Police Recorded Crime Statistics

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. I welcome the decision to make time available for this debate, and I congratulate the Public Administration Committee and its Chair on doing a service to our country by tackling a series of problems—I shall refer to them in detail—in a thorough, impartial and forensic way, rightly challenging all those with power to act, be that the police service or those responsible at area level, including police and crime commissioners and the Government. This debate is well timed, because it comes against a background of a year during which there has been, to say the least, lively debate about police statistics. There is the work of not just the Public Administration Committee, but the UK Statistics Authority, the Office for National Statistics and Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary.

Why does accurate crime reporting matter? First, it is crucial that criminal activities in local force areas are identified properly if the police are to deploy their resources efficiently and effectively, according to real need. In the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), it is about an evidence-based approach to how we commit local police resource. Secondly, accurate crime reporting is vital with regard to the victims of crime. Proper recording has an effect on getting victims to come forward and, crucially, informs the decisions that have to be taken to support the victims of crime, particularly sexual crime. Thirdly, accurate recording of crime helps politicians—at area and local level, in Parliament and at Government level—properly to hold the police to account.

Fourthly, proper recording of crime also informs other interventions. The Chair of the Select Committee referred to the excellent chief constable of Essex. I had the pleasure of meeting him recently, and I can give a rather interesting example from that. As in Northumbria, there was a welcome focus on the rising problem of domestic violence. The assessment made was that it was a very significant and growing problem in the county, so Northumbria police introduced a world-class system. They brought in a systems engineer with a background at Ford to construct the ability to track perpetrators and victims, and potential perpetrators and victims, of domestic violence, and also to identify domestic violence hot spots, so that other interventions could take place. For example, if there was a particular problem on some estates, that might require interventions in the schools on those estates. Having an accurate picture of crime is absolutely key on all those fronts.

[Mr Jenkin]

We were briefed yesterday by the chief constable of Essex, and many of my colleagues were astonished to learn that whereas most people think of crime as burglary, auto theft or violence against the person, there are four times as many incidents of domestic violence as burglaries every day in the county of Essex. The scale of the domestic violence problem is something that all constabularies will have to spend much more time on in order to protect the public, who are becoming victims of these crimes.

[Jack Dromey]

I totally agree with the Chair of the Select Committee. Historically, as my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) said, this crime was simply not taken seriously enough; it used to be described as “a domestic”. There has been welcome progress in the past 10 years and more—of that there is no doubt—but it remains a crime substantially hidden from history. Ensuring that we have an accurate picture, that we encourage victims to come forward, and that they are properly supported when they do is therefore of the highest importance.

Let me turn to the police recorded crime statistics. It was absolutely right to strip those statistics of their national statistics status—the gold standard—on the back of evidence heard by the Select Committee. Considering the substantial weight of evidence that has come forward of significant under-recording of crime, it would have been dangerous to let ourselves be drawn into the false sense of security that those statistics were providing. I therefore commend the considerable courage of PC James Patrick, who alerted the Chair of the Select Committee to his concerns and then appeared before the Committee so that its members could hear at first hand, from the sharp end, just what was happening. It heard very powerful evidence of—the Chair used these words earlier—cuffing, nodding and skewing. As the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) rightly acknowledged, PC Patrick was a brave man who exposed what was clearly wrong.

The ONS has raised a number of hypotheses, including some very similar to what PC Patrick said, as to why the police were recording crime incorrectly, including the idea that there were performance pressures associated with targets. The time has clearly come to move on from that old-style performance target regime.

In addition to what PC Patrick, the ONS and others have said, there was compelling evidence to the Select Committee from Dr Rodger Patrick, a former chief inspector of the West Midlands police service. He set out his research, which suggested that

“the perverse incentives embedded in quantitative performance management…encourage a range of ‘gaming’ behaviours that result in under-recording of crime.”

As the Chair of the Committee said, there have been other “incentives”, including the desire for promotion.

Let me turn to the crime survey for England and Wales. That was historically relied on as more accurate. However, we must recognise that the situation is far from ideal. It is true that the CSEW stats are based on interviews with adults about their experience of crime, regardless of whether or not it was reported to the police, but the CSEW stats cannot give us a detailed indication of crime trends at local level. We are missing that vital piece of the puzzle.

