Public Disorder (NUS Rally)

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Of course it was worrying for the staff at Conservative campaign headquarters in Millbank and for other members of the public. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary spoke to Baroness Warsi during the day about that experience. I also agree with my hon. Friend that this is the place where democratic debate takes place over issues of public policy. No one questions the right of those students to march yesterday and to make their case, and 40,000 of them did so peacefully. There is plenty of opportunity to debate policy, but there is neither a need nor any excuse for a minority to resort to violence.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

May I join those on both Front Benches in congratulating the Metropolitan Police Commissioner on admitting what went wrong yesterday and holding a thorough investigation? I am sure that members of the Home Affairs Select Committee will be keen to look at those findings, especially in view of the criticism that the police received following the G20 protests, to find out whether they might have felt the need to adopt a different approach. Everyone has rightly condemned the violence. Has the Minister received any information that lecturers were also involved in organising this protest? If that is the case, and it is more than just anecdotal information, will he speak to Ministers at the Department for Education to ensure that their establishments look carefully at the way in which their employees have behaved?

[Nick Herbert]

I have received no such information. I repeat that the vast majority of the 40,000 who were demonstrating yesterday did so peacefully, and the Government have no issue with that, or with their right to protest. The right hon. Gentleman also mentioned the response to the Tomlinson incident. I discussed this with the commissioner of the Met this morning. He was clear that there had been a failure on the part of the police force to assess the risk properly, and he is reviewing that. He did not seek to attribute the blame to any deliberate change in policing tactics as a consequence of the Tomlinson incident. It is worth reflecting, however, that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary stated in a formal report following the Tomlinson incident that the British model of policing

“can be easily eroded by premature displays of formidable public order protective uniform and equipment which give the perception—inadvertent or otherwise—of a hardening of the character of British policing.”

That was a criticism directed towards the police by the inspectorate, and it shows that they have difficult balancing judgments to make.

Police (Public Trust)

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in my first Westminster Hall debate under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. It is also a real pleasure to follow the contribution of the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard). I regard him not only as a friend, but as someone who thinks carefully before making his speeches. His was a very thoughtful speech, which raised several issues of concern to Members on both sides of the House. I am sure that the Minister and the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), who was in the Minister’s position until very recently, will have taken on board many of the points made by the hon. Member for The Wrekin.

The debate is well attended, which shows the tremendous interest in the House in policing issues. The hon. Gentleman was right to end his speech by praising the work of so many police officers, but he was also right to mark up a number of issues that really need to be addressed. Our debates in the House deal largely with the great issues—the structures and the new landscape—of policing, and we sometimes forget individual cases. Such cases are often brought to the public’s attention through the media and therefore have a disproportionate influence on how people regard the police. The hon. Gentleman mentioned a number of cases.

We live in exciting times as far as policing is concerned. The Home Affairs Committee is certainly extremely busy scrutinising the Government on a number of policing issues. We have decided to conduct three inquiries into policing this year—they are rather like “The Lord of the Rings” in that they are a trilogy. The first report will deal with police commissioners, and we will rush it out by the end of October because the Bill dealing with the issue is due before the House in November. The second report will deal with the elements of the planned national crime agency, which will result in legislation next summer. The third report will relate to the comprehensive spending review, and I fear that a number of the issues that we raise today will have to be seen in the light of what the Government decide to do about the policing budget.

I want to raise a number of issues that I think will be of use to the House. As constituency MPs, we all have examples of dealings with local people who are concerned about the police, although none of us, except the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart), has actually served in a police force.

One of the easiest things for the police to look at, which actually costs no money at all, is how they deal with the public. Good customer service is essential to ensuring that we have policing by consent and it means that when people send letters to chief officers or local commanders, they get a reply very speedily. One of the points made to the Committee in its short inquiry into the Independent Police Complaints Commission earlier this year—in fact, it was in our recommendations—was that if police at the local level dealt more efficiently and effectively with concerns raised by the public, the need for complaints would diminish.

The first aspect that I want to raise is therefore very much in the hands of the police, and what happens depends very much on the personality and character of the chief constable; if the chief constable wants to make sure that something works, it will work. I had a useful meeting last Friday with the new chief constable in my area, Simon Cole. I raised my concern that when I write to the police on behalf of constituents who come to my surgery on a Friday, I do not get a reply for weeks or even months. All that those constituents want to know is what is happening about their cases. If they know, they will be satisfied. They might not be satisfied with the outcome, but they will at least know what is going on.

Providing good customer service and responding to concerns are therefore important. The Fiona Pilkington case occurred in Leicestershire. As hon. Members know, Ms Pilkington made 33 complaints to the local police force before she drove off and set her car on fire. That is an example of what happens when people do not get a response. I hope that everyone learns the lessons of what happens when the police do not respond; I know that Leicestershire police have. If forces get their house in order and provide the right service, that will be very helpful.

The second issue is visibility. I do not know whether the Minister knows how much his budget will be next year or whether he has just received a text from the Chancellor asking him to go to No. 11 to discuss it, but I am sure that his budget will be cut. If it is cut, to the levels that he and I think possible, that will have a huge impact on some of the issues raised by the hon. Member for The Wrekin. The police cannot perform the functions that the public expect them to unless they have the budgets to enable them to do so.

[Mark Pritchard]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that discipline and leadership in the police do not necessarily have to come with a price tag?

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[Keith Vaz]

I accept that absolutely; it is one of the common-sense issues that could be dealt with quickly. If someone needs to be disciplined they should be disciplined. There is a defensiveness to the public sector. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has encountered cases against the local health authority in his constituency, as well. When we write in because someone is concerned about their treatment, there is always denial—all the way to the doors of the High Court. Some of the issues can be dealt with by providing proper leadership.

That leads me to my third point, which is about the new landscape of policing. The Minister has a great opportunity, in deciding what will go into the national crime agency, to deal with issues of leadership. Leadership is not being provided at the moment. We took evidence yesterday from the deputy Mayor of London—the kind of no-nonsense politician one wants in charge of a police force. With people such as Mr Malthouse around, one wonders whether there is a need for elected commissioners; there is always someone like him in every local authority.

I hope very much that the Government will pause and think before they shove everything into the national crime agency. The National Policing Improvement Agency is supposed to go in there, with all its police improvement functions, and so is the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre is going in there, and the databases will too.

