Policing and Crime Bill

Jake Berry Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. When an incident takes place, the three emergency services will often be called and will have to work together. That is why the Government did a great deal of work under JESIP, the joint emergency services interoperability programme, to look at improving how the three services work together—the protocols, the language that is used and the command structures that can be put in place—so that, as my hon. Friend says, they also work together on their emergency response.

The national picture remains patchy. Collaboration should be the rule, not the exception. That is why, as I have said, part 1 of the Bill places an overarching duty on the three emergency services to collaborate. It will help to drive close working across the country when that would improve efficiency or effectiveness. In the case of police forces and fire and rescue services in particular, I believe that there is a compelling case for taking such collaboration agreements a step further. To facilitate enhanced collaboration and strengthen democratic oversight, part 1 provides a framework for police and crime commissioners to take responsibility for delivering foreign rescue services by local agreement.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend would accept that one of the most challenging parts of our country in which to deliver police services is, of course, Northern Ireland. I am sure that she is aware of the fantastic steps that have been taken in Northern Ireland to share training for the police and the fire authority and the huge savings that that has delivered. Could we not learn something in this House from Northern Ireland’s contribution to training?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Of course, we must recognise that there are particular policing challenges for the Police Service of Northern Ireland, but it is right that the police and the fire and rescue service train together there, and that is a very good example.

To return to the intervention made by my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) about the emergency services coming together to deal with the flooding in Somerset, training together can help that emergency collaboration when an incident takes place. Over the past three and a half years PCCs have proved the value of having a single democratically elected figure by providing visible leadership, proper local accountability and real local scrutiny of how chief constables and their forces perform while driving reform and innovation and finding efficiencies to ensure value for money for the taxpayer. In nine weeks’ time, voters up and down the country will be able to hold PCCs to account for their performance and judge new candidates on their proposals in the most powerful way possible, through the ballot box. I believe that it is now time to extend the benefits of the PCC model of governance to the fire service when it would be in the interests of economy, efficiency and effectiveness, or public safety to do so.

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[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend makes precisely the point I was coming on to make. Whatever Ministers claim, 36 of the 43 police forces face cash cuts in the coming year, while all of them face real-terms cuts. As he has said, West Midlands police will lose £10 million in real terms—the precept does not cover that—and my own Greater Manchester police will lose £8 million. At the same time, he needs to consider the cuts to fire services, because West Midlands fire service will have a cut of 45% in its budget over the decade. In effect, the budget will halve, and the same is also true for Greater Manchester. [Interruption.] It is true. Ministers seem not to know that fire services are being cut in half. I put it to the Home Secretary and her police and fire services Minister that that prompts this question: can they be sure that their cuts to police and fire services are not exposing our big cities to unacceptable levels of risk? What assessment have they made of their capability to deal with a major incident or a Paris-style attack? Experts in the fire and rescue service would argue that their cuts have already gone too far.

[Jake Berry]

Surely the question that really prompts is: why does crime continue to come down? Why does the right hon. Gentleman believe it is coming down?

[Andy Burnham]

I do not think that the hon. Gentleman can have been paying attention. We have just had an exchange in which the Home Secretary acknowledged that online crime is about to be added to the crime figures. As he may know from his constituency postbag, crime has changed in recent years. We have seen reductions in traditional volume crime—burglary, car crime—and crime has moved online. When Ministers stand at the Dispatch Box and complacently say that crime has fallen, I am afraid that they are not representing the real picture. The real picture will look very different when the figures are published in a couple of months’ time.

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[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity, relatively quickly, to speak again in a debate about policing. It shows how important we in this House consider policing to be that we have a good attendance today, with so many colleagues from across the House, on a cross-party basis, welcoming this wide-ranging Bill, which is evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and which moves policing on in our country.

Some of us who stand up in this place to talk about policing have direct experience of it, but for the majority of us, our most direct experience—apart from family connections, which I have—is of our local force. I put on record my thanks to the Lancashire constabulary, which does a fantastic job. It has had some tough funding settlements over the past five years, but has nevertheless continued to prioritise fighting crime on the frontline. Crime has continued to come down on the streets of Lancashire, which I welcome. The shadow Home Secretary and I had a lively debate earlier about whether crime is in fact coming down, but we have to acknowledge that while the face of crime is changing and online crime forms a larger part of the crimes committed today, we can only use the measure that we have now. We will all watch with interest what happens to crime numbers when online crime is included.

It would be churlish to say that police funding has not been under pressure—as I said, we have felt that pressure in Lancashire, as it has been felt throughout the country. However, I welcome the commitment of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to protect police funding in real terms in this spending review period, with the proviso that police and crime commissioners across the country will increase the precept. Lancashire’s PCC has a bit of form on this, because he has increased it in every single year when he has had the opportunity, and I do not doubt that he will do so again. It is important that we protect police funding in real terms, because police forces face a big challenge in keeping us safe.

