Legal Aid

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Karl Turner]

Some 97% of funding to Citizens Advice will go as a result of the Government’s plans, so my hon. Friend makes a valid point.

I am not just talking about the for-profit providers. The non-profit providers also provide important legal advice to people in our constituencies. I want to attempt to bust a myth that the Government are perpetuating. There seems to be the suggestion that publicly funded lawyers are fat cat lawyers earning fat cat salaries. In reality, publicly funded lawyers, whether solicitors or barristers, earn very modest incomes if funded by legal aid. The Lord Chancellor says that he does not want to hit women and children, but he does want to target fat cat lawyers. Why, then, is he making 53% cuts to social welfare legal aid?

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I declare an interest as a non-practising barrister. I worked for a number of years as a solicitor at a law centre. These cuts will affect some very poorly paid solicitors who work in law centres and who were previously doing work such as immigration before that was taken away. The profession will suffer because we will not be able to attract people and give them the expertise to do this kind of work.

[Karl Turner]

My right hon. Friend makes a very important point and one that solicitors and barristers have raised with me in recent days. There is certainly concern about attracting people into training contracts and even attracting people to study law as a result of the Government’s plans.

As I understand it, £350 million will be removed from legal aid as a result of the Government’s plans. The vast majority of that will be in social welfare law. In an attempt to bust the myth that publicly funded lawyers are fat cat lawyers, I spoke to some legal aid providers in my area today. I spoke with Keith Lomax, the senior managing partner of Davies Gore Lomax, which is based in Leeds. He represents the most vulnerable clients on such issues as housing, debt, welfare benefits and education, particularly special educational needs, and he told me that the Government’s 10% reduction in fees across the board was difficult for his firm to cope with. I was staggered when he told me that his hourly charging rate was £48.24. He charges the Legal Services Commission £3.78 per letter—hardly fat cat lawyers rates. The people who work for him earn very modest incomes—between £18,000 and £24,000 a year for fully qualified solicitors, he tells me.

Tim Durkin, the managing partner of Myer Wolff solicitors in Hull, runs a long-standing firm reliant on legal aid. Mr Durkin estimates that the cuts to his business in relation to child contact and residence applications will amount to about £300,000 per year. He describes that as simply unsustainable.

Max Gold, from the Max Gold partnership in Hull, reports to me that he has not been in a position to pay himself or his solicitors and staff an increase in salary for some six years. He says

“the Government are not living in the real world to describe legally aided lawyers as fat cats”.

In his view, the Labour Government were far from profligate when it came to legal aid. He says that the previous Government were not particularly generous in relation to publicly funded lawyers. However, he says that the previous Government at least understood the requirement to offer legal advice in areas such as social welfare law. Indeed, he also mentions immigration, which is particularly important, given that the other place almost accepted an amendment—it was defeated by, I think, 19 votes—a couple of days ago.

In 2000, there were 10,000 legal providers. There are now 2,000—a reduction of 8,000 firms in the last 12 years. Many closed their doors in the last 12 months. The impact of the cuts on legal aid providers is clear for anybody to see. Many firms that provide help mainly in family and social welfare law will have to withdraw from the market. The Law Society says

“firms already operate on the margins of viability…specialist firms and advice agencies…providing social welfare law services…are likely to be wiped out with catastrophic consequences for people in need”

of legal help. The Law Society says that it

“does not see how many firms can continue to operate in this environment.”

The current changes could reduce firms offering family law by as much as 60%.

The Government’s impact assessment, which accompanies the Green Paper, estimated a 67% decrease in income for law firms in rural areas and a 59% decrease in urban areas. That is simply unsustainable. It will not be economically viable for those firms to continue offering services on such tight margins. The Legal Action Group believes that legal aid will cease to be viable as a nationwide public service, with an overall decrease in civil legal aid to 900 firms, down from 2,000. My concern is about the potential for advice deserts to emerge as a result of those reductions. The impact on access to justice is therefore clear. If no service is available, our constituents will be left to paddle their own canoe. Some 75,000 children and young people are set to lose legal aid. Some 6,000 children under the age of 18 and 69,000 vulnerable young adults aged 18 to 23 will lose access to legal aid in their own right as a result of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill.

The Government claim that advice will be available elsewhere, from places such as the Free Representation Unit, jobcentres and Age UK. That claim has been disputed by the Advice Services Alliance. The Free Representation Unit represents clients in tribunals, but it does not cover the initial advice stages of, say, a welfare claim. The Child Poverty Action Group has stated:

“Unfortunately we do not have the resources to provide direct advice to people who are claiming benefits”.

Age UK has said:

“Our concern is that while it is true that both Age UK nationally and our partners in local Age UKs and Age Concerns do provide some help and advice with welfare benefits it is most often not at a level comparative to that provided through legal aid.”

The Government’s defence until now has been to talk about the telephone advice service. However, that is not the answer to advice deserts. Face-to-face legal advice is crucial. Fortunately, the Government suffered a defeat on this issue in the other place yesterday evening. I would respectfully urge the Government to take that on board. The Ministry of Justice predicts between only 4,000 and 10,000 additional mediation starts, despite withdrawing legal aid from 255,000 cases. It has simply not made a proper assessment.

The impact on for-profit and non-profit providers will be substantial, but it will be most keenly felt by those who rely on their services. The Government’s own impact assessment states that the proposals

“have the potential to disproportionately affect female clients, BAME clients”—

that is, black and minority ethnic clients—

“and ill or disabled people, when compared with the population as a whole”.

Despite that evidence and advice, the Government seem to want to plough on regardless. At a time when unemployment is rising and pressure is increasing on squeezed families, it is wrong for the Government to withdraw support for legal advice.

Opposing the legal aid cuts is not done due to narrow interest or to ensure that lawyers’ bank balances stay buoyant. It is about ensuring that people have not only these important rights but the means with which to exercise them. The Government must listen to the experts and base their cuts on the evidence. The Justice Select Committee, on which I serve, has said that the full cost implications of the Government’s proposals cannot be predicted. I therefore ask the Government to reconsider these cuts and not to take a gamble with justice.

Many eminent judges—not least Lord Hope, Lord Justice Dyson and Lady Hale—have also voiced their concern, along with academics and professionals, telling the Government time and again that there will be an increase in court administration due to the increased number of litigants in person, but that advice has been completely ignored. The Lord Chief Justice has echoed those concerns.