I know that it is hoped that we shall save money—and we all want to get value for money from the police service—but there may be an opportunity in the few months that remain to deal with the issue of police leadership. There will be arguments on either side about whether that should go to ACPO, about which some hon. Members have concerns. I think that it is an organisation that can be developed to take over Bramshill and provide the necessary leadership.

However, to get the police constables of the future, who will be responsive to the needs of the public, it is necessary to start at a much lower level. The career development that is so vital, especially in policing, should be conducted by an agency that is not the national crime agency. All the good work that is being done by the NPIA should go somewhere else, although I do not have a fixed view on where. The Select Committee will consider the matter, but that work is not suitable for the NCA.

The hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti), who spoke briefly and had to attend to other duties in the House, mentioned the Kent constabulary and the good practice there. I saw good practice when I went to Staffordshire a year and a half ago. The former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling, knows that I am going to raise this issue, which concerns the forms that Staffordshire police were filling in. They had reduced them from 24 to one.

I wrote to Jacqui Smith and said, “This is brilliant; can you please write to all the chief constables and make sure that it is rolled out throughout the country?” It took months and months before it happened. The Select Committee has its own website—I do not know whether the Minister has seen it—which notes good practice by police forces. One of the examples is what is happening in Kent. Guarding against bad practice, which is what the hon. Member for The Wrekin was discussing, is a good way to ensure that good practice happens. Perhaps it happens through guidance from the police Minister, or perhaps it happens when the dos and don’ts are shoved on to the Home Office website.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

There is an example of good practice in Northern Ireland, where the Police Service of Northern Ireland has made clear progress over the years. Part of core policy for the PSNI is the interaction of community officers with the general public. They get to know each other and a relationship builds up. Also, for many, there are vocational callings. Some people who are community officers have that vocation in life. That is what they are called to do, and their qualities can be seen coming through in policing.

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that there are many lessons that can be learned from the progress made by the PSNI in Northern Ireland and the way in which it is developing its relationship with the general public?

[Keith Vaz]

Yes, there are, and the Select Committee members look forward at some stage in the future to coming to Northern Ireland to see what has happened. The developments have been amazing, and the appointment to the PSNI of Matt Baggott, the former chief constable of Leicestershire, is very welcome. We look forward to visiting him there.

On 22 November, the Select Committee will hold a seminar in Cannock Chase. I have written to the Minister to ask him to speak at that seminar, which will deal with all the issues that I have outlined. It is only 41 minutes away from the Wrekin, so I hope that the hon. Member for The Wrekin will attend. The purpose is outside the context of Westminster, where we can get very political about policing issues. Members on both sides of the House and people on neither side—because we hope that there will also be many police officers and members of police committees there—will discuss the new landscape that is proposed.

I am not one of those who feel that the Government have gone too fast on policing. They are right to have set out a strong agenda for change, but I urge them to heed the views of others who may have an input to make into the matter. I know that the Minister respects the work of the Select Committee because he poached one of our best and newest members—the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod)—as his new PPS.

The Minister will not agree with everything that we say, but given what the hon. Member for The Wrekin has said and what others will say, let us not rush ahead on some of the issues. Of course principles are important, but we are dealing with a new landscape. Let us make one that is above party politics and based on consensus, and that will last for at least a generation.

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[Mike Crockart]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point, but that is the defence that is used when none other can be found: “We know things that you don’t.” In fact, what is being said is: “We may know things that you don’t.” That justifies any means by which communities are policed, which simply is not acceptable. Clear guidelines have been laid down for looking into those offences. We are having a major review of much of the terrorist legislation that is being used for such measures. I hope that we reach a position where we can deal effectively with such concerns and potential problems without using the types of behaviour that have damaged public trust in that police service.

Another example, highlighted this week in The Guardian, demonstrates the far more serious flipside of the racial problem outlined by the hon. Member for The Wrekin in relation to policing and justice more generally. It showed that, per capita, seven times as many black Britons were incarcerated than white Britons, which is an even higher ratio than in the United States, where four times as many black people are in prison than white people. Those data, which come from the recently published Equality and Human Rights Commission report on fairness in Britain, show just how much of an effect decades of racial prejudice in the criminal justice system have had on the black community. Another figure that is particularly striking, and that again goes to the heart of the targets culture, shows that black Britons constituted 15% of the stop and searches in Britain in 2008, despite making up only 3% of the population.

All the factors that I have outlined contributed to public confidence reaching new lows. In response to that, Labour again reverted to type, refusing to acknowledge that central meddling was the culprit, and tried to deal with the problem through targets, setting a target for improving confidence in forces’ local crime and disorder-fighting strategies by a minimum of 12%. It also set a national confidence target, to be measured by annual surveys.

What is the answer? How do we reconnect the police with the public they serve? There must be a wholesale revision of the interaction between the police and the public. The coalition’s plans to bring in locally elected police commissioners is certainly a step in the right direction, and there is certainly something to be said for increasing the local accountability of police forces. If communities are involved, they will be able to have more input into the priorities of local police forces, which will go a long way towards restoring trust in the force.

[Keith Vaz]

I ask the hon. Gentleman the following question because he is a former senior officer: does he think that, within the proposals for elected police commissioners, operational independence is guaranteed?

[Mike Crockart]

As it stands, the position is that operational independence must be maintained, and I would argue that it must be sacrosanct. To a large extent, operational decisions have to be made quickly, but that may not be possible under new structures. The amount of information that is needed to make such decisions is immediately available to senior police officers, and they are absolutely the right people to make those decisions.

I have some concerns about the detail of the scheme. I feel that it is probably not local enough, so I hope, as we have urged in our submission to the Home Office, that the plans will be trialled to ensure their effectiveness. It is clear that accountability for policing priorities and dialogue between the consumers of policing and the providers of it need to happen at a much lower level, and in a much more regular and inclusive way. Only by doing that will we restore a degree of public trust in the police and, in so doing, re-establish the principle of policing by consent. That will ultimately answer my original question, what are the police for? This is about working with and in communities to improve people’s lives.

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[Vernon Coaker]

The point I am making is not so much that the statistics are confusing but that people pick out bits from them to prove their point. The overall crime statistics reflected in both the BCS and recorded crime figures show significant falls in crime. What should we do, if we want to ensure people’s trust and confidence in the police? What confidence can one have in the police?