Additionally and very importantly, several crimes are not included in the statistics, and that ultimately skews our understanding of crime and where it is headed. For example, according to an ONS study released in July 2013, the number of fraud offences could total between 3.6 million and 3.8 million incidents of crime a year. However, most fraud offences in England and Wales are now referred to a central organisation, Action Fraud, rather than being logged by local forces. It is therefore believed that if bank and credit card fraud were included in the CSEW stats, the estimated number of annual offences would jump by almost 50%. When we listen to Government rhetoric on crime being at an all-time low, we must remember that the Government tend to pick and choose which crimes to pray in aid and which statistics to refer to, ignoring these very significant and growing areas of crime, which are not properly reflected in the statistics. That is both wrong and dangerous.

Professor Marian FitzGerald, a criminologist at the university of Kent, was absolutely right when she said to The Times in August 2014:

“Ministers were readily persuaded that the Crime Survey represented a gold standard for measuring crime when it started to show a continuous fall from the time Labour took office in 1997. Yet here we have an admission from its own results that crime is 50 per cent higher than the figure it claims.”

In addition, the CSEW does not cover a range of other things. It does not cover those living in group residences such as care homes, student halls of residence and prisons, or crimes against commercial or public sector bodies. The CSEW figures exclude murder and manslaughter because the victim is dead; figures on rape and other sex offences, which are calculated separately and differently because of their sensitive nature; and crimes, such as drug possession, that are considered victimless.

Both the Chair of the Select Committee and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East referred to no-criming. Another important issue identified by the Select Committee in its report was the prevalence of no-criming. In response to the

“damning indictment of police complacency, inertia and lack of leadership”,

the Select Committee recommended that the Home Office undertake a comprehensive analysis to explain the extraordinary disparities in no-crime rates for sexual offences across all police forces.

The gravity of the impact of no-criming should not be underestimated. Let us consider this example given by HMIC of a case that was no-crimed. A woman alleged rape by a man in a car after she changed her mind about having sex following a discussion about use of a condom. The rape was recorded as a crime. She reports that she did not run away because she was scared of being beaten up. There had been no violence or pinning down, although the woman said that her chest was sore and she had felt intimidated. The incident was no-crimed because the man said that he did not know that she did not consent to having sex, but there is no additional verifiable information to show that the victim had in fact given consent. That was “no crime”.

Let us imagine, first, the difficulty of coming forward to report a rape during which the woman was so afraid for her well-being that she felt powerless to do anything. Let us imagine then what happens if the authorities doubt her, in effect favouring the perpetrator, despite no evidence being given to disprove her allegations.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East rightly praised the excellent work of Vera Baird in Northumbria. When the issue that he referred to was looked into as a consequence of her action, more than one in three rape allegation cases initially deemed to be no crime were reopened, following a review of 153 separate cases. An audit by HMIC identified that the force may have incorrectly no-crimed many of those cases. As a result of the action taken by Vera Baird, the chief constable ordered a review of all such reports going back three years, and a team of experienced officers have now checked 153 cases. In addition, 48 officers involved in the incorrect no-criming and failure to act have been warned that they may face disciplinary action as a result of the inquiry by the force.

Concern about this issue is all the greater today; statistics show a 29% increase in rape, and a worrying justice gap: in the last year on record, there was a fall of 28% in referrals for prosecution, and a fall of 14% in prosecutions.

On unreported crime, in its interim report released earlier this year, HMIC noted a “significant under-recording of crime”. Basing its comments on the assessment of 13 police forces, HMIC stated that up to 20% of crimes may be unrecorded. Only yesterday, I had the privilege of attending an event organised by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, at which I heard some heartbreaking cases of violence against shop workers, including the case of a man whose whole life was ruined as a consequence of being seriously assaulted at work. A survey by USDAW of its members revealed that one in five of those who had been assaulted did not report the incident, not least because they often lacked confidence that any action would be taken if they did.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about shop workers, having visited the USDAW meeting the other day. On the tube, there are now notices saying that if staff are abused, the perpetrators will be prosecuted. We ought to adopt that approach for everyone who is abused while doing their job.

[Jack Dromey]

I absolutely agree. It is important that people have confidence that if they report an assault, they will be taken seriously. The police may spell out a good reason why they cannot investigate, but it is critical that the victim has the right to appeal against that decision. There is disturbing evidence to suggest that a culture has been created in which people feel that except in very serious cases, violence against shop workers is not taken seriously. It is not surprising that shop workers who have been assaulted do not come forward as often as they should, as the USDAW survey showed.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I accept entirely what my hon. Friend says. Does he agree that even abusive language can be terrifying and upsetting, particularly, for example, if it is used by a male against a female shop assistant? Does he agree that even that is not acceptable?

