Police

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

The hon. Gentleman is making the mistake that I think is the mistake of the Labour party of equating the quality of the front-line service purely with numbers. I shall address precisely this issue later, and if he feels that I have not done that I will be happy for him to intervene on me again.

On capital funding, I have carefully considered the consultation responses and have decided to top-slice the Home Office police capital allocation to support the establishment of the National Police Air Service. That service will give all forces access to helicopter support 24 hours a day, 365 days year, in contrast with the current system in which some force’s helicopters are grounded for days at a time while being repaired. It will mean that 97% of the population of England and Wales will remain within 20 minutes’ flying time, and it will save the police service £15 million a year when fully operational.

The plan for the National Police Air Service has been led by Chief Constable Alex Marshall and has the full support of the Association of Chief Police Officers, the police service’s operational leaders and the vast majority of police authorities. The funding proposal I have set out is the right way to ensure that this key national service is established on a sound basis. Each force will face an equal percentage reduction in the previously indicated level of capital grant; this is the most transparent and equitable means of providing for the capital requirements of what will be a national service. All forces will benefit from the savings.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I welcome what the Minister has done on the helicopter issue, especially in using the powers to mandate South Yorkshire, but what about unexpected events? Last Saturday, the English Defence League marched through the middle of Leicester at a cost to the police authority of £800,000. Where does it get that money from at a time when budgets are very tight? It cannot prevent people from marching unless there are reasons to do so, but that puts it under huge pressure.

[Nick Herbert]

First, I note the right hon. Gentleman’s support for the National Police Air Service, which is important given his position as the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. This move is a significant step forward and shows that police forces can collaborate to improve the quality of service and reduce cost. On events that occur in police force areas and incur particular costs, there are established procedures under which police forces can apply to the Home Office for special grant. Forces and authorities are aware of the criteria for such grants and we will always consider such applications very carefully.

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[Nick Herbert]

I will give way to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Keith Vaz]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way to me for the second time. Has he seen the evidence given to the Home Affairs Committee by Dame Helen Ghosh? We were pushing the recommendation that we had made in a previous report that there should be a catalogue—Dame Helen kept referring to it as an Argos catalogue, but something more up-market would be more appropriate—[Interruption.] I will not refer to John Lewis, for obvious reasons. The catalogue in question, which would be approved by the Home Office, would ensure that police forces did not procure separately, but obtained the best possible national deal.

[Nick Herbert]

I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that that is effectively what we are doing. We are passing new regulations—we have just introduced the latest raft—which require forces to buy certain goods and items of equipment together. The savings that they are making are accumulating, and, as I have said, will eventually reach £200 million a year. I shall be happy to provide the Home Affairs Committee with an update on that, because I think it is a good story which shows that forces can make savings by working more effectively together. I note that the Opposition have conceded that savings can be made in that area. Those savings, too, are in addition to the savings identified by HMIC.

The third way in which the police can find savings beyond those originally identified by HMIC is through transformation of the way forces work. HMIC said that savings of £1 billion a year could be found if the high-spending forces simply reduced their costs in a range of functions to the average of that spent by a similar force. However, if all forces achieved the efficiency levels of the best forces nationally, that would save a further £350 million a year. Why should not all forces be as efficient as the best?

Outsourcing can also play a major role in effecting this transformation. The Government have been supporting Surrey and West Midlands forces and authorities in a joint programme exploring the value of business partnering. Broad areas of service can be covered, including a range of activities in, or supporting, front-line policing such as dealing with incidents, supporting victims, protecting individuals at risk and providing specialist services. This is not about traditional outsourcing; rather, it is about building a new strategic relationship between forces and the private sector. By harnessing private-sector innovation, specialist skills and economies of scale, forces can transform the way they deliver services and improve outcomes for the public. Every police authority in England and Wales bar one could join in, should they choose to do so. Under its own steam, Lincolnshire is about to sign a £200 million contract over 10 years with G4S. That contract for support services is available to the other forces named on the procurement notice.

These are highly significant developments that open up the possibility of new savings across policing. The published potential value of the Surrey and West Midlands contract is between £300 million and £3.5 billion. I look forward to hearing whether the Opposition believe that such business partnering is the right way forward for policing.

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). Both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) spoke passionately about their local areas. Notwithstanding the debate over police numbers, I think we all recognise the huge amount of work being done at a local level. I shall start with a couple of local issues, before moving on to the wider national issues.

On the situation in Leicestershire, we will sadly see a reduction in the police grant of almost £4 million. When I spoke to Chief Constable Simon Cole this morning, he talked about a very complicated formula that first gave us the money but then took it away because of the damping element. He, like every police force, will struggle to meet the ambitions that he and others have to achieve the reductions that the Government have put in place.

Last Saturday’s events, when the English Defence League marched through Leicester, remind us that police authorities struggle not only because of the reductions but because of events occurring that cannot be predicted. I want to pay tribute to Simon Cole and to Leicester’s mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, for how they handled that march. The EDL is not welcome in Leicester, but it was given the opportunity to march because we believe in the fundamental principles of freedom of speech. The fact is that the 2,000 police officers who came out on to the streets will cost £800,000. With the possibility of an EDL march in Leeds, the people of Leeds—in the end, it is the taxpayer who will pay—are going to have to pay another large sum. When I intervened on the Minister, I know he said that applications for a special grant can be made, and we will ask him to help us with these costs, because these are not costs of our making; we had to police that demonstration.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington alluded to the recent riots, which reminded me that local police forces have been left with a shortfall. I have figures for the Metropolitan police. I am told that costs under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886 will be £198 million, with a further £78 million for operational policing costs; yet the Home Office will pay only £100 million and £52.7 million for the policing costs, so there is a shortfall of about £20 million for the Metropolitan police. I hope that the Minister will give some reassurance to areas such as Birmingham, and to a lesser extent to Leicester, where there were disorders rather than huge riots, but most particularly to London, that help will be forthcoming from the Home Office, as the Prime Minister promised when I put the point to him during his statement just after the riots. He said that the Government would meet the costs of all the extra issues that arose as a result of the riots; I can give the Minister the Hansard extract if necessary.