The opposition to the cuts in social welfare legal aid is, for me, about protecting the vulnerable and allowing access to justice. Of course, we are living in a time of austerity, and this must also be about saving money to the taxpayer, but there are alternatives. The early intervention provided for debt, employment, education, housing and family law matters through a mixture of voluntary and private sector organisations offers value for money. I shall not bore the Minister with the statistics produced by Citizens Advice, but it has provided Members with a helpful report that shows, pound for pound, the advantages of providing early advice. Unfortunately, however, the Tory-led Government have ignored crucial advice from, among others, the Lord Chief Justice, the Bar Council of England and Wales, and the Law Society.

The Lord Chief Justice has stated that the proposed reforms of public funding for civil cases will damage access to justice and lead to a huge increase in people fighting their legal battles alone. It is obvious to anyone that litigants in person will delay court time. The hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) is in his place. He sits as a recorder in the Crown Court, and he must know from experience the advantage of having a solicitor advocate or a barrister representing a client in court, as opposed to someone representing themselves.

The chairman of the Bar Council, Michael Todd QC, has told me today that

“legal aid barristers, working across a broad range of practice areas, are public servants, overwhelmingly operating in the public interest. Over a number of years, many members of the Bar and the junior Bar in particular, have found it increasingly difficult to sustain a financially viable career on legal aid work, which poses a grave threat to access to justice. Successive fee cuts and now the threatened removal of whole areas of law from the scope of legal aid means that many vulnerable people will be denied effective access to the Courts. It also means that many highly skilled and publicly spirited Barristers will be forced to leave the profession with a particularly heavy impact on female and BAME practitioners. That cannot be in the public interest”.

The Lord Chancellor needs urgently to take on board the defeats that the Government have suffered in the other place, and to look again at the real impact of these legal aid cuts before overturning those amendments in this place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Although some very good work is being done in prisons at the moment, and although there always have been one or two prisons in which a fair amount is happening, we will not be able to provide work for all prisoners for quite a long time. Our aim is to get a much higher proportion into work, and for that reason employees in prison will be volunteers. That is welcomed by private sector partners who like to have a say in their work force, and who want a properly motivated work force consisting of people who are trying to get themselves into a better state to go straight when they leave.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Lord Chancellor will know that 51% of those who enter the prison system have a drug dependency. What programmes to assist them will he have in place to enable them to undertake this work?

[Mr Clarke]

Actually, an even higher proportion than that have abused drugs in the month or two before they arrive in prison. We are currently opening the first drug rehabilitation wings in prisons, and we hope to have drug-free wings, too. We are upping the effort to deal with the drugs problem, which is a very large cause of the criminality of many of the people in our prisons. Obviously, it should be given a much higher priority than it has sometimes had in the past.

Police

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

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

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

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

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

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

[Nick Herbert]

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

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

[Keith Vaz]

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

[Nick Herbert]

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

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

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Mr Ruffley]

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

[Keith Vaz]

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

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

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

Transparency and Consistency of Sentencing

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the work of the Sentencing Council and the transparency and consistency of sentencing.

I am glad to have the opportunity to debate this issue today. Public confidence in our criminal justice system rests on the principle that justice is dispensed independently by a judge in possession of the full facts of a case. It is normal to quote Magna Carta: we do not deprive people of their liberty

“without due process of law”

in this country. It is not the case in the United Kingdom, as it still is, unfortunately, in many parts of the world, that the Executive can order the detention and trial of people simply on the basis that they disagree strongly with the Government. Neither is it the case, as it is in some other judicial systems, that trials can be stretched out and rerun, until the “right” judgment is reached. Politicians do not sentence people in individual cases, judges do, and British Governments lose cases when they are parties in civil actions. I shall not go on, because we all know that those are the fundamentals of civil liberties and the rule of law in this country.

Independence is what we employ judges for, but alongside that fundamental truth lies an equally important principle—the discretion to do justice in individual case. Only judges see the full circumstances of each case, and they need the freedom to vary sentences in individual instances in accordance with the gravity of the offence. They have to bear in mind the circumstances of the individual offender and such mitigation as they may be able to offer. Sometimes the offence will be so aggravated that a higher than average sentence is required, as we saw, for example, after the riots in August. On other occasions, there will be significant personal mitigation, or relatively little harm caused to the victim, which means that a lower sentence than average will be justified. Just as we trust that our independent judges are the right people to make sensible decisions about the running of cases, so we generally trust them to apply the framework of criminal law across a range of different kinds of case of varying degrees of seriousness.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Clarke]

It is very early, but I give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Keith Vaz]

On the point about gravity, the right hon. and learned Gentleman will have noted the sentences that were given yesterday to a group of four al-Qaeda inspired fundamentalists, who as the result of a Goodyear hearing will, in effect, be out of prison within six years. Does he consider it important to revisit the whole notion of Goodyear hearings in view of the fact that people who were going to cause mayhem in London have got away with being in prison for only six years?

[Mr Clarke]

I am not yet familiar with the full facts of the case, so I certainly shall not comment. There is also a matter of principle. The custom is growing that Ministers conduct a running commentary on sentences in individual cases as they proceed. I do not think that that is wise. I believe in the separation of powers. The right hon. Gentleman is a senior and respected Member of the House, but my understanding is that those people will be sentenced next week. I will check. When the sentence is actually imposed, we have a system whereby the Attorney-General can put in an appeal on the ground of leniency and ask the Court of Appeal to reconsider it. I will inquire more closely during the course of the debate, as the right hon. Gentleman is obviously concerned.

Public confidence would not be well served if individual judges gave widely varying sentences in similar cases. We have one body of law as determined by Parliament, and the punishment should fit the crime. Parliament imposing the law is the guardian of public opinion. We are answerable to the general public and the maximum tariffs set by the House have to be taken as a guide by judges in all cases.

Different cases should attract different punishments. The question is how to ensure that our independent judiciary can make judgments that fit the facts of the case but are also consistent with each other: how to balance, on the one hand, the imperative of judicial freedom—such that they have the latitude to sentence according to circumstance—with, on the other hand, the need for a consistent approach across the system and in all our courts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is an enormous pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the Chairman of the Justice Committee. I agree with almost everything he said. Many lawyers are present, which is not unusual in the House of Commons, especially on a subject like this one. It is absolutely the right approach to highlight the importance of investing resources on prevention rather than at what happens at the end of the criminal justice system. As the right hon. Gentleman has said, that means early intervention—something that no Government seem prepared to do because it costs money up front, whereas at the moment, our system pays to keep people in prison at astonishing rates in order to punish them, but they often come out of prison and reoffend.

