Policing and Crime Bill

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hoey]

I rise to support new clause 20 in particular. I declare an interest as chair of the Fire Brigades Union parliamentary group. Giving fire and rescue services a statutory responsibility for leading the emergency services in response to flooding is something on which we have had meeting after meeting over the years with Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Ministers, who have all said that they supported it, and with Ministers from different Departments. It goes so far, but then it stops. There is clearly a Treasury argument here somewhere, but I feel strongly about the matter. There has been an increase in floods over recent years, and we have seen how our fire and rescue services have responded. What is happening seems wrong when we rely on them.

Let us look at the data from last year. Thirty-four fire and rescue services provided assistance in the worst-affected areas. Data collected by the FBU, which does a good job in getting it, from individual fire and rescue services found that firefighters responded to at least 1,400 flood incidents across north-west England and 450 incidents in Yorkshire. As we saw on our television screens, with politicians lining up to thank them and say how brave they had been and how wonderful they were, firefighters rescued people from a wide range of hazardous situations, evacuating people in advance of coming floods and making various other emergency interventions. It seems strange that we give our firefighters great praise for doing something that we and local people automatically expect them to do, yet we do not make their leading of the emergency services a statutory responsibility. I can only assume that the Government do not want to spend what might be some extra resources on ensuring that firemen and firewomen and all the rescue services are properly equipped.

We have seen terrible examples of when firemen and women have not had the right safety or protective equipment and have had to do things without the correct clothing, with things running out in some areas. They still did those things, but that is wrong and I genuinely do not understand the situation. I am sure that the Minister supported the proposal at one time. Many Ministers have supported it, but when they get into a position in which they actually have to make the decision or are allowed to get involved in it, they seem to change their mind. I hope the Minister will respond to that and that we will get the opportunity to support the change in a vote today.

I now turn briefly to the other issues. I share the position of the shadow Front-Bench team on police and crime commissioners. There is no public appetite for change. Wherever I have been around the country, no one has been clamouring for reform of how we govern our fire services or for any responsibility to be transferred to PCCs. I have not heard any evidence today—we may hear it from the Minister, but I doubt it—that there is a problem with the current governance arrangements. No one has convinced me that the change would deliver an emergency service that is more economic, efficient and effective or would help to improve public safety. We all want co-ordination, and I welcome that co-operation and co-ordination have gone further in some parts of the country than in others. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) said from the Front Bench, we want to see more of that, but we do not need to bring it in this top-down, totally anti-democratic way.

I am not at all ashamed to say that I believe that firefighters and police officers perform different roles. That does not mean that we do not value equally the roles of both, but they perform different roles and have different remits. A police officer is seen as a legal person and someone who is there to uphold the law. A fireman or firewoman, or anyone involved in the rescue services, is seen very differently. Having a single employer will begin to confuse that in the public mind. The preventive work that firefighters do and the way that they are trusted, implicitly and completely, by the public could well be jeopardised if the changes go through.

The Bill and this change would do nothing at all to invest in fire and rescue services’ resources. I have already mentioned the work that goes into responding to large-scale flooding incidents and providing emergency medical response. The Government should focus on putting extra resources into initiatives that will actually lead to the changes and to co-ordination.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree that this is frankly more about saving money than improving the service. She probably noticed that the burden has been shifted on to local authorities, with the 2% increase. Eventually, the entire burden for fire and police will be shifted on to local authorities. Then we will have a situation of profligate spending—we have been here before—and local authorities will get capped.

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[James Cleverly]

London’s exceptionalism is often held up as the reason why things that happen in London cannot possibly happen elsewhere. I have to say that, having served in office both in London and in Essex, I do not subscribe to that view. There are many things that national Government can learn from what a Conservative administration has done in London. I will go even further and say that London could learn plenty of things from other parts of the country, including from my wonderful county of Essex.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

The hon. Gentleman is making some interesting arguments, but the problem that we have in the west midlands—if we leave the Mayor and his authority to one side—is the frequency of change in the local superintendents. They change and the public do not really get to know them. In the past, before the Layfield report and the major reorganisations of the 1970s, people were able to identify who was in charge of the local police force and knew exactly who to go to. That is the problem that we have in the west midlands.

[James Cleverly]

That is a fair point. I have had a number of people talk to me about the speed with which police officers move through posts, so I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman.

Let me drag myself kicking and screaming back to the point that I was trying to make, because I have inadvertently found myself speaking more about policing than about fire and rescue services. I think it is legitimate, because what we have seen in London is a very clear line of accountability. Londoners may not be able to identify their nearest—I do not use the word “local” here—fire authority member. The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) mentioned the local councillor on Newham council who has responsibility for fire and safety, but that councillor does not sit on the London fire authority. In fact, the reason I asked her specific questions is that I know who sits on the London fire authority—I am probably one of the few people in this Chamber or elsewhere who does—and I know that no one from the London borough of Newham, either elected or appointed, is on that authority. When the people of Newham want to cast judgment on the delivery of fire services in that borough, the only person they can either reward or punish at the ballot box is the Mayor of London, who, we should remind ourselves, is also the police and crime commissioner for London.