At a recent conference, the Home Secretary said that the biggest factor was whether crime is falling in police force areas. She said that that is the measure that we should use to give the public confidence and trust in their police force, and to know whether police forces are being effective.

The hon. Member for Newton Abbot spoke about crime falling in her area. That has to be the banner headline. If we try to undermine the statistics all the time, it is no wonder that people’s fear of crime rises.

In discussing how we keep confidence and trust, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East said that some aspects are not hugely difficult. What seems to be difficult is for it to happen in every community in the country consistently and persistently. The things that drive confidence and trust are neighbourhood policing and a visible police presence, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) said. There will be a debate about whether that has happened or not, but we need neighbourhood policing, visible policing and police being around and responding properly when phone calls are made about antisocial behaviour by a few kids on the street.

We are all constituency MPs. How many people come to us about terrorist incidents? Not many. How many come to us because they phoned up about what may seem a trivial incident but, to the member of the public, is fundamental? If that is responded to, even though it may seem trivial, confidence and trust in the police go up. People are not stupid. They know that sometimes things are difficult to deal with, but they expect that if they are worried about a kid who keeps banging on their door, somebody will say, “Yes, it should not happen. We are very sorry.” In the best cases—in an increasing number of cases—the police are recognising that and responding in the way that we would all want.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Member for Edinburgh West discussed the targets set by central Government, which he felt were unhelpful to policing. However, as I mentioned in my speech, during the previous Administration I found that central Government were able to pass on good practice. From his experience, does my hon. Friend believe that it could have been done better? There needs to be a better understanding of the fact that the Home Office has a role in ensuring that good practice in one part of the country is occurring elsewhere. If it does not have such a role, who does?

[Vernon Coaker]

I was coming to the point about good practice. My right hon. Friend is right. The Home Office does have a role, as do the police, police authorities and others, in disseminating good practice and good information. We have talked before about good community engagement, good communication, informing people about what is going on and having meetings. All those things are fundamentally important, as is answering letters, and so on.

The Home Office has a responsibility for disseminating information, whether through websites or in other ways. I am interested in whether the Minister believes that that is so and whether he will deal with some of the issues that right hon. and hon. Members have raised this afternoon, notwithstanding his not agreeing with certain cultures and targets. What role does he think the Home Office has to play in driving up confidence and helping restore trust?

Briefly, on trust and confidence, my experience is that the Minister has responsibility both for police and criminal justice. In respect of confidence and trust in the police, the issue is not only about what the police do, but what other bodies, including local authorities and local councils, do. What those bodies do drives trust as well. For example, the clearing up of graffiti and things like that makes a difference.

How the police interact with the criminal justice system is fundamental. There is a big issue here. Sometimes the police get blamed for the criminal justice system not working effectively with respect to the police. We need to get better in respect of one thing in particular. One of the biggest confidence and trust builders is for local people to know that somebody who is causing real problems in their area, and is arrested by the police and taken to court, has been dealt with by the courts and taken through the criminal justice process.

I should be interested in hearing what the Minister expects from the spending review. Other hon. Members have mentioned what will happen with respect to the coming cuts. We have all talked about visible policing and the importance of officers on the beat. How on earth are we going to maintain police numbers and the current numbers of police community support officers? How are we going to cut bureaucracy if police staff are going to go? What will happen to the number of police stations? What will happen to police station opening hours? What will happen to confidence and trust in an environment where all that is happening?

We are talking about trust and confidence in the police. Part of the modernisation of the police has been the establishment of a number of specialist units, which some people regard as a waste but I think are fundamental. Domestic violence would not have been tackled to the extent that it has were it not for the training and development of specialist domestic violence units in many police force areas.

The same is true of sexual violence. Victims of sexual violence want to know that a specialist officer is dealing with the case. What is happening to child protection? All those things are fundamental. If we want confidence and trust, it is all very well to say that that should be mainstreamed into police business and into their main work, but often when that happens there is a loss of focus with regard to such matters.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East mentioned the new national crime agency, which is supposed to take in the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and the National Policing Improvement Agency. I thought that the national crime agency was to be an operational crime-fighting body. The NPIA deals with training, the police national computer and so on. Why would something like that be put into the NCA? If people are to have confidence in the NCA, they want to see a crime-fighting body, not one that encapsulates some of the necessary functions of the NPIA.

Finally, on accountability, the hon. Member for Edinburgh West mentioned elected police commissioners, said that he went along with that proposal and then slightly qualified what he said. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East asked whether those commissioners would have operational independence. We oppose the creation of elected police commissioners. First, will the Minister clarify whether the Government’s policy is still, as it was when they were in opposition, to have the power of recall so that another election, to get somebody acceptable, can be held if somebody unsatisfactory is elected as a police commissioner?

Secondly, if the police are still operationally independent, which they should be, of course, what can an elected police commissioner do if he does not agree with what the chief constable does? If the chief constable operates ineffectively, either the commissioner can do something about it or he cannot. How can the elected police commissioner be held accountable if the chief constable is operationally independent—something over which the commissioner has no influence? What will the role of the elected police commissioner be with respect to a chief constable, if the former sees the latter acting unsatisfactorily?

I shall finish where I started, by congratulating the hon. Member for The Wrekin on prompting the debate. He raised some real issues, as did other hon. Members. I say to all police officers out there that the vast majority do a good job in difficult circumstances and they have the full support of every Member of Parliament, notwithstanding some of the difficult incidents that we hear, see and read about. We know that there are bad officers, but we also know that they are not a reflection on the police force as a whole.

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[Keith Vaz]

Hear, hear.

[Nick Herbert]

I note the intervention from the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. That is a genuine offer; this is the moment to make such a move.

My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin talked about leadership, and I strongly agree with him about the value of leadership in policing. We have asked the former chief constable of Thames Valley police and chief executive of the National Policing Improvement Agency, Peter Neyroud, to conduct a study into how we can ensure the right leadership and training in the police. In the end, however, that must rest with the police themselves. Part of the reforms that we wish to introduce concerns the reform of the Association of Chief Police Officers to ensure that it takes responsibility for such matters in an accountable manner.

My hon. Friend also called for a review of agencies and quangos, and he will be hearing a great deal more about that in due course. We have proposed a decluttering of the landscape surrounding policing by winding up the National Policing Improvement Agency and taking those functions to a new national crime agency.

