Police Grant Report (England and Wales)
Jack Dromey Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
I bow to no one in my admiration for our police service. Robert Peel uttered these immortal words:
“The police are the people and the people are the police.”
There has been a constant in our country for two centuries: the British model of policing by consent, which we built on when we were in government. When Labour left office, there were record numbers of police on the streets—16,500 more than in 1997 and, in addition, nearly 17,000 police community support officers. Neighbourhood policing, which we built, was popular with the public. It worked, and we saw a generation of progress on crime. We had local policing, local roots, local say and local partnership working. We built up neighbourhood policing and the public valued it. It was one of Labour’s greatest achievements.
Jake Berry
On the issue of bowing to no one, will the hon. Gentleman support this settlement today, or will he bow to the shadow Home Secretary’s suggestion of a 10% cut?
Jack Dromey
We will oppose this settlement today. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice said from the Dispatch Box that police funding is being protected. That is simply not true, and I will lay out my case in due course.
We are still learning some painful lessons from the past. There are still wrongs to be righted; the police are not perfect. We need to raise standards, and we should always hold the police to the highest standards in the public interest. The first thing I wish to say to the Policing Minister and the Home Secretary is that the British model of neighbourhood policing is celebrated across the world. The model was responsible for a generation of progress on crime, but the Home Secretary’s remorselessly negative tone about the police, taken with ever fewer police officers doing ever more work, has demoralised the service, and we are now seeing soaring levels of sickness and stress.
Andrew Gwynne
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He is absolutely right to go back to the Labour success of neighbourhood policing. Is he as dismayed as I am about what is happening now? In my own constituency, neighbourhood policing is withering away, and officers are now being put on response duties. I accept that such duties are necessary, but so too is neighbourhood policing. This is undermining public confidence in the ability of the police to listen to the needs of communities.
Jack Dromey
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Typically, what we see all over the country is a neighbourhood sergeant responsible for perhaps one or two teams and a number of PCSOs. Those who were previously part of the neighbourhood teams are now being put on response duties. Following a Home Office decision in 2012 there was a reclassification whereby some people on response were given local neighbourhood policing duties, even if they spent all their time on response, so the earlier assertions about our having more officers on the frontline are simply not right.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend comment on the fact that Humberside police—I do not think it is the only police force in this position—has been judged inadequate by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary? We have the lowest level of police officers since the 1970s. Will the shadow Minister reflect on what that means for neighbourhood policing?
Jack Dromey
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Surveys show that, increasingly, the public complain about a lack of visibility of local police officers. Neighbourhood policing is absolutely essential. It is not just about detecting criminals, but about preventing crime, diverting people from crime, building good community relationships, and bringing in people to co-operate in identifying criminals. Losing the benefits of neighbourhood policing will have an effect. At the most serious end of terrorist crime, the former head of counter-terrorism, Peter Clarke, said that neighbourhood policing is “the golden thread” that runs from the local to the global. He said that the patient building of good relationships with communities means that communities co-operate in identifying wrongdoing—in this case, it is wrongdoing of the worst possible kind.
Jack Dromey
My right hon. Friend, who served with such distinction as a police Minister, is absolutely right. This is about the wider duties of the police service. The College of Policing has done some very interesting work. By the way, the National Audit Office has called on the Home Secretary to have a better understanding of what the police actually do. It is not just about that element that is focused on crime, but about the wider responsibilities.
The police, together with the fire service, the ambulance service, the Environment Agency and others, guarded premises to prevent looting during the floods. That is just one example of what they do. I have another example from last Saturday. I was deeply impressed to see West Midlands police, with other police services from West Mercia and Warwickshire, policing the pernicious Pegida attempt to march through Birmingham, keeping apart counter-demonstrators and those who were there in support of the march. They worked with the community and did a tremendous job. My right hon. Friend was absolutely right in what he said.
Debbie Abrahams
My hon. Friend might have heard me ask the Minister to comment on burglaries in Saddleworth, in which there has been almost a 50% increase. Does he wish to comment on what the Minister said? Greater Manchester police have just confirmed that there has been a reduction of 2,000 front-line posts.
Jack Dromey
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. If we look at the statistics overall, we see that areas of volume crime have gone down—I will come on to explain in more detail why Government claims about crime falling are simply not true. Car crime has gone down, and houses by and large are now more difficult to break into. Having said that, there are spates of burglaries all around the country. What is essential is good neighbourhood policing. Let me give an example from my own constituency. The admirable Sergeant Simon Hensley set up a canoe club on Brookvale lake. I literally launched it in a canoe—[Interruption.] It was one of my most terrifying moments as a Member of Parliament. Hundreds of young people joined the club, and very good relationships were formed. One benefit was that when there was an outbreak of burglary in Stockland Green, they came forward and said they knew who the bad lads were. Again, it is that neighbourhood policing that is so important. There is no substitute for it. It is the bedrock of policing in our country.
Mr Jackson
The hon. Gentleman is making a fair point. It would be churlish not to accept that there was progress around community policing, but that is not the whole story. Does he agree that one legacy of the previous Labour Government was an inordinate amount of bureaucracy and paperwork, which kept many front-line police officers in the station, processing data, rather than out catching criminals? This Government have tackled that, which is why we have seen a reduction in numbers and a significant reduction in recorded crime.
Jack Dromey
Let me give a straight answer. I think that we did prescribe too much and too often. It was right therefore that, by consensus across political parties, the previous Government became less prescriptive. Certain things will always need to be prescribed, but I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s point.
Catherine West
Does my hon. Friend agree that, in relation to the very serious act of gun crime, neighbourhood policing is crucial in piecing together all the small bits of information that might secure a conviction? Will he assist me in highlighting the tragic shooting in Wood Green that I mentioned earlier? There are orphans who wish to know what happened to their father, who, in a case of mistaken identity, was shot in a drive-by shooting as he stepped out of his workplace. They would like to have that crime solved.
Jack Dromey
It is difficult to comment on the detailed circumstances of that crime other than to say that, of course, what we need is capacity to catch those people who are guilty of murder, which is one of the most heinous crimes. I ask my hon. Friend to forgive me if I repeat what I said in a previous answer, but key to that is good neighbourhood policing, as it is vital for intelligence gathering. If we run down neighbourhood policing, the inevitable consequence is that it is more difficult to detect criminals of that kind.
Stephen Hammond
I agree with the shadow Minister that neighbourhood policing is key. Does he agree with the borough commander whom I met again last Friday, who made the point that although the numbers in some of the neighbourhood units are down, they are now dedicated to that unit and that neighbourhood, so although numbers are lower, they are more effective?
Jack Dromey
That depends on what we are talking about. For example, the West Midlands police service has sought to maintain dedicated numbers in high risk, high demand areas, but taken as a whole the numbers have been going down. There will be variations at any one point in time, but the evidence is clear: there has been a remorseless reduction in the number of police officers and a hollowing-out of neighbourhood policing.
Several hon. Members rose—
Jack Dromey
I have given way about nine times. Let me make a little more progress, then I will gladly give way.
I celebrate the fact that, as the police bravery awards show, we are policed by ordinary men and women doing extraordinary things, often in the most difficult circumstances. They deserve better than what happened in the run-up to the comprehensive spending review. Yesterday I was privileged to speak, together with Conservative Ministers, at the 20th anniversary of the docklands bomb. Afterwards I talked to police officers, brave men and women, with an outstanding sense of duty and a powerful sense of obligation to their community. They talked to me about the mounting pressures they face—the challenges of counter-terrorism and the impact of the past five years—and they were dismayed that their Government had contemplated cutting the police service in half. As I will come on to say, that is precisely what had been contemplated.
In my constituency, Erdington, I saw one PCSO in tears—loyal, long-serving, much loved—describing how awful the uncertainty had been in the build-up to the comprehensive spending review. It should never have happened. After cutting 25% in the last Parliament, right up until the night before the comprehensive spending review the Government were contemplating a further 22% cut in this Parliament. The Home Secretary failed to stand up for the police service. We were on the brink of catastrophe, as a police officer said to me but yesterday, which would have had very serious consequences, demonstrating a disregard for the first duty of any Government, maintaining the safety and security of its citizens.
Under pressure from the public, the police and the Labour party, the Chancellor U-turned and a promise was made. I shall read it out, as the Policing Minister has clearly forgotten it. The Chancellor said:
“I am today announcing that there will be no cuts in the police budget at all. There will be real-terms protection for police funding. The police protect us, and we are going to protect the police.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1373.]
In parallel, there were big cuts elsewhere—for example, to Border Force—but let us examine that statement to the House. That promise to the public, to the police and to Parliament has been broken. The Chancellor said he would protect the police, but now we know that police budgets are still being cut.
The force covering my constituency, West Midlands police, is excellent. In the next financial year it will suffer a £10.2 million cut in real terms, contrary to what the Policing Minister said earlier. Yes, the £5 mechanism is being used, but it will raise only £3.3 million, so there will be a £7 million overall cut in real terms.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
On the precept, is my hon. Friend aware that a force such as Northumbria, which, under our excellent police and crime commissioner, Vera Baird, has made every saving possible, has cut into its reserves and has had the lowest precept hitherto, has had to accept that £5 maximum with great regret, just to try to maintain services?
Jack Dromey
Indeed. I pay tribute to somebody who was a great parliamentarian and who has been a great police and crime commissioner. The work that Vera Baird has done on domestic violence and, more generally, on violence against women and girls is admirable and first class. My hon. Friend is right. As I shall say later, Northumbria, like the West Midlands force, has been hit twice as hard as leafy Tory shire police forces down south.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that some of our police forces are stretched just by the crime that they are currently dealing with? In Salford we have had 19 shootings in a period of 19 or 20 months. On some weekends there have been four shootings on the same day. Protection of the public is important, but should our police force be so stretched in Greater Manchester when they have that to deal with?
Jack Dromey
There has been an £8.5 million cut in real terms, contrary to what was said at the Dispatch Box. After a generation of progress, and despite the heroic efforts of the police and crime commissioner, Tony Lloyd, and the Greater Manchester police service, we are seeing profoundly worrying signs of crime starting to rise once again.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is right to point out the sleight of hand by the Government. The real unfairness to areas such as the west midlands and Greater Manchester is this: we have a relatively low council tax base, so the precept brings in relatively small amounts of funding—nothing like the amounts of funding that are being cut by the central Government grant. Added to that, those are the areas that tend to have higher crime rates, so need is not matched by resources. It is a double whammy for the urban areas and it penalises places such as Greater Manchester.
Jack Dromey
My hon. Friend sets out the case powerfully. There is no question but that need does not determine the way this Government allocate funds, whether to the police service or to local government. I will return to that point.
There was another broken promise. The Prime Minister said in 2010 that he would protect the frontline. Not true—12,000 front-line officers have since been lost. It was a broken promise and, to add insult to injury, not only are the Tories continuing to slash police funding, but they are expecting the public to pay more for it. The Tory sums rely upon local people being charged an extra £369 million in council tax. Our citizens and the communities we serve are being asked to pay more for less.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
In a forward-looking county such as Hertfordshire, which has the pressures of supporting London and Luton and policing major roads, it has been possible to use more police on the frontline and more modern methods. In Hertfordshire the police precept is being cut as the funding settlement is perfectly adequate.
Jack Dromey
Every week I see innovation in the police service; of that there is no doubt. In relation to road policing, to which the hon. and learned Gentleman refers, there are profoundly worrying signs that the progress made over many years, particularly under the Labour Government, in reducing road deaths, for example, is starting to reverse as a consequence of the cuts in road policing and other aspects, such as CCTV cameras. I am totally in favour of innovation and greater collaboration—for example, between the police and fire service—but ultimately there is a simple, grim reality: the remorseless downward pressure on our police service. The people who are paying the price are not just our police officers, but the public we serve.