I particularly support the changes in the Bill in relation to police volunteers and police community support officers, who are now such an important part of policing. When they were first introduced, they were referred to as “Blunkett’s bobbies” and were not hugely popular. I remember speaking to people in the police force who said, “Having these PCSOs is undermining policing.” However, only this week I was driving along Grane road, between Rossendale and Darwen, and there was a major road traffic accident at which the first person on the scene was a PCSO, who was doing a fantastic job of directing traffic. PCSOs are a really important part of policing both nationally and in my constituency.

Clause 28 extends chief officers’ powers to use PCSOs and police volunteers more effectively. I particularly support giving PCSOs additional duties and extended powers. Given that policing is changing, as we have all acknowledged, it is right that we give chief officers the freedom to utilise fully all the resources that they have available. I echo the comments of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) about having an open mind to the use of police volunteers. As we have heard, one person who volunteers as a computer programmer might be able to do as much to tackle cybercrime as 1,000 police officers. Clause 28 and other measures that cover the role of PCSOs show how policing has changed. We have moved on from the days when Blunkett’s bobbies were slightly unpopular and viewed with suspicion by other officers. PCSOs are now valued not only by the communities they serve, but by fellow officers, chief officers and civilian staff in the police force.

PCSOs are important in the provision of community policing. In our previous debate about policing, Members on both sides of the House said that the first thing to go when police forces come under pressure—I do not recognise this in Lancashire, however—is the community police who talk at events and meet young people. PCSOs and police volunteers can fulfil that role.

Clause 29 gives the College of Policing a greater role in designating the training of police volunteers, which will ensure that, even though someone is a volunteer, they will be trained to a rigorous high standard similarly to their colleagues. As more volunteers carry out roles on the street that might traditionally have been fulfilled by warranted officers, members of the public will expect them to have received high-quality training so that we have a good experience when we interact with them. That is important, so I hugely support clause 29.

Clause 30, which is also part of the short set of provisions in the Bill relating to PCSOs and police volunteers, extends the police complaints system to cover police volunteers, which will ensure that there is fairness and consistency when people complain about the police. We the public demand that high standards of discipline are maintained whether we are dealing with a PCSO, a police volunteer or a warranted officer.

The Home Secretary said that 16,000 special constables —specials—currently serve shoulder to shoulder with police officers. Any Member who interacts with a special constable will probably not realise that that is what they are, because they look like every other type of police officer. They are warranted officers who work shoulder to shoulder, as volunteers, with paid police officers. One of the great benefits of special constables is that they are drawn from all walks of life. They represent policing by the people, for the people.

The Met has done some fantastic work in supporting specials in London. It gives them a council tax reduction and travel concessions are available. Other forces throughout the country also provide such perks, for want of a better word, and I hope that they will continue to do so.

While many of us can stand here and say that special constables do fantastic work, the case of Andrew Blades, one of my constituents, gives us a cautionary tale. He volunteered as a special constable for 2,500 hours over six years, but at the end of that period, he lost his job. He might also lose his home and he is going to lose his future career. In the course of his work as a special constable, he did what I think was a tremendously brave thing: he moved an unmarked police car, which he had the authority to drive, across the street to block the path of a scrambler motorcycle, which was uninsured, had no MOT and was non-road legal, in order to stop the crime of that motorcycle terrorising the community and to protect a fellow officer. The thanks he received was a prosecution for dangerous driving. The Policing Minister helped at the time and we put Mr Blades in touch with the special constables’ legal advice service but, frankly, I do not think he received adequate advice. He chose to plead guilty, so he now has a conviction for dangerous driving, meaning that he is unable to continue his business as a driving instructor.

Things could have been different if, as a special constable, Mr Blades had had the protection of the Police Federation, which is the subject of clauses 37 and 38. I support the extension of the Freedom of Information Act to cover the Police Federation and the way in which the Bill will make it more transparent and open to its members. However, the Bill misses the opportunity to extend the protection provided by the Police Federation to cover special constables. Before the debate, I spoke to Police Federation representatives. They are in advanced talks with the Home Office about whether room can be found in the legislative programme to pass primary legislation that would enable the federation to protect special constables, but I hope that there will be an opportunity in Committee, on Report or in the other place to make the changes required through the Bill.

That point is particularly important because the Police Federation for many years regarded special constables with some suspicion. In fact, it took the view some years ago that the role of a special constable undermined both the federation’s role and that of the warranted officers with whom specials stand policing our streets. At the Police Federation’s 2014 conference, however, its members unanimously passed a resolution calling for protection to be extended to cover specials. That should not surprise us, because day after day they stand shoulder to shoulder with paid, warranted officers, working the same beats, hours and shifts, to protect the public and keep us safe. I hope that the Minister will look at this missed opportunity and work with the Police Federation to address it.