On the point raised by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), I will of course pay attention to all issues and concerns that are raised by people about the whole spectrum of reforms to policing. As he will know, I have been attending to those issues, and I have taken care to pay attention to the views of stakeholders, police organisations and so on.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I understand my hon. Friend’s concern about this and note the ten-minute Bill he recently introduced. The Government believe that wherever possible foreign national prisoners should serve their sentences in their own country. Negotiations on a compulsory prisoner transfer agreement with Nigeria will be concluded as soon as changes to Nigerian domestic legislation have been made.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

In evidence to the Home Affairs Committee this morning, Lin Homer, the head of UKBA, told us that 14% of the prison population were foreign nationals and that 700 officials were working in her department on this issue. As it is a priority for the Government, is the Minister confident that he has sufficient staff dealing with what is a very important issue?

[Nick Herbert]

The Government are determined to improve performance in the removal of foreign nationals and in prison transfer agreements. The right hon. Gentleman will know that only 41 prisoners were transferred this year, but compulsory transfer has been available only since November 2009, so we expect performance to improve.

Police Grant Report

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Police (Nick Herbert)]

I beg to move,

That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales) for 2010-11: Amending Report 2010-11 (House of Commons Paper No. 47), which was laid before this House on 10 June, be approved.

The Government’s top priority is to reduce the unprecedented budget deficit that this country faces. As a first step towards achieving that aim, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced on 24 May a £6 billion package of savings across the public sector. The Home Office share of this spending reduction is £367 million. In order to minimise the impact on the police service, the Home Office has cut a greater than proportionate share of its central budget by bearing down significantly on overheads and reducing waste, including cuts to consultancy services, marketing costs and travel. National policing organisations have been required to make significant savings too. For example, the National Policing Improvement Agency will make a saving of £40 million this year, on top of a £73 million saving already planned for this year. That is a greater proportionate cut than we are asking police forces to make.

However, the police account for well over half of Home Office spending, so we cannot make the necessary savings at the centre alone. We need the police to contribute to the drive to efficiency. On 27 May, I announced my intention to reduce this year’s core Government funding to the police by a total of £135 million. I propose that this will mostly be achieved by a £115 million reduction in rule 2 grant, for which the Government today seek the House’s approval. Those proposed reductions to police funding are fair and reasonable. Every force is treated equally, with a cut equivalent to 1.46% of their core funding from central Government.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

rose—

[Nick Herbert]

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

[Keith Vaz]

Obviously the Minister regards those reductions as fair and reasonable; others might not regard them in that light. At the end of the day, he must have received some advice from his officials, so will we have fewer police officers on the front line as a result of what the Government propose to do?

[Nick Herbert]

We do not believe that there need be fewer police officers as a consequence of the savings that we are asking the House to approve today, for the simple reason that, as I said, the savings amount to less than 1.5% of the core funding that forces receive from central Government. Police forces can make those savings and the front line can be protected.

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[Caroline Flint]

I want to make some progress, as I have taken lots of interventions and I am very conscious that other Members want to contribute to the debate.

The reality is that as a result of improved communications, new technologies and international mobility, serious and organised crime is becoming more sophisticated and increasingly global in reach, making the police’s job more difficult. As I have said, we are dealing with 21st-century criminal entrepreneurs. They are involved in all sorts of rackets from counterfeit goods to human trafficking, prostitution and, of course, drugs, and what we need is a 21st-century police response.

The reality, however, is that many smaller forces—there are 19 in England and Wales with fewer than 2,000 officers—already struggle to meet the challenges of modern crime, and across the board, as Sir Paul Stephenson made clear in his speech on Monday evening, police resources for tackling serious and organised crime are “unco-ordinated” and “inadequate”. I am afraid to say that that is partly due to the police structures we have and a parochialism that does not address some of these serious crime issues. Many Members—probably on both sides of the House—will defend their force structure, even though it might not help or deliver the capacity to deal with some of the crimes I am talking about. That is why I believe there is a very strong case for borough level local policing, but I am certainly not convinced that at the force level some of the sizes of organisation we have are either manageable, good value for money or even delivering what we need.

The police believe that there are 68 criminal organisations with assets in excess of £10 million. These are organisations whose operations are complex and do not respect national borders, let alone police force borders. While inter-force collaboration is certainly improving—there are many good examples of it up and down the country—as the Bichard report clearly highlighted, the way our police service is structured means that all too often individual forces act separately and fail to share information with other forces. In an age in which criminals can escape quickly across police force boundaries, it is not sustainable for police forces to have to notify other forces in advance, or have protocols in place, before they can track and apprehend criminals. It slows everything down; it is not a good use of resources.

In the case of the London and Glasgow bombers in June 2007, when terrorists placed two car bombs outside a nightclub in London’s west end before driving to Scotland to ram their jeep into the entrance at Glasgow airport, detectives from London following the getaway car were concerned that if they had to make arrests en route they would have to ensure that local forces were notified and put on stand-by. Later there was also confusion about which force should lead on the case—whether it should be the Metropolitan police which had started the investigation, or the Strathclyde police in Glasgow where the case finished up.

It is also difficult for smaller police forces to invest in the assets that are needed to run complex, and often international, investigations effectively. There is a case for investigations into serious and organised crime being led by larger, more centralised crime-fighting units, and merging some functions or responsibilities, or even forces, could offer economies of scale and reduce bureaucracy and costs and lead to better outputs. Alternatively, as Sir Paul Stephenson suggested, we could have a nationally co-ordinated, federated structure for tackling organised crime, whether led by the police service or as part of an extended Serious Organised Crime Agency remit.

[Keith Vaz]

I wonder whether my right hon. Friend has had an opportunity to look at the Select Committee’s detailed report on the Serious Organised Crime Agency that was concluded earlier this year, in which we raised the issue of targets as opposed to cost. If the Government are right, we are spending £500 million on SOCA, but it sees only £23 million. Does she not think that these targets need to be improved if we are to get value for money?

[Caroline Flint]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend, and the Select Committee did very good work on SOCA. I am very proud to be the former Home Office Minister who established SOCA. We brought together the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the drugs investigation arm of Customs and Excise. However, things have gone wrong on asset recovery, on which we needed to make more progress. Also, when we developed SOCA and since, we failed properly to consider its relationship to forces around the country. It is not just a question of having a national body, but of what is happening on the ground. The link between local policing and national police services such as SOCA is absolutely crucial, and I agree with my right hon. Friend that much more needs to be done to get that right.