I do not want to talk about numbers, as the issue has been well rehearsed eloquently by right hon. and hon. Members of all parties, particularly by the shadow Home Secretary and the Minister. What I want to talk about is procurement, as this is an area in respect of which there will be common cause. IT procurement costs the public £1.2 billion annually. The Minister has told us that the Government are keen to ensure that savings are made. Forces currently have 2,000 separate and bespoke information and communication technology systems that are serviced by 5,000 different members of staff.

The National Audit Office recently published a report on the use of mobile phones, and I declare an interest in having a BlackBerry, although I am not certain that I use all its features. However, in my conversations with the BlackBerry people, they assure me that the BlackBerrys they have given to South Yorkshire police, for example, have resulted in savings of £6 million. This is not rocket science. It was a recommendation of the Select Committee in November 2008 when we said that sufficient funding should be

“made available as soon as possible to enable all frontline officers to have access to”

hand-held devices. We talk about waste and procurement; that would have saved a huge amount of money. We still face a situation in which police officers of different police forces are buying these services from different suppliers and are operating different devices.

I understand that the system in South Yorkshire—I am sure the Minister will be familiar with it—allows the individual police officer to access the police national computer, the warrants database, the electoral roll, command and control, case study records, intelligence briefings, crime tasking, electronic witness statements and shift briefing. That is the sort of thing we need to give our police officers so that they do not spend their time dealing with the bureaucracy of which the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton spoke. We are all against bureaucracy; who wants the police to be filling in lots of pieces of paper?

If we look at new technology—I do not know whether a mobile phone is described as such these days—I believe this is the way for us to go forward. Nineteen forces have mobile phones for fewer than 50% of their officers, and according to the National Audit Office only one in five use it effectively. We give out the equipment, but perhaps do not train officers as effectively as we should.

I am all for the Minister mandating collaboration. I know that the Home Office and central Government are reluctant to tread on the toes of individual chief constables, but police and crime commissioners are going to be introduced in November, and I hope they will have a leading role to play on procurement. We need to be in a position not to allow all 43 forces to buy their own equipment. The Minister was here for Prime Minister’s questions when my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) raised the issue that four police authorities were buying Hyundai police cars. Of course, my hon. Friend’s point was about British jobs given that they come from North Korea, but I saw the issue as being primarily one of why all our police cars are not the same; I wondered why, when I went to Kent, there was a different make of police car from those I saw in Leicestershire. This is a no brainer.

I am pleased with what the permanent secretary at the Home Office said. I was glad when she was not appointed the head of the home civil service—not because I do not think she is capable, as I think she is an extraordinarily capable woman, but because I think the permanent secretary to the Home Office is a big job to do. When she came before the Committee she talked about the so-called Argos catalogue—her choice of shop; I do not know whether Dame Helen goes there regularly. We have been pushing for a long time for a catalogue with nationally agreed prices from which everyone buys. Why the previous Labour Government did not do that, I do not know. My defence is that I was the Minister for Europe so I did not have a chance to be in the Home Office. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) did a great job as a Minister, but this is a difficult task, as he will tell us.

[Mr Ruffley]

The right hon. Gentleman’s Committee has done much under his leadership to raise awareness of the efficiencies that can be delivered by police forces from existing budgets. When he talks about mandating collaboration, is he suggesting that the whole of England and Wales should be divided up and that every force should be mandated to collaborate with a neighbouring force or neighbouring forces?

[Keith Vaz]

It could be that; of course legislation allows that to happen. The Minister has told us what he did about helicopters with the National Police Air Service. As I remember, South Yorkshire did not want to share its helicopters but the Government said, “You have to share, because a helicopter is quite an expensive piece of equipment.” I do not care where it is done, and I do not think we should hang ourselves on a hook as far as who should say what, but it is common sense to be in a position where we can do this. I think Dame Helen Ghosh gets it, and that is why the Committee will interview her on a regular basis about her commitment to procurement. We want to see not just the kind of savings we have had so far, but much bigger savings.

Finally, let me speak about police pay and conditions. We all have huge admiration for the police. Tom Winsor will be appearing before the Home Affairs Committee shortly, and I think the Minister needs to take the temperature of the Police Federation and ordinary police officers. He meets them every day and sees them on many occasions, so I cannot lecture him about this, but morale is very low and I think that Mr Winsor has gone too far. We need to be very careful when we deal with police pay and conditions. The previous Labour Government got it wrong—Jacqui Smith got it wrong and so did my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)—when they did not allow the pay rise that the police ought to have been given when the arbitration committee decided that they should have that pay rise. This time, we should make sure that we carry police officers with us in making the massive changes that the Government are putting in place. That is vital because this is the biggest change to the policing landscape we have seen in this country since Sir Robert Peel’s time.

We should remunerate the police well, we should not be mean and vindictive to them and we should not get rid of the most experienced officers. That is something we are seeing in this House, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington mentioned, where some of our most experienced people are being told they have to go. When I say in this House, I do not mean Members of the House, luckily, as I have been here a long time, but those who guard the Palace of Westminster. We need to value that experience. I hope that the Minister will look again at pay and conditions and will try to bring Mr Winsor under a little bit of control. We are dealing not with railways—I know Mr Winsor was the rail regulator—but with real people in real jobs who protect our constituents. They are the people we lionise in times of crisis, and we should reward them properly for the work they do.