[Jack Dromey]

Again, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. I want to make a general comment about the under-reporting of crime. The Conservative police and crime commissioner for Suffolk, Tim Passmore, has said that he would not be complacent about a drop in crime in Suffolk because in his assessment, half of all offences go unreported.

As we know from tragic experience over the past two to three years, the scale and obscenity of some crimes—including domestic violence, sexual offences and child abuse—have been hidden from history. I welcome the growing focus on those obscene crimes that are the legacy of history and that sadly persist to this day. When it comes to tackling child sexual exploitation—I say this with all respect to the Minister—I have no doubt whatever that the Government are taking the matter seriously, but it is the worst possible time to cut 16,000 police officers; demand is rapidly growing. In the West Midlands police, 10% of officers are working on nothing but historical and current CSE cases. In the words of the chief constable, that is the tip of the iceberg. The debate today reinforces the need to take action on sexual crime and crime against children. To do that, the police need determination and focus, but they also need the resources that will enable them to do their job.

[Mr Jenkin]

We all share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the pressure on resources. However, the chief of the Metropolitan police has reported that he has been able to take all the savings out of the back room, and there are just as many officers on the front line as there were before the spending reductions. In Essex, we are finding that technology can enable police officers to do much more. Technology can release resources for the extra tasks that we are demanding of the police, despite the overall reduction in resources. Furthermore, there are still huge savings to be made in the way in which police forces buy technology and communications equipment. I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but I do not think that we need to despair about it.

[Jack Dromey]

The Chair of the Select Committee makes an interesting point. It is true that the police have coped remarkably so far, in the circumstances. There has been some interesting innovation in the use of technology; I mentioned a classic example in the Essex police service. In addition, there remains significant scope to develop the use of technology. For example, the 19 basic technological requirements provide remote access and allow police officers to operate in the field with all necessary support, intelligence and access to intelligence, so that they do not have to go back to police stations. The electronic submission of witness statements is speeding up the criminal justice process, as the Camberwell project has shown. Video-link evidence can allow cases to be brought quickly and effectively to court, particularly domestic violence cases; some interesting experiences have arisen out of the Camberwell project in that regard.

Having said all that, I want to provide one example from the West Midlands police service to illustrate why resources matter. In the west midlands, 40 people have been brought before the courts for serious terrorist crime in the past five years, and there have been 31 convictions. That conviction rate was the result of highly effective and patient building of relationships with communities—all bar one of the defendants were of a Muslim background—and good neighbourhood policing. Year in, year out, the police have patiently built trust and confidence with the community, to the point where the community now comes forward and identifies wrongdoing in its ranks.

With all respect to the Chair of the Select Committee, all over the country neighbourhood policing is being hollowed out; that is eroding the ability of the police to form relationships that are crucial not only to the detection of wrongdoing—in the cases that I have just mentioned, serious wrongdoing—but the prevention of crimes and the diversion of people from crime. I have been conducting a tour of police services all over the country, including Essex. Everywhere I go, I hear that we are getting close to what the President of the Association of Chief Police Officers has called the “tipping point”. The Government must reflect long and hard on the continuing trajectory of significant cuts to our police service.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that one of the benefits on the Isle of Wight is that police officers cannot get away? For them, there is no difference between “during working hours” and “outside working hours”. They are there, and people will collar them in the street and ask them to do things. They cannot pretend that they are not working, because they are there. What can we do about the fact that London’s policemen are brought in from Hampshire, Berkshire and so on?

[Jack Dromey]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point, and I will say two things in response. First, it was Robert Peel who said:

“The police are the public and the public are the police.”

In the past 25 years, we have seen the importance of the evolution from those principles of neighbourhood policing. The emphasis is on the notion of local policing, local routes, local say, local familiarity and the building of relationships of trust and confidence. The police are entitled to go home, but if they come from the communities that they serve, they are better able to understand the nature of those communities.

Secondly, there is a problem in the Metropolitan police. My view of the police service is different from, and perhaps more positive than, the Government’s view. However, I also believe that there are many things wrong with the police that have to be put right. I remember telling the ACPO conference the maxim:

“The police are the public and the public are the police,”

but saying that the only problem was that they did not look like the public. The Metropolitan police is a classic example of that, because it does not look like the communities that it serves. Frankly, due to housing pressures and the cost of housing, too many Metropolitan police officers live in counties adjacent to London, up to 50 miles away. We can address that in a range of ways, including with affordable housing.