The point is still well made that we can look for savings as well as better outcomes, but given that we are discussing the police grant, we must task the Minister with explaining how we are to protect the existing situation. Yes, there needs to be improvement, but we do not want to go backwards in our efforts to tackle organised crime through these reductions in the police grant.

Examining this issue has the potential not only to make the police more effective, but to help to deliver the savings that need to be found without necessarily reducing the number of police on our streets, and to become more effective in tackling serious and organised crime. The cost of such crime to the country is £40 billion, and there are 38,000 organised criminals and 6,000 criminal organisations. There will be no new resources for dealing with organised crime and even if there were, they would never be enough to tackle terrorism, for example.

This is a serious issue that needs to be looked at as these cuts are made, in order to ensure that we do not lose our capacity, which is already varied throughout the country, to tackle the most serious crimes that our neighbourhoods face.

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the thoughtful speeches of the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson). We all thought that his ambition in life was to be the Member of Parliament for his city, but now we know that he really wants to be the sheriff of Peterborough. Whether he goes and hugs those trees is another matter, but the constituency angle that he has taken should be considered by the House when dealing with the police grant.

I welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box for his first of what I hope will be many debates on the police grant. I hope that he will pass on our very best wishes to the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), who as shadow Police Minister was a frequent attendee at these events and whose comments from the Dispatch Box were very incisive.

These are difficult times and of course we understand that a new Government are always keen to blame the previous Government for the decisions that they will make. I, too, was present at the debate earlier this year when the police grant was, in effect, agreed by both sides of the House. I do not know what those on my Front Bench have decided to do, but I assume that they will vote against the reduction in the police grant. I am not sure—I am sure that somebody will remind me—but I think that in February the House was unanimous in approving the grant, and rightly so. This is one of the priorities of the people of this country.

I am glad to hear that in the Labour party manifesto the Home Office budget was ring-fenced. I cannot absolutely remember the section, although I imagine that my right hon. Friend the shadow Police Minister wrote it, so he would know. I am sorry that the Government did not do the same thing as part of the coalition agreement. I understand that we have to preserve the budgets of the national health service and education, but as far as law and order is concerned we—or the coalition Government—will regret the fact that they did not work harder to keep the Home Office budget intact. Why? This is a key priority, as the hon. Member for Peterborough has said, for every single Member of this House through the prism of their local constituency.

We know that the demand from local people is for more doctors and nurses, better schools and more police officers. Every single local campaign—not just campaigns launched by the Liberal Democrat party, as some would say—local petition and local survey shows that local people say that they want more police officers. The visibility of a police officer on the beat is the absolute sign that the public are being protected. Anything that cuts into that budget and prevents the reality of the local police officer on the beat will cause each and every Member of this House some pain.

Clearly, Opposition Members will feel some pain because Ministers and Government Members will always say, “Well, this is because of the shadow Chief Secretary’s letter, so we have to do all this.” Looking around the Chamber, I think that I might have been here longer than anyone else who is present—although not longer than every Member put together—and one thing that I remember and that Members should remember as elected representatives is that, ultimately, memories are quite short. Over a certain period, one can use the mantra, “They left us with no money”—eight weeks is not long enough not to use it—but by the end of the year local people will be very frustrated when they pick up their phones and the police officers they want are not there.

That was why I was so pleased to hear the commitment made from the Dispatch Box this afternoon by the Police Minister: he anticipates that, notwithstanding the reduction in the police grant, the number of police officers in front-line services will remain intact. Of course, the actual analysis is out of his hands. At the end of the day, it will be for local chief constables and police authorities to say whether that is what happens, but I know that that is his ambition and it is a very good ambition for a Police Minister to have. It is a very good ambition for a Conservative—even though it is a coalition Government—Police Minister to stand up at the Dispatch Box in the House of Commons and to say in his first speech, “We do not want to reduce the number of police officers. We want to keep it the same and perhaps, if we get those structural changes, to increase it.” As he knows, one of the great achievements of the previous Government was a record number of police officers—147,000 police officers, 16,000 police community support officers and 79,000 new civilians working in the police force. These are figures to die for, in my view. Every Police Minister would love to get to the Dispatch Box and say that those figures will remain intact.

We must work with the Government to try to ensure that that happens. I know that it sounds odd, but I have always seen policing issues as above party politics. There is agreement that local people want to see crime reduced, they want to see their police officers out on the beat and they want to be able to see quick responses to their problems, so let us see whether there is a way in which we can help the Government to do that. Tomorrow, the Home Secretary is coming to give evidence to the Select Committee—it will be her first appearance. I am very pleased that the Police Minister is coming in two weeks’ time, and I thank him for the speed with which he responded to my request. That is the appropriate mechanism to analyse the Government’s claims and the concerns of local police committees and chief constables. We want to get to a position where we use the pot of money properly and adequately, so that there is not the reduction in numbers that I think will happen but the Minister hopes will not.

Those changes that we have heard about today have been present in every debate that we have had on policing, certainly during the three years for which I have been the Chair of the Select Committee. The first is structural change, by consent and not for structural change’s sake. The second is collaboration. As we have seen throughout the country, forces are working together, whether that involves borrowing a helicopter, as they did in Cumbria during the Whitehaven tragedy, or the way in which the police force in Northumberland reacted so quickly to the problems of the past two weeks. Such collaboration is ongoing. The third is better procurement, so that we have one set of contracts rather than 43.

The fourth change is ensuring that we do not just have initiatives. I accept what the Minister says when he asks what the point is of a brand-new police station—people do not really want their police officers in a police station; they want them outside. But sometimes we need brand-new police stations. We cannot expect all our police officers to operate from a Doctor Who-type TARDIS. There have to be police stations to hold people in detention, so that officers can deal with those requirements that legislators place on our local police forces.

The fifth change is a reduction in bureaucracy. Of course, we all agree that that should happen. Let us implement the Berry report and the Flanagan report in full. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) was a member of the Select Committee in the last Parliament and he co-authored the report “Policing in the 21st century”, which talked about all those things but also about investment in technology. In the long term, we can cut bureaucracy by giving police officers hand-held computers. The Minister will not win his battle with the Treasury for more money, because he is trying to cope with less money. However, that is what we have to do in the future.

