Metropolitan Police Service

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) on initiating this debate and rightly drawing our attention to some of the ways in which the debate on police numbers has been presented by the Mayor’s office. He is completely right, as he pointed out in his intervention, that the presentation showing one additional police officer in Westminster does not tell us the whole truth, and that we are down by 202 police officers since 2010. He is also completely correct to draw our attention to the changes in the safer neighbourhoods structure, which I think will seriously dilute the connection between safer neighbourhoods teams and their local ward areas. Local leadership of safer neighbourhoods teams is what has made them so important and successful over the past seven or eight years, and it is a great shame that that structure is now being changed.

Although the debate has been framed generally around numbers and premises, one important thing that we can all agree on is that what really matters is how the police demonstrate their presence in a community. It is presence that is significant, not necessarily the bricks and mortar in which police are housed. Police must be visible and accessible, and visibility is not the same as audibility. Communities want to know that their police are present, and not simply as a siren in the street.

I welcome the fact that, under the new proposals, more police officers will be moved into the safer neighbourhoods pool of police, albeit in larger local units, but that brings us back to police premises. It is all very well for the Mayor to make the case that there are 65 stations and counters with a low footfall for reporting crime, and that they can be closed without an effect on the community, but we all know that where police work from matters in terms of how they are perceived by the community. The withdrawal of police stations, particularly from areas of deprivation such as the Harrow Road police station in my constituency, will matter if we are not given a clear indication of the criteria, budget and structure for the alternative way in which police will operate.

The whole consultation has put the cart before the horse. We have been asked to make our comments on police station closures without having had any clear indication of what will replace them or, above all, where the safer neighbourhoods teams will work from to ensure their local police presence. That matters not just in terms of reassuring the community about police presence but to the close relationships between police and their local communities.

The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) is completely right that one important example is the relationship between police and young people. In recent years, progress has been made on improving that relationship. It is always difficult, but it has improved, and overall progress has been made on stop-and-search, which lies at the heart of a lot of the tensions. It is therefore worrying that young people have come to me who have undergone strip searches for cannabis possession under the new enforcement regime. It seems to me that proportionality is an issue in how we operate stop-and-search. It is an important tool and it should be used, but proportionality should be borne in mind.

The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster was completely right to draw our attention to gangs and the terrible murder in his constituency. It is of deep concern to me that we have yet to hear from the Mayor’s office on the funding of the gangs unit. Westminster council has told us that the £225,000 that it received from the Home Office ending gangs and serious youth violence fund will end, and that we have yet to hear where the replacement funding will come from.

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[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Streeter. I echo others in congratulating the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr Thomas) on securing the debate, and I echo his tribute to the Metropolitan police and to the police as a whole on the remarkable job that they continue to do. The right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) spoke about their performance, in particular during the Olympic and Paralympic games, when forces from throughout the country worked together in London to deliver the biggest peacetime policing operation in our history. That was a huge and undeniable success.

I will start on one of the things the hon. Member for Harrow, West said that I agreed with. He will not be surprised to learn that there were not many, but there were some. I completely agree with him and the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee on the importance of diversity in police recruitment and retention, and I have two concrete things to say in response.

I was pleased earlier this week to help launch the College of Policing, a new body set up with support from across the House to increase professionalism within the police, to improve standards and to share best practice. Clearly, one of the areas in which the college will have fruitful work to do will be on practical ways to improve diversity, which is obviously a particularly important issue for the Met. As has been said, chief officers as well as Ministers in successive Governments have said that something needs to be done. There has been no lack of push to do it but, so far, there has been a lack of sufficient success in doing it. I hope that the college will help to achieve that.

The shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), made a point about money. I admire the elegance of his phraseology: when the previous Government were organising something, he used the words “savings” or “reductions”, but when this Government do it, it is “cuts”. They are exactly the same, and wrapping it up in nice language does not make any difference.

When we came to office, we set the police a challenge to cut crime while playing their part in reducing the country’s record deficit, which the right hon. Gentleman’s party left us. In the case of the Metropolitan police, the response to that challenge is being ably led by the Mayor of London and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. We know about some of the difficulties that the Met has faced in meeting that challenge. They have been brought up by many hon. Members during the debate, but we also know that it is fundamentally determined to address those difficulties, and that it is being successful in doing so.