When the Solicitor-General winds up the debate—I understand that he is the Government’s spokesman at the end—I hope he will tell us whether Lord Justice Leveson is still chairing the Sentencing Council, even though he is also—[Interruption.] I am most grateful; the Solicitor-General no longer has to wait for the winding-up speech. We work quickly together, Madam Deputy Speaker, as he is my neighbour in Leicestershire, so we understand each other quite well.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Telepathy is difficult for Hansard to pick up and it is not easy for other Members in the Chamber. It would help if we made that sequence a little clearer.

[The Solicitor-General (Mr Edward Garnier)]

To make it clear, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) meant that I, not Lord Justice Leveson, was his parliamentary neighbour. I say that in case that does not appear clearly on the record either.

[Keith Vaz]

In football terms, that was an instant replay. I am glad that Lord Leveson now chairs the important inquiry into the media. After that is completed, he will start the next inquiry. He must be an incredible chap to be able to chair the Sentencing Council and conduct all these other inquiries. I am glad that he is still there; continuity is important.

Let me go back to the intervention I made at the start of the Lord Chancellor’s speech. He said that the Government would be able to give us more information at the end of the debate on the case that I raised, which has been concluded in the courts. It concerns a group of four al-Qaeda-inspired fundamentalists who admitted planning to send mail bombs to their targets during the run-up to Christmas 2010. Their targets included the Palace of Westminster, the home of the Mayor of London, the Stock Exchange, and other buildings of that kind.

Those defendants participated in what is known as a Goodyear direction, which, as the Lord Chancellor and other Members will know, enables a trial judge to indicate the sentence that will be given if a defendant pleads guilty. I understand that the sentence that is indicated cannot be increased by the judge at the time when the defendants are sentenced.

[Rehman Chishti]

I have huge admiration and respect for the right hon. Gentleman. However, I dealt with Goodyear indications when I practised as a barrister, and I recall that a judge can refuse to give such an indication. He can say, “This is too severe. If the defendant wants to plead guilty, he can do so; otherwise he can stand trial.” A Goodyear indication can relieve a potential victim of the stress and the ordeal of giving evidence, but ultimately it is a matter for the judge: if he thinks that the sentence is too severe, he will not give a Goodyear indication.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is a very experienced prosecutor, and he knows much more about these matters than I do. Perhaps, given the charges that were levelled against the individuals in the case that I mentioned, the judge ought to have refused the application, but the fact remains that two of the defendants, Mohammed Chowdhury and Shah Rahman, were effectively told by Mr Justice Wilkie that they would be out in six years, because that was what was indicated by the sentence of twelve and a half years that he proposed to give them.

I have raised that case because it came before the court yesterday, because we are debating this issue today, and because I think we should consider the severity of what would have occurred had the matter been brought to fruition.

[The Solicitor-General]

I do not want to rain on my right hon. neighbour’s parade, but I am afraid that I will not be answering questions of the kind that he has put to me when I wind up the debate. The matter is ongoing. It may well be that the judge has given a Goodyear indication, but he will be sentencing next week, and nothing that I shall say today, or that the right hon. Gentleman will say today, should in any way impinge on the judge’s discretion. The Goodyear direction system is there, and its conduct is circumscribed by fairly strict rules. While the right hon. Gentleman is perfectly entitled to make any point that he wishes to make about particular sentences, I think that—as my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor said earlier—we would be better advised to leave that particular issue until the sentence has been promulgated. All sorts of implications may flow from that.

[Keith Vaz]

I am very happy to take the Solicitor-General’s advice. What I have sought to do is ensure that the issue is looked at, as I hope it will be in future when the sentence is finally determined.

Let me move from the specific to the general. I do not want us to reach a point at which we have plea bargaining in criminal justice, because I think that that would be wholly wrong. The hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) mentioned the riots. I pay tribute to the way in which the criminal justice system operated throughout that period. I well remember going to Horseferry Road magistrates court at midnight and receiving a call from the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), who welcomed me. I do not know how he knew that I was going to be there, but somehow he knew that I was looking at the 24-hour courts. Although there was something of a gap because both the practitioners and the defendants had to be brought from police stations, the courts moved very quickly at a time when it was necessary for that to happen.

Although politicians are very wary of trampling on the jurisdiction of the judiciary, the public, and even the Prime Minister, made known their views on sentencing during the riots. The result was that the courts issued sentences that were, on average, more severe than for similar offences committed outside the period of the riots.

I also pay tribute to the Lord Chancellor and the Ministry of Justice for providing my Committee with so much information. I do not think that we have had so much transparency before, as regards figures relating to the riots being made available. I think it was the Lord Chancellor who told us, in a Select Committee evidence session, that 76% of people who appeared before the courts for offences committed during the riots had a previous conviction. He also told us that for adults, the figure was 80%, and for juveniles it was 62%. It is important, as we look at sentencing and transparency, that figures are made available to Select Committees and Parliament, so that we can have informed views on the issues that we are deliberating.

The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), who has left the Chamber, raised the issue of rehabilitation in her intervention on the Lord Chancellor. One of the most important issues that the Lord Chancellor has raised during his time in office is that of rehabilitation. As the Chairman of the Justice Committee has said, there is no point in just sending people to jail; if one convicted criminal in four reoffends soon after completing their sentence, something is wrong with the way we deal with rehabilitation. Of course people have to go to prison to be punished in certain circumstances, but the prison authorities need the time and space to start the process of rehabilitation.

We have been looking at the roots of radicalisation and will publish a report on the subject on Monday next week. We feel it is very important that when people are incarcerated, those who are able to detoxify—that was the word used in the evidence given to us, and I use it again today—people who have been radicalised have time to do that. One cannot do that in a short period, or without resources; it has to be done over a period of time. We need to ensure that when those people come out, the experience has made a difference to their lives, because at the end of the day it is our constituents who suffer if that is not the case.