We have an investment in this matter on both sides of the House as constituency MPs as well as a duty to the public to ensure that we work together to try to cut away waste. I do not think that there is a huge amount of waste in the police force. I know that we have heard about potted plants and iPods in certain Government Departments, but there is always a story like that. I assure the Minister that in a couple of years’ time, the Opposition will be coming out with such stories. The fact is that we need to ensure that when we give money it is monitored much more closely. Perhaps there ought to be more strings. The last Government were probably too generous in providing so much funding and not very firm in monitoring it.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is a question not just of pot plants and mood music, but of the fact that police forces in England and Wales have to deal with some 6,500 pages of nationally given guidelines from the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers? Her Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary said only a few days ago that putting those documents end to end would reach as high as the Eiffel tower. That is waste and bureaucracy, is it not?

[Keith Vaz]

Yes, it is. I do not say that everything the last Government did was absolutely perfect. I have related one example to the House on many occasions. I once went up to Staffordshire and looked at the work of Staffordshire police to reduce from 24 sheets to one sheet the documentation that is required when someone is charged. After that, every time the Home Secretary got up, I asked, “Have you rolled out this brilliant idea across the country?” but the answer was no, because the system worked so slowly. We will expect better from this Police Minister, because he is so keen to deal with waste. We want to make sure that good practice is adopted as quickly as possible and is rolled out. We do not want excuses such as that it takes a long time to write a letter to chief constables.

The points raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) are correct. I did not know that she actually invented the Serious Organised Crime Agency; had I done so, we would have called her to give evidence. There are examples of our providing huge amounts of money, such as half a billion pounds for SOCA, which seized only £23 million, and £400,000 for the National Policing Improvement Agency, and spending £79 million on consultants. Those are the kinds of issues that we should have dealt with in the past 13 years, but sometimes Ministers cannot, as the new Minister will find, know exactly what is going on.

[Caroline Flint]

They do not stay long enough.

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. In her case, she was promoted to become the Minister for Europe and the rest is history. We need Ministers to stay in place long enough to see what happens when their decisions are implemented.

The Select Committee will be constructive and will not just condemn. We are going to put good practice on our website, without waiting for it to go on the Home Office website, with lots of arrows pointing to good practices and asking, “Why isn’t this followed in Cambridgeshire, Essex, Leicestershire or elsewhere?” We will hold the Government to account on that.

The Minister has repeated the words that were used at the Association of Chief Police Officers conference of 1 July, saying that he wants the police to be crime fighters, not form fillers. We all agree with that—there is no problem with that statement—but a reduction in the police grant is proposed today, and if the comprehensive spending review cuts the police budget by 25%, ACPO has said that would mean 20,000 fewer police officers. There will be conflict between the Government and the police force, because it will not remain silent, just as it did not remain silent on police pay.

I had only one really robust conversation with the previous Prime Minister, which will not be in my memoirs, although I have thought of a name for them: I am going to call them “The 23rd Man” rather than “The Third Man”. That robust conversation occurred when I reminded him that we had a duty to respect the police. There is no point in Ministers and shadow Ministers, every time there is some great tragedy, coming to the Dispatch Box and praising the police but then not giving them the pay rise that was agreed in arbitration. When we are in the position of cutting perhaps 20,000 police officers, we will have a severe problem and the police force will be in conflict with the Government. I hope it does not come to that.

I hope also that Parliament will support the Minister in his battle with the Treasury. I know it is difficult for Ministers to do this in the current economic climate, but policing policy needs defending. The Minister should feel confident that he can go to the Chancellor, quote speeches such as that of the hon. Member for Peterborough and say, “At a local level, we cannot have fewer police officers. We must retain the level and we must invest in our police service.” I joined others on the streets of our capital to oppose what the Labour Government did on police pay, because I think that we need to defend the police not just at the Dispatch Box, but outside.

[Robert Halfon]

I am interested to hear the right hon. Gentleman’s eloquent speech. He talks about retaining numbers, but given that 80% of the police budget is spent on staffing costs, which is a huge amount, surely one way of retaining the numbers is by reducing that 80%.

[Keith Vaz]

That will, of course, happen with the reduction before us today, even though some chief constables have said that they will not make police officers redundant. Under the proposals that Treasury Ministers have put to the Home Office for a reduction of 25%, I am afraid that that will happen. What I am saying is that the hon. Gentleman will have to go back to Harlow, as I will have to go back to Leicester and other Members will have to go back to their constituencies, and explain why that has happened. The mantra, “They left us with no money,” is not going to be enough, so we need to work constructively. We need to help the Minister to do battle with the Treasury. We need to try to ring-fence this budget, because policing is just as important as the NHS and just as important as schools and education. It needs to be protected. I hope that the Minister understands that in the months ahead, with the CSR and other considerations, he should feel free to come to Parliament and listen to what colleagues are saying about the impact at local level. If he does that, he will understand that the global figures are one thing, but that the cuts at local level will be severe.

This is an important debate and I hope that we will have another opportunity in the near future to discuss all the other ideas that Members have put forward, because the package cannot stand on its own. It has to be done with all the other reforms and changes that are necessary. I thought that my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) was a pretty good Police Minister, but if he were here doing what the present Minister is doing, I would vote against his Government, because I think it is wrong to reduce the police budget in this way. We need to realise how important this area of policy is and do our best to defend it.

Defendant Anonymity

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

The strongest argument is around the balance of harms. The complainant in a rape trial has anonymity, and everyone who has considered this issue in the past has come to a balanced judgment that it is therefore appropriate to give the defendant a degree of anonymity. Because of the way in which rape is reported, these will have been the considerations that have guided previous Governments and Oppositions, and previous parliamentarians, in their consideration of this issue.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Minister has correctly described the views of the Select Committee, of which the Prime Minister was a member, in 2003. I was not serving on the Committee at that stage. He has set out the Government’s views very clearly today. Does this proposal exclude the possibility of the further research into false allegations that the Stern inquiry suggested? Is he dismissing the idea of further research altogether?

[Mr Blunt]

No, it does not. I am delighted to say that the right hon. Gentleman has provided me with a cue to begin the next part of my speech, which deals with that issue.

In taking our position forward, we will examine the question of section 44 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, which I understand has never been implemented. That section grants anonymity at the pre-charge stage to persons under 18 years old who are involved in criminal investigations, including suspects. It already provides a statutory equivalent for children and young persons to the measures that we have in mind for adults, and as such is linked to the present debate.

