Policing and Crime
Debate between Julian Huppert and Lord Coaker(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
This has been an interesting debate with many contributions. I am particularly pleased that my hon. Friends, to a man and woman, have put forward the message that what we are seeing is very damaging to each and every one of our communities. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) and my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) pointed to the real damage that the budget cuts are doing to policing in their areas, highlighting the impact of the fight against crime on other important community services.
Interestingly, the unity among Labour Members was not matched by Government Members, many of whose interventions and speeches pointed to the fact that the Government are in some difficulty on this whole agenda. The hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), who also spoke about himself, eloquently explained at some length the damage being done to the Government’s law and order credentials on sentencing and issues relating to policing. The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), who is not in his place, asked his own Home Secretary to look at the disproportionate impact of the cuts on policing. The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) pointed to the potential harm done by the bureaucracy surrounding CCTV, ANPR and DNA. However much the Home Secretary tries to pretend that all is well and everything is going just swimmingly, it is clear that there are tensions and problems.
With regard to all this, it sometimes seems to me that I live in a parallel universe. I am struck by what the Home Secretary said at the Police Federation conference and by what she has said to the House. There was not a sliver of doubt in what she said—not one jot or iota of movement to suggest that maybe, just maybe, there might be other people who have a point, or that if she is not totally wrong, perhaps she needs to trim a little bit. Everybody who has opposed the Home Secretary, and indeed the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, is regarded as wrong, and their views are rejected. The view from Government Front Benchers is this: “We will plough on. It doesn’t matter what anybody else says—we are going to carry on.”
I say to the Home Secretary that the Government are out of touch on crime. They are taking big risks with the cuts to police numbers. The Prime Minister, who prides himself on being in touch, has not made one major crime speech since becoming Prime Minister. There is no cross-Government strategy to cut crime. Crime went up under the Tories before. If the Home Secretary, the Policing Minister and other Ministers carry on like this, they are at risk of that happening again, and it is communities across the country that will pay the price.
The Home Secretary tells the House that there is no choice but to slash the budget by 20% and to lose 12,000 police officers and 16,000 staff. I say to her that that is a choice the Government have made. There is an alternative, but the Government do not want to pursue it. I will not use the example of aid that was given by the hon. Member for Monmouth, because we support that money. The Government have protected certain budgets. The schools budget is protected. The health budget is quite rightly protected. The Defence Secretary fought for the defence budget and secured changes to it. Where was the Home Secretary when it came to the police budget? Where was she when she should have gone to the Prime Minister and demanded that he give the police the budget they deserve? She was nowhere. Why was that not a priority? The police suffered a disproportionate cut to their budget, which is forcing chief constables up and down the country to make cuts.
I do not blame the chief constables, as the Home Secretary has done, for cutting police numbers. The blame for that lies fairly and squarely on the shoulders of this Government, who have made the decisions about the budgets. It is not the chief constables who should be blamed, but the Home Secretary and her Ministers.
As well as police numbers being cut—some of the most experienced officers have already gone—the front line will be affected. I guarantee to all Government Members that if they speak to police officers in their constituencies, they will say that it is impossible for what is happening in their area not to impact on the front line. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) says that she does not think that that is right. I tell her to put that on her website. I will check it in the next couple of days to see whether it is on there.
Vernon Coaker
I will give way in a moment, because I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will put out a press release on what he says. It will come out how the loss of officers and staff in Cambridgeshire is impacting on the front line there. I was in Cambridgeshire yesterday, and I spoke to front-line officers who told me that that was the case.
Dr Huppert
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. It is a shame he did not have the courtesy to say that he was visiting Cambridgeshire. I spoke to the chief constable this morning—the hon. Gentleman would know this if he had been here earlier—and there will be no loss of police constables in Cambridgeshire. The hon. Gentleman is simply wrong.
Vernon Coaker
Before the hon. Gentleman gets on his high horse, I should say that I have not heard of the new rule that one has to let an MP know every time one visits friends. I went to see friends of mine in Cambridgeshire who happen to be police officers, and they told me what the impact on front-line officers will be. If I had to choose between the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and front-line police officers in Cambridgeshire to tell me about the impact on the front line, I know who I would trust.
The hon. Member for Shipley spoke about the impact of DNA and CCTV. People and communities up and down this country are not saying to me as shadow Policing Minister, to my hon. Friends or to Government Members, “We’ve got far too many CCTV cameras in our area.” I do not have people queuing up in my constituency to tell me that. They are not saying, “Actually, our civil liberties are being undermined tremendously”. They say that they want more CCTV, because they understand that it supports the police and helps them fight crime. It reassures people and enables crime to be tackled effectively.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Debate between Julian Huppert and Lord Coaker(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Vernon Coaker
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has cleared up the issue—there is one council in favour of the proposed changed across the country. However, I disagree absolutely with what he said about the electorate voting for this measure. The model in the Bill was not voted for by the majority of people. As he said, the model in the Liberal Democrat manifesto was completely different from the one in the Bill. He gave the game away when he said, “Of course, in the coalition agreement, there was a compromise”. Well, if there was a compromise, it obviously happened after the election, not during the election, so I do not think that anybody actually voted for this model.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the key issue is about having elected people looking after policing? That was the common ground between our two parties. The outcome was not exactly as we would have liked, but it was a balance between the two options. Does he further agree that there is a problem at the moment, in that police authorities do not represent those on district councils? District councils do not have a direct input. In fact, does he think that police authorities, as they currently are, work well at all?
