Police

Debate between Julian Huppert and Richard Drax

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huppert]

Even in that intervention, the hon. Gentleman very carefully avoided saying where he would get the extra money. I think that we would all love to have more money to spend on policing, and, indeed, on almost everything that a Government do; the problem is where that money is to come from.

The hon. Gentleman also missed an opportunity to intervene earlier—this is relevant to the point that he raised just now—in order to congratulate Cambridgeshire constabulary, which in 2012-13 recruited 72 constables and 13 officers who transferred themselves to the area. I have not scaled up that number to cover the whole country, but it shows what can be achieved. I feel no need to apologise to the people of Cambridgeshire for the fact that we have been recruiting those extra police, and have been able to protect the front line in the county. The hon. Gentleman is welcome to intervene again to give a clearer view of what he would cut in order to raise the extra money, but if he does not wish to do so, I shall move on to the more substantive aspects of the debate.

Let me begin by paying a tribute, which I think all Members would echo, to the work done by the vast majority of the police. They do a fantastic job day in, day out. Some times are easier than others, but most times are quite tough for police officers. It is a very hard job and it makes a big difference to people’s lives, whether it involves directly combating crime and catching criminals, or the much broader role that police officers play. I have always welcomed community policing, although I must say that I was slightly concerned when, back in the days when I was a councillor, one of the best community beat officers in my constituency, who had managed to halve the crime level in a single year, was given a reprimand for not arresting enough people. I think that that was target-driven rather than being particularly sensible.

As I have said, the police in general do a fantastic job, and they feel let down by the few officers who behave badly. A number of officers have spoken to me directly about some of the issues that we explored in the Select Committee, such as Plebgate, and have told me that they are ashamed to wear the same uniform as some of those involved. Those officers deserve better. According to recent reports, in the last few years there have been more than 2,000 cases of officers and staff breaching data protection rules, in some instances by looking at the police national computer. Those officers constitute only a small fraction of the total force, and like most police officers, I wish that they would behave much better.

We are lucky in this country to have such good policing, and to have a core of policing by consent. I hope that that continues, because I am not at all keen on the idea of increasing militarisation in the police. For that reason I am concerned about Tasers, although they are a subject for another debate. Policing by consent—the sort of policing that we have here—is not just about throwing money at problems, and it is not just about passing more and more laws to make more and more actions criminal offences; it is about giving communities a say, and working closely with them. We need the police to work as part of the community, and for the community.

[Richard Drax]

The hon. Gentleman has just mentioned Tasers, and said that they were a subject for a debate on another day. I wonder whether he has ever faced two or three completely drunk hooligans at three o’clock in the morning with no more protection than a protective vest.

[Dr Huppert]

As it happens, I had very similar experiences when I was an ambulance technician with St John Ambulance. One of the things we did in order to increase our safety was try to make it clear that we were not playing any form of quasi-militaristic role, and that the role that we were playing was much more relaxed. I worry about the message that is sent to people who see something that looks like a firearm and is used like a firearm. I agree that there is a place for Tasers as a less lethal option, but I do not think that they should be rolled out for basic use. That is a subject for another debate, however.

The police work very well. The establishment of the College of Policing is one of the best things that the Government have done in this area. It will make it much easier for policing to become a more established profession and for the police to work with a proper evidence base and a more effective way of sharing and developing information. That will follow on from the work that is already being done to reduce crime despite tight budgets.

When times are tough, it is even more important to do things that actually work to reduce crime and the fear of crime, rather than things that merely work anecdotally. A huge amount of research has been done in this area, and I pay tribute to the work of Professor Larry Sherman at the institute of criminology at Cambridge university. He is a member of the board of the College of Policing, and he has done a great deal of work on what actually makes a difference in reducing crime. How we place police officers and how we move them around a city can make a difference, for example. He has also produced proposals relating to crime harm indices. Where his proposals have been tried, they have been very effective in reducing crime. That is the sort of lesson that the college should be developing and that we should all be trying to follow.

We should also look at other ways of reducing crime. Providing more support to people serving very short sentences is a really good thing, for example. We know that some people reoffend repeatedly, and it is more efficient to invest in reducing their reoffending than to invest in catching them and dealing with them afterwards. I am also pleased to see a drive towards the use of more technology. It is far more helpful to get police officers to go out and do their job, as they want to do, rather than fighting technological problems. The police are far happier when that happens. I have spent time with a police officer, and I will never forget that it took more than an hour to download a video from a shoulder-mounted camera because of technological problems. That was an hour that could have been much better spent.

We should also give the police much more flexibility to innovate. An example is a scheme in my constituency known as “lights instead of tickets”. Cyclists who cycle without lights are given seven days to buy lights to avoid paying a fine. That has led to a huge number of people acquiring lights, which is far better than a huge number of people paying a fine and continuing to cycle without lights.

We can also ensure that money is spent more usefully by focusing on the more serious crimes. I will not go into detail, but the Deputy Prime Minister has suggested certain reforms of our drugs policy. The Home Affairs Select Committee has also found that we could do as Portugal has done, in transferring effort and money from the police and criminal justice system to the health service to help to reduce addiction. Similarly, we could reduce the stop and search that does not lead to arrests. That would save police time and free up the police to get on with other things.

Perhaps the Minister could give us an update on the reforms of stop and search. Such reforms are important because they relate to trust in the police. Certain communities start to lose trust in the police because of stop and search and, in my view, because of increasing Taser use. That lack of community interaction is a problem. It leads to distrust and makes it harder for the police to find out what is happening. It makes people work against the police rather than with them.

We could also do much more to help the police by sharing information, although that must obviously be done carefully. The Select Committee has recommended asking hospitals to share non-confidential information—about numbers of incidents, for example—with the police more often. There have been some good pilot models of that, but they do not happen often enough. The public could also have more information. The data available from police.uk is helpful, but we could go further in that regard. Indeed, Professor Sherman has some ideas on how to engage communities and give them real information about what is going on. Such data also need to include hate crime, which should not be considered separately from the main national crime statistics.

The whole information drive is important, but we do not always use the most up-to-date information. I hope that the Minister will comment on this. I note that some of the figures in the report on the police grant have used the 2001 census data. I represent a county that is growing rapidly, and I hope that we can move to using more modern censuses, because we are already facing issues based on the present population, not the one we had in 2001.

The subject of saving money has been discussed at length. I am pleased that the proposed expenditure of £1.8 billion on the communications data Bill will now be available for other policing. When I asked the Met commissioner how he would use that amount of money over 10 years, he said that he would use it to get more neighbourhood policing, more technology and more training. I am pleased that we are able to do that, rather than spending it on the original proposals.

The finances are tight. We would all love to have more money available to spend on absolutely everything, but it is a great tribute to the police that despite times being tough, crime continues to fall. I hope that that will continue for a very long time to come and that we will see more effective use of our wonderful police.