When that legislative opportunity arises, the Government should also look at Police Federation subs for special constables. I have mentioned the Met’s superb work in providing a council tax reduction for specials. Police Federation subs are not insignificant and a volunteer special constable might query whether they should pay about £30 a month for the privilege of being a member. When we make the legislative change that I set out, I hope that we will be able to find the money—from central Government funds, rather than from those of individual forces—to pay the subs of special constables on their behalf.

The shadow Home Secretary made a good point about when officers choose to retire. There was previously clearly a loophole whereby officers could avoid an investigation by retiring or resigning from their post. As someone who was born and brought up in Liverpool, I, like the shadow Home Secretary, was well aware of the allegations relating to Hillsborough and the ongoing investigations into them. A 12-month arbitrary cap on the period for which officers can be pursued is probably not correct, so I hope that we will be able to look at that again. The situation could be treated similarly to the statute of limitations in tort law, whereby the limitation starts to run only from the date on which the tort—the wrong, in this case—is known about. That would be a reasonable adjustment for the Government to make, because there was clearly a police cover-up regarding Hillsborough and the extent to which serving police officers might have been implicated could not have been known within 12 months of the incident. The Government have an opportunity to look at that, so I hope that we will be able to explore it further as the Bill goes through the House.

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[Jake Berry]

On this specific issue, does my hon. Friend think it is worth exploring extending the slightly arbitrary 12-month period after retirement during which someone can be pursued? Should the fact that someone has been retired for 12 months mean that they can escape punishment?

[James Berry]

On this issue, the Berrys are ad idem.

My second point relates to developing the role of police and crime commissioners. I entirely agree that PCCs should have a greater role in the complaints system. That will add a level of independence to it, and they, rather than the chief constable under whom the officer complained about serves, will become the appellate body with respect to complaints. They will also have the power to deal with local resolution. I personally would have gone further by introducing a power of recall for PCCs, but perhaps that is a matter for another day.

My third point relates to encouraging collaboration between blue light services. This is probably the most far-reaching aspect of the Bill. I ask the House to consider what would happen, knowing the cost of public services and of the estate and knowing the amount of co-working that blue light services do, if we were to step back and start from scratch. I suggest that for reasons of efficiency and effectiveness we would choose to have shared premises, shared control rooms, shared back-office staff, shared first responder services for incidents such as crashes and explosions, and shared local accountability. There is a strong case to be made for that to be the direction of travel for blue light services across the UK.

However, the Bill does not mandate collaboration. It introduces a duty on the police and the fire service to consider, and keep under consideration, whether blue light collaboration would increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the services. So this is not collaboration for the sake of it; it would involve collaboration where efficiency and effectiveness would be improved. I believe that that is what local residents and taxpayers would demand of their blue light services. Nor is the Bill prescriptive about how collaboration should take place. It can be done to suit local needs.

My fourth point relates to giving the police the tools they need to do their job. This is very much how the House should approach legislation relating to the police, with officers on the ground telling us what powers and resources they need to tackle the changing nature of crime. When they tell us that legislation passed by this House is not working in the way that we intended, we should do all we can to put that right. In Kingston, which is covered by my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), we have done just that by encouraging the council to purchase extra police officers to police the town centre as a result of problems created by the night-time economy. Also, the local council and the local police force have set up a Korean information centre with a specific police and community support officer employed to help the Korean community with the issues that it is facing.

The House has responded in a similar way in the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, which bans the supply of psychoactive substances and their possession in prison, and in the Investigatory Powers Bill, which will ensure that the police’s current powers are brought up to date to deal with the challenges that we face from the new technologies that criminals are using. In this Bill, Parliament will provide powers of entry and arrest to deal with suspects who have breached bail, and there will be new provisions with respect to sexual offences relating to live streaming on the internet. There will also be provisions on the use of decommissioned and antique firearms, and a new offence of being in possession of the tools to convert an imitation firearm. All these powers are important for the police in their day-to-day fight against crime.

The Bill contains a smorgasbord of provisions, all of which will improve policing on a day-to-day basis and complete the job of police reform on which this Home Secretary and her team have worked so hard for the past five years. I do not have time to touch on the important provisions on the treatment of 16 and 17-year-olds in custody, on the reduction of pre-charge bail, and on the reduction of the use of police cells for people detained for reasons connected to their mental health. None the less, I welcome this Bill because it enhances the transparency of the complaints system, it puts together a framework for bottom-up collaboration between our blue light services, and it provides very important updates on the police’s powers. For those reasons, this Bill is worthy of the support of the whole House.