This is a good debate, and I hope very much that it will not just be about tougher sentences, because as we all know, 83 of the 134 prisons in this country are classified as overcrowded. If we are to make sure that when people come out, they do not reoffend, we need a criminal justice system that is fit for purpose and able, in the end, to do the one thing that we want it to do: help in the reduction of crime.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

That is an important part of any consideration about the transfer of prisoners, and one that I certainly give attention to in considering applications that are made to me.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

As the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) said, the process for removal should begin at the time of sentence. That was one of the recommendations of the Select Committee on Home Affairs in our last report. At the moment, the whole process starts far too late. We need better liaison between the UK Border Agency and the prison authorities.

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman and to his Select Committee for its work in this area. He will know just how multi-faceted this all is, and I am grateful for the continuing attention of his Committee. The points he makes are entirely reasonable and I will be following them up.

Victims and Witnesses Strategy

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

We are seeking to make it more of an obligation on the court to consider making a compensation order for the victim when they appear for a crime. We are also trying to address ways in which we can improve the collection of that compensation so it can be paid over. My hon. Friend touches on what ought to be a key feature of the justice system, and one that needs to be improved.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Six months on from the riots last August, only 42 people have received compensation under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886. The Home Affairs Committee report suggests that there should be a review of the victims surcharge. Is that part of the Lord Chancellor’s strategy? Does he agree that compensation should go directly to the victim rather than to a general fund?

[Mr Clarke]

The victims surcharge has always been separate from orders for compensation for victims—or at least it has for a long time. Either way, as I have explained, we are hoping to get more from the victims surcharge to give more money to victim support services in general across the country, because there are still deficiencies in them. I think we are all agreed that it is a very good idea that courts should make compensation orders for the victims of crime.

We hope that that will be done more often as a matter of course in court, but it depends on the defendant’s means, so we must look at how the court gets better information on the assets available to pay for such things. That will come later as we work on the proposals. We must also improve the recoverability of compensation orders. We all believe that we should cover more by way of fines, compensation orders and so on, and that that steadily improves. The difficulty is that a large number of people before the court either do not have much money or will not co-operate in recovering it. As for all creditors recovering money from extremely reluctant and feckless debtors, it is difficult for us to raise that money, but we hope to have the assistance and advice of the Home Affairs Committee from time to time on how we might improve that record.

EU Criminal Policy

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

I beg to move,

That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 14613/11, relating to a Commission Communication, Towards an EU Criminal Policy: Ensuring the effective implementation of EU policies through criminal law; agrees that the primary focus of EU criminal law should be tackling serious crime with a cross-border dimension; and further agrees that the general principles of subsidiarity, proportionality and necessity based on clear evidence must be respected when deciding whether to propose criminal sanctions to ensure the effective enforcement of EU policies.

I am glad of the opportunity to restate that the Government agree with the European Scrutiny Committee that the focus of European Union criminal law should be combating the most serious cross-border crimes. We also agree that in determining whether criminal law is required across the member states, it is critical that the general principles of subsidiarity, proportionality and necessity are respected.

The consequence of the Lisbon treaty coming into effect on 1 December 2009 is that the use of criminal law provisions is likely to increase, as they will be used to support the implementation of European Union policy in areas in which they have not been used before. However, the limits to that are not set in the communication that we are discussing, which is non-binding. Rather, they have a legal basis in the treaty, namely article 83. Paragraph 2 of that article limits the EU’s power, because it sets out that member states cannot be required to criminalise breaches of EU law unless the strict conditions in article 83 are met, and the United Kingdom opt-in will always apply. We have recently seen the first such proposal, on criminal sanctions for insider dealing and market manipulation.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The fact that we now have a specific example of where there can be co-operation means that we can extend it to other areas such as human trafficking. Does the Minister agree that in the case of specific crimes that cross borders and on which there is agreement, such as human trafficking and terrorism, we need to co-operate better with our European partners?

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, and of course the answer is yes. Our position on human trafficking and child sex crimes has been to have opt-in, so I can confirm his point.

It appears that in anticipation of the developments under the Lisbon treaty that I have described, the European Commission is seeking to develop some principles to be taken into consideration when the criminal law is used. The Government’s position is that we will approach legislative proposals on justice and home affairs on a case-by-case basis, with a view to maximising the country’s security and protecting civil liberties and the integrity of the criminal justice system. There is nothing in the document that we are debating, which is only a communication, that changes or challenges that fundamental position.

As the House may recall, some time before the Commission communication, in 2009, the European Council agreed conclusions on model provisions to guide its criminal law deliberations. The conclusions were adopted to prevent incoherent and inconsistent criminal provisions in EU legislation, and in anticipation of the changes that the Lisbon treaty would bring.

A number of the Council’s conclusions relating to the assessment of need for criminal law are satisfactorily reflected in the Commission’s communication, most notably the principle that the criminal law be used as a last resort. The adoption of legislation in accordance with the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality is referenced, as is the need to establish necessity.

There are some things that we welcome in the detail of the communication. For example, it acknowledges the UK’s opt-in rights and clearly states that the diversity of member states’ criminal law must be respected. The use of criminal law only when it is a necessary and proportionate response to combating particular conduct is an approach that we apply in our domestic criminal legislation. We are therefore glad that the Commission’s and the Council’s statements reflect those principles.

However, there are potential concerns. The Government believe that it is essential that the Commission propose only European criminal legislation that is necessary and proportionate. Ineffective implementation of a European Union policy should not, in itself, trigger consideration of the use of criminal law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash). He and the other members of his Committee are quite right to have brought this matter before the House. Although I start from a different position on the European Union from him, I think it is vital that the House has every opportunity to discuss issues concerning Europe. I commend him on working hard to ensure that on Thursday afternoon there will be a debate before the European Council meets.

I thought that the hon. Gentleman was a little harsh on my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) when he accused him of being complacent. I have known my hon. Friend since he was 11-years-old —we were at school together. There are many ways to describe him, but “complacent” is not one of them. However, if I may digress for just one second, Mr Speaker, I used to try to avoid being in class with him, because our names were adjacent on the register, and when they were read out in quick succession—“Slaughter”, “Vaz”—it was usually my hon. Friend leading the cheers.