Now, for the benefit of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and other hon. Members, I should add a final note on the question of research. As hon. Members will be aware, the director of analytical services in the Ministry of Justice has been asked to produce an independent assessment of the current research and statistics on defendant anonymity in rape cases. We are aiming to publish this report before the summer recess, in the week commencing 26 July. It will cover all the available research and statistics on the subject and is intended to inform the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is an enormous pleasure for me to follow the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti), which I thought was excellent. I first met the hon. Gentleman on his first day on the House and I did what every old Member does to every young Member—no, not that! I asked him when he was going to give his maiden speech, and I kept asking him week after week. He said that he was going to save it for a really important debate and he was right to do so. He spoke with great eloquence and enormous passion about his constituency. He cleverly named all three local newspapers, the leader and deputy leader of his council and his local football team, and he becomes, of course, the most famous graduate of Chatham grammar school for girls. That kind of story is almost new Labour.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will make a huge contribution to this House. We on the Opposition Benches and, I am sure, Members on his side look forward to his eloquence in future debates. I wish him well in what I am sure will be a long parliamentary career. He was right to mention Paul Clark. Paul—or Mr Clark, or whatever we call former Members of the House—had a very small majority. We would have been delighted if Paul had won again, but the hon. Gentleman has turned the majority into five figures. We wish Paul Clark well in his career; he was a very popular Member and was admired and liked on both sides of the House.

This debate, like all debates in the House, is very important. I am speaking only because the Home Affairs Committee has been mentioned on numerous occasions. The Prime Minister has mentioned the deliberations of the Select Committee in 2003, when he was a member, and Members on both sides of the House have referred to that, so I felt it appropriate to inform the House of what the Select Committee decided when it conducted an investigation into this important matter seven years ago.

The Prime Minister was a member of the Committee at that stage, but I did not know until my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) mentioned it in her intervention that he was not present when the evidence was taken. However, as a former member, she will know that it is not vital to be there when evidence is taken so long as one is part of deliberations on the proceedings. I say that in the presence of one new member of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood). We look forward to the Government’s tabling the order to set up the Select Committee so that we can meet and start to discuss these matters—I know that the Minister is no longer a Whip, so he has no control over these matters. This is certainly one of the issues that we will want to consider.

The hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham came up with the crucial point that was perhaps missing from the Minister’s speech. Why is it necessary to extend anonymity just for those who have been accused of rape up until the time of charge? That is what the Select Committee said and I will read verbatim from our recommendations in the course of my speech. It is necessary for those cases in which people feel that they are falsely accused and turn out to be falsely accused, and the huge level of publicity that occurs as a result of such cases. In a sense, we should include the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport and the shadow Minister in these discussions, because what concerns Members of this House who are worried about the issue is the fact that people can make false accusations and as a result whole lives can be destroyed—not just the lives of the people who have been falsely accused but those of their families, too.

As the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), said in what I thought was the finest speech that she has given in this House on any subject, these are important issues that need to be discussed and explored properly. That is why I think that the Government should pause, having stated their position clearly, as the Minister has. There is a need to pause, because this decision has implications not just for rape cases but for the whole criminal justice system.

I would probably be described as a conservative with a small c, because I believe passionately that those who are falsely accused are also victims. I do not mean those who are acquitted because there is not sufficient evidence, but those who are maliciously—I think that this point was made—falsely accused of rape or any other crime or misdemeanour. It is a terrible thing to be falsely accused when those accusations are not put to the relevant person and they are not given a chance properly to respond. Unfortunately, that is how the criminal justice system works at the moment.

We need to think very carefully before we make any extension. I am not saying that the Government have not made their case, because, as I shall show when I read out the Select Committee’s recommendations, it is entirely in accordance with what the Committee recommended in 2003. My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley, who has read the transcripts will correct me if I am wrong, but I understand that the decision was unanimous. Given the personalities who have sat on the Home Affairs Committee in the past 10 years, including our most distinguished former member, the Prime Minister, it is quite difficult to get unanimity, especially on issues of this kind, so we should not dismiss absolutely what the Committee said in 2003. Indeed, we should use it as the basis for a period of wider consultation.

[Mr Blunt]

Perhaps I should be clear about the consultative process. We will not be having a period of formal consultation with all that that entails, but we will have a process whereby people will be able to contribute and listen. When we put out our research analysis, there will be another opportunity for that. If we need to go down the statutory route, there will not, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, be an immediate opportunity to do so.

[Keith Vaz]

That is most helpful. I am not sure whether the Minister has given us a timetable for the consultation period, but perhaps his colleague, the other Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), will do so when he winds up. The Minister has given a timetable for the independent study into research that he is conducting, although I am not sure how independent that research will be if it is done by a director at the Ministry of Justice. If it is to be called an independent inquiry, it might be appropriate for it to be done by a former High Court judge or a serving judge rather than a civil servant—not that I cast any aspersions on the officials in my former Department, who were all fine people. They have all the minutes from previous Ministers’ meetings, so we must never cast aspersions on our former civil servants. The inquiry probably will not be as independent as one would hope, and I hope that the Minister will reconsider that issue.

I am with the Minister, however, regarding the fact that someone will be looking at the research that has been conducted or that will be conducted in the next few weeks. That is what the Stern inquiry suggested—proper, appropriate research into the false allegations issue—and that will be helpful.

[Geraint Davies]

Does my right hon. Friend feel that there is an equivalence between the sort of case being discussed, in which someone is accused and found innocent, and someone being raped? We seem to be making out that there is some sort of equivalence, but surely there is not.

[Keith Vaz]

No, there is not an equivalence—that takes the debate in the wrong way, and we need to be careful and temperate in the language that we use. There is no equivalence, but we should not forget those who are falsely and maliciously accused but have not committed an offence of that kind. The newspapers revel in reporting allegations about offences of a sexual nature because it titillates the editorial writers in our tabloid papers. We should not forget how awful it is for someone to have a malicious rumour spread against them, but that is in no way equivalent to the rape of a man a woman, which is a terrible crime. I think that all hon. Members in the House agree on that.

Let me read the recommendations of the Select Committee in 2003. I shall not read all of them—just the couple that are relevant to what we are discussing. The Committee said:

“On balance, we are persuaded by the arguments in favour of extending anonymity to the accused. Although there are valid concerns about the implications for the free reporting of criminal proceedings, we believe that sex crimes do fall ‘within an entirely different order’ to most other crimes. In our view, the stigma that attaches to sexual offences—particularly those involving children—is enormous and the accusation alone can be devastating. If the accused is never charged, there is no possibility of the individual being publicly vindicated by an acquittal.”