Steps must be taken to widen the pool from which we draw police officers, including in London. Last week I met an impressive chief inspector from Police Now who is doing exactly that by, for example, targeting universities in London—including the old polytechnics in north London, which have diverse student populations—with the notion that students can become a police officer for two years and then have the option of continuing with a career in the police service. Police Now is reaching out and targeting communities within those geographical areas to encourage people to become members of the police service. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) makes a powerful case and, going back to my starting point, I believe in Robert Peel’s maxim, but we must ensure that the police truly reflect the people.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

rose—

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman intervenes, I remind Members that this debate is about the recording of crime statistics, rather than a general debate about policing. We have plenty of time for the debate, but we should focus on the content of the Select Committee’s report and the Government’s response.

[Jack Dromey]

That brings me neatly to my concluding remarks. Frankly, there is a problem with the stats, which simply cannot be relied on. The debate over the past 12 months is therefore hugely welcome, in terms of ensuring that in future the stats can be effectively relied on. I counsel the Government not to be overconfident in their reliance on some of the stats. More importantly, I echo the words of the Chair of the Committee. It is not only the Select Committee saying this; the ONS, HMIC and UKSA are saying it, too. There is a widespread view that the stats, and the culture giving rise to the stats, are deeply problematic, and in those circumstances it is ultimately about responsibility and accountability from the top downwards. The Select Committee is therefore right to challenge the Government on what they intend to do about it. I wait to hear precisely that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Baker]

I do not pretend that the crime survey is perfect, but I think calling it far from ideal is over-egging the pudding.

As to whether plastic card fraud is covered, evidence from the crime survey on such crime shows a fall, from 6.4% of card holders falling victim in 2009-10 to 5.2% in the year ending June 2014. That fall is broadly in line with the reduction in crime in the survey during the same period. It would be disingenuous to imply that that such crime is not captured, or that including it would skew the figures dramatically. Indeed, the Office for National Statistics, which is of course independent of the Government, made the point in a press briefing this morning that the pattern of plastic card crime and victimisation in recent years would not change recent downward trends in the overall crime survey figures. It was fairly strong on that point.

Figures for the number of victims of plastic card fraud have been published since 2005-06 but have not been included in the headline count in the crime survey, for several reasons, including concerns about double counting of frauds and thefts, and questions about whether the victim is the card issuer or the issuing bank. However, we know that the number of holders of plastic cards who have been subjected to such fraud has declined during the relevant period.

[Jack Dromey]

The Minister is selectively taking one area of fraud and online crime. It is true that there has been significant progress in chip and pin technology, but does the Minister agree with the opinion of the ONS that about 3.5 million crimes—fraud and online cybercrime—are not properly recorded in the statistics that he regards as gold plated?

[Norman Baker]

No other national crime survey that I am aware of, including that of the USA, covers fraud as well as the crime survey for England and Wales. It is not true that fraud is not included, although more certainly needs to be done to ensure that our society is aware of the extent of fraud, which is potentially much greater because of online activities. That is certainly true. This morning, the Office for National Statistics recognised that the transfer of fraud recording from forces to Action Fraud has led to an increase in the number of recorded fraud offences, although that is beginning to level out now. There was underreporting of fraud, but Action Fraud has been taking steps, by its very existence, to deal with that matter to some degree. Yes, there is more work to do on fraud—I fully accept that—but it would not be fair to suggest that the crime survey’s overall trends, which I have mentioned, would be skewed if fraud were fully captured in the way that the hon. Gentleman wishes to see.

If the Committee wants to return to how the crime survey is conducted, that is a perfectly legitimate exercise, which no doubt it will wish to carry out. Even if I did not want the Committee to carry it out, it would still do so anyway. I look forward to that happening in due course.

In conclusion, we have an independent crime survey in England and Wales, which is the gold standard and has run since 1981, producing figures that can, I believe, be relied upon to a large degree. We also have police recorded crime, which has varied in quality; I fully accept that. We have taken steps, as a Government, to try to deal with that matter, along with the HMIC. I welcome the Committee’s work on that as well, which will lead to good results in due course. We are working with the ONS to develop a separate fraud module for the crime survey for England and Wales. We have already identified more work that has to be done in that regard and that is coming through in due course, to try to make that better as well. I think the public at large can be confident that the crime survey for England and Wales is a fair reflection, that police recorded crime is now improving and, most of all, that crime in this country is down.