Jack Dromey
I shall refer later to old Macmillanites. On the basis that I believe the hon. and learned Gentleman to be one, I give way.
Sir Oliver Heald
The hon. Gentleman is very generous, though I shall not comment on that. Does he agree that police force reserves around the country are substantial—Hertfordshire has £48 million, but in one case the figure is as high as £71 million.
Jack Dromey
If I can put it this way, that is a canard, as we used to say in the T and G. Of course it is right that reserves should be used. Looking at the pattern across the country, however, why are they typically built up? The reasons range from investment in bringing three or four buildings into one, as the West Midlands police service has done in Birmingham, through better technological equipping of our police service—we need a technological revolution in policing—to planning ahead to recruit more police officers so that, even if the overall numbers are falling, the service is at least bringing in some fresh blood. If we look at the various studies that have been done of police reserves, including by the National Audit Office, we see that the line of argument has never stood up that all will be well if only the police use the hundreds of millions of pounds that are somehow there.
Opposition Members are with the police when they say efficiency savings can be made. Crucially, in the run-up to the last general election, we identified £172 million that could be saved through mandated procurement alone. Other measures included full cost recovery on gun licences, ending the bizarre arrangement whereby the police have to subsidise the granting of gun licences. If the Government had embraced that plan, we would have saved 10,000 police officers in the first three years of this Parliament.
Efficiency savings are one thing, but, ultimately, decisions have to be made. We listened to the police, and in the light of the tragic attacks in Paris, they said, “We think we can make up to 5% efficiency savings”—I stress again that we ourselves identified how one could do that. However, it was clear beyond any doubt that the chilling message from the police, who are so vital in maintaining our security, was that going beyond that would compromise public safety. I will never forget the powerful letter from Mark Rowley, Scotland Yard’s head of counter-terrorism, who said that, post-Paris, we have to look at things afresh. Ultimately, numbers matter.
Jack Dromey
No, forgive me if I finish this important point.
Numbers matter. In the light of attacks such as Paris, we need surge capacity on the one hand, and neighbourhood policing for intelligence gathering on the other hand. We also need more firearms officers; we have 6,000, which is 1,000 down from 2008. We listened to the police.
Several hon. Members rose—
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
It is all well and good bandying numbers around and saying we must have the capability to make a surge in the number of armed officers. However, if the leader of the Labour party is to be believed, what are those officers going to do? Just wave their guns at these people and say, “Oh, please stop what you’re doing.” Will the hon. Gentleman take this opportunity to dissociate himself from his leader’s remarks about what armed policemen can and cannot do?
Jack Dromey
The Opposition—all of us—have a very simple view. Perhaps I can draw a parallel with the deeply moving statement I heard one of the Parisian officers make about when he and his colleagues went into the Bataclan club. Innocent men and women, including British citizens, were being terrified by jihadis practising the most appalling form of terrorism. That officer said, “I had to make a split-second judgment. I made it, and as a consequence I saved lives.” That is our very, very clear position.
Andrew Stephenson
I am slightly confused, and I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman can help me. He says that savings can be made. Today’s report includes a real-terms increase in anti-terror funding. Why, therefore, is the Labour party opposing this very generous settlement?
Jack Dromey
After Paris, the Government made a series of announcements—there was also one that predated Paris, but that was about the Investigatory Powers Bill. We have to get the balance right, but we said, “Yes, we support the Government’s broad approach”—that we need enhanced means, for example, to combat those who use the dark net. We supported the Government in making £1.9 billion more available for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. We supported them when they said that additional resources would be made available for the British Army for counter-terrorism. Ultimately, however, it came down to this: Chris Sims, the former chief constable in the west midlands, and Bernard Hogan-Howe here in London say that the majority of the leads that result in the detection of terrorists come through good neighbourhood policing. If we have continuing downward pressure on neighbourhood policing and the hollowing out of neighbourhood policing, that will impact, in Mark Rowley’s words, on the eyes and ears of the counter-terrorism effort. It is not enough, therefore, simply to equip the special services and the special forces with additional powers; neighbourhood policing is key on every front, particularly counter-terrorism.
The simple reality is that neighbourhood policing will continue to be hollowed out. Some 18,000 officers have been lost since the current Prime Minister took office in 2010. Some 1,300 have gone in the last six months alone. Today confirms that the Tories’ back-door cuts to police forces will inevitably lead to further police officer losses. It appears that the Government are oblivious to the consequences of their actions. Hugh Orde, the former head of the Association of Chief Police Officers, as it was called, is right when he says that a generation of progress is being reversed.
Police in the 21st century face the new challenges of terrorism, cybercrime and child sexual exploitation and abuse. Undoubtedly, the threats to British security in the 21st century demand a modernised, more responsive and better equipped police service, not a smaller one. In defence of the Government’s position, the Police Minister said crime is falling, but that is not true: it is changing. In July, when an estimated 6 million cyber and online crimes are included in the official statistics, crime will nigh on double.
Resources are diminishing, just when demand is soaring. We face not just the three challenges that I mentioned; police recorded crime is rising, and some of the most serious crimes have soared to the highest levels in years. There has been a major increase in knife crime, which is up 9%. There has been a 27% rise in violent crime, including a 14% increase in the murder rate, while sexual offences have gone up 36%. Reported rape figures are the highest since 2003. Victims are also being let down, with half of cases closed without a suspect being identified.
Increasingly, the police are left to pick up the pieces, as other public agencies are slashed. Who, for example, goes after looked-after children if council social services departments are badly depleted?
Jack Dromey
I am going to conclude my remarks, because I have been—forgive me if I say so—generous with interventions, and I want hon. Members to have the maximum time to make contributions to this important debate.
The Home Secretary does not seem to understand the challenges to the modern police service or its complexity. Despite massive and growing challenges, not only are police budgets being cut, but the funding formula fiasco in which the Home Office misallocated hundreds of millions of pounds of police funding means that the doomed review of the unfair funding formula has been delayed for another year. We have a stop-gap settlement of only a year, with more uncertainty and more unfairness. My force—West Midlands—and Northumbria face cuts that are double those that Surrey will receive.
As I was saying earlier when the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) intervened, we have had the tradition of Robert Peel, but there has also been the tradition of Harold Macmillan: a tradition of noblesse oblige, of care, of meeting need, and of serving the national interest in one nation. Macmillanites are increasingly an endangered species in the Conservative party, because both in this settlement and in the local government settlement that will be debated later, there has been a grotesque unfairness of approach where need has been ignored in favour of political heartlands being looked after.
I want to ask the Minister three questions. First, on an important detail, where exactly is the funding for the international capital city grant coming from? Why, in the published information, is it not included in the core police settlement figures? Secondly, when will he finally replace the broken funding formula and give forces the long-term certainty they need to modernise and address the challenges of the 21st century? He expects to implement the new formula in the 2017-18 financial year, but we will need a new formula by the end of this year, at the very latest. Will he even begin to make progress on that in the near future? Thirdly, when will he stop this financial rollercoaster and finally be frank with the public and police about the cuts that he and the Home Secretary intend to impose?
Yes, we will vote against this police grant settlement, because for Labour Members the first duty of any Government and of any Parliament is the safety and security of their citizens. Yes, we will vote against it, because that is what is at risk if we continue down this path of remorseless reduction in the numbers of police officers. Quite simply, the time has come to put public safety first and to cut crime, not cut cops.
Jack Dromey
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Now that the Serjeant at Arms is in his place, I would like to say that I was privileged to shake his hand the other day. He is deeply welcome to this House; it is great for us to have him here. It is a long and honourable role within this House. Like my right hon. Friend, I celebrate the fact that we have the first BME Serjeant at Arms—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Mr Dromey, can I just help out? The Front Benchers took well over an hour and there has been plenty of time. Everybody has welcomed the Serjeant at Arms, and so it should be. This is a debate on policing, and I know that the Chair of the Select Committee will not want to wander too far away again, because we do want to get through it, and we only have until three minutes past 4.
Andrew Stephenson
I want to talk about rates of crime that have increased, so if the hon. Lady will allow me, I will make some progress.
Jack Dromey
My intervention will be quick, because I am keen that everyone has the chance to speak, but it is important to put the record right. In July, cybercrime and online fraud will be included in the crime survey of England and Wales. The early estimate is that it will add 6 million crimes and result in crime possibly doubling. Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on what he has just said and recognise that at last the truth will be told on crime? It is not falling; it is changing.
James Berry
I am sure the Minister will deal with that in his response. I do not recognise those statistics, but I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s chief constable for running such a fantastically efficient force.
James Berry
No.
The point about flexibility is clearly lost on the Labour party. I recently attended a Westminster Hall debate in which a London Labour MP insisted on a top-down, inflexible model of ward policing in London, without recognising the fact that some wards needed more policing than others, as is the case in Kingston. That is why I endorse the decision taken by the Home Secretary and the Chancellor to be flexible themselves, including increasing funding both for counter-terrorism policing and firearms officers, which is what the police asked for, at a time when we face an unprecedented terrorism threat, and for a new drive to co-ordinate the fight against fraud, which, as the hon. Gentleman has said, has increased, particularly on the internet.
Thirdly, police funding has to go hand in hand with reform. Thanks to the coalition Government—particularly their Conservative policies—there has been an increase in the democratic control of policing through police and crime commissioners. Important reforms have also been made to the police misconduct regime, including, most recently, opening up misconduct hearings to the public, to increase transparency and public confidence. The College of Policing has been created to set standards and guidance for police. I declare that I am an associate of that college and occasionally give lectures there.
The Home Secretary’s police reform agenda continues, including funding to encourage collaboration between forces, which is not a top-down model like that pursued under the last Government, but a bottom-up model. There are excellent examples of collaboration, such as that between West Mercia and Warwickshire police. There is also funding to encourage blue light collaboration, which not only saves money, but increases the efficiency and effectiveness of our blue light services.
My fourth and final point is about policing in London and in Kingston, which has the second lowest crime rate in London. We have an excellent borough commander in Glenn Tunstall, who leads a fantastic local police force, which is part of the fabric of the local community and does us in Kingston proud. Tomorrow I will host a public meeting with officers in Surbiton, to talk about the excellent work that they, led by Sergeant Trudy Hutchinson, do to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour. I pay tribute to them.
In Kingston town centre, the Conservative council has made good on our campaign to increase the number of police officers by using the Police Act 1996 to buy extra police officers and making use of the Mayor of London’s “buy one, get one free” offer. That has had a fantastic impact on the rate of arrests and on safety in the town centre.
My constituents do not spend all their time in Kingston with its low crime rate; many of them also come into central London, where, of course, crime rates are higher, as is the threat of terrorism. That is why I got together with other London MPs, including my constituency neighbour—my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith)—and my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) to talk to the Policing Minister, the Home Secretary and the Chancellor, in order to ensure that police funding in London was protected. The right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) has claimed that it was Labour that forced a change in police funding, but I am afraid that that is simply not correct. Clear calls were made by Conservative Members, and the Chancellor, the Home Secretary and the Policing Minister listened to them and protected our budget. As a result, the number of police community support officers in London is not going to be cut, and the number of authorised firearms officers will be increased considerably. There will also be increased funding for counter-terrorism, and our capital city grant has been protected.
To return to the issue of flexibility, certain areas of crime have increased, despite the overall downward trend in the UK and in London, but I am sure that the Metropolitan police and the police in Kingston and the rest of the country will be flexible to meet the increased demand on their services and that they will meet those challenges.
I welcome the report. I am delighted that funding has been protected in London and that the Government are putting the protection of people at home and abroad first. I thank the Minister for what he has done for policing in London.
Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
It is fitting that we are having this debate in the same week that the Prime Minister made a speech on his groundbreaking reforms in our prison system. One startling fact in his speech was that 70% of prisoners have at least seven previous convictions. If we can improve recidivism rates, it will inevitably have an impact on the resources available to police officers. These reforms to the prison system and to the police funding formula are compassionate and they are to be welcomed because they will also help to prevent crime.
My right hon. Friend the Policing Minister is to be congratulated on acting on the promise to review the police funding formula—something promised by others over the years but never actually done; it has now been done by the Minister and the Home Secretary. He is also to be congratulated on protecting the policing budget in the autumn statement and on making real blue light reform possible, enabling the police, the ambulance and the fire services to work together. I shall deal quickly with each in turn.
On the police funding formula, Lincolnshire is the police constabulary in my constituency, which is a very rural part of the world that has been particularly badly affected by the old police funding formula, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). The Lincolnshire chief constable—and, indeed, some of his colleagues and other chief constables—has been very brave in challenging the funding formula. Not every chief constable has made the same progress as him on efficiency savings. He has written an excellent book, “The Structure of Police Finance—Informing the Debate”, which helped me when I needed to put various questions to chief constables in my work on the Home Affairs Select Committee. The Select Committee has found that some forces have extraordinarily generous reserves of savings. The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Committee Chairman, invited chief constables and police and crime commissioners to give evidence and we heard from some that they had reserves of up to £60 million. Since then, I have learned that the West Midlands force has a reserve of £153 million. Rather than have that money sitting in a bank account, we should surely spend it wisely to protect the public.
Jack Dromey
The hon. Lady mentions the money of the West Midlands police service, but it is overwhelmingly earmarked for the rationalisation of buildings in order to save money in the medium and longer term and for the recruitment of new police officers. I know Neil Rhodes well, and he is a fine chief constable. He was right to call for a review of the police funding formula, so does the hon. Lady share his dismay and my dismay that, as a consequence of the omnishambles within the Home Office before Christmas, we are stuck with the existing arrangements?
Victoria Atkins
It is certainly true that the chief constable was excited at the prospect of the new funding formula and how it might help his constabulary. It is as it is, but I received a letter from the chief constable last month saying that the constabulary has made further bold bids for transformational funding, which it is excited about in connection with blue light funding. I shall come on to that later.
As we have heard, the overall police budget is going to be protected—up to £900 million by 2019-20—and there is going to be a real-terms increase to £670 million for policing and counter-terrorism next year. There is also to be an increase in transformation funding to help with issues such as cybercrime.
I see in their places three members of the Joint Committee that has scrutinised the draft Investigatory Powers Bill, which is going to report tomorrow. During our work on that Committee we have heard about the changing nature of the threats facing our country and local policing, whether it be in respect of counter-terrorism or the challenges faced by police officers investigating missing persons. That, however, is for another debate and another time.
My final point is about making blue light collaboration possible. In a village in my constituency, Woodhall Spa, fire officers are trained to step in as ambulance workers, because they will be on the scene before the ambulances arrive. That is a great improvement, and the more we see of it the better. When I had the pleasure of visiting police stations in both Louth and Horncastle before Christmas to thank the officers for their work, I was interested to see that Louth police station was next door to the fire station. There must be room for the services to work together in helping to protect the public.
There have been suggestions from the Opposition that Members do not appreciate the work of police officers. That is simply wrong. I had the pleasure and privilege of working with excellent police and law enforcement officers in my previous career, and I am delighted that Lincolnshire constabulary will be hosting its annual awards in March to celebrate the bravery and commitment of officers in our county. I have been invited to the ceremony. Sadly, I shall probably not be able to go because I shall be here, but I wish them well. I am sure that the whole House wishes each and every police officer in our country well for the future, and is grateful for the work that they have done already.
Alex Chalk
As I have said, it is important to put the settlement in context. Back in 2010—[Interruption.] May I deal with the point? In 2010, the country was bringing in about £600 million in tax revenue and spending £750 million. If that had not been addressed, the country and policing would be facing meltdown, but policing is now on a sound footing to protect the people of our country.
Speeches are sometimes as interesting for what is not said as for what is said. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington did not mention, even as one of his own apocalyptic scenarios, the kind of cut that he would himself have countenanced. At the Labour party conference in Brighton, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) declared that savings of up to 10% could be found. He said that that would be doable. That is not what is happening under this Government. Funding is now on a sustainable footing and capability is being enhanced.
Alex Chalk
I will not take any more interventions.
Let us look at how that capability is being enhanced. Specialist capabilities in cybercrime are being improved, as is firearms capability. Modernisation and reform are also taking place because, as Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary has set out, there are further efficiencies to be made. Whether in respect of decent funding or improving our capability, this settlement will enable us, even in difficult times, to protect our police, build capacity, drive reform and deliver for the people of this country.
Question put.
Riot Compensation Bill
Jack Dromey Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. This is my first Bill Committee, and for it to be on my own Bill is a particular pleasure.
I would like to express my gratitude to the people who have helped the Bill get this far. In particular, I have received support from the Home Office in drafting and preparing the Bill, both officials and Ministers, as well as from shadow Ministers and other Members in all parts of the House. They approached Second Reading in an extremely constructive fashion. I am very grateful for the widespread support for the principle that we are trying to achieve.
The Bill seeks to update the existing legislation, the Riot (Damages) Act 1886, and make it fit for the 21st century, not only to deal with factors that naturally would not have been considered when the Act was passed, but to adapt it for the changing nature of riot and riot damages. Particular thanks are also due to Neil Kinghan, the independent reviewer, for his extremely valuable work in preparing the review that forms the basis for the Bill.
Clause 1 is a straightforward attempt to update the definition of a riot with more approachable language while maintaining the existing principle that police forces have some liability for damages caused during riots. As we will address under later clauses, however, that should not be unlimited liability.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth.
The riots in 2011 saw disorder on a scale unprecedented for a generation, threatening life and limb, with businesses and homes burnt down and communities laid waste. What happened was nothing short of outrageous. I pay tribute to the police, fire and ambulance services for the role they played in the most difficult circumstances. I also pay tribute to the local communities that stood together in what were tough times. It was right that many people paid the price for what happened with their liberty, but there was then a price to be paid to the victims.
As the hon. Member for Dudley South has said—I pay warm tribute to him for pioneering the Bill, which we strongly support—the Bill is about updating the 1886 Act. There were many moving contributions on Second Reading about the severe losses of those affected by the riots in 2011 and how compensation was woefully inadequate, particularly in terms of the speed with which it was paid, as well as the scale of what was paid. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton spoke movingly of her constituent, Ravi, a small business owner. It took 18 months for his shop to reopen at half the size, and he and his family were forced to live off their savings in the meantime.
My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North spoke of the nine businesses and 40 flats that were destroyed in his constituency, putting poorer victims in severe financial difficulty. Some victims have not received the compensation that they are due to this day. The losses to people such as Ravi show that it is right that the legislation is updated to ensure that those who suffer the catastrophic consequences of riots are compensated fully and in a timely fashion.
Equally, there are other changes that we will come to shortly that necessarily deal with flaws in the existing legislation. For example, there was no mention of motor vehicles in the 1886 legislation, unsurprisingly, and no consideration of interim compensation for victims while claims were processed. There was no consideration of new-for-old replacement of damaged goods and no powers for the police to delegate administering the compensation process to experts. As a result, several years on from the 2011 riots, some victims are still waiting for more than £40 million to be paid out.
The Bill is a necessary update to very old legislation, and the broad thrust is welcome. There will be contributions during the passage of the Bill on particular issues to seek clarification and to address concerns from hon. Members who have constituency interests, but the Bill is welcome because it modernises the language of the 1886 Act and includes cars and other vehicles. It provides for much-needed interim payments and creates a new body to deal with insurance claims to avoid massive delays and the kind of bureaucracy seen last time around. The Bill proposes the capping of payments by police forces. It is right that they are not asked to promise a blank cheque, not least because of the immense financial pressures on police forces.
In conclusion, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham has spoken movingly in previous debates and on Second Reading about the impact of what happened on his community and many others. “Never again” is our determination, but we need to ensure that the victims of what happened are finally properly and fully compensated, and we need to learn the lessons of the inadequacies of the 1886 Act and bring arrangements up to date to ensure that victims are compensated. I am pleased that we are in agreement on this welcome measure, which has the support of the Opposition.
The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. This private Member’s Bill is a first for me as a Minster. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South on piloting the Bill through. It has support from across the House. Tone is important when trying to persuade colleagues, and he is a champion of that. I apologise for not being in the House on the Friday when the Bill was debated on Second Reading, but I have read the Hansard report. I was not the duty Minister on that day, but my colleague, the Minister for Immigration, did very well to ensure that he read every note I gave him in the right tone.
I join the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington in paying tribute to the emergency services that were so valiant and brave in 2011 and in the other riots that sadly we have had over the years. We do need measures in statute to ensure compensation for those who need it; some would argue that we should have done that sooner, since this was first put in statute in 1886.
As someone born in Enfield and brought up in Tottenham, Mr Howarth, I found it very difficult to watch the riots on TV and later to visit the area where I have so many friends and relatives. That part of the world had done so much over the years, particularly since the terrible things that happened at Broadwater Farm. Politicians are supposed to be hardened, but we are not because those are our communities. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Tottenham, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate, Nick de Bois and other hon. Members now here who had their communities blighted and devastated by the riots. I say as the Minister that it is right and proper that we are here today to help the Bill through.
I have looked extensively at the amendments and spoken to hon. Members from across the House to see how we could help. I also pay tribute to my officials, who have given an extensive amount of time to ensure that we debate the Bill and get it right so that we can enact it and help our constituents in the way they need.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Property in respect of which claims can be made
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Jack Dromey
Birmingham was one of the cities hit hard by the riots, and the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood was particularly affected. I want to draw a distinction between, on the one hand, big retailers such as Next or supermarkets, which have the capacity to submit a claim quickly—they understand the process and can take advantage of the 1886 Act—and, on the other hand, smaller businesses. Business organisations have said to us—we are sympathetic to such representations—that some individuals were traumatised, some were injured, some faced financial problems and some literally faced bankruptcy. For those people to learn about the procedure, compose an application and submit it, they need time. I sense that the Government are sympathetic to the arguments that my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham has powerfully deployed, so I hope that the Minister will be flexible. This amendment might usefully be made.
Mike Penning
I fully understand the thought process behind the amendments and their tone. Of course, there was an extensive consultation process, but we have to draw a line somewhere. I fully understand the points made by the right hon. Member for Tottenham and the shadow Policing Minister, as I am sure other Members do. I will commit to putting exceptional circumstances into the regulations.
The Bill is for people who have suffered and the most vulnerable. It is a safety net; that is what it is there for. The regulations will cover exactly what the right hon. Gentleman has asked for. Exceptional circumstances could easily cover medical conditions, residential properties and small and medium-sized enterprises. The Bill is rightly not about the Nexts of this world. Given what I have said and will say, I hope that Members and other people will realise that we have listened. We will do this in the regulations, which is where it should be. That commitment is now on the record, so I hope there is no need for the amendments.
Jack Dromey
If one looks back at the experience of the 2011 riots, one sees that the overwhelming majority of claims subsequently lodged were for under £1 million. Having said that, there were claims—albeit a small minority—for more than £1 million. We can understand the argument for capping the costs that fall on the police, but there is a strong argument, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham put powerfully, that we should not have an arbitrary cap of £1 million and that if losses exceed £1 million, compensation should be paid. The question in those circumstances is: who pays?
On Second Reading my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham made a very powerful case indeed. It is not difficult to see that for a small or medium-sized family business with, for example, substantial stock, depending upon the nature of the business, the losses sustained might exceed £1 million. I was impressed by my right hon. Friend’s argument that the kind of successful high streets we want to see in our communities is a combination of the big and the small.