Anyway, back to the European Union and away from our school days. I was heartened by what the Minister said about this measure. It is important that we deal with such measures on a case-by-case basis, for the very reasons cited by my hon. Friend. The European arrest warrant, which began as a good idea, is now out of control, with hundreds of requests being made by certain EU countries—I am sure that when he gets to speak, the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) will make reference to that fact. That is something that we need to guard against, so a cautious approach to the extension of criminal policy is extremely important. We have our own criminal law, and that is how it must remain, but we need co-operation with our European partners in a number of areas. I do not accept that the list read out by the hon. Member for Stone is definitive. It is a good list for us to work on in regard to co-operation on those issues with our European partners, although not necessarily in regard to legislation. The Government should bear that in mind when they approach those issues.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

As my right hon. Friend will have heard, there is a difference of view between the Chair of the Justice Committee and the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee on whether this constitutes a degree of legislative creep towards an objective of unifying the legal systems in Europe. If one of them is right, we can be happy that there is no creep, but the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee seems to think there is a degree of legislative creep involved. Which one does my right hon. Friend agree with?

[Keith Vaz]

I agree with both of them, because they were each making different points. We must be fair to the Chair of the Justice Committee, who is also the Chair of the Liaison Committee, because he was disputing a point of debate, not a point of fact, as to whether he had met any chair of a justice committee in any other European country who agreed with the view of the hon. Member for Stone view that one criminal law was being sought for the whole of the European Union. I have attended quite a few meetings in the European Union, and I have certainly never heard anyone say that they wanted one criminal law for the whole EU.

[Mr Cash]

I acknowledge the role of Solomon that the Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee is adopting, but I must point out that I was quoting from the Commission’s own document, which I think makes my case.

[Keith Vaz]

That clarification is helpful, but as the commissioners are not here to defend themselves, I shall try to move the debate on.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned certain crimes that are of course not Euro-crimes: terrorism, trafficking in human beings, illicit drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and computer crime. They go beyond the borders of the European Union, but it is important that we work with our European partners to try to combat those problems. There are times when we need to act quickly—in relation to the trafficking of human beings, for example. Our last report pointed out that at least 100,000 people were being trafficked around the European Union each year, including 5,000 in the United Kingdom, and that there did not appear to be a common European Union strategy to deal with that. We do not need a new criminal law that covers all the EU countries to deal with it; we need to ensure that our structures—Europol, Interpol and others—are able to service the needs of our criminal law. We should be able to prosecute those involved in human trafficking quite happily, without having regard to what is being said in other countries. Similarly, when Turkey eventually joins the European Union, it will have to deal with the problem of illegal drug trafficking. Almost 80% of the heroin that comes into Europe comes from Afghanistan via Turkey.

We can talk about co-operation, but we need to be very careful when we talk about extending criminal law. Our systems are completely different, and I do not think that anyone in the House would accept a proposition to harmonise our criminal justice systems. We should, however, proceed in the direction of co-operation.

I hope that the Minister will also examine the question of data. People can arrive in this country and undergo checks that do not reveal that they have committed criminal offences elsewhere in the EU. Dealing with that does not require legislation; it requires ministerial co-operation and co-operation between EU countries. So if someone who had committed a criminal offence in Poland, for example, came here and was involved in activities that required that information to be made available, that disclosure should be possible. Equally, that should also apply if someone who had committed an offence here went to another part of the EU.

I welcome the Government’s approach, but I urge the Minister to be cautious, because any extension would cause us great problems. However, it is important to push forward the co-operation that exists at EU level on the entire justice and home affairs agenda.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Alan Beith]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman and with the action he has taken on this matter, and I very much welcome the fact that the debate is taking place. It is certainly the view of the Liaison Committee that more attention needs to be given to developing European proposals that will, if we are not careful, only come to the House at too late a stage for us to have any significant influence on them. The work of the European Scrutiny Committee in all that is extremely valuable, but there are limits to what it can do.

In conclusion, let me remind Ministers of two things. First, we want to secure as much help as we can get for Select Committees from the UKRep staff in Brussels, who are extremely good when we go as visiting Committees in giving us advice on what is happening, what is being proposed and which of the Commission’s brainwaves is getting somewhere and which does not look likely to do so.

[Keith Vaz]

I fully support what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. I do not know about his Committee, but we find we are so busy that we simply do not have the time to cover European issues, and we rely heavily on the European Scrutiny Committee to alert us if anything is going wrong. One way in which we could be more involved would be if UKRep was more responsive to our work.

[Sir Alan Beith]

It is not so much about being responsive, because when we have asked representatives for help, they have given it. I am looking for a proactive approach. It would be very helpful if the Foreign Office gave the team in Brussels a clear indication that it would be helpful to alert Select Committees to proposals that looked like gaining traction, and would have important implications for the United Kingdom.

Secondly, of course, it is important that Ministers come to Select Committees before important Council meetings and afterwards, if it is necessary to secure a report back. The House too often finds that a set of complex documents that are extremely difficult to decipher comes before us in the General European Committees at a stage far beyond that at which it would be possible to influence or change it. We have relied unfairly on the members of the European Scrutiny Committee, whose work I again recognise as extremely important, and Select Committees have a job to do that is difficult to incorporate in a crowded work programme, so the more help we can get from Ministers and our officials to alert Select Committees to important issues that are coming up, the more effective we can be.

Detainee Inquiry

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Like my hon. Friend, I was a member of the all-party group on extraordinary rendition being led by my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), so I was as anxious to see the outcome of the police and other inquiries as everybody else. The whole point is to dispel all this because we must have an effective national security system and effective agencies. People who work in those agencies do very brave work that is essential to this country. We must draw a line under all this and investigate fully this legacy of allegations in order to find out exactly what happened and work out how to proceed and how to scrutinise the services in future.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Justice Secretary clearly has the support of both sides of the House in the decision he has taken today. Could he clarify whether this was his decision or whether Sir Peter came to him and asked to be relinquished of his responsibilities in view of the fresh investigations? I know that the Justice Secretary cannot give us a timetable, but does he envisage this lasting for months or years?

[Mr Clarke]

It was discussed with Sir Peter Gibson and he agrees that this is the way to proceed. I did not personally have the conversation, but in the light of last week’s inquiry it was decided that it was sensible to discuss this with Sir Peter and he agrees with the decision we have taken to proceed in this way. I wish I knew how long the Metropolitan police investigations will take. I hope that they will not take as long as the Guantanamo Bay cases, but there is absolutely no basis on which I can properly intervene with the police. We want these matters to be investigated thoroughly so we will wait and see.

Policing

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The House will know, Mr Brady, that over the past 10 years, you and I have had the honour of co-chairing the Westminster kids club Christmas party, but this is the first time that I have served under your chairmanship, and it is an enormous privilege to do so.