Vernon Coaker
I do not think that police authorities are as bad as they are portrayed. There is some variation among them, but many do a reasonable job. Perhaps they are not as visible as they might be, and perhaps people do not understand exactly what they do, but people such as the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), who sits on the Kent police authority, do a good job.
As for elections, let us say this. We can come forward with different models for this election or that election. However, as the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) will have heard me say in Committee, whatever the arguments about direct elections, the Government’s model is at totally the wrong level of accountability. I do not get people queuing up at my surgeries to say, “Do you know what, Mr Coaker? Nottinghamshire police’s counter-terrorism strategy”—or its fraud strategy or trafficking policy—“is wrong.” People come to my surgery to say, “Mr Coaker, we’re absolutely fed up with the kids at the end of our street,” or, “We’re totally fed up with the drug dealing going on from cars in a car park down the road.” I am sure that that is true for most hon. Members.
That neighbourhood, street-level accountability is what people want, which is why, to be fair to the hon. Member for Cambridge, his party proposed elections at a very local level. Whether that was the right model or the wrong model, if we are looking at where we need to strengthen accountability arrangements, it is precisely at that neighbourhood and street level where we need to do so. We can have neighbourhood policing, community meetings, beat meetings, and so on—all the things that have happened in a calm and measured way, and which have made such a difference to confidence at that level.
Dr Huppert
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we have discussed that idea in another venue, along with how important ultra-local policing is and how it is different from governance at a higher level. However, I am trying to understand where he is heading. In Committee he proposed directly elected chairs of police authorities, so I am glad that he now prefers the Lib Dem model—I do not remember him saying that before the election, but it is nice to hear that he is moving our way. Why does he think that having a directly elected chair of a panel would be so different from having a single directly elected person who would also act across a whole area?
Vernon Coaker
We are opposed to directly elected police and crime commissioners as set out in the Bill. Having said that, the Bill will presumably go through—unless Government Members vote against their own Whip—so then what should we do? The proper and responsible thing to do is to acknowledge that fact and propose another model—the hon. Gentleman will have seen our amendments. If we are to have a directly elected individual, then as well as saying that we are opposed to that in principle, what we as a responsible Opposition should do is say how we would improve it. The amendment that we moved in Committee—the hon. Gentleman knows this, but I am repeating it for the benefit of other Members—would have made that directly elected individual the chair of the police and crime panel, and thereby would have introduced proper checks and balances in the system.
The proposal that we are putting before the House today offers another way forward. What we are saying is, “Keep them as two distinct entities”—that is, have a police and crime commissioner as a figurehead, but also have a police and crime panel with significantly enhanced powers. These are all things that, with a proper inquiry and proper research, we could check to see whether they might be more appropriate, but I will tell the hon. Gentleman this. If he was stood where I am and he was opposed to something that the Government of the day were doing, he would say that he was opposed to it, but he would also seek to improve and adapt it, to take some of the edge off. That is what we did in Committee and that is what we are doing now.
It is not just the Opposition; hon. Members will no doubt have read Lord Imbert, the former chief constable of Thames Valley police and a former commissioner, setting out his opposition in The Times today. He will not be alone, although it is easier for him, as a non-serving police officer and a noble Lord, to say why he is opposed. He says:
“If passed unamended, this Bill will undermine”
the policing model that we have had in this country for years,
“threatening the crucial political independence and non-partisanship of the police and the Rule of Law itself.”
Yesterday, Liberty published the results of a survey conducted on its behalf by YouGov, which showed the lack of public trust in elected police commissioners. In answer to the question “Who would you trust more to protect your family from crime?”, 65% chose “A Chief Constable reporting to a Police Authority, as now” as their preferred option. “A Chief Constable reporting to an individual politician elected as a Police and Crime Commissioner” was the preferred option of just 15%. Just to show that that goes across the length and breadth of the country, I found out that a survey had been conducted in Hampshire showing that only 5% of the public there support having a single elected police and crime commissioner.
That is just the sort of evidence that any inquiry would have to look at. However, the Government’s response is simply to stand back and pretend that those people are all dinosaurs who would inevitably say that, because they are looking to protect their own interests, when in fact they are trying to say to the Government, “You need to slow down a bit and look at the consequences of what you’re trying to do.” All the Minister says is, “We believe it’s the right thing to do.” I have said to him before that, with respect, simply asserting that something is the case is not the same as arguing the case. Where is the evidence for this change to policing, which will make such a fundamental difference to governance arrangements?