I remember debating at length in this very room the Localism Bill in 2010-11, which led to the initiative by Mary Portas on regeneration of our high streets, and what constitutes a successful high street. What we want is for businesses of all kinds, big and small, to come to and make a success of high streets—high streets where people want to go. Crucially, we then need confidence on the part of those businesses that in the unlikely event of a riot, they will not suffer as a consequence and that insurance cover will be provided. One therefore comes back to the cap.
We think that there is an argument for payment of compensation beyond £1 million. There is an argument that compensation of up to £1 million should, in line with historical practice, continue to fall on the police. Beyond £1 million, in circumstances where the police are under immense financial pressures, there is clearly an argument that compensation should not be paid by the police. We would ask the Minister to consider the Home Office accepting responsibility for the payment of compensation over and above £1 million as the Bill progresses.
Safer Neighbourhood Policing: London
Jack Dromey Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on rightly bringing to the House—as one of the first debates we are having in the House this year—this debate on the importance of the safety and security of our citizens in London and, crucially, the role played by neighbourhood policing.
I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) and my hon. Friends the Members for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) and for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for bringing to this debate the experience of their constituents and the concerns that are increasingly being expressed.
My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North was right to remind us of the legacy of history. I will say two things about legacy. First, painful lessons have been learnt from what was a very different era of the policing of London—following Scarman, Macpherson and stop and search. Indeed, John Grieve said today, in a powerful intervention, “I got it wrong all those years ago and I feel ashamed of myself.” One senior police officer in London said to me, “Jack, we were like Robocops touring estates in cars, remote from the communities that we were responsible for policing and distrusted by them.”
The second thing about the legacy of history is that although the police themselves learnt lessons, including excellent police officers such as Sir John Stevens, that came together with what we did in government to create the British model of neighbourhood policing that is celebrated worldwide. That included 17,000 extra police officers, 16,000 police community support officers and, here in London, ward-based safer neighbourhood teams.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting said, rooted as he is in his community and in the great city of London, this is about the notion of patiently building good community relationships of trust and confidence, whereby people then co-operate in detecting crime, but it is about more than that: it is about preventing crime and diverting people from crime. Again, my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North gave the excellent example of the boxing club in her constituency. It is about engagement between the police and young people, whereby the police come to be seen very differently by the young people they serve.
Sadly, a generation of progress that has been made in building trust and confidence is now being reversed. In the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting, today we are seeing the filleting of neighbourhood teams here in London, as a consequence of the last five years, with the £600 million of cuts, and of what will happen in the next five years, when there will be remorseless reductions at the next stages. These are the biggest cuts to any police service in Europe.
The first duty of any Government is the safety and security of their citizens. I therefore stress how important it is that the truth is told in this very important debate. First, it is not true that crime overall is falling. Crime is changing. There are disturbing signs, in the words of Sir Hugh Orde, the former chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers, of a “tipping point” being reached; and, as the statistics are now cleaned up, we see police recorded crime up 3%, violent crime up 24% in London and sexual crime up 29% in London. In addition, we are seeing a rapid growth in cybercrime. That will now be included in the crime statistics from this year onwards, showing a 40% increase in crime overall. I therefore hope the Government will stop saying, “We cut police, but we cut crime,” in circumstances where the truth will be told.
Secondly, it is not true that the comprehensive spending review protected police budgets. As has been said, the pressures remain tight and resources will reduce. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has been absolutely clear about how that presents big challenges to the police service. The threat relating to the reform of the funding formula still remains. There was an omnishambles and that had to be shelved, but again, as he has said, “It makes it difficult to plan ahead in circumstances where we do not quite know what our income streams will be in two to five and five to 10 years’ time.”
Thirdly, as has been exposed today, it is not true to say that there are more neighbourhood police officers here in London. Suffice to say, the powerful case that Opposition Members have made shows that such assertions about statistics are as reliable as dodgy Del Boy promises that “All will be right if you buy from me now.”
This is the worst possible time for the Government to continue putting those resource pressures on our police service. It is not just about the tipping point being reached in relation to conventional crime, as it is sometimes called, but about the challenges relating, first, to child sexual exploitation and abuse. Rightly, this country is rising to the challenge of rooting out that evil and protecting children, but that is hugely resource-intensive. Secondly, there is the rapid growth of cybercrime.
Thirdly and crucially, there is the uniquely awful generational threat of terrorism that we now have in our country. Key to combating terrorism is good neighbourhood policing. Peter Clarke, the former head of counter-terrorism, said that neighbourhood policing was “the golden thread” from the locality to the global, where plots are hatched by terrorists. Mark Rowley, the current head of counter-terrorism said that, from their point of view, neighbourhood policing was absolutely crucial. Remember that we are seeing arrests for terrorism nationally at the rate of one a day, and here in London, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has said that the majority of leads in relation to those engaged in or plotting terrorism has come from neighbourhood policing—not from high-tech surveillance, although that plays its role, or international collaboration, although that is absolutely crucial. However, neighbourhood policing and the patient building of good community relationships are key to detecting those who are planning such outrageous wrongdoing.
In conclusion, as Opposition Members have said, it is welcome that within 48 hours of the comprehensive spending review the Government pulled back from the brink and did not make a proposed 22% cut on top of the 25% cut in the last Parliament. However, the facts speak for themselves: resources will reduce. Neighbourhood policing in London is being hollowed out. I say, with due respect to the Minister, that at a time like this, the Government need to think again, because it is true that the first duty of any Government is the safety and security of their citizens and the Government cannot say, “We backed the police,” unless they make the necessary resources available.
Draft Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Codes of Practice) (Revision of Code E) Order 2015
Jack Dromey Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I start with the principle that out-of-court disposals and community resolutions in appropriate circumstances—I underline that 10 times—are a good thing. On the one hand, they can prevent someone from being criminalised where that is not appropriate, and on the other they can save police time.
We have all seen in our constituencies good examples of where those things have been used to good effect. To give one recent example from my constituency, in Castle Vale there has been an excellent joint venture by the community housing association and the police to tackle antisocial behaviour and nuisance neighbours. That has involved both out-of-court disposals and community resolutions and has brought people together as a consequence. Therefore, on the substance, I think we are as one.
On the process, I raise two points. First, it appears from our discussions with the Home Office that the evidence behind what is proposed is substantially anecdotal. Secondly, the three pilots in question—West Yorkshire, Leicestershire and Staffordshire—have yet to report. One would have thought that a measure of this kind would be informed by the outcome, as opposed to pre-empting it.
The next point relates to a substantive point raised by the Bar Council, which sums up the situation very well:
“Whilst the purpose of the consultation is said to be to ‘support the policy which applies in England and Wales to give police options to use out-of-court disposals’…no evidence has been cited to justify the need for this change in police procedure nor any explanation as to why the four specified offences have been selected. The consultation paper does not address the potential adverse consequences of re-introducing the power of the police to conduct non-audio recorded interviews pre-arrest, which lead to the removal of the power in the first place.”
The Bar Council goes on to make a particularly important point:
“These include the scope for deliberate abuse of the power by the police, the lack of a definitive record of the interview, challenge to the content of the interview in court and further erosion of trust in the police. The rationale for permitting such interviews to take place post-arrest does not apply.”
Those substantive points of concern do not necessarily lead to the conclusion that this measure should be opposed, but they are substantial and it would be good if the Minister addressed them.
My final point is that the Government and the Opposition have been advocating the technological transformation of the police service—a digital revolution best achieved, as we have argued, through economies of scale by way of a serious national strategy to transform policing and make it more efficient and effective. That includes, of course, evidence-gathering. As the Bar Council also said,
“The proposed revision also appears to be contrary to the purpose of the Home Office funded pilot scheme, introduced by the Metropolitan Police in May 2014, to enhance the recording of the interaction of the police with the public by way of body worn video cameras.”
Put another way, we have embarked down the path of digital revolution, but this seems to be a step back. With those reservations, the Opposition are content to support the measure.
Police Funding Formula
Jack Dromey Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Mike Penning
I thank my hon. and learned Friend for his comments. We had a good meeting and I promised to listen, and I hope that the response I am giving today shows that we have listened. The funding formula for 2016-17 will be based on the existing formula and the announcement, as normal, will be made in December, but there will be a lot of work, a lot of listening and a lot of understanding of what the demands are, within the difficult financial situation that we are in. Not everybody will think it is fair, but we will think it is fair and we will not be in the opaque position of the existing formula.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
The first thing the Policing Minister should do is apologise to the police service for an omnishambles process—replacing one opaque and unfair formula with another; withholding vital financial information; publishing that information only under threat of legal action; and then publishing the wrong information.
The Policing Minister was right to apologise to Parliament, but I ask him to go one step further. Last Wednesday he dismissed all concerns about his new funding formula. Forty-eight hours later, it was revealed that he had got it wrong and had published the wrong data. Funding allocations varied by up to £181 million and there were 31 losers. When did he know that? What did he know, and when did he know it?
Tony Hogg, the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Devon and Cornwall has summed it up on behalf of the police service:
“We have now lost all trust in the process.”
The Policing Minister should abandon the discredited process, as he has agreed to do; he should start afresh, as proposed by the police and crime commissioners, which I hope he has agreed to do; and acting in an open, transparent and honest way, he should publish all financial data, which should be concluded as soon as possible and be overseen by an independent third party—perhaps the National Audit Office, because there is no longer confidence in the Home Office.
The third and final apology that the Policing Minister should give is to the public. The first duty of any Government is the safety and security of their citizens. People expect their Government to act responsibly when it comes to the policing of their communities and the country. This would be laughable if it were not so serious. I say in all sincerity to the Policing Minister and to the Home Secretary: get a grip, and get it right.
Mike Penning
The House will be disappointed in the shadow Minister’s tone. I was informed on Friday, and this is the first opportunity I have had to inform the House about the situation—[Interruption.] I hear shouts from the Labour Benches, “You should’ve known.” At the end of the day, I was not told, and the first I knew about this was when I was in the House on Friday. We will make sure that we have a fair process in place as we go forward. That is only fair. I have apologised and I will do so again if necessary, but I am not apologising when it comes to the hon. Gentleman’s tone, because he has got it wrong as usual.
Arrests of Chinese Protesters
Jack Dromey Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Mike Penning
As I said in my statement, a lot of preparation work was done to ensure that people had the right to protest peaceably, as the law stipulates. But if the police made a decision to arrest—and they have made that decision—that is an operational matter and not a matter for the Police Minister to comment on.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
China is a proud country of 1.4 billion people. It is the second largest economy in the world—soon to be the largest. The Anglo-Chinese relationship is very important. We have, for example, Chinese collaboration, Chinese investment and Chinese students. If it is right that we seek to strengthen that relationship, then that relationship should be underpinned by an integrity of approach. There are certain values of universal human rights that transcend any commercial or other relationship. That is why this country rightly believes that, domestically, our Bill of Rights is so important, rooted as it is in our great democratic traditions back to the Magna Carta. That is why, internationally, in a free society we both engage and speak out, as indeed you did last week, Mr Speaker—would that the Prime Minister had been quite as vigorous as you—as did the Leader of the Opposition and the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg in her interrogation of the Chinese President.
In a free society, we defend the right to dissent and to protest. It would not be appropriate to comment in any detail on the circumstances of this case, because it is under investigation, but these are very serious allegations that should be properly investigated, including the raid on the homes of those engaged in dissent. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) is absolutely right to raise these concerns on the Floor of the House of Commons.
Mike Penning
I am not certain whether there was a question there. If I have missed it, I will write to the hon. Gentleman. I think that I agree with everything that he said early on in his contribution about our relationship with China. Indeed, some very, very important business was done last week. The principle of protest is absolutely right. Three people are on bail while an investigation takes place. It would be wrong of me to comment, in any shape or form, on the legitimacy of the case at the moment.