The second relevant recommendation is:

“We therefore recommend that the reporting restriction, which currently preserves the anonymity of complainants of sexual offences, be extended to persons accused of those offences. We suggest, however, that the anonymity of the accused be protected only for a limited period between allegation and charge. In our view, this strikes an appropriate balance between the need to protect potentially innocent suspects from damaging publicity and the wider public interest in retaining free and full reporting of criminal proceedings.”

From what the Minister said today, I gather that is what the Government are suggesting. Even though I was not chairing the Committee at the time, it would be totally churlish for me to say that the Select Committee got it wrong.

[Ms Bagshawe]

Can the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the recommendations he read out referred to all sexual offences, including those involving children, and rape was not in fact singled out?

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, which is why I would be keen for the Committee to revisit the issue. I shall try to make a deal on the Floor of the House with the Minister, if he is open to deals. As a former Whip, I am sure he is used to such things. A member of the Select Committee is in the Chamber. The Committee has not yet met although it will do so for the first time next week if the Government table the motion that sets us up—I cannot think why the Government have not yet set up the Select Committees.

Will the Government please give us the opportunity to examine defendant anonymity again, in the light of what was said in 2003, in the light of their proposals and in the light of the fact that there will not be the all singing and dancing consultation that my hon. Friend the shadow Minister wanted? Will the Government give us the opportunity to look at the evidence that civil servants at the Ministry of Justice are preparing? Let us deliberate so that we can come back to the House, perhaps this year—if the Committee agrees; I am not trying to get the Committee to do anything, because it is a Committee decision—with a firm set of proposals that the whole House can discuss, rather than rushing things through. That would allow the whole House to deliberate and would enable us to look at what we said in the past in the light of the evidence of the past seven years.

Others will come to the House in future and say that if we extend anonymity for a particular offence, we must look at the whole criminal justice system and extend it for other offences. There is a powerful argument for doing that, so that such matters are kept before the courts, and not decided by the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. Sometimes, newspapers trash people’s reputations in a way that no court proceedings could do—I am not speaking personally of course.

I hope that the Government will think again. Perhaps when the Minister winds up, he will give Parliament the opportunity to examine these matters more carefully.

Police Funding (Greater Manchester)

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Nick Herbert]

Of course, separate funding is made available for counter-terrorism responsibilities in the region, and all those responsibilities on forces are taken into account. I also accept that we are talking about an in-year reduction. The Government are not making any secret of the fact that, in order to pay down the deficit, we needed to find £6 billion-worth of savings. It is necessary for the Home Office and, in turn, the police, who account for well over half of Home Office spending—indeed, they account for half of all law and order spending—to find their fair share of savings.

I ask the hon. Gentleman to accept that we have a sense of proportion on the issue; he used quite strong language when talking about the implications of the cuts. Actually, I do not believe that his view of the implications of the cuts is shared by policing professionals, or those who are responsible for administering the budgets. Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I convened a meeting of chief constables; we invited them to come and talk to us about the challenge that they face. They are absolutely realistic about that challenge. The chief constable of Greater Manchester police was at that meeting, and I note that he has said, on the reduction in grant, that the force hopes to get officers on the streets by working more efficiently. I have also met the chairman of the Greater Manchester police authority on a number of occasions over the past few days to discuss wider issues relating to policing and, according to reports, he has insisted that the public would not see the effect of the cuts. He has said:

“Can I give an assurance to the people of Greater Manchester that we’re not looking at cuts in police or police staff? Currently the situation is difficult, we’ve had 10 very good years. Now the tough times are with us and we’re having to make those cutbacks—and considerable cutbacks they are.”

I believe that the chairman of the Greater Manchester police authority, who I understand is in the same party as the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish, is adopting a responsible attitude towards the savings that he has to make, and indeed a realistic attitude to the fiscal position that the last Government bequeathed to this Government.

It is, of course, for chief constables to use their expertise to decide what makes most sense for their force, but I am clear that the saving that we are discussing can be achieved by driving out wasteful spending on support functions, reducing bureaucracy and increasing efficiency in key functions, leaving the front line of policing strong and secure. I expect forces to be held to that, both by police authorities and by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

If police authorities find that their initial assessment is wrong and that they cannot make the required savings, will the Minister look sympathetically if they came forward with their proposals to ensure that officers remain on the beat? Visibility of officers on the beat is the bottom line, is it not?

[Nick Herbert]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It is very important that police officers remain on the beat; that is what the public wants to see. It is the responsibility of chief constables, as the managers of their forces, to do everything possible to drive out costs, reduce bureaucracy, find the savings within their forces, and find ways to work more efficiently and share services so that they can protect the front line. That was very much the discussion that I had yesterday with chief constables. It is the collective ambition both of the Government and of the police leadership in this country that we should do that. There is also a great realism about the situation in which we find ourselves; to coin a phrase, there is no money. We were faced with having to make savings, and they are, I believe, of a relatively manageable size in the overall scheme of things.

The service is already working towards realising more than £500 million of savings by 2013 and 2014—that work was already in train—of which £100 million will be realised this year. Collaboration, including in the procurement of goods and services and with regard to information technology, will be important in improving both service delivery and value for money. It is vital that we drive down the costs of policing while maintaining the quality of the front-line policing services that the public receive.

Legal Aid Payments

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Some of us on the Labour Benches did not support the previous Government’s cuts to legal aid in this area because, as representatives of inner-city areas, we realised that there were few specialist immigration solicitors. Will the Lord Chancellor ask the LSC to consider an emergency franchising of those firms that have expertise so that the casework may be dealt with? The problem is the casework that is not being done by RMJ, so how do we help people now?

[Mr Clarke]

We will not go back on the graduated fees scheme. It might well be that the previous Government will not have been the only one who had to examine what could be done to improve the efficiency of the legal aid scheme and to address its costs, although I realise that that will not be altogether popular.

There are a lot of specialist firms, although there could no doubt be more. The number of firms bidding has gone up in the present contract round, with 330 organisations bidding for twice the amount of work available. However, I will ask the LSC to consider whether something like the right hon. Gentleman’s proposal might be required in particular cities or areas.