In November 2012, the Metropolitan police submitted a plan for a balanced budget and stated its intention to transform the service, prioritise the front line, and maintain officer numbers. The Mayor’s office for policing and crime is consulting on a draft policing and crime plan and estates strategy. I regret the way that the consultation has been criticised by various hon. Members during the debate. It seems to me that we should all welcome the deputy mayor’s visits to London boroughs to hear local concerns as a model of consultation.

[Ms Buck]

It is right that we can have a mature debate about police premises and the best way to base the police in the community, but given that the Mayor said categorically that police stations and counters would not close until alternative provision had been found, why have we gone through an entire consultative process with no alternatives being offered, merely being asked to comment on 65 station closures?

[Damian Green]

I will come to station closures. I take the point, which has been raised by the hon. Lady and other hon. Members. I want to deal with it.

The consultation includes commitments about not only the level of resources that the Met will have at the front line but—this point has been neglected but needs to be injected into the debate—how those resources will be used. At the forefront of the Met’s plans is the Met change programme, which is being used to transform how operational policing is delivered in London. The programme has several strands, including plans to deliver a flatter management structure, thereby putting more constables on the beat, engagement with the supply services market to examine new ways of delivering the services they provide in areas such as human resource, technology and finance, and plans to release under-utilised assets.

I hope that hon. Members agree that the Met’s recently issued plans show that it is looking at a transformational approach to the way in which it delivers policing in London. Everyone has observed that London is a fast changing city that is difficult to police, so it needs to keep ahead of the curve. Clearly, there has been great interest, not just in the debate, but across London about the closure of police stations. As has been said, decisions about the number of stations and their operating hours are matters for the Mayor and the Commissioner. I am sure that many hon. Members will contribute to the consultation.

It is important not to confuse buildings with quality of service provided to the public. Fewer than 50 crimes a night are reported at front counters throughout the Metropolitan police area. Since 2008, the number of crimes reported to those front counters has dropped 20%, and internet and e-mail reporting is up by 32%. That shows how changes in the modern world must be reflected in changes in the way the police deliver their services.

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[Damian Green]

Indeed, and as the right hon. Gentleman knows, one part of the MOPAC plan is to increase the number of police constables, so there will be more visible policing. The background that the right hon. Member for Delyn mentioned in passing—he is honest enough to know that it must be the background to the debate—is that crime is falling, but someone coming to this debate cold would not recognise that fact from the tenor of the debate so far. It is a straightforward fact that crime is falling, and that includes a 3% reduction in police recorded crime in the Metropolitan police area in the first two years of this Government between 2010 and 2012. That refutes any suggestion that reduced budgets and fewer officers inevitably make the public less safe.

[Ms Buck]

Does the Minister accept that the reporting of crime at police counters or contact points is marginal to the argument that most of us have about the police presence in the community? People want safer neighbour teams and police to be rooted in their neighbourhoods so that they do not end up having to report to a police station at the far end of the borough and, as is usually the case, the most deprived neighbourhoods are left behind.

[Damian Green]

I have just addressed that point. There are two things: the response to crime and preventing it, and the quality of day-to-day contact. That is why finding innovative ways of placing the police regularly in parts of the community where thousands of people go may prove to be a better way of establishing those contacts than the traditional way. I have seen that in action. The other week, I was in Newport in Gwent visiting a mobile police station in a supermarket car park. People of all ages and from all backgrounds were coming up and talking to the police naturally. That is extremely important.

The matter must also be looked at against the background of falling crime. Crime in Harrow—the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) introduced the debate—is down by 1.6%. We heard an impassioned speech from the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) who must be aware that crime in Hammersmith and Fulham over the past year is down by 4.7%. In the interests of fairness, it is important to put that context in place, because the Metropolitan police are doing an extremely successful job in vast parts of the city.

I shall deal with one or two of the detailed points that have been made. Various funds that were mentioned have been rolled into the community safety fund, which is worth £90 million in 2013-14. The allocation of that within individual budgets is the responsibility of local areas, and in London the deputy Mayor. A point was made about abstraction of police constables, and overall the Met intends to increase the number of police constables.

The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) asked about the use of dead children’s identities, which of course shocked all of us—