I welcome this opportunity to discuss the report by the Select Committee on Home Affairs, “New Landscape of Policing”, which we published on 23 September 2011. A new Government always want to put their imprint on an important area of policy, but in my 25 years in the House, I have not seen the kinds of changes to policing and the policing landscape that this Government initiated when they took office. The Government propose abolishing the National Policing Improvement Agency and the Serious Organised Crime Agency; creating a new National Crime Agency, a professional body for policing and a police-led information technology company; centralising non-IT procurement; supporting collaboration; and ending unnecessary bureaucracy.

Our report was a response to those fundamental and far-reaching proposals for policing reform. Given the significance of the changes to this £997.3 million budget, the Committee decided to examine the proposals in great detail. I am pleased to see that three members of the Committee are present—my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael), and the hon. Members for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) and for Cambridge (Dr Huppert)—as well as the official spokesmen from various parties.

We have received more than 50 pieces of written evidence and heard from 29 witnesses, including the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert). We have also held an informal meeting with the Police Federation, attended by its chairman, Paul McKeever, and Derek Barnett, who represented the Police Superintendents Association. At the invitation of the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, we have also held two public meetings—in Sheringham in Norfolk and in Cardiff in Wales. We put the public at the centre of our deliberations; after all, the police exist to protect the public and uphold the rule of law. To increase that involvement still further, we ran a nationwide polling exercise on our website, asking people what they wanted the police to prioritise. In total, 2,000 votes were cast, and the highest public priority for the police was dealing with murder and serious violence.

Despite the Government’s desire to unclutter the landscape, we concluded that it seems likely that the new landscape of policing will contain more bodies than the current landscape’s six. It is possible that the Government’s changes will lead to a more logical and better functioning police landscape and ultimately make the police more successful at achieving their basic mission of reducing crime and disorder, even though we will end up with more bodies. We believe that as the scale of the change is unprecedented, the possibility for mistakes may be large and with us for some time. That is why, at the point of publication, the Committee had particular reservations about the timetable for the changes, including the transfer of functions from the National Policing Improvement Agency by spring 2012 and the setting up of the National Crime Agency by December 2013.

It has taken the Government more than a year to announce where the functions of the NPIA will go. As the NPIA has an annual budget of £447.6 million, it is extremely important that we know those facts. The continuing uncertainty was damaging to the morale of the 2,000 people who work for the agency, and to the efficiency and effectiveness of the police service as a whole. I am therefore glad that the gap or loophole was rectified by the Government’s acceptance of our recommendation that the phasing out of the NPIA be delayed until December 2012, and by the announcement on the future location of some of the agency’s functions. It is not immediately clear whether further functions from the NPIA will transfer to the NCA, and how some of the functions already earmarked for transfer to the NCA will relate directly to operational responses to organised crime.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman, who chairs the Committee, for giving way. Does he agree that, while it has certainly not been perfect, the NPIA has done a very good job, and that there is some concern that an impression has been given that it has not been valued by the House? It has had many disparate functions, many of which have been developed very well. It is important that we put on record our appreciation for the NPIA’s work during its existence.

[Keith Vaz]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for, and agree with, his intervention. It is important that we put on record the achievements of the NPIA in certain areas. The fact that organisations are being abolished does not mean that we do not recognise the work done. I will come on to some of those organisations later.

The fact that the location of all the NPIA functions has not been announced remains a concern. I hope that, during his winding-up speech, the Minister will finally give us the list of all the outstanding functions and tell us where they will go. Many of the NPIA functions bound for the NCA will have to move to the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which itself is due to be abolished and co-opted into the NCA by December 2013. This shifting of resources between agencies due for closure, before finally shifting them to the NCA, makes heavy weather of the Government’s important principle of uncluttering the landscape.

SOCA was set up by the previous Government, of which the shadow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), was an active member—one of his roles was that of Policing Minister—and our Committee has been concerned about it for a number of years. In our most recent report on the agency in 2009, we found that its budget of £476 million was used to hire 3,800 members of staff; that it was spending £15 of public money for every pound it seized from criminal gangs; and that it lacked transparency in the way that it operated. Despite improvement in its performance, it is essential that the Government’s new crime-fighting agency be set the correct targets and can use its resources cost-effectively, so that it does not become another SOCA. It is also not clear whether SOCA will be given extra resources to help it manage the NPIA functions during the short-lived transition. I hope that the Minister will offer clarification on that point.

The lack of detail regarding the creation of the NCA was one of the central concerns of the Committee, and that remains the case. We were concerned about the delay in appointing a head of the agency, and the lack of detail on the objectives and—most importantly—the budget of this new policing agency. We welcome the appointment of Keith Bristow as the head of the NCA since the publication of our report. We felt, however, that someone occupying a position of that importance ought to have appeared before the Committee before taking up his formal appointment. We also remain concerned about the lack of detail on his role and objectives. Will he be a civil servant, or the head of the No. 1 crime-busting agency in the country? Will he be Sir Humphrey or Eliot Ness? Perhaps we will find out when he appears before the Committee on Tuesday to answer some important questions.

The Committee still awaits the figures on the agency’s budget. When the Minister first appeared before the Committee on 28 June, I asked his director of finance whether he knew the budget. He replied that it would be a little higher than SOCA’s, which is £476 million. Luckily, he had the Minister next to him, who told the Committee that although the budget for the NCA had not yet been set, the lion’s share of it would come from SOCA. The Minister came before us again on 20 December 2011, following the announcement that the destination of some of the NPIA functions would be the NCA, and he could still not inform us of the budget. This is not a game of “Play Your Cards Right”—a little higher here, a little lower there. We want the figures. Parliament needs to know exactly what the budget of this new agency will be, particularly as it is the flagship of the Government’s new policy.

There remain many areas where the agenda for the future of policing is unclear. One such area is police IT. Despite costing the public £1.2 billion annually, we concluded that

“IT across the police service as a whole is not fit for purpose,”

and that that affected the

“police’s ability to fulfil their basic mission of preventing crime and disorder.”

The Home Office has made rectifying that, through changes to police IT, a top priority.

