Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

In three years, the Government have made significant strides in cutting crime and reforming the police. Since 2010, crime has fallen by more than 10%. This is in no small measure down to the professionalism and dedication of police officers and police staff working day in, day out to keep our neighbourhoods safe. The reduction in crime has been achieved against the backdrop of a difficult financial climate for the police, as for other public services. We have taken the decisions necessary to restore this country’s long-term economic well-being. We have been able to mitigate the impact of diminished resources because we have allowed officers to focus on their core task of cutting crime. We have thrown off the straitjacket of national targets and freed up the front line from pointless form-filling and needless bureaucracy. Through the introduction of police and crime commissioners, we have revolutionised the accountability of police forces, and they are now far more responsive to local needs and priorities.

In the last Session, we legislated to set up the National Crime Agency which will, from the autumn, lead the fight against serious, organised and complex crime. The College of Policing is already firmly established and is leading the way in ensuring that the police operate to the highest professional standards. We are giving the Independent Police Complaints Commission the capacity it needs to investigate all serious allegations of misconduct. We cannot, however, afford to ease up on our reform programme. We cannot rest while the crime survey shows that there were 8.9 million crimes against adults last year. We cannot rest while businesses were the victims of more than 9 million crimes, or rest when the police recorded approximately 2.3 million incidents of antisocial behaviour, with many more going unreported.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I, and the Home Affairs Committee, support what the right hon. Lady is doing on the new landscape of policing. She listed a number of the organisations and described how they would fit into the new landscape. Has she made a decision on whether counter-terrorism is to remain with the Metropolitan police, or will it be placed with the new National Crime Agency?

[Mrs May]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his early remarks, and for the work of the Home Affairs Committee in its consideration of the Bill. We value its work. The answer to his question is no. It is still a matter for decision. I was clear, at an early stage, that it would not be right to make a decision on where counter-terrorism should sit before the Olympics or before the National Crime Agency was properly up and running. The legislation has now passed and we are working towards the formal and final launch of the NCA later this year.

The Bill marks the next stage of our reform programme to deal with the challenges we face.

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[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes an important and valid point. All of us who talk about this issue should be clear about the difference and careful in the language we use. As he says, there is a real difference between an arranged marriage, where there has been consent, and a forced marriage, where there has not.

Part 10 contains a number of important policing reforms. First, it transfers to the College of Policing key statutory functions that are commensurate with, and appropriate to, its role in setting standards in policing. It will fall to the college to determine such matters as the qualifications for the appointment and promotion of police officers, and to issue codes of practice. In the longer term, we are continuing to explore how best to enshrine the college’s independence in law. This is properly a matter for debate in the context of the Bill, and I have no doubt it will be the subject of further discussion in Committee.

[Keith Vaz]

I am most grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way a second time. Is she as concerned as I am that the cost of a certificate in knowledge of policing will be £1,000? Does she think that will have an impact on her desire, and that of the whole House, to increase diversity in policing?

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman has cited a figure concerning the work being done by the College of Policing, but it is for the college to determine what requirements it will put in place for individuals regarding their initial ability to operate as a police officer, and the development they need to undertake as they progress through the ranks and acquire the necessary skills. It will be for the college to look carefully at the balance that will need to be struck to ensure that people can undertake that training and not be put off doing so. I believe that the College of Policing represents an important development in the policing landscape. As well as setting standards for training, development and skills, it will be a body in which best practice can be shared between police forces. That will have an impact on the ability of the police to fight crime.

On police reform, this part of the Bill will further strengthen the capability of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. I have already mentioned that we will build up the commission’s capacity by transferring resources from forces’ professional standards departments, but we also need to ensure that the IPCC has the appropriate remit and powers to operate effectively. Critically, the Bill will ensure that the IPCC has oversight of complaints made against those who are contracted to provide front-line services on behalf of the police.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins) in this important debate. I thank him for his kind comments about the Home Affairs Committee’s report on child grooming, which was published this morning. I pay tribute to all members of the Committee, who have worked so hard on the report, especially the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), who originally suggested that the Committee conduct the inquiry and who has been so assiduous in helping us to determine which witnesses should give evidence and in preparing the final report. It would not have been as powerful or important had it not been for what she has done.

I, too, am very interested in the hon. Gentleman’s proposals. He is right that this is one of the areas we have looked at. At the moment, the anecdotal evidence and the evidence of people who see with their own eyes that there is a problem are not sufficient to catch the terrible perpetrators of these horrific crimes. If we had legislation, that would help the situation enormously.

