Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between James Cleverly and Robert Neill

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

It is appropriate that I follow the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, as I am conscious of the fact that my predecessor as Chair of the Justice Committee was present when those assurances were given. I do not doubt the good intentions of the Minister and I am prepared to cut the Government slack over the matter, but there is an important point that the right hon. Gentleman has just made: it is not purely the high profile cases that are of concern to many professionals in the criminal justice system.

The shadow Home Secretary spoke movingly and passionately about the impact of Hillsborough and other such scandals, but of equal concern to lawyers such as me—I have had 25 years in the criminal courts—is the long-term day-to-day cosiness of relationships that, I am sorry to say, develop between police officers, not necessarily at the highest level but at an operational level, and reporters. Unless something is done to deal with that, there is a risk of miscarriages of justice. However these things are done, they do not come purely on the back of headline catching; there is a more insidious culture in some ways, which can be dealt with only through very firm management by the leadership of the police service, and if that is lacking it needs to be looked at appropriately.

I accept the concern about outstanding cases, but there is no doubt that this issue is potentially important. Any practitioner at the Bar will know of any number of occasions where the local press—this is not just about the nationals—has been aware, surprisingly, that a particular person was going to be arrested or that a particular search was going to be carried out. I am afraid that that cannot happen accidentally, so there is an issue here of general concern.

Let me turn briefly to new clause 23, to which I am a signatory. Again, I accept that the Minister wants to take the issue forward, but I agree with the sentiments expressed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier). There is inevitably a reluctance among officials—I used to find that as a Minister—and senior officers to complicate regulations if they think that what they have got will do. I do not doubt that the advice the Minister has been given was given in good faith, but I say as a London MP who speaks to officers on the beat—on the frontline—in my constituency that their concerns about the inadequacy of the current provisions are genuine, and their experience perhaps does not mirror the advice the Minister may be getting from some of the top brass in the service. That advice may also not always mirror the concerns of my constituents, who go up to London to work and who are sometimes caught in these particularly unpleasant and intimidating demonstrations. My right hon. and learned Friend therefore makes an important point in his new clause.

Let me turn now to the main issue I wanted to raise, which I hinted at in my two interventions on the Minister: new clause 48 and the fire inspection regime. As I said to the Minister, who was generous in his responses to me, I welcome the change. In some ways, I wish I had been able to bring it in when I was the Minister responsible for the fire services, but the political and administrative climate was not there for it to be done, so I genuinely congratulate him on introducing it. He has more front-line experience of the fire services than I do, having actually done the job of putting fires out. My involvement with the fire services goes back to my involvement with the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) some—I hate to say it—30 years ago, when I was the leader of the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority, immediately after the abolition of the Greater London Council. I would like to say that I lied about my age to join up, but that was not quite the case. However, I have been involved with the fire services in one way or another ever since.

At the time, we had the old-school inspectorate. Then we moved to an arrangement with a chief adviser. I think we all hoped that peer review and the work of bodies such as the Chief Fire Officers Association and others would achieve improvement from within. However, the Minister is right to have concluded that that arrangement is not delivering all that we want, and the recent evidence in the Public Accounts Committee report sets that out very clearly. It is therefore right to move to the inspectorate, and I warmly support it.

The reason I have raised what seems an arcane and technical point is this. I have taken on board what the Minister has said, but I want to amplify why I think it is right. One problem with the old inspectorate was that it tended to be a bit of an old boys’ club for retired senior officers. Almost invariably, the inspectors and the assistant and acting inspectors came from a very narrow group of retired senior officers, and there was a bit of a revolving door. There were therefore real questions about the inspectorate being up to the minute in its knowledge and about the degree of independence that it would bring. An inspector can have to say pretty hard things to a chief officer and his management team, and that is not too easy if someone has come fairly recently from within the ranks of a fairly close-knit service.

That is why there should, where appropriate, be greater flexibility to bring in a contractor with expertise in the appropriate fields. That may not be for the whole of an inspection, but it could be for a specific part. The obvious example is in relation to financial matters, but this would also work in relation to things such as the assurance of operational resilience, because there is now expertise in the private sector, as well as in the public sector, that can appropriately be brought to bear.

[James Cleverly]

In the new environment where we are encouraging greater collaboration between the blue-light services, might the fire inspectorate not also want to lean on senior members of the other uniformed blue-light services to add their expertise and to support the inspectorate as part of this multi-agency working?

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is also the former chair of a London fire and emergency planning authority, and he makes an important point. All of us who have taken an interest in fire services over the years favour greater collaboration between the blue-light services, and I know that that is where the Minister wants to go. We all want a formula that will achieve that, but my concern is that the current wording of the Bill might make that harder, although I have absolutely no doubt that that is not the intention of Ministers. The reason I raise this concern is that, as it reads, proposed new subsection (A5), which will be placed in section 28 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004, does not seem to cover the use of contractors.