Policing and Crime

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I should like to start by congratulating Her Majesty’s Opposition on securing this Opposition day debate on such an important topic. I am particularly pleased about it, as it gives me an opportunity to talk about the good news story for policing and tackling crime in Scotland. We often hear the allegation from the Government Benches that there are major problems with domestic policy in Scotland, but when we examine the evidence, we see that that is not the case. I am happy to say that, on policing and fighting violent crime, Scotland under a Scottish National party Government has a good news story to tell. The glib and misleading comments that we hear from the new Prime Minister about failures in domestic policy cannot be brought home in relation to issues of policing and violent crime. I am particularly pleased to have this opportunity to talk about how we have increased police numbers in Scotland under an SNP Government and successfully tackled the terrible scourge of knife crime, which I know from my previous role as a prosecutor in Scotland’s highest courts was a terrible scourge in Scottish society. While it has not by any means gone from the streets of Glasgow and the rest of Scotland, knife crime is being successfully tackled there in a way that could never previously have been imagined.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I hope that my hon. and learned Friend will join me in welcoming the report of the Commission on Justice in Wales, which was commissioned by the Welsh Labour Government. It draws attention to the fact that there is a jagged edge in relation to devolution in Wales, where criminal justice is reserved despite the fact that many of the services that underpin it are devolved. We do not get policing funded per head of population as we would under the Barnett formula. I tried to intervene on the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) earlier, because I was sure that she would agree with the Welsh Labour Government on this. Does my hon. and learned Friend believe that criminal justice and policing per se need to be devolved to Wales as a matter of urgency, just as they have been so effectively in Scotland?

[Joanna Cherry]

I wholly agree with that. Matters such as criminal justice, policing and tackling violent crime are best fought as close to home as possible by people who understand the communities in which these issues occur. As I have said, Scotland has a good news story to tell about fighting violent crime and about policing numbers, and I am sure that if the wishes of Plaid Cymru and the Labour party, who I believe considerably outnumber Conservative MPs in Wales, were listened to, Wales could benefit in a similar way.

I stress that there is no room for complacency in Scotland, and my colleagues at Holyrood continually strive to improve matters, but I think that Scotland’s successes are something from which the UK Government could learn. I therefore hope that Ministers will listen to this carefully, because what I am going to say is based on evidence, rather than flung-about allegations about policy failures. In Scotland, crime is down to historically low levels. Recorded crime has fallen by 41% since 2006-07 and non-sexual violent crime is down by 43% since 2006-07. Cases of homicide have fallen by 25% in the past 10 years, and the Scottish crime and justice survey shows a 46% fall between 2008-09 and 2017-18 in violent incidents experienced by adults in Scotland.

It is well known that Scotland moved in recent years from having eight regional police forces to a single police force, and it is worth bearing in mind that that was a bit of a no-brainer. Scotland’s population is only 5.5 million, which seems a sensible number to be policed by one force. In the days when I was prosecuting, having multiple different practices across the regions of Scotland caused problems. The benefit of a unified police force in Scotland is that we have been able to improve best practice across the force, but do not just take my word for that. Let us hear what Rape Crisis Scotland has to say about the single police force in Scotland:

“The move to a single police force has transformed the way rape and other sexual crimes are investigated in Scotland. It has allowed far greater consistency of approach, including to the training of police officers and to the use of specialist officers.”

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I acknowledge what the hon. and learned Member says in relation to Rape Crisis and serious crime and in relation to Police Scotland, but does she acknowledge that moving to a single police force in Scotland has taken away the third leg of the stool in terms of local accountability, meaning that the police force is now a much more politicised institution than it was prior to unification?

[Joanna Cherry]

With all due respect to the hon. Lady, whom I congratulate on her recent election victory, I cannot agree with that. It is a political point that the Liberal Democrats repeatedly try to make in the Scottish Parliament, but it is not borne out by experience.

Police officer numbers are up by 1,000 in Scotland despite significant cuts to Scotland’s budget from Westminster. As of 30 September 2019, the total police officers were up 1,022 on 2007 figures. Scotland has more officers per head of population than in England and Wales. The ratio in Scotland is 32 officers per 10,000 members of the population versus 21 officers per 10,000 members of the population in England and Wales. I suggest that the sort of ratio we have in Scotland is something that England and Wales should be aiming for. The present Government’s proposal to increase police numbers simply reverses a position that they enforced at an earlier stage, so it is a bit rich for them to expect to be congratulated on reversing their own policy failures.