It was an error of judgment on the part of the Home Office to prevent Lord Wasserman from giving oral evidence to our inquiry. As the author of the police IT review that preceded the Home Secretary’s announcement of the creation of a police-led information and communications technology company, and as chairman of the board setting up that new IT company, he is central to any future plans. He hosts seminars on behalf of Ministers, he speaks on behalf of Ministers, and he advises Ministers. I have received many invitations to seminars that the Minister for Policing was unable to attend, and Lord Wasserman is sent in his place. It appears that Lord Wasserman is, in fact, acting as a Minister, so it is very odd that he has refused to appear before the Committee. I hope that the Minister will have some good news for the Committee, in terms of agreeing to allow him to attend. The Committee unanimously wrote to the Home Secretary again on 20 October 2011 asking Lord Wasserman to come before us and give us answers on the development of the new company. That request was turned down.

One of the areas that the Committee has been focusing on with regard to policing has been the policing protocol.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I know that my right hon. Friend is going through a lengthy period of not being controversial—somewhat like me—but is he coming to the point when we deal with morale in the police force?

[Keith Vaz]

I have a feeling that my hon. Friend has seen a copy of my speech—although I am not suggesting that he popped into my office, which is next door to his—because I will indeed come on to police morale.

[Mr Winnick]

I can assure my right hon. Friend that I have not seen a copy of his speech.

[Keith Vaz]

One thing is certain: my hon. Friend did not write it for me. We will be coming on to police morale in a moment.

I pay tribute to the excellent work done by the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood in pursuing the issue of the protocol. In the past, the Minister has been willing to engage with the Committee on a number of issues. I find him a very accessible Minister. He may well be top of the league table, as far as my dealings with Home Office Ministers are concerned.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

Oh!

[Keith Vaz]

I do not have a list for shadow Ministers yet. However, uncharacteristically, on the issue of protocol the Minister has let himself down. We were very keen to engage with the Government on the protocol, as it is very important. However, there has been no engagement. The Committee nominated the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood to be our representative at any meetings that took place, but unfortunately that offer was not taken up.

As hon. Members know, the protocol sets out the critical relationship between police and crime commissioners, the first of whom are to be elected in November 2012, and the police. I note that a Committee member, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, has announced that he will seek the Labour nomination for his local area. I wish him well in pursuit of that. I hope that the fact that he has been endorsed by the English Chair of the Home Affairs Committee will not mean that he does not get the nomination.

The Committee was the body that recommended that there ought to be a protocol, in its report on police and crime commissioners. That move was put to the Committee by the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood, and we put it in our report. We were delighted that the Government took that recommendation on board and created a draft protocol that the Committee commented on in detail. Of course, the problem is that although they allowed us to comment on the draft protocol in detail, none of our suggestions have been taken up.

The ability to engage with Parliament on that critical issue was important, especially as there are no police and crime commissioners yet and the number of elected people involved in the process was pretty limited. What happened was a lost opportunity, which is why the Committee wrote to the Leader of the House. I understand that on Monday there will be a debate at 4.30 pm in the Chamber on that very issue. I hope that the Minister will approach that debate in the same way that he approached the Committee’s suggestions. The shadow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn, is shaking his head; I thought it was he who told me, as I walked into this Chamber, that there was a debate on Monday.

[Mr Hanson]

I am disagreeing with my right hon. Friend on the point about the debate being in the Chamber; I think he will find that it is to be in Committee, upstairs.

[Keith Vaz]

There is still a debate; it is still happening, but it will be in Committee. I am most grateful.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

Before the Chair of the Select Committee moves on from the protocol, I would like to put on the record my thanks to the Government and the Treasury; I apologise, but I do not know the constituency of whoever makes these decisions. The protocol is an excellent document that will be very powerful, and it is important that there be an opportunity for Members of Parliament, as well as members of the Association of Chief Police Officers and representatives of police authorities, to have their say. I very much look forward to that debate and would like to put on the record my thanks for it happening.

[Keith Vaz]

The debate is taking place in no small measure because of all the work that the hon. Gentleman has done.

I turn to the issue of police morale, which was raised in an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick). For police officers up and down the country, the role and future of the police service have been at the forefront of the national agenda since July 2010. The service will suffer more than 16,000 job losses before the next election, and uncertainty remains over how pay and conditions will be affected by the Winsor review and the ruling this week by the Police Arbitration Tribunal. In addition, there is the two-year public sector pay freeze and the capped 1% increase beyond those two years. We have heard from the Police Federation that the proposals for changes to police pay and conditions will have a detrimental effect on the morale of the police service.

In a Police Federation survey of 43,000 police officers last year, 98% said that they were demoralised by how these matters were progressing. When the issue of police pay has been settled, and when that is coupled with all the other challenges that they face, there could be a fundamental shift in the standards and motivation of police officers all over the country. We would be grateful to hear from the Minister about the progress on that subject, and about any other discussions that he has had with the Police Federation.

I have to say to the Minister—again, this is uncharacteristic of him—that I was very disappointed with the reply that he gave to my parliamentary question when I asked how many times he had met the Police Federation. He gave me no reply. He said that he could not tell me how many times because that is what the previous Government did. That is very odd. I thought that this Government were committed to transparency. When the Chairman of a Select Committee tables a parliamentary question to the Minister of Policing asking when he met officially—not socially or informally—the chairman of the Police Federation, he deserves a reply. I shall take that up with Mr Speaker.

[Mr Winnick]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend recalls that when I—and indeed he—pressed the chief constable of the west midlands on the effect of cuts in that region, he said that it was bound to have an effect. Over the period concerned, cuts in the west midlands will be somewhere in the region of 26%. That is not disputed. It will mean 1,100 fewer police officers and around 1,100 fewer police support officers. That is bound to have an adverse effect on dealing with criminality.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is a distinguished Member from the west midlands, and I accept what he says. That is exactly what the chief constable of the west midlands said to us when we met him about these matters, so they have to be taken very seriously. On the question of the reply, I will take that up with Mr Speaker, because it is a reasonable question for hon. Members to ask. If we accept that we will never get an answer to questions about who Ministers meet officially, then, frankly, there is no point in coming here and no point in tabling questions.

Despite those difficulties, we need to accept that officers in police forces all over the country work extremely hard and are very dedicated. The riots across the UK highlighted the length to which officers will go to protect their communities and to have a positive impact on local areas. Yesterday, along with the Minister, other Ministers and hon. Members, I attended a reception at Downing street organised by the Prime Minister to thank police officers who had taken part in trying to quell the riots. The Prime Minister spoke eloquently about the bravery of those officers. It is right that we realise and recognise that, during these difficult times when budgets have to be cut to some extent, police officers face enormous problems.

