West Midlands Police (Funding)

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be called to participate in my first Westminster Hall debate under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I join my right hon. and hon. Friends in congratulating the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) on securing the debate on this extremely important topic. As the son of a west midlands police officer, who served for nearly 30 years in West Midlands police and before that in the Birmingham force, through the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and mid-’90s, this issue is important to me personally. The future of West Midlands police is obviously dear to me, as well as vital to my constituents.

I appreciate that time is short, and I will try to keep my remarks brief and avoid repeating things that have already been said better by my right hon. and hon. Friends. As has been said, we have seen crime levels fall by 17% in the west midlands over the last few years. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield that the crime has changed, but I do not accept his assertion that crime levels have not fallen. The evidence is that, however crime is measured, the trend generally points in the same direction. If anything, the scale of the fall, on other measures, is greater than 17%.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is absolutely not the case with crimes such as domestic and sexual violence?

[Mike Wood]

Sorry, but whether we take our crime figures from the police or the victims of crime surveys, the general trend in the west midlands and nationally is down. Of course, some sections of crime—the hon. Lady is right to identify domestic violence as an issue—have had a large impact on recent crime figures. Domestic violence is, of course, an important issue, which West Midlands police has to address; and it is, in fact, working hard to do that.

The work being done to reduce crime across the west midlands has come at a time when the Government have had to take extremely difficult decisions, and they will continue to do so. That is despite the scare stories we have had since day one, when we were told that decisions that have now been taken would inevitably lead to apocalyptic outcomes, but that is not what we have seen. Of course, we all want the best funding settlement for West Midlands police, but we should be careful about accepting at face value some of the more apocalyptic predictions.

As I said, West Midlands police has achieved significant reductions with reduced budgets. We are fortunate to have a police force that is innovating and that has shown that it is, where appropriate, prepared to work with the private sector to deliver the police service we need. Its success in that field has been recognised as outstanding by HMIC.

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[Mike Wood]

My constituents have certainly come to me with concerns about how West Midlands police is using, or intends to use, those reserves to make sure that the best possible service is provided. Yes, people were surprised—

[Jess Phillips]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Wood]

If I could just finish a sentence, I will give way.

People are surprised at the use of £33 million to refurbish Lloyd house. I understand that there were some contractual obligations, but the situation is obviously not sustainable. Tying up so much of the force’s resources in a prime property in Birmingham city centre is not delivering the police service we need.

[Jess Phillips]

I agree, as I am sure everybody here does, that we must spend our resources wisely, so does the hon. Gentleman feel that the £4 million spent as part of a flawed policy on an exceptionally flawed by-election, which was badly managed by the Home Office, was a good use of spending?

[Mike Wood]

I campaigned in last year’s by-election. Obviously I was not happy with it being in August or with the result, but we have to move past both those factors.

The current police allocation formula is clearly outdated and in desperate need of reform. I will respond to the Home Office consultation as soon as I work out what some of the questions refer to.

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[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

This is my first go at contributing to a debate in Westminster Hall, Mr Crausby. I did not know where the Chamber was—luckily one of my colleagues from Coventry was coming here—but I do know an awful lot about policing in the west midlands. There is not a single MP here in whose constituency I have not worked with the police teams. In fact, I welcomed the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) into a women’s refuge in my area some years ago, and had a cup of tea with him and Francis Maude. I have also—I am sure that the Minister is not aware of this—acted for the past five years as an adviser to the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice on international human trafficking and police resources for domestic and sexual violence.

I know what I am talking about when it comes to police funding, and what should be central or local. There is definitely a need for both to play their part. There is a huge array of different funding models for preventing crime in the west midlands. My experience has largely been that those that are protected, part-funded—for want of a better word—and encouraged by central Government always work best.

I want to give some apocalyptic examples of exceptionally bad husbandry. The bad husbands that I will talk about are people who abuse their wives. I have worked on every Birmingham MARAC. Not everyone will know that acronym; it stands for multi-agency risk assessment conference. MARACs deal with people at imminent risk of death from domestic violence—the most high-risk victims, who have been put through unimaginable terrors. In Birmingham, we have had four MARACs. For 10 years, they were chaired by serving police officers; then it changed to police personnel chairing the meetings. The administration and co-ordination of all those meetings, at which all the cases were heard and we decided together what to do about them, was managed by police staff. Police people put together the minutes, gave everyone their actions and chased people who were to come back to the meeting once they had taken action; they would ask, “Probation, what have you done about the offender? Housing, have you got a house for this woman and her children?”

Until about 18 months ago, it was the police who held that together. Then the police did not do it any more. The three MARACs that now exist in Birmingham do not have an administrator or a co-ordinator. We go along to the meetings and talk about stuff, and action points are taken away, but stuff falls through the cracks. That stuff is what you—[Interruption.] Sorry, Mr Crausby, not you. That stuff is what the Home Office will receive when it has its domestic homicide reviews. It will say that the system is broken and that we cannot communicate with each other any more, because we had resources—once it was police officers, and then, one step down, police personnel—but now we do not have any.

This might sound apocalyptic, but that situation will mean that people die. It will mean that we fail in our duty to keep people safe. That is what police cuts mean. Yes, we all feel that crime is going down, and that good husbandry and efficiency in management has really helped, but I am seeing that it has not. Members will never see inside the MARAC room. No one from a newspaper will ever say, “Gosh, there’s no MARAC co-ordinator—MARAC co-ordinator scandal!”, but in the real world, where people are working on the frontline in every single one of your constituencies—sorry, Mr Crausby—that is what is happening. It is bad.

There is a difference between crime figures and safety. The public protection unit of West Midlands police is one of the greatest police units. West Midlands police have done an awful lot to clear the decks and try to recognise that child sexual exploitation, human trafficking, sexual violence and rape have to be dealt with. The force has put huge effort, care and love into that, but the report from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary still says that the response is not good enough for the people in my constituency and across the west midlands. That is not the fault of the police. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) said, if we were where we were 20 years ago, things would look very different; on domestic and sexual violence, on gang violence and on working with our communities, we have come really far, and there is a reason for that: we were able to do the work.

I have seen how a really good multi-agency, multi-partnership community response has gone because of cuts to policing. I can do no more than urge the Minister to hear me when I say that the papers will be coming across the Home Office’s desk, but unfortunately they will be about the deceased.