West Midlands Police (Funding)
Jack Dromey Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) on his public service in securing this debate.
Last weekend I was in Erdington high street with Louis, a much loved police community support officer who works with the town centre partnership, making the high street a safe place to go. Popular with the local community, he is a grandfather figure to the local children in the high street. Last month I was with Cindy Tierney, out on the beat in Perry Common. She has been doing the job for 11 and a half years. “I love the job,” she says, and she is much loved—I saw that at first hand. She polices one of the poorest wards in Britain and undertakes exemplary work with local young people. Now both are at risk of losing their jobs as a consequence of budget cuts that will see PCSOs become an endangered species in the west midlands.
West Midlands police is rightly regarded as one of the best forces in Britain. It is ably led by Chris Sims, and has been ably represented, first by Bob Jones and then by David Jamieson. Centres of excellence are contained there, including award-winning neighbourhood police schemes, such as in my constituency, in Stockland Green. The West Midlands police service has done everything and more that the Government have asked of it. The Police Minister often says that the police should make the best use of resources. West Midlands police has done precisely that and been rated as outstanding by HMIC for doing so. That includes undertaking a groundbreaking partnership with Accenture on the modelling of the police service looking to 2020.
However, West Midlands police is reeling from 23% cuts over the last five years—the biggest cuts to any police service nationwide and in Europe—with £126 million gone from their budget. The west midlands is increasingly feeling the consequences, and I have seen that at first hand all over the west midlands—the progressive hollowing-out of neighbourhood policing, with more and more neighbourhood police officers getting taken back on to response; 27 police stations closing; and a generation of progress in cutting crime now being reversed. The latest figures on police recorded crime is for a 1% increase for the period of March 2014 to March 2015—and by the way, West Midlands police has been praised by HMIC as being the best force in the country for the accuracy of its crime statistics.
Now the West Midlands police service is facing catastrophic cuts, with potentially very serious consequences. Why? Because of the cumulative impact of what has happened thus far, with 1,500 police officers gone, and now, because the comprehensive spending review is looming, with the police not protected and with at least another £100 million and 2,500 more police officers to go. What has made things worse is the grotesque unfairness of the approach adopted by the Government. As hon. Members have said, had the west midlands been treated fairly over the last five years, we would have seen £43 million more in funding. Unfortunately, the west midlands has been treated grotesquely unfairly.
To add insult to injury, a funding formula review is about to make a bad situation worse. A fresh review was necessary and was promised for a year. It was published on the last day on which Parliament sat. The situation is now descending into farce because vital information has been withheld. The review talks about a number of principles, saying that some forces would be significantly affected, yet the Government have withheld which forces and by how much. There must have been an study on the likely impact of the new formula on all forces—on West Midlands police in particular—and there has to be, under law, an equality impact study. Neither has been disclosed.
On 30 July, I wrote to the Police Minister asking for that information to be disclosed, but there was no answer. The West Midlands police service has asked for it to be disclosed, but there was no answer. Therefore, it had to put in a freedom of information request, but there was no answer; or, now at least: “We may answer. If we do, we’ll do so on 29 September”—14 days after the consultation period closes. You couldn’t make it up.
Now at last we have some clarity, as a consequence of the leaked document. Work has been carried out by the Police and Crime Commissioners Treasurers’ Society, suggesting that the West Midlands police could lose another 25.1% because of the new formula, which does not include the departmental spending cuts to come. It reveals that, under the proposed formula, there will be a shift from urban to rural. The second hardest hit will be the west midlands, with a cut of 25.1%, the third hardest hit will be Merseyside, at 25.5%, and the fourth hardest hit will be Greater Manchester, at 23.3%. That will mean that the West Midlands police service will be near cut in half and will be smaller than when it was founded in 1974.
The Government have perpetrated a myth that somehow massive cuts can be inflicted on the police service and crime can be cut. Well, not only is recorded crime rising after a generation of progress, but crime is changing. Demand is rising. We have seen a massive increase in fraud, online crime and cybercrime—nearly 4 million last year alone—while the biggest concentration of cases of female genital mutilation outside London is in the west midlands. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) said in her excellent contribution, this is not only about the impact on the victims of domestic violence; it is about protecting those who have been subject to child sex exploitation and abuse. What the West Midlands police service has done is rise to the challenge to tackle these obscenities, increasing the numbers in the public protection unit from 300 to 800. However, it is still struggling to cope with rapidly growing demand.
There is also counter-terrorism. At a time like this, it is utterly irresponsible to inflict such cuts that hollow out neighbourhood policing. The former head of counter-terrorism, Peter Clarke, and the current head of counter-terrorism, Mark Rowley, have both said that the patient building of good community relationships through neighbourhood policing is absolutely vital to the apprehension of terrorists and potential terrorists. Seeing neighbourhood policing being increasingly hollowed out will put the people of the west midlands at risk.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield asked some powerful questions. Fundamentally, it comes down to two points. First, will the Police Minister agree to publish in full all the studies that must have been carried out on the impact on our police service, so that this debate can be properly informed? Secondly, will he agree to extend the deadline on the consultative process? Otherwise, the consultative process is utterly meaningless, concealing a serious hidden agenda.
In conclusion, what the Government and the Police Minister must do today is come clean about exactly what they are proposing. Thus far, both the Government and the Police Minister have been in denial, asserting that, as was said earlier this week, numbers of police officers somehow do not matter—but yes, they do. They have been claiming that the front line will be protected, when it has not been—12,000 have gone from the front line over the last five years and the number is rapidly rising. Sometimes we are accused by the Police Minister, when we are telling the truth about what is happening—as hon. Members have in the powerful contributions that have been made in this debate—of somehow attacking the police. Nonsense. I bow to no one in my admiration for the West Midlands police service and for the good men and women that I see doing an outstanding job, day in, day out. We are not attacking the police; we are standing up for our police service, because that is exactly what our constituents want us to do. We are standing up against a Government that are doing terrible damage to our police service.
The first duty of any Government is the safety and security of their citizens. Cuts on this proposed scale will make it very difficult for the police to do their job, and it will make many communities in the west midlands less safe places to live and work. The Government cannot fail in that fundamental duty to the people of the west midlands, and we urge them to think again.
Mike Penning
I am going to speak; I am not going to give way.
The key is what is being delivered; that is crucial. I know that the Labour party opposed PCCs, even though it fought a very interesting by-election campaign when Bob Jones sadly died. It was very sad that he went. I respected him enormously; he was a very good PCC and community leader. And he has been replaced by a similarly very good community leader.
Several hon. Members talked about referendums. The provision is there. I understand the argument about the precept. It has been raised with me several times by the local police and the PCC. If there is a need or want to increase the precept, let the people decide. Interestingly, we will have PCC elections in May next year. Perhaps someone will put it in their manifesto that if they put 10% on the precept, they could raise £7 million and put more than 124 officers—if they want to use the money for that purpose—back on the beat. [Interruption.] I will touch on the problem that has been alluded to.
Although I praise what is happening in the west midlands, it is crucial that we ensure that good work that is going on elsewhere in the country is also done in the west midlands. We do not necessarily need huge numbers of buildings with just police inside them. I had the pleasure of going to Winchester. I am an ex-fireman; I went to the fire station there and in the fire station was the police station. I went down the bottom of the drill yard, where the firemen were practising the excellent work that they do, and the armed response unit was also at the bottom of the yard. They were completely unified. It is very important that that is the case. In my own constituency, the police station will soon move into the new civic centre—that is where it needs to be. The interesting thing from my point of view is that when the front desk was closed, I asked my local force how many times people were coming to the front desk on the average day and the answer was three. Is that really the best use of our resources? Can that service not be delivered in a different way?
The aim of the consultation document that we put out was to try to find a fairer way of doing this. Instead of coming from the top and saying, “This is how much you deserve, but we’re going to take this away,” let us start from the bottom and build up from there in terms of what we deliver and what the needs are. That is part of the consultation that is going on.
Mike Penning
I am not going to give way.
What is really wrong is when people scaremonger. There is no calculation, whether there is a leaked document or not. No one really knows until we come to a conclusion about whether the “bottom” principle is actually right, and the reason—[Interruption.] The shadow Minister holds up a document, saying, “This is fact.” It is not fact, because we do not know yet. Once the consultation is over and we agree on the principle of feeding up from the bottom, we can see what the needs of West Midlands police are—what they are bringing to the market. This relates to counter-terrorism. We will know more about exactly how things will be delivered. Will it be through the ROCUs—regional organised crime units? Will it be through the National Crime Agency? What will actually need to be delivered by West Midlands police? Will it deliver in collaboration with the forces around it? It is a very large force; it has a lot of capacity. Could some of that capacity be used elsewhere? What it brings to the party will decide the fundamental principle of how much money is coming.
That is why we have not released a set of assumptions. We cannot release a set of assumptions until after the consultation is over. That was the advice I took, and that is the advice I continue to work from today. But it is a consultation. One principle is crucial, and those who have been in the House for a while with me will know that when I did the coastguard consultation, which was very controversial, I said this categorically. It is a consultation. I will look very carefully not only at what has been said here today, but at all the other representations. I encourage colleagues to be part of the consultation. They should not assume that what they have said today is everything that needs to be said. They should be part of the consultation. And what we will come out with, I believe, is a fundamentally better formula for the whole of England and Wales—the 43 authorities. Trust me, Mr Crausby: plenty of chief constables and PCCs from other parts of the country are desperate for a change, because they feel that they have been fundamentally underfunded for many years. We therefore need a fairer policy. As soon as we can get the consultation finished and—
Police Procurement (Motor Vehicles)
Jack Dromey Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Brady. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) and for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) on obtaining the debate. They are right that we must work towards British bobbies buying British cars.
My hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester was right when he referred to the world-class success story that is the automotive sector. I welcome the fact that the steps that the Labour party took in government for a dedicated industrial strategy and the Automotive Council UK were continued in the past five years. There has been a welcome continuity of policy in the automotive sector, designed to build on that success. My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston was right when he said that we need constantly to bolster that success, particularly when decisions that can be influenced by the Government are being made.
We would not be having this debate in France. Sadly, I vividly remember what happened to the Peugeot factory in Coventry. I was involved in the efforts to persuade the company to change its mind. If we were having this debate in France and anyone said to the French Police Minister, “Will you buy British cars?”, I think the Minister’s response would be, “Pas croyable! On achète des voitures Anglaises, pour nos flics Français? Merde!” Or, loosely translated, “You cannot be serious.”
Jack Dromey
Part of the problem is the approach towards procurement. However, there is also the issue raised by both my hon. Friends in respect of the interpretation of the European Union procurement rules. I remember that in my former role as deputy general secretary of, first, the Transport and General Workers Union, and then Unite, we regularly sought to influence procurement decisions under successive Governments. The rather narrow interpretation of EU procurement rules in our country, compared with France and Germany, was stark. In one rather heated discussion with senior civil servants in the Treasury some years ago, they said, “Well, we would like to, but we can’t, because of the constraints of the EU procurement rules.” Perhaps my Catholic education lets me down, but my recollection is that when Moses came down from the mountain with the tablets of stone, they did not have written on them EU procurement rules. EU procurement rules are manufactured by Minister and man and can, and should be, interpreted flexibly, exactly as happens in France, Italy and Germany, who traditionally hold their industrial base in much higher regard than we do, all too often.
Mike Penning
The hon. Gentleman mentions Italy, a part of the world that I love dearly. I am informed that Italy has just awarded a contract for 4,000 cars to SEAT, from Spain.