I am glad that there is agreement between the Front-Bench teams that there will be no vote on this measure. I agree that it is an important measure, but I also agree with the shadow Home Secretary that there are ways we can improve the Bill. It is important when we have such Bills that we use the Committee stage to do that. That will help to make it an even stronger and more powerful Bill.

I am glad that the Select Committee had the opportunity to scrutinise the draft Anti-social Behaviour Bill in a number of sessions. That happened not only because that was the decision of the Select Committee but because of the case of Fiona Pilkington, who committed suicide in October 2007 with her daughter after suffering years of abuse from local youths. The Independent Police Complaints Commission found in May 2011 that she had contacted the police 33 times in seven years. They failed to act accordingly and, as a result, she committed suicide with her daughter. I am glad that the new Leicester chief constable has changed things. Simon Cole has made this one of his priorities and we have accepted his assurance that that kind of situation will never happen again. Obviously, if we pass the Bill, that assurance will be even stronger.

Sadly, however, even though we had the case of Fiona Pilkington, four years later we had the inquest into the death of Dr Suzanne Dow, a lecturer in French at Nottingham university, who killed herself in 2011 after suffering antisocial behaviour from the crack house next door to her. The council ignored her pleas for over a year.

In January, the Select Committee recommended that there should be a national backstop of three complaints to set off the community trigger. We believe that that would guard against people such as Fiona Pilkington slipping through the net. Of course the Home Secretary is right: we also have to have a degree of local accountability. That has been one of the great features of her term as Home Secretary: she sets guidelines and a vision, and then she leaves it very much up to local people to complete the vision. She has done that with police and crime commissioners, to which I will come later. However, we believe strongly that, unless we have a national backstop, a figure that everyone could sign up to, there is a risk that locally people could make their own decisions, and we would end up with the trigger not being as great in Devon and Cornwall as it was in Somerset, Leicestershire and Derbyshire. That is why we felt that the trigger was important. I hope that, as it scrutinises the Bill, the Committee will look seriously at the Select Committee’s proposals. I am convinced that they will strengthen the Bill. That was the unanimous view of the Select Committee.

We should also, in looking at the Bill, express our concern about the cuts to youth services. It is right that we should be wary of young people who are involved in antisocial behaviour, but it is also important that we should not stigmatise them. A letter in The Times today was signed by practically everybody who is anybody in the voluntary sector that deals with these issues. It said that an injunction to prevent nuisance and annoyance could be used differently in different hands.

The annoyance and nuisance I feel would be different from that felt by someone else. I am 57 years of age this year—[Interruption.] Yes, it is true—just checking whether the House was still awake. The annoyance I feel in my office in Norman Shaw North may be different from that felt by younger Government Members with offices in Norman Shaw North who have just been elected. They may find the nuisance and annoyance not as great as I would because of my age. The same could be said for my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), who has an office next to mine. His threshold may be different even from mine. We should look at the matter because the thresholds are different. It is important to read what those who signed the letter say. At the end they say:

“The coalition and opposition should listen to the call by the cross-party Home Affairs Committee to ‘end the arms race’ against Anti-social Behaviour by setting reasonable limits on the behaviour covered by the new powers.”

I have not quoted that just because they praise the Committee, but because we must look at this. On 7 January this year at 4 o’clock my constituent Rajesh Devaliya was ambushed by four young people in St Mark’s in Leicester, where he lives with his elderly father. The police said the young perpetrators of this crime had nothing else to do. The police were not condoning the crime, of course; they were talking about the cuts to local services in St Mark’s

I warmly welcome what the Home Secretary is proposing in clauses 100 and 101. Clause 100 introduces the new offence of possessing prohibited firearms with intent to supply, and clause 101 increases the penalty for unlawful importation of prohibited firearms from 10 years to life. That is the right thing to do, of course. It was recommended by the Committee, and we are happy to support it, as it will serve to bring to book those who are supplying as well as those who are using.

However, we looked at firearms two-and-a-half years ago, and we are concerned that two-and-a-half years on from our report the Home Secretary has not taken the opportunity this Bill presents to bring together the 34 separate pieces of legislation covering UK gun law. President Obama, in his bid to try to control firearms in the United States, is looking closely at what our country is doing as we have a better record than the United States of America, but it is important that we look at codifying and bringing all this legislation together.

