

That is an interesting observation, but when the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) was Home Secretary he famously said there would not be enough money to pay for various things, and the home affairs budget would clearly have gone down. It is not in dispute that that will present the Department with a significant problem. Efforts are being made, but a choice had to be made, and I applaud the Government on the choice they made and for going ahead with it.

I asked the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) whether he supported the police and crime commissioner changes. We find from talking to our constituents that the centralisation of control under Labour over the past 13 years is a significant problem. The legislation that the Labour Government brought in put ever more work under Whitehall control. The Home Secretary was given ever stronger powers to intervene and to direct police authorities. Labour’s approach failed to recognise the fundamental problem of policing, which is that those who should be in the driving seat, and those who suffer when things do not work, are the public, not the Government.

In the last year prior to the change in Government there were 52 documents of central policy guidance, and a further 60 on planning. The average length of the manuals was just under 100 pages, and they included 4,000 new promises. The principle is very simple: the police are there to serve the local community, not Whitehall, but for too long they have been serving Whitehall.

[Jack Dromey]

The hon. Gentleman’s esoteric dissertation on central Government diktats is all very interesting, but does he not accept this simple reality: as a consequence of what Whitehall is now doing in front-loading major cuts to the police service—7% and 6% in the first two years—local police services generally are faced with a nigh-on impossible problem and the West Midlands police service in particular will lose 400 police officers by 1 April next year?

[Guy Opperman]

I make this simple point: what would Labour have cut? All parties would now be facing this difficulty and, frankly, it is fanciful to argue there would not have been any cuts whatever to, say, the Birmingham or Northumberland police forces.

I want to turn now to the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill. When under the leadership of the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), Labour planned for elected representatives. In the 2008 draft legislative programme it announced that its Policing and Crime Bill would include proposals to provide

“a clear and powerful public voice in decision making through directly elected representatives”.

To my untutored mind, having done nearly 20 years at the Bar, that sounds remarkably similar to what we are introducing now. Labour referred to elected representatives in a policing Green Paper published in July 2008. I accept that I was in another place.

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[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

I should first declare an interest: I am a member of the Kent police authority.

It is a pleasure to follow my hon.—and perhaps learned—Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), and I particularly welcome the emphasis he placed on the need for the localisation of policing decisions, as opposed to the centralisation that went on before. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), who I have not previously had the pleasure of hearing make a speech. There has been strong representation from the west midlands in today’s debate, and Members representing constituencies in that area have put their case well. The Conservative party was welcomed by chief constable Chris Sims in October when he organised the security for our conference, and we were very impressed with the service we received.

May I first tackle two propositions put forward by Labour Members? The first is that morale in the police is plummeting and that this settlement will lead to a worse service being provided by them. That is not my experience; I am consistently struck by the professionalism of officers in Kent and elsewhere in the country where I meet police officers. In Kent, we have been planning for many months for these grant reductions. The work that has been done and the engagement of every different area of Kent police in finding substantial savings has been extraordinarily impressive. I have not detected any reduction in morale. Officers and staff appreciate that there has been a very serious recession across the country and in the private sector, where many people have lost their jobs, had pay freezes or had severe pay cuts, and that the police family have come through that period very well. In addition, this Government kept to the third year of the pay review that had been agreed, and I know that that was greatly appreciated in many quarters.

The second proposition relates to the debate about police numbers and the level of crime. I heard the interview that the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice gave on Radio 4, in which he made perfectly sensible remarks, and I do not understand the excitement of Labour Members about this issue. The hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) said that the number of West Midlands police officers had increased from 7,135 in 1996 to 8,536 this year. The level of crime did decrease over that period, certainly according to the British crime survey, which Labour Members particularly like to cite. What the hon. Gentleman did not say is that nationally quite a reduction in police numbers took place during part of that period—until about 2002-03—and thereafter those numbers rose. According to the British crime survey, there was a consistent reduction in the level of crime throughout the period—that started in 1994, as we heard from Labour Members yesterday. That does not correlate with the trend in police numbers over that period, so there is no simple link and it is very difficult to show such a correlation statistically.

What I know from my constituency is that police officers, effectively placed and doing the right thing, can make an enormous difference. For example, we introduced neighbourhood task teams to support neighbourhood policing. Medway has had two teams, comprising a sergeant and five or six constables, which support the neighbourhood policing teams, concentrating on particularly difficult high-crime areas. One huge success has been that, through working with other agencies, they have almost eradicated street prostitution in Chatham, which has been a problem for centuries. This is about working with other agencies. A particular team has helped bring about that success, but overall it is not possible to demonstrate a direct or simple relationship between police numbers and crime, and we need to recognise that.

Decisions on police numbers should be taken by local communities. The single most important change that we are about to see in policing is that, for the first time, this will not be about the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) suggesting that the Home Office commission research to decide what to do, or even about this House debating what we want police numbers to be and where we want them to be; this will be a decision for each local community to take, through the commissioner who they elect to oversee and organise their police force locally. That will be a hugely healthy change from the current situation.

I have always found, both as a councillor and as a member of a police authority—and in this House, to an extent—that democratic oversight is one of the key drivers of value for money in public services. This is about scrutinising what the employees, the officers and the people delivering the service are doing and ensuring that they are delivering value for money for the taxpayer. I am not convinced that the same savings have been made in national Government as have been made in areas where there is more direct democratic oversight: in local government and, to an extent, in police authorities. If each Department were to report to the relevant Select Committee and the permanent secretary were to put his budget before that Committee for approval and discussion, item by item, that would help us to find savings.

The Government have set out a strong savings programme, but what I see when I participate in the budget review group and the audit and finance committee of our police authority in Kent is that members of the authority, a majority of whom are elected—it is the elected members who must pass the police precept every year—subject the police officers to an enormous degree of scrutiny. Through that process we have made much more substantial savings than we have been ordered to find by the centre. When we examine the reductions in police grant that are coming, the decision will be taken locally as to what the level of precept will be.

Kent’s new chief constable, whom we brought in from Norfolk, where he had been deputy chief constable and had done fantastic work in improving public confidence, making significant savings and restructuring the force, said that he sees these grant reductions as an opportunity to deliver a more efficient and effective force. [Interruption.] Some hon. Members say that he has no choice, but very often when the money is increased by year and there is not the great pressure to find savings and be efficient, it is human nature for people occasionally not to act as efficiently as they might. Perhaps more people are employed in a particular area or perhaps the focus is on something that needed to be done some years ago when things have moved on and it is not necessarily the priority it once was. It is by finding such savings and having proper democratic oversight of that process that we should be able to make our policing more efficient and effective.

[Jack Dromey]

The constant quest for efficiency and effectiveness is common ground between us, but what has the hon. Gentleman got to say to the people of the west midlands who are led by a chief constable who is the national champion on bureaucracy and they have a police service that has already made very significant changes to promote efficiency and effectiveness, but it now says that because of the scale and speed of what it is being asked to do, there will be significant cuts to front-line policing and some of the best, long-serving officers in the police service will be compulsorily retired?

[Mark Reckless]

Having a national champion on bureaucracy in the way that it has been organised by the Association of Chief Police Officers, which is an organisation that does not entirely respond to this House and has little if any statutory basis, is not the way to tackle bureaucracy. We have had far more success in finding savings in Kent by having a majority of elected members who sit down with the officers who spend the money.