Jack Dromey
I am aware of a Franco-Italian-Spanish collaboration. Interestingly, that refers back to the point made in an earlier intervention about countries making reciprocal arrangements that benefit the countries and industries involved.
There are two problems: first, the interpretation of EU procurement rules; and, secondly, the lack of a strategic procurement strategy. The Minister was right to mention the welcome step in the right direction in the 22 forces coming together and the role of the Crown Commercial Service, anchored by West Yorkshire—a collaboration not before its time. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Richard Arkless), the Scottish National party spokesman, that it is different in Scotland, where there is a national strategic procurement approach, but the problem is that while we have 43 forces in England Wales, taken as a whole, the story of our life is all too often separate decisions being made that do not necessarily make sense in terms of operational effectiveness and efficiency, and the best interests of our industrial base.
That long-standing problem has recurred under successive Governments, but under the previous Government a damning National Audit Office report mentioned a particular sum in respect of the procurement portal’s potential: if it were fully realised it could lead to a benefit of £50 million. However, what was being realised was peanuts, because there was only 2% take-up through the national procurement portal.
The official Opposition have argued that collaboration is crucial, but there needs to be a move one step further in a nationally driven strategic approach with the police service, including mandated procurement. Some of the work that we have done during the past two years has demonstrated that saving 25% of the £2.2 billion procurement budget, or £550 million, is eminently achievable, considering the experience elsewhere in the public and private sectors. By the way, that sum could save many police officers who would otherwise go. Whether in respect of a sensible approach to realising savings to enable investment in policing, or in respect of procurement and the industrial interests of our country, the time has come for a national strategic approach, at the heart of which should necessarily be—where appropriate and not in all circumstances—mandating.
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, saying that his Committee might return to this at the next stages, not least because of the enormous benefits there would be for our industrial base in Britain, but also because we would have capacity to invest in policing, particularly front-line policing, at a time of continuing constraints on public expenditure.
We urge the Minister to consider two things during the next stages. First, a powerful case has been made for the pause, if I can use my right hon. Friend’s words. Concern has been expressed, rightly, about what may happen at the next stages—will a major contract be placed with a company that has not, in the past, shown quite the loyalty to this country that it should have done? My hon. Friends are right to raise that matter. I hope the Minister is prepared to sit down with those able to make the decisions and urge them to reconsider, very much along the lines that my right hon. Friend mentioned. Of course, we need value for money, but we should think of the wider and longer-term interests, including our country’s industrial interests.
Secondly, I would be the first to recognise that there have been some welcome steps in the right direction under this Government, but I hope they go significantly further in the aspect of procurement relating to hardware —to use the shorthand—whereby, working with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the police service, they seek a strategic focus on getting the best for Britain out of procurement.
In conclusion, it goes without saying, but it is worth saying nevertheless, that the best should always be bought for our police service, because, particularly at times of stress and crisis, it needs to be absolutely confident that what is purchased for its use works and is of the highest possible specification, subject to value for money. We need to be confident that that is so. However, having said that, I do not believe that that contradicts a “Buy British” policy, for which my hon. Friends argued powerfully. No one is suggesting that always, on every occasion, nothing else is done, but we should have that approach. My hon. Friends have flown the flag for their two constituencies today, and our approach should be to fly the flag for the country as a whole.
Mike Penning
As a Minister in the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, I would not want to take on other responsibilities, but I promise to made sure that we look into that and get the facts on how other countries do it. Other countries interpret their membership of the European Union differently. I have committed infractions on more than one occasion in more than one Department, because my interpretation was different both from what my officials were pushing me to do and from the interpretations of courts in Europe.
If I was sitting on the Opposition Benches—I have sat there—I would be arguing for similar things. Whether we can physically do those things and how we get to the position where we can do them are important. To be honest, a Select Committee could look at this in procurement terms, so that we can be open and honest about what we can and cannot do. I thank the shadow Minister for his comments; we have come a long way in the past couple of months. We disagree that there should be a centralised purchasing system. We have freed up the police authorities to police their areas in the way that they feel they should. The police are doing fantastic work in Cheshire: crime has dropped with fewer police officers and less money, and the situation is exactly the same with West Midlands police.
One point that the shadow Minister and I agree on is that there is money to be saved in procurement. There is no argument about that; I was banging on about that long before I came into the House. As a fireman, I used to complain bitterly about the money that we spent. There were cupboards full of stuff bought 15 years before; it was sitting there and would never be used. I am desperately trying to push that spending down. To be fair to the PCCs and the chiefs, they are coming to the table. We created the PCCs to be independent and to be able to do what they want, and all I have said to them all along is that there has to be value for money. Some of them have clearly said to me, as Members have in this debate, that if they can buy locally, that should outweigh a little of the cost that they could have saved if they had got it cheaper elsewhere, and I understand that point. There are, however, huge differentials in what forces are paying, not only for cars, but for batons, shirts, fleeces and trousers. They are so huge that I have decided in the next couple of weeks to publish by police force the main things that they buy, so that the public can see what their force is spending in their area. We will make that information available, including for Cheshire, West Midlands and Leicestershire.
I was a tad cheeky in saying that Leicestershire was not part of the consortium of 22 police forces that has done the recent review. The West Midlands force, sadly, is not part of it either. I am sure there are reasons for that, and I am sure they will come to the party. We can get that 22 up, but it is not just about having all 43 forces. As we have heard, Police Scotland is part of the consortium, which is welcome as it helps us to get more bang for our buck, as are the British Transport police.
I will touch on the points raised on it being only Peugeot that won a contract, because it was not only Peugeot. BMW, Ford, Vauxhall and Peugeot were successful in the e-bid process that we have just come through. An interesting point was made about whether, when manufacturers have brought something else to the UK, that balances things out. That is similar to what the shadow Minister said about Italy buying 4,000 SEAT vehicles from Spain that were manufactured in Spain—some of the parts might have been produced here in the UK. We are a major exporter of car parts, and we should not underestimate that part of the system. BMW makes the Mini in this country, and that very successful product employs lots of people in Swindon. Sadly, Ford does not manufacture vehicles here any more. As a young fireman in Essex, I used to go to the Dagenham plant all too often—it was technically over the boundary, but we were often needed when there was an incident. The TCDI engine is a world-leading diesel engine that is exported all over the world. Some 80% of the vehicles manufactured in this country are exported, and Members have alluded to that great success story.
I must declare an interest: many of my constituents in the great constituency of Hemel Hempstead work in Vauxhall’s Luton van manufacturing plant, which is part of the consortium. Vauxhall vans will be with police forces, based on the process that took place, and Peugeot has also won a contract.
A new bidding process will take place this autumn. I am sure that Vauxhall, like many other manufacturers, will want to bid. Nearly every time I have visited a police force, I have been squeezed into the back of an Astra. The Astra is a bit of a Marmite subject for police forces. I love the Astra, and we have had Astras in our family, but colleagues who have been out on patrol will know that if there are two burly bobbies with all their kit and a burly Minister in the back, it can be interesting—but it does the job. Peugeot has won this contract, and I am sure that Vauxhall will be bidding for the other one.
What has happened here for the first time is economies of scale. I was a little bit cheeky by naming two forces that just happen to cover the constituencies of two of the most senior Members in Westminster Hall this afternoon. I am sure that there are contractual reasons for those forces not being in the consortium, because nearly all the chiefs I have met have said, “We’re going to be part of this. It’s very important.” I hope that forces join together at that level in other types of procurement. We see a lot of joint practice across different forces at the moment on HR and procurement in the IT sector. We have just announced a new IT company that will run the IT purchases for all 43 forces. I hope that Scotland will join us on that, because it would be brilliant to have an operable IT system. We need to work together on that with the National Crime Agency and organised crime units, and I will be working on it with Ministers in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The key is having the right vehicles for the right people doing the right jobs. I first became a Minister back in 2010. I never dreamt that would happen to me, but it did. Having been a shadow Health Minister for four and a half years, the Department for Transport was really interesting on the first day. One thing I worked on was the Government car service. I am sure that colleagues remember the Mondeos outside Parliament over the years, then the Priuses and the Honda hybrids, but they have probably noticed that we do not see those vehicles out there any more—certainly not the Honda hybrids and the Toyotas. I made an absolutely conscious decision to buy the Avensis for junior Ministers, because they were assembled and manufactured in this country. There was not another compatible vehicle that could do the job—we tried lots of other vehicles: we had a Qashqai on loan for a considerable time, but it did not work; Hyundai sent us some vehicles, and I think one of them is still hanging around. I took a little bit of flack, but I wanted that pressure.
There are exemptions. For instance, the Metropolitan police wanted to use BMW armoured vehicles because they come off the production line armoured, whereas all other vehicles, such as the Jaguar, are retrofitted. I think we will find that the Prime Minister is in a Jaguar. It took a little while, but we got there in the end. I do not criticise the Metropolitan police for taking that time, because they wanted to keep people as safe as possible, but I want to ensure we have vehicles that create as many jobs as possible in this country, and I have a track record of trying to do that.
Jack Dromey
The steps taken by the Minister in relation to the Government car service were very welcome indeed. However, the lesson is surely that the Minister was able to move to the overwhelming majority of requirements being met by way of a British manufacturing strategy because he had the power so to do and drove that decision centrally. Does he accept that if we continue down the path of hoping that collaboration will deliver the kinds of outcome we are debating today, it is highly unlikely we will ever succeed to the extent we could realise with a strategic, mandated approach?
Mike Penning
We have debated this point before. I do not agree that the Home Office is the best place to control the procurement. In the example that I used, I was the Minister responsible, but I had to prove with cost analysis that it was the right vehicle. Of course, it was a very small procurement in real terms, but it sent a message.
I also make the point and advise that it would be illegal to look at the successful bid now and then, outside that, offer a British company the opportunity to match that bid. That would be illegal under EU procurement rules. Frankly, the e-auction mechanism would just collapse, because the process would not be in place.
We need to strike a balance between getting the best possible bang for our buck with the limited funds that we have at the moment in the difficult times we are still going through, and making sure that the police are happy with the vehicles they get and use, while at the same time bringing the forces as close together as possible to ensure that they build an economic argument. I can understand the point about Peugeot, but there are three other companies. There will be lots of jobs for my constituents building vans in Luton.
Jack Dromey
On the wider policy issue of how best to conduct procurement, I hope that on reflection, and informed by a Select Committee investigation, we will see progress in the next stages. In the here and now, however, a decision about Peugeot is imminent. Will the Minister agree to the very reasonable requests made by my hon. Friends the Members for City of Chester and for Ellesmere Port and Neston, and at the very least use his formidable powers of advocacy to call in those who are making the decision and ask them, “Can you not think twice?”?
Mike Penning
I speak regularly to West Yorkshire police, which is the lead force in the procurement process. I think we are beyond that stage, because we are already discussing the autumn auction, when there will be lots more vehicles out there.
The Crown Commercial Service facilitates the process within the Cabinet Office—it used to be done all over Government, with each Department doing its own thing, so at least it has now been brought together. Under the 2015 public contracts and social value legislation, the CCS has to look at the framework and set out—it is set out on its website, and I will get the documents sent out—how it has considered social value as well as cost analysis. That is enormously important.
The shadow Minister mentioned an investigation. I thought that Select Committees did inquiries rather than investigations—it sounds like I will have to swear an oath before I sit down. I honestly think that we should be having this debate in public, and we should be honest about the restrictions that result from our membership of the EU—what we have to do, how we interpret it and whether or not we are gold-plating it. If we are gold-plating it in any shape or form, Members who have known me for a long time will know that I will push back and push back. I have the Prime Minister’s permission to do that in as many areas as possible.