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. and learned Lady would not want to mislead the House—I will not put as it as strongly as that—but while she refers to the 2007 figures, the numbers that I have suggest that the number at quarter 4 2019 was actually below that in 2009, so she is neatly avoiding the high point in her maths, illustrating the fact that police officer numbers in Scotland have been broadly flat for a decade.

[Joanna Cherry]

I do not accept that, and I return to the statistic I quoted: police officers stood at 17,256 in Scotland at 30 September 2019, which is up by 1,022 on the total inherited by the SNP Government when Alex Salmond first brought the SNP to power in Scotland in 2007. That is a fact. Of course, there have been fluctuations in the meantime, but there is a significant—[Hon. Members: “Aha!”] No, that is a fact. If the Minister thinks that I am misleading the House on the stats, I challenge him to make a point of order and to bring stats that contradict mine. I can tell the Minister that this is not just about the Scottish National party, because people across Scotland working in the health service, the police and in other areas of Scottish public services are sick to death of glib comments from this misinformed Conservative Government —misinformed by the six Tory MPs that they are left with in Scotland.

[Kit Malthouse]

rose—

[Joanna Cherry]

I will not give way. The Minister has had time, and I saw Mr Speaker urging him to bring his speech to a close, so I will use my time to look at the facts. As we say in Scotland, facts are chiels that winna ding which, translated into English, basically means that evidence-based policy making is best.

Despite successive Tory Governments reducing the Scottish Government’s resource budget by £1.5 billion— 5% in real terms—since 2010, police budgets in Scotland are protected, and police officers in Scotland are getting the biggest pay rise in the United Kingdom. The police budget in Scotland is up by more than £80 million since 2016-17, and that includes a £42.3 million increase in funding for this year alone. Police officers in Scotland are receiving a pay rise of 6.5% over 31 months, compared with just 2% for 2018-19 for officers in England and Wales. As a result—[Interruption.] I am going to continue my speech despite the heckling from those on the Government Front Bench. I know it is deeply uncomfortable for the Tories to hear the facts as opposed to— [Interruption.] These are the facts.

One of the main issues facing Scotland was that, unlike other police forces in the United Kingdom, Police Scotland was being charged VAT. As a result of increased pressure from me and my learned friends, we won back VAT worth around £25 million a year. However, the United Kingdom has yet to refund the £125 million of VAT paid by Police Scotland between 2013 and 2018. I hope that the Government will look at that carefully—[Interruption.] If I may make some progress over the heckling, I point out—[Interruption.] Well, I realise that it is deeply uncomfortable to hear the facts as opposed to the misinformation that this Government like to put forth.

The Prime Minister was asked a series of questions at PMQs about the reality on the ground in Scotland as a result of the impending withdrawal of freedom of movement, but it was interesting that he was unable to deal with them in any meaningful way because he is not across the detail. I assure the Government that I and my colleagues up the road in Edinburgh are across the detail, and they do not have to take just my word for it.

As I said earlier, Scotland had a woeful problem with knife crime. To our shame, Glasgow was for a while the murder capital of the world, but that is no longer the case. We introduced a public health approach to tackling knife crime—an approach advocated by the World Health Organisation—and it has worked well in Scotland to reduce the incidence of knife crime. I am absolutely delighted that so many representatives from this great city of London—the Metropolitan Police, the Mayor and, indeed, members of the Government—have visited Scotland to look at the public health approach to tackling violence. It really has brought amazing results in Scotland, and it is clearly effective when we see that violent crime in Scotland has decreased by 49% over the past decade, and that crimes of handling an offensive weapon have decreased by 64% over the past 10 years.

There is still a long way to go in fighting violent crime in Scotland, but the importance of the public health approach has been that it has recognised that the issue is complex. Were there to be any doubt about Scotland’s success in fighting crime, let me quote what the Conservative and Unionist party’s crime spokesperson said in Holyrood recently:

“It is important to acknowledge that Scotland has turned its record on violence around.”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 20 September 2018; c. 61.]

That turning around of Scotland’s record on violence has happened under the much-maligned SNP Government, who have a great success story to tell in this area.

Let us have credit where credit is due—not for the sake of it, but because facts matter. In the area of policing and knife crime, we must take an evidence-based approach. The success of the Scottish National party’s Government offers lessons from which this Government could learn, and that could benefit the people of England and Wales if the Government were big enough to acknowledge Scotland’s success story and follow our example.

[Several hon. Members rose—]