On 17 May the Select Committee recommended criminalising forced marriage. We take the point that it is quite different from arranged marriage. However, I must tell the Home Secretary that I am worried about the allegations database that she set up, which we will look at very closely in our next report. I have many constituents who complain that they are being abused by their spouses and have been tricked into getting married. They make their complaint to the Home Office and nothing happens. They are not informed because of the bizarre belief that they are third parties. I do not believe that someone who goes off to a foreign country and marries somebody there, and then brings them to this country so that they are only here because they brought them in, and who then complains that their spouse has abused the system and tricked them, is a third party. Of course they need to know whether the Home Office has removed them. We have had 28,000 allegations since the Prime Minister’s famous speech in London two years ago, when he asked people to report these issues, and 500 arrests have been made, but still the Home Office cannot tell us how many people have been removed.

I have three final points, and I shall begin with the College of Policing. I know that the Home Secretary is not interested in legacy stuff, because I am sure she will be in post for a long time, but when her legacy is written up, the creation of the College of Policing—which I hope will be called the “Royal College of Policing”, as that will give an impetus and dignity to those we train as police officers—will be seen as an important feature of her new landscape for policing. However, she ought to have ensured that the chair of the college appointed the members of the board or had a part to play in that, rather than appointing all the members of the board and then appointing the chair. I know she had problems filling that post but they have been resolved, and she has now appointed an excellent chair. In order to give the chair greater importance, the chair could perhaps be allowed to work with board members to co-opt additional people on to the board, which is not doing very well in terms of diversity.

I attended the Emily Wilding Davison centenary celebrations with the Home Secretary and you, Mr Speaker, and I heard what the Home Secretary said about diversity. In fact, I think I may even have got one of the T-shirts that were on offer. Diversity is not an apparent feature of the College of Policing board, however. Moreover, I find it extraordinary that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who represents so many police officers, does not sit on the board, whereas the Association of Chief Police Officers does. I have nothing against that organisation sitting on the board, but the commissioner should, too.

The Home Secretary still has not told us who will hold the integrity register for chief constables. She rightly announced that chief constables ought to have a register of gifts they receive and jobs they do, but after all these months she has still not told us where that register is going to sit. In her new landscape, she has so many new organisations to choose from, and one of them—perhaps the College of Policing, perhaps Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary—needs to hold the register in order to give it credibility. Although the Home Secretary did not like the idea of a register for police and crime commissioners, the Select Committee published one. PCCs were very upset, but the fact is we just published what they put on their websites or what they told us to put in. If we have registers for MPs, peers and chief constables, we should have one for PCCs. We must not leave that until the next election.

The Home Secretary seemed a little puzzled about the cost of the certificate of knowledge in policing, or perhaps she was saying that is up to the College of Policing. We should, however, look carefully at the cost of a certificate, which is £1,000.

On the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the Home Secretary has done everything we could have asked her to do in respect of our last report on that organisation. She did not quite deal with the point made by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), however.

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for mentioning the IPCC, because it enables me, if he will indulge me in this, to deal with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood). I have checked, and in cases of suspected criminality the extension of the IPCC oversight of private sector contractors will allow them to be interviewed under caution. I am grateful for the opportunity to put that on the record.

[Keith Vaz]

I am delighted that the Home Secretary has got that on the record, and I know that the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon will also be very pleased.

The Committee said that the IPCC was woefully under-equipped and hamstrung by a lack of powers and resources. The Home Secretary has not given it all the powers we would have wanted, but she has certainly given it a lot of them. She does need to deal with the issue or resources, however. People tend to refer conduct issues to the IPCC. It is dealing with thousands of cases as a result of Hillsborough. It has an excellent new chair in Dame Anne Owers, and it has shown a real commitment to do good work in this area, but it cannot do that work unless it has the necessary resources to finish the job. We thank the Home Secretary for giving these powers, but we also say, “Let’s have the resources to go with them.”

Finally, on extradition, we again have what the Select Committee recommended in our report on the subject. The forum bar has been enacted, and this will take it further. We need to stop having cases such as those involving Gary McKinnon and Richard O’Dwyer, which I know took up a huge amount of the Home Secretary’s time and the time of this House. I still think it should be up to the Home Secretary to make that decision, rather than give it to judges, because I think there are other considerations to take into account. I do not think that she or her successor if Labour wins the next election, the current shadow Home Secretary, are very keen to have the power to stop people’s extradition, but she is the Home Secretary and she should be making these decisions, not a judge. That question is for another day, however.

In the end, we have a Bill that enacts a lot of what the Select Committee has recommended over the years. I think we need to improve parts of it, as the shadow Home Secretary has said, but I am glad we are not pressing the House to a Division on this important measure this evening.