As I said earlier, if I was a Back Bencher, I would probably have been here arguing in exactly the same way as Opposition Members have today. Perhaps I have allowed a little more openness in the debate by mentioning the companies other from Peugeot which manufacture in this country, which is very important. No one was more disappointed than me when I heard that Peugeot was not going to do the work. Colleagues did an awful lot of work to get Peugeot to stay, but it made a commercial decision to go. Perhaps next time, it will make a commercial decision to come back.
Undercover Policing
Jack Dromey Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Mike Penning
Let me say to my right hon. Friend that I have never been coy; it is an attribute that I do not really have. On the Wilson doctrine, it is plainly obvious why we have to be careful. There is litigation in place, and we need to make sure that it goes further. By the end of July, Lord Justice Pitchford will set out his remit, including the sorts of things that my right hon. Friend alluded to. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will put them forward directly to make sure that they are part of the inquiry.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
The allegations in the newspapers today will send a chill up the spine of all those who value free speech, democracy and campaigning for one’s beliefs. Being investigated not for crime but for political beliefs is quite obviously unacceptable.
Almost five years ago, before the last general election, the activities of what was then the special demonstration squad were reported in The Guardian. Over the past few years, we have seen horrifying allegations, many looked at as part of Chief Constable Mick Creedon’s Operation Herne investigations. They include allegations that SDS officers engaged in sexual relationships, and even fathered children, then leaving the women as if the relationship had never occurred; used the identities of dead children for covert identities; and spied on the Lawrence family—the grieving parents of a cruelly murdered son.
Two years ago, the shadow Home Secretary called for stronger safeguards on undercover operations. There remains an overwhelming case, further strengthened today, for more safeguards, including independent pre-authorisation, for example by the Office of Surveillance Commissioners, especially for the small number of long-term covert operations, and then continuous, not paper-based, independent checks. I hope the Minister can respond directly on that point.
Now we also want assurances that the inquiry into the activities of the SDS led by Lord Justice Pitchford will be extended to the allegations set out in the newspapers today. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) said, this is an affront to parliamentary democracy—to the sovereignty and independence of this House. It is also an affront to the vital principle, the breach of which can be very serious indeed, of confidentiality between a Member of Parliament and those he or she represents. Lord Justice Pitchford’s inquiry must be extended to look into the allegations as part of the investigation into the Met’s special demonstration squad. I stress again that undercover policing remains a crucial tool in combating serious and organised crime, but it must not be abused.
In conclusion, Labour has for years pressed for much stronger oversight of undercover policing, and that is all the more important in the light of today’s shocking revelations. Lord Justice Pitchford needs to be able to conduct an extensive and wide inquiry, which, crucially, should have the flexibility to investigate any allegations about undercover policing, in particular those relating to surveillance of Members of this House.
Mike Penning
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments and questions, and I think the whole House shares his concerns, but it is for Lord Pitchford to decide how he wants to take this forward. That is exactly why the concerns touched on—
Mike Penning
The hon. Gentleman is better than that. This is a really serious inquiry. There have been concerns for many years, including when his own party was in government, but it is this Government who have established an inquiry as a result of the work of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. We shall wait and we shall work together. If Lord Pitchford asks for more, I am sure we will give him more.
Police
Jack Dromey Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Five years ago, not one single Conservative candidate went to the electorate and said, “Vote for me and we will cut the police.” Not one single Liberal Democrat candidate went to the electorate and said, “Vote for me and we will cut the police.” On the contrary, Liberal Democrats up and down the country said, “Vote for us and we will put 3,000 more police officers on the beat.” In addition, the Prime Minister himself pledged to protect the front line. When it comes to writing the history of great broken political promises of our time, what has happened to the police service will rank alongside the commitments from the Prime Minister that there should be no more top-down reorganisations of the national health service and from the Deputy Prime Minister that there would not be an increase in tuition fees. Instead, we have seen the biggest cuts to our police service of any in Europe.
Mr Stewart Jackson
On election manifestos and hyperbole, does the hon. Gentleman recall that his party told the electorate prior to the 2010 general election that any reconfiguration, any sharing of services, any co-operation between services would inevitably result in a massive hike in crime? In fact, the opposite has happened.
Jack Dromey
The short answer is no, the reverse is the case; my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), as Policing Minister, encouraged such things. When the hon. Gentleman went to his electorate, did he say, “Vote for me and 117 police officers will be cut”? That is what has happened to his local police service.
The Minister spoke about inheritance, and there was an inheritance on the police, because a Labour Government put 17,000 extra police officers and 16,000 police community support officers on the beat. Local policing, local roots with local people having a say proved to be both popular and highly effective.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that neighbourhood policing was a success story of the last Labour Government. May I draw his attention to the work of the Poet’s Corner residents association in north Reddish, ably led by Brenda Bates who is really concerned about the lack of response by the PCSOs now that they have to parade in Stockport? For example, they used to do school gate work but they are now unable to get to the school gates in time for when children are dropped off because they are too busy parading in the town centre, several miles away.
Jack Dromey
Unlike what we heard from the Minister, my hon. Friend speaks from the heart about the reality in his locality, and it is unsurprising, given that the police service that covers the constituency he so ably represents has seen more than 1,300 police officers go, with more to follow at the next stages. There was a good inheritance on the police, but a generation of progress made—the formation of that British model of neighbourhood policing—is now being reversed.
I wish to make one other point about what the Minister said. He paid tribute to our police service and discussed remarkable innovation, which I have seen all over the country. Let me give but one example. Essex police, under its excellent chief constable, Stephen Kavanagh, has developed a groundbreaking system that tracks both the perpetrators and potential perpetrators of domestic violence, and the victims and potential victims of domestic violence, and enables the police to drill all the way down to hot spots of domestic violence to inform other interventions. We see such innovation by our police all over the country. But the Minister, who was previously a firefighter, will know from his experience that the police service in England and Wales is a demoralised one. It is demoralised by the scale of what is happening to the service and by the remorselessly negative tone set by the Government, from the Home Secretary downwards.
Jack Dromey
I will gladly give way, but will the Minister confirm that every index, be it sick, stress or anxiety leave, is shooting up because of the combination of the growing pressures on the police service and the fact that the police feel—people tell me this all over the country—that the Government never have a good word to say about them?
Mike Penning
If the hon. Gentleman has ever heard me run down the police in this country or destroy their morale, he should stand up and say so now, because I have never done that. The police force’s morale is being destroyed by the sort of commentary we have just heard from the Opposition Dispatch Box, but he is better than that. The first thing he should have done was congratulate the police, but he went into a political rant. That is what destroys morale in our police force.
Jack Dromey
Over the past 12 months, I have visited 34 of the 43 police services, and there is without doubt an unprecedented collapse of morale, from the chief constables to the police constables and PCSOs, because of that combination of the mounting pressures on the police service and the negative tone set by our Government.
We believe that a different approach and a fresh start are essential. Today’s vote on policing is a choice between a Tory plan to cut 1,000 more police officers next year and a Labour plan of reform and savings to protect the front line, so that chief constables can prevent those 1,000 police officer posts from being cut. The Home Secretary should be straining every sinew to protect the front line, but she is not. The Home Secretary and the Tories, and their human shield, the Liberal Democrats, just do not get what pressure the public services and the police are under, and they are turning their backs on obvious savings that could keep those much needed police on our streets.
The Home Secretary has said that it does not matter that thousands more police officers are set to go, on top of the 16,000 already lost, reversing a generation of progress under the previous Labour Government; she says that under her plans all is well because crime is falling. The truth is that crime is changing, pressures on the police are going up, and this is the worst possible time to inflict the biggest cuts on the police service of any country in Europe, just when the police are facing mounting and serious demands.
Over the past 20 years, volume crime, as it is often called, has indeed been falling. Cars are more difficult to steal than they once were, because crime has been substantially designed out, and homes are more difficult to burgle than they once were. That has been a worldwide trend over the past 20 years, because of a combination of advances of the kind I have described and the success of neighbourhood policing, with its emphasis on prevention. But the figures are clear: police recorded violent crime is increasing, and online crime has shot through the roof. For example, Financial Fraud Action UK has said that online banking crime has increased by 71%, e-commerce crime has increased by 23% and card crime has increased by 15%. We have also seen the mounting terrorist threat posing an ever more serious challenge to our police service, and just this weekend assistant commissioner Mark Rowley, the national anti-terror lead, warned that he needs more resources to respond.
At the same time, the police are struggling to deal with crimes that are ever more complex in terms of what it takes to investigate them properly. Hate crime, one of the most hateful of crimes, is up. I have seen this at first hand in my constituency. A fine woman was out with her disabled son, who was in a motorised wheelchair, when he had stones thrown at him because of a whispering campaign about how anyone who has a car or Motability vehicle on benefits somehow has to be a scrounger. I sometimes think that Ministers should be ashamed of the tone they set, because of what it leads to in communities all over the country.
Hate crime is up. Reports of rape and domestic violence are up, yet the number of prosecutions and convictions is down. Reports of child sexual abuse have increased by 33%, but referrals to the CPS from the police have decreased by 11%.
There are serious delays in investigating online child abuse. That means that victims are finding it much harder to get justice and more criminals and abusers are walking away scot-free. After the exposés of the past two years, there is now a great national will to tackle the obscenity of child sex exploitation and abuse, both historical and current. But, because of the mounting pressures on the police, there are serious question marks over the effectiveness of their response. The National Crime Agency, for example, has, thus far, failed to bring to account those identified under Operation Notarise. Some 20,000 people were found to be accessing child pornography, thousands of whom will be contact abusers of children, but only 700 have faced any action.
Police services in Lincolnshire and all over the country say that such are the pressures on their resources that they will find it difficult to do anything other than cope with current cases, and that they will not be able to look into historical cases of abuse and exploitation. I have seen the effect of those mounting pressures in my own police service in the west midlands, where 10% and rising of police resources are now dedicated to doing nothing else but dealing with child sex exploitation and abuse.
Even in basic responsibilities, such as road safety, the police are being over-stretched. The number of traffic police on our roads has fallen by 23%. The number of driving offence penalties has fallen substantially while the number of fatalities and casualties has gone up—the number of child fatalities and casualties has gone up by 6%. Neighbourhood policing is being badly undermined.
Mark Reckless
Does the hon. Gentleman recall how the Government used to stress the need to protect the front line and to put the emphasis on visible policing? But just now, the Minister said that that accounted for only a tiny proportion of activity and he seemed very happy with that and had no desire to increase it.
Jack Dromey
The hon. Gentleman is right to be concerned, because his police service has lost 604 members of staff since 2010. It is certainly true that policing is complex and requires investigatory teams, not all of which will be on the front line. None the less, front-line policing is essential. We created neighbourhood policing, and it worked; we saw substantial falls in traditional forms of crime and it was popular with the public. It is about not just detecting crime, but working with communities to prevent crime and to divert people from crime. Lord Stevens rightly said that neighbourhood policing is the bedrock of policing, but under this Government it is now being hollowed out. Many forces all over the country are taking officers off the neighbourhood beat, putting them back into cars and forcing them to deal with only emergency response. They are now off the front line and into response, when they should be building community partnerships and intelligence and preventing crime.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Given the rise in the number of racial and anti-Semitic attacks, is not community policing important because it brings people closer to understanding different communities?
Jack Dromey
I agree with my hon. Friend, and I will come to that in just a moment. Neighbourhood policing, which took a generation to build, is now being systematically undermined, and the consequences of that are increasingly serious. Let me give two examples. My first relates to terrorism. It was said by a former Member of this House that neighbourhood policing was the “fluffy end” of policing. That could not be further from the truth, especially when we consider how we now have to rise to the challenge of terrorism. Two weeks ago, Peter Clark, a former head of counter terrorism, said:
“In the past decade the UK has built a counterterrorist structure that is in many ways the envy of the world. The almost seamless link between local, national and international units is remarkable. Instead of a London-centric force descending on communities, there are regional hubs where community police and counterterrorist officers work together. They understand their local communities, pick up vital intelligence and reassure the public.”