I want to address the hon. Lady’s point about the fire service being starved of resources so that we can support what she feels is the higher-profile policing service. After the changes that the London fire authority made, the Mayor of London, who is the budget holder for both the police and fire authorities, made a commitment to protect the London fire budget irrespective of the budgetary award from central Government. He was able to do so, because he could flex his budgets over the two areas. Far from starving resources from fire and rescue to give to policing, he was able to protect fire and rescue by dipping into his broader budget. Therefore, I fundamentally disagree with this idea that a police and crime commissioner who has responsibility for both policing and fire services would automatically and obviously rob Peter to pay Paul. That view is reinforced by the fact—the Minister has stated this from the Dispatch Box on a number of occasions—that the budget lines are separate.

Before I conclude, I will touch on the concerns that were raised by the shadow Front-Bench team about the single employer model. There are many instances where the employer has very different types of employee in terms of public sector delivery. No one confuses civil servants at the Ministry of Defence with members of the Special Air Service. Ultimately, both are employed by the same organisation; there is no confusion in the minds of the public there. Indeed, in the fire and rescue service and the police force, we have both uniformed and non-uniformed members of staff. The police service has warranted officers, police community support officers and non-uniformed civilian staff, and they are all under the same employer and there is no public confusion about the different roles. The idea that, somehow, the British public are too dim-witted, or too slow on the uptake, to be able to tell the difference between a copper and a firefighter is an argument that is so bereft of power that it should be disregarded.

The British people deserve to know who to punish or to reward at the ballot box in relation to fire and rescue, because, like policing, it is a vital public service. I have no doubt that, next week, we will see a much greater engagement and turnout in the police and crime commissioner elections than we have seen previously because people now understand in more detail what they are voting for. They have seen where the police and crime commissioners have done well, as highlighted in Cheshire by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), and where they have done less well, and the PCCs will be held to account at the ballot box. When it comes to the delivery of fire and rescue provision, the British people deserve just as much a say as they do on policing, so I am happy to support the Government’s position, and I call on the House to reject the new clause put forward in the name of the shadow Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jake Berry]

My hon. Friend makes my point very clearly. People should try to prevent flooding or loss of life only when it is safe for them to do so and when they believe that they have the capacity to deal with the situation—for example, members of the armed forces or police officers, who are extremely brave, or the Environment Agency or the water board. The clause would put an unnecessary straitjacket on the response to floods in Lancashire. Although I support much of what it seeks to achieve, putting that in primary legislation is probably a step too far.

As an update, I can tell the House that the people of Rossendale are well served. We have the impending visit of the Minister with responsibility for floods, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who is coming to Irwell Vale on 13 May. I do not think he knows what is going to greet him. I will make sure that there is an angry mob to talk to him about the response of the Environment Agency, but no one should tell him that. I hope it can remain our secret. I hope that in future the Environment Agency may be in a position to take a lead in the Rossendale valley, looking at a full catchment solution.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

The hon. Gentleman mentions the Minister with responsibility for floods. In the 1970s we had a Minister with responsibility for drought. He was expected to bring the rain when necessary.

[Jake Berry]

There is no drought in Lancashire, but if the hon. Gentleman wants me to come to Coventry to do the rain dance, I am more than happy to do so if it is required.

Amendment 2, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling), has been signed by right hon. and hon. Members across the House. Having been involved in the Bill since Second Reading, it is clear to me and probably to everyone who has spoken on the Bill or served on the Committee that the recognition accorded to police and crime commissioners is at an all-time high. We first went to the polls on a wet November evening in my constituency to elect a police and crime commissioner. When I went knocking on people’s doors saying, “This is an important national election. You must come out and vote”, I was met with blank faces. People did not know what the office had been created for and they did not understand what police and crime commissioners would do.

Everyone who heard the evidence session on the Bill, with some excellent contributions from police and crime commissioners all over the country, would say that that has now changed. I may fundamentally disagree with much of the evidence given by Vera Baird to the Committee, but I have heard of her. I listen to Radio 4 in the morning and I often hear her, usually beating up the Government. She is raising the profile of police and crime commissioners, as are police and crime commissioners across the country.

The general public like the idea of having one individual whom they can hold accountable for the performance of their local police service. The old police panel was remote. It was appointed and was therefore unaccountable. I compare that to the situation today with my local PCC. He has taken road shows all around Lancashire, going out there and talking to people about what they would like policing priorities to be over the next four years. I am slightly sceptical about his new-found fondness for going out and meeting the public. It seems like a last-ditch attempt to be re-elected. I hope that Andy Pratt, the Conservative candidate, who has 30 years’ service as a police officer, will win in Lancashire so that, like many other areas of the country, including Cheshire and Staffordshire, we can have our PCC all year round, not just every four years at elections.