Policing and Crime Bill (Second sitting)

James Cleverly Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Public Bill Committees

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

Q Can any of you see an opportunity—some of these issues were brought up by our previous witnesses—in areas that are very fast moving, particularly in the digital space, for example with social media, where there is a lot of activity that I and, I suspect, many warranted police officers find bewildering? For example, could subject-specific experts be brought in to volunteer alongside warranted officers and give the additional knowledge that it would be very difficult to have permanently embedded in a force area?

David Lloyd: Exactly that. In Hertfordshire only the other week I was at an awards evening, next to a special who had been brought in specifically because of his IT skills. He has far greater IT skills than anyone in the constabulary and does that for free. He sees that as giving something back to society. It is very helpful to have, and you can dip in and out and use those skills in a specialist way, because it is no longer the case that if you sign up as a special you have to go out on the streets arresting people; you can be there and working in those specialist areas.

I disagree with Vera. Clearly, things are very different in Hertfordshire from how they are in Northumberland—and we have not lost any police officers, either. One of the reasons it is different is because we think about other ways of using people and volunteers, too, so that we get a far more effective, efficient use of local people. That is the way to do it.

David Jamieson: We have lost 2,500 officers and staff over the last six years, so we are not in the comfortable position that some areas are in. [Interruption.]

[The Chair]

I remind the Committee that this is not a debate, but an evidence-taking session.

David Jamieson: To answer Mr Cleverly’s point, there can be no substitute for officers who have the skills that we need to investigate complaints and crimes. With the chief constable, I am looking closely at how we build up that level of expertise.

[James Cleverly]

Q You expressed an opinion as a statement of fact and I want to explore that.

David Jamieson: Which fact do you mean?

[James Cleverly]

You said that there can be no substitute—

David Jamieson: First, if you have volunteers coming in to work on computers or IT, you would need those who supervise them to have at least the same knowledge as the people coming in. [Interruption.]

[The Chair]

Q I hear one question from several voices: why?

David Jamieson: I am giving a view from my perspective as a police and crime commissioner. I would be very worried if I did not have officers with sufficient capability to understand what those who were working in the force were actually doing. That applies to all levels of work, whatever sort of investigation was going on. There is a good example in forensics, where we bring in particularly scientific knowledge. Those in the force know what they are calling for and what they want out of the forensics team. Whether they have the high levels of scientific skills in those offices is a different matter. I think that you are getting to where I am. In the end, we have to have full-time, trained officers to do those jobs. Could we bring in specials and the others we have talked about with other skills, apart from those walking around the streets? Yes, of course we could. However, we have to be very careful if we are bringing people in to do highly complex work that involved cases and access to all the computer systems. We would need very close safeguards before we did that.

Vera Baird: I would jump at the chance. We have one guy—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

You are asked to confirm an opinion, or not, but carry on.

Alex Marshall: We share the opinion that bail needs to be very closely managed and that long periods of bail are bad for everyone in delivering good justice. What we have been doing is separate from the legislation: we are looking at how bail operates in local forces and what tighter management controls might make a difference. We have not had the data analysed yet. We have been finishing it in the last couple of weeks, but early indications are that around 30% of all the people who are arrested are put out on bail and in the forces we looked at—about half of those in England and Wales—70% of those who were bailed were bailed for more than 28 days. The rough number of people arrested each year in England and Wales is just under 1 million: about 950,000, down from 1.5 million a few years ago. That gives you an idea of the scale.

We then looked at the reasons why bail went beyond 28 days. They include getting professional statements from doctors and others, getting phones and computers analysed, taking detailed statements from vulnerable victims of crime, getting banking information and details, and getting forensics analysed and back to the investigation. We agree that the time limits should be closely monitored, but can see the resource implications of requiring a superintendent and others to be involved in what looks like a very high volume. The onus will rest on many people across the system to respond much more quickly to requests from the police conducting their investigation.

[James Cleverly]

Q Dame Anne, there are proposals in the Bill for super-complaints. Could I have your views on the impact that will have on public confidence in policing and the integrity of the process of policing, rather than the individuals?

Dame Anne Owers: Yes, we have noted those. The proposal is that they would come to the inspectorate of constabulary in the first instance, not to us. It will be interesting to see how that pans out. We asked for, and have been given, a power of own-initiative to be able to go into an individual investigation when we need to. We would need to see how the super-complaints work because, at the moment, between ourselves and the inspectorate of constabulary we have quite a lot of powers to go in and look at themes and issues that are arising. We are always slightly worried that a gateway will open that then leads to many things that we cannot do anything about but will be expected to. We are waiting to see what happens.

[James Cleverly]

Q Okay, fair enough. Following that up, you mentioned the interrelationship between yourself and HMIC. Are there crossovers? Could there be convergence? Could you and should you work together closely, or indeed is there a requirement for two separate organisations?

Dame Anne Owers: My view is that there is a need for two separate organisations because investigating, which is inevitably reactive and responds to an incident, is different from inspecting, which is essentially preventive and regular. There is a close connection between them and with the work that the college does. Insofar as our work reveals problems and issues and we make recommendations, there is then an opportunity for HMIC to look at whether those recommendations are more than pieces of paper when it goes round and does its police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy programme inspections. There is also an opportunity for the college to reflect on whether that should feed into authorised professional practice and standards. Between us, we ought to be able to create a virtuous circle.

Professor Dame Shirley Pearce: I think we are now working much more closely together. We have a concordat about how our executive and those at non-executive level work together. We have a system whereby the standards are set in one place—the forces—and assessed in another. It also requires us to look at and to monitor quite carefully the powers in the Bill, as we develop much further away from a system where we have a barred list of people who have been struck off, and towards having lists of people who are qualified to do the job and have licences to practise—therefore, we hold a list of people who have skills—to see how those powers are implemented. Do we actually have the right powers?

We welcome some of things in the Bill to give the college powers for individuals, but when it comes to forces delivering things consistently, we are still dependent on a rather heavy-duty code of practice which still only requires forces to have regard to it. As we implement this tripartite system more effectively, we are going to have to watch that we have all the right powers in the right place.

[James Cleverly]

Thank you.

[Amanda Milling]

Q My question is for Dame Anne on the complaints framework. Can you see the logic of a single complaints framework for both police and fire under the single employer model?

Dame Anne Owers: I think there is a problem about that. It is a problem about our specific remit and about some of the incidents that may happen in a fire situation. Our remit is over bodies exercising policing powers. It is very clear. That can extend to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, it can extend to some of the immigration functions of the Home Office and it is going to extend to gangmasters, but it about the exercise of policing powers. I think there is real difficulty in just transporting the Police Reform Act onto bodies that do not do that.

Also, under the PRA, every death or serious injury must be referred to us so that we can decide whether it needs to be investigated. I think there would be real difficulty if that provision were to be applied to anyone, for example, who died in a house fire. I do not think the two run together: we have considerable concerns about whether that complaints system is suitable for the fire service.