He went on to say:
“Neighbourhood police hold one end of the thread that can take us from Britain’s streets to wherever in the world terrorists are trained, equipped and radicalised. The chief constable of Merseyside has warned that if police numbers continue to fall, ‘neighbourhood policing as people understand it will not be possible’. Chief constables and police and crime commissioners have tough choices ahead in deciding what to cut. Cutting the counterterrorist policing thread could be fraught with danger.”
I know that that is an uncomfortable message for Government Members, but let me give them an example from the west midlands. Some 40 people have been brought before the courts for serious terrorist crimes in the past five years, and there have been 31 convictions. Overwhelmingly, those individuals were identified as a consequence of good neighbourhood policing and the patient building of good community relationships. The community co-operated to identify the wrongdoers, so neighbourhood policing is key to combating the mounting threat of terrorism.
What the Home Secretary now wants is a similar scale of cuts all over again, with the Association of Chief Police Officers warning that at least 16,000 more officers will go. Next year, police forces are expecting to cut more than 1,000 officers, and that is what today’s vote is all about. Labour would take an alternative approach. Yes, budgets will be tight, and we have already said that the 2015-16 budget the Government have set will have to be our starting point, because the Chancellor’s failure to secure strong growth in this Parliament means that more still needs to be done to get the deficit down. His long-term economic plan has certainly boosted borrowing. We have had to borrow £200 billion more than he planned back in 2010, putting additional pressures on budgets, including that of the Home Office. But there are alternative ways to make savings—[Interruption.]
Mike Penning
The hon. Gentleman, who is a bit of a friend of mine, is actually reading out, word for word, the article that the shadow Home Secretary put in the press this morning. He is better than that. He should be talking about the debate today and not doing the lackey’s job for the shadow Home Secretary.
Jack Dromey
The Minister may be surprised to hear that the Labour party is united in defence of our police service. That is in contrast to what we see all over the country, which is Government Members, including the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), expressing growing concerns over what is happening to the police service. [Interruption.] Members will hear my speech. Now, there are alternative ways to make those savings—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The House well appreciates that a little bit of banter is in order, but continuing banter from a sedentary position is not in order.
Jack Dromey
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I appreciate that this is an uncomfortable message for a Government who have been oblivious to the consequences of their actions. There are alternative ways to make smart savings, and that is what we will do. We will require forces to sign up to national procurement, and that would save—
Jack Dromey
Is the Minister aware that the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners has brought forward a proposal on ICT savings alone that would save £400 million, so £100 million is a conservative estimate—please forgive the bad pun.
The Home Secretary has simply refused to go down that path and instead has promoted the view that 43 forces can be trusted to do their own thing with 43 police and crime commissioners arguing over contracts of the kind that make nonsense of any sensible approach towards procurement. That is not what we would see in the best of the private sector or, indeed, in the public sector elsewhere. The Government have failed to drive a strategic approach towards procurement, which has been heavily criticised by the National Audit Office, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and, increasingly, police officers across the country.
Let me move on to the next saving that we will make and ask the Minister a question—perhaps he will want to get up to defend this. Why should the police have to continue to subsidise gun licences? The Minister is not a member of the Chipping Norton shooting set, but perhaps he could justify to the House why it costs £50 for a gun licence and £72 for a salmon and trout licence—£22 more—when it typically costs the police £200 to process each application for a gun licence. Had the Government done the sensible thing and said that they would have full cost recovery, which is what the Association of Chief Police Officers has called for, there would have been substantial savings of £20 million, but that was vetoed by the Prime Minister who, as a fully paid-up member of the Chipping Norton shooting set, declined to do the best and most obvious thing. Would the Minister care to justify that?
Mike Penning
What is the shadow Minister trying to say to anyone who has a shotgun licence and happens to be working class, like me? I do not have a shotgun licence, but I do shoot clay occasionally at my local shooting club and I enjoy that very much. For many people who are not from an affluent set and who did not go to public school, like those on the shadow Front Bench and on the Government Front Bench, this is an important part of their social life. People do not have to be part of the Chipping Norton set to have a shotgun licence; they just need to enjoy clay shooting or something like that.
Jack Dromey
Under this Government, proposals have been made in the Home Office to move on this matter but they have been vetoed by the Prime Minister. Why should the taxpayer subsidise gun licences? Why should the police service subsidise gun licences when we need to find ways to keep police officers on the front line? Does the Minister choose to come back to me on that point?
Mike Penning
All I would say is that there is selective memory loss of 13 years of a Labour Government. Did the Labour Government do anything about this during their last term? No, they did not.
Jack Dromey
I think that the public listening to the debate will find it incredible that the Policing Minister can get up and say that despite the fact that the police have been calling for movement on this for years the police should continue to subsidise gun licences rather than that money going into our police service.
We have made a number of other proposals, such as the £9 million from driver offending retraining courses, and we have also proposed not to proceed with the police and crime commissioner elections in 2016. All those things could be done and they could be done now. If they were, those 1,000 police officers who face being cut would not go. At a time when the overall police budget is being squeezed, sensible action on four fronts, as outlined in our proposals today, would mean that the 1,000 police officers who will otherwise go will remain in the police service and on the front line. The Home Secretary could do all these things now, but she has refused. Without those policies in place, we will not support the Government’s proposal today. That is why we will vote against the Home Secretary’s plans and why we will challenge Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates throughout the country on why they are voting to cut hundreds more police officers from their local force next year.
The Government are turning their backs on neighbourhood policing. The impact on our police service is ever more serious. The Government are taking us back to the 1930s. A Labour Government would not allow this to happen. We face unprecedented challenges as crime changes—from terrorism through banking and online fraud to the emerging child abuse and exploitation cases—and we must rise to them. We want to rebuild the neighbourhood policing that helped to cut local crime and helped our citizens to remain safe. We want to rise to those new challenges, which is why we have set out sensible reforms that better protect the front line, and stand up for communities that depend on public services. The first duty of any Government is the safety and security of their citizens where they live and work. Unlike the Government, we will not fail the public we serve.
Jack Dromey
I am glad that point has been made, because all the costings for proposals by Opposition Front Benchers have been checked, including with the House of Commons Library. The simple reality is that the difference between the Government and the Opposition is that, in circumstances where sensible savings can be made which would save the 1,000 police officers under threat in 2015-16, the Government are choosing to go ahead with their proposals, irrespective of what has been said by the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) and my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane).
Mike Kane
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Savings of £136.8 million are forecast to be required by my force alone by March 2018. Savings of £71.3 million have already been identified, with the majority coming from a net reduction in police numbers by 1,054 over that period. There is a choice at this general election: people can choose that type of austerity and see crime rise on their patch or they can choose a better way.
In conclusion, I thank my police and crime commissioner, Tony Lloyd, for his hard work; the chief constable, Peter Fahy; my local officers in Wythenshawe and Sale East, and the fine network of home watch associations that I support, particularly Sale Homewatch, and Graham Roe, who helped me prepare this speech.
Mike Penning
I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), for giving me early sight of his speech. I say that a little tongue in cheek because it was written by the shadow Home Secretary and issued this morning, and the hon. Gentleman would have read it out verbatim if I had not interrupted him.
This has mostly been a sensible debate in which MPs have rightly stood up for their constituents and praised, as I did in my opening speech, the fantastic work done by police forces across England and Wales, which are the countries for which I have responsibility.
I reiterate my earlier remarks that front-line policing is a vital component, but so much work is done behind the scenes that the public do not see. The hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) intervened on me on that issue. He should visit his chief constable. [Interruption.] I know he probably has already, but he should talk to him very carefully about the work done by non-uniformed police, including CID, the counter-terrorism and serious fraud units, and clerks and officers.
Mike Penning
The shadow Minister has had plenty of time to read someone else’s speech, so I am not going to give way to him.
I know where the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood is coming from, but there is no way that I would say that front-line police are not important.
I will touch on the shadow Minister’s comments later, but it is important that I first address some of the points raised by Back Benchers, because when I come on to some of his points I am afraid I will find it very difficult to keep a straight face.
Mike Penning
No, I am not taking interventions from the shadow Minister, because he made a complete fool of himself earlier and I am not going to help him make even more of a fool of himself.
I say to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) that Dorset police do absolutely fantastic work. I think he thought that I might have said, “It all happens here,” or something like that, but that was my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), who had come in to listen to his speech. I understand that about 20,000 people go to Bournemouth on a Friday and Saturday to enjoy the night-time entertainment. That shows how diverse police work can be in Dorset, and I praise the work done there. Martyn Underhill will be on the review board, which is important.
My hon. and gallant Friend asked for a commitment until 2016-17, but that is difficult because there is going to be a review and his police and crime commissioner will be on the board. It would be wrong for me to pre-empt that review. As I said in my opening remarks, it is vital that everybody looks at the different types of policing needed, especially going into 2016-17, and at how the formula was formulated all those years ago. That will not be a tweak; we have to take a fundamental look at the changes needed.
Mike Penning
I am not going to give way at the moment. I might give way later if I make some progress, but I have been given a time limit by Madam Deputy Speaker, which is why I do not want to give way too much.
Let us not get into the semantics of the speech made by the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane): he was doing exactly what I would expect him to do in standing up for his force. It will be really interesting to see what happens when Manchester gets a mayor. It has clearly worked brilliantly in London, but we will wait to see what the Home Secretary decides. That sort of localism is very important. The PCC for Greater Manchester police does a good job, even though the shadow Minister said today—or was it the shadow Home Secretary?—that Labour wants to abolish the position.
The costings are very interesting. Several hon. Members talked about the number of police cut since the coalition came to power. Interestingly, the speech/article read out by the shadow Minister mentioned 100 new officers. The assumption is that Labour would make a saving of £100 million through procurement. I do not know where that figure comes from. There are always assumptions within procurement, but we are working very closely with forces on that; as I said earlier, it is absolutely fine for Governments to decide what should be done as long as we get it right. The shadow Minister talked about making huge savings on shotgun licences. That matter is currently under review, and an announcement will be made shortly. He said that the abolition of police and crime commissioners would save £50 million, even though I understand that Labour police and crime commissioners were told at the weekend that they were expected to be in place until at least 2017. That is another hand-brake turn following others. I am sure that Vera Baird and Paddy Tipping would love to know exactly what the policy is, because it appears to have changed since the conference.
Even on such assumptions, including that the shadow Minister is right to say that this horrible Government would cut 1,000 police next year—that is complete and utter rubbish—and Labour would put in 100 police officers, that works out at an average of 24 per constabulary. That will make a difference, but not quite the difference that some Opposition Members think the shadow Minister has announced today.
Mike Penning
I have explained why I will not give way.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) made some important comments in his very measured and sensible speech. When he talked about centralised control and such things, my mind drifted back to the regional fire control centres introduced by the previous Administration. As an ex-fireman, I have followed the issue very closely. I was absolutely fascinated by the sheer waste of taxpayers’ money caused by the disastrous policy of regionalising fire control centres. When I was the Minister with responsibility for shipping, I was very lucky to be able to add the coastguard to the centre in Gosport, which saved the coastguard a huge amount of money; however, it also cost the Department for Communities and Local Government a huge amount.
It is absolutely right to look very carefully wherever there is centralised control. That is why I have always said that forces should work together to make sure that they know exactly what is going on. Forces do not necessarily need to work with their natural partners on their boundary, because they do not have to be next to each other to do procurement, human resources or IT together, as is absolutely vital.
The key to this debate is that although we as constituency MPs quite rightly want to stand up for our forces, we must be aware that ongoing savings are required within police budgets, as the shadow Minister said. We must make sure that the review does what it says on the tin and that we have a proper review.