Vernon Coaker
First, if the system in London was working so well, why would the Government want to change it? Secondly, the change that the Government are making is to a completely different system from that which operates at the moment. The Metropolitan Police Authority is being abolished. The person who, through primary legislation, is going to be put in charge of policing in London through the Mayor’s office for policing and crime will be an unelected individual appointed by the Mayor of London. They will not be a directly elected individual as per the rest of the country, but an appointee of the Mayor following the abolition of the Metropolitan Police Authority. The hon. Gentleman asked why, if the system works so well, we should not expand it to the rest of the country. If the system in London is working so well, why are the Government changing it? Why not just leave it as it is? We are not changing the system in London to that in the rest of the country—we are completely changing the system in London to another system.
The inquiry would also need to look at the arrangements between a police and crime commissioner and the local democratic framework. One of the great successes of the current policing arrangements has been the introduction of the neighbourhood policing model, with the development of community safety partnerships in Wales and crime and disorder reduction partnerships in other parts of the country. Those arrangements have brought together all the various partners at a local level in order to try to tackle crime and improve confidence. The police and crime commissioner is not a responsible authority under the terms of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.
What, then, is the relationship of the police and crime commissioner with the police and crime panel? Again, we do not understand that, and the Bill is unclear about it. I have referred to the complete lack of power that a police and crime panel has, leaving an omnipotent individual in charge of policing. Police and crime panels will have one person from each local authority—if there are not 10 authorities, we can make up the number with another couple—and a couple of independent members. If there are more than 10 local authorities, we can have a few more so that we stick to the basis of one person per authority. There is no reference to how many people might be in that local authority area or to its size—the reference is just to one person per authority, so it could be a tiny district council and a massive local authority area. My hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) mentioned Northumbria, which is a huge area covered by one council and a very small, highly populated area covered by another.
Dr Huppert
Does the hon. Gentleman think it is right that under the current system district councils such as Cambridge city council have no representation on the police authority at all?
Vernon Coaker
That is a fair point. We can, of course, make changes and improvements to the current system. However, the point is that we are introducing police and crime panels when we have not had a proper debate about what their constitution should be; we have merely said there should be one member per authority. The size of the district council area in terms of population is not mentioned. These are clearly things that we need to understand.
We have had numerous representations from people saying that they are concerned about this. Cumbria and Surrey police have expressed their reservations. Cheshire—I do not know if there is anyone here from Cheshire, but I might as well go round the country—says that the police and crime commissioner
“must be able to influence relevant partners if their Police and Crime Plan is to be effective in delivering improvements in community safety and crime reduction. However, if the PCC is not a ‘responsible authority’ they have no statutory role and could, therefore, be ignored.”
That is a serious flaw in the Bill that the Minister needs to address.
Another aspect that members of the Committee reflected on, as would many others, is the cost of the introduction of police and crime commissioners. That will be a particularly important area for HMIC to look at. Different police authorities across the country tell us that there will be a significant cost involved. A police and crime commissioner will have people supporting them—a chief finance officer, a chief executive and other staff. A police and crime panel will presumably need resources to be able to carry out its function properly. A chief constable will become a corporation sole—in other words, a legal entity—and able, unless the Bill is amended as the Liberals tried to do, not only to control staff but own property and assets and so will presumably need more staff to be able to do that.
Vernon Coaker
That is one reason why I said that if the DPP is to take decisions he will need to do so swiftly. As I have said, justice must not be denied by being delayed. We believe that the Crown Prosecution Service and the Metropolitan police should play a strong role, as they have in the past, and must not be hit by the cuts. That is why we tabled amendment 154—to ensure that there is no delay and that wherever possible things are dealt with as speedily as possible so that the arrest warrant is granted where appropriate, and we can secure a prosecution.
Dr Huppert
I shall try to be brief because a number of hon. Members wish to speak. I have written an article today for “Liberal Democrat Voice” if anyone wants my comments in full—I am sure that hon. Members read it frequently. [Interruption.] There is only one version—unlike what happens with the Labour party, whose members seem to give different messages from the back, the front and the side.
I want to talk about how the system would work, and I urge hon. Members to look at the transcript of the DPP’s evidence to the Public Bill Committee, which was very detailed and very reassuring for those of us who want to make sure that prosecutions go ahead. He made it clear that a team was available, as has just been mentioned, and that it would be ready to act. He understood the issue of timeliness and advanced the idea of using a lower threshold test when there is not enough time to gather evidence. Importantly, he also offered to look in advance at evidence about people who we know should be prosecuted, so as to be ready to go at very short notice—to update what would be required and to be able to go ahead. I was very encouraged by that.