In the week after the Stephen Lawrence verdicts, when there has been some criticism of how the police operated during the original investigation, may I give the Minister an example of really good practice? On Boxing day, a young student was shot in the head in Manchester when he was out attending the sales. He was an overseas student. I was involved in this matter, because an e-mail came from India from his family in Gujarat, and they asked me to ensure that things were in order. I am full of praise for the work that was done by Greater Manchester police. I would like the Minister to look at the letter that I have sent to the Home Secretary today. Within seven days, Assistant Chief Constable Dawn Copley and her team in Greater Manchester arrested someone and charged them with the murder. They sent two police officers to India to inform the family of what was happening. When the family came over here, they looked after them and communicated with them on an hourly basis to tell them what was happening. We now have a date for the hearing of the person who is alleged to have murdered Anuj Bidve. That is an example of good practice, which we should acknowledge when we look at what happened in the Lawrence affair; we can see how far forward we have moved in the past few years.

The Government’s changes are the most far-reaching proposals for the police service since the 1960s, and are among the most significant since Sir Robert Peel laid the foundations for modern policing nearly 200 years ago. Ministers must be commended for thinking outside the box in their desire to improve policing in Britain in a radical way. However, the structures must follow their vision for policing in the 21st century. All the Committee is seeking to do in its report is caution the Government to think carefully before putting their structures in place, so that they are fit for purpose and achieve their laudable aim of reducing crime as much as possible, and provide intervention from the centre to guide long-term policing. It is for that reason that we suggest, in the very last words of our report, that change on this massive scale requires clear and strong leadership from the Home Office, and effective communication with the stakeholders involved in this very important process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake]

Councils may make a contribution in that respect, but at some point a police and crime panel might need to call on expertise that is not available in local authorities. If people are trying to access such expertise, which may be required for the panel effectively to undertake its scrutiny role, it does not take too long for a substantial bill to build up. I hope that the Minister will set out precisely how it will work and will reassure hon. Members that resources will be sufficient for the important task that the panels will undertake.

I hope that the Government will quickly review their role in scrutinising the police and crime commissioners, or at least the way in which they have been implemented. Given that activity is already starting in relation to London, it is not unreasonable to hope that by sometime in 2014, say, when the police and crime commissioners have been active for a couple of years, the Government may want to consider whether those bodies are delivering the sorts of things that we expect them to, in terms of increased accountability, greater involvement of the public and ensuring that the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable are engaging effectively with the people who are, at the moment, excluded from that consultation and engagement process.

I am sure that many hon. Members—possibly all hon. Members here—will at some point have attended the ward panel in one of the wards in their constituencies. I have done so occasionally in Wallington, South. It is clear that those panels receive useful input from key individuals in the community. It is true to say that young people are rarely present on those panels, and I suspect that those on lower incomes are underrepresented. The Government will want to consider whether police and crime commissioners and chief constables are beginning to engage more effectively with such groups to see whether their views, concerns and priorities, from a policing perspective, are properly taken on board.

The Home Affairs Committee report and the Government response contain a large body of information about the professional body. I support that and want it rolled out quickly and, as the Committee has suggested, in an all-encompassing way that is not exclusive in terms of its membership. That body should be doing some things at an early stage, including considering national minimum recruitment standards for the police force, considering whether there is scope for learning from the Teach First scheme, to see whether there are ways to get a different group of young, qualified people into the police force, and looking at whether there is any prospect of using some of the expertise that has been built up in respect of teaching schools to see whether there is any role for some of our larger police stations in that respect.

[Keith Vaz]

I was remiss in not recognising that the right hon. Gentleman appeared as a witness in the Committee during its inquiries.

The Government’s proposal to completely and radically reform the way that police officers are trained and to look at standards is exciting. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with the Committee that it is important to bring the profession with us when having a discussion of this kind and to have the widest possible consultation, so that we have something that will last beyond this Government—the worst possible thing would be to have too much party politics in this—and that we should be getting people on board and united behind a new method of education and professionalism?

[Tom Brake]

I welcome this proposal and agree that the profession must be brought along and that that requires consultation and engagement, although, of course, it may be difficult to get a single view of the profession from all levels of police officers about what that professional body will look like. However, it is clearly essential to engage with all of them, whether chief constables, superintendents, police constables—the whole range—or staff.

I hope that the professional body will look more carefully at black and minority ethnic recruitment into the police force and how BME officers do or do not make progress within the ranks. It should take that task on at an early stage.

As an aside, the professional body should, rightly, concentrate on training. What training will be available for both police and crime commissioners and police and crime panels? In relation to the former, what training might be available to candidates who are going to be, or want to be, police and crime commissioners? Such training could be beneficial. I am concerned that some candidates for those posts may not have the experience, knowledge or expertise that is required. Although coming to the job with a fresh approach may be welcome, understanding the environment in which people are going to work will also be beneficial.

I shall mention efficiency, touch on one major omission from the new landscape and then conclude. On efficiency, the report clearly and rightly highlights the importance of getting more out of the procurement process and out of IT. However, it is short on detail about ensuring that the police are taking the most effective approach to tackling types of crime.

I want to see more in terms of drawing into the centre the evidence base for what is effective from a policing perspective, so that we can make that information available widely to all the police and crime commissioners and chief constables and can be certain that, when they launch an initiative—whether tackling antisocial behaviour or organised crime, at NCA level—they are using a policy or approach that evidence suggests will be the most effective possible. Doing that may require universities and others to be more heavily involved in the research than may currently be the case.

The Home Affairs Committee did not focus enough, to my liking, on the linkages that should exist between police and local authorities. The Chair of the Committee has visited Sutton, as has the Minister with responsibility for the police, to look at the partnership between the local authority and the police, which has drawn together under one person police and local authority resources to tackle antisocial behaviour and so on. I would like to have seen that agenda pushed more, because there is no doubt that it has been effective in Sutton not only from a policing perspective, but in ensuring that the police, the local authority, the fire service and the voluntary sector work together effectively. I would like it to have been more prominent in the Committee report and in the new landscape of policing more generally. From a policing perspective, these are exciting and challenging times, and there are lots of opportunities, which is why we need to keep the situation under constant review. I hope that the Minister will reassure us there will be an ongoing and heavily engaging process for all Members.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alun Michael]

One approaches this either with pessimism or optimism. I admire the hon. Gentleman’s optimism, as I do often in our discussions in Committee. I hope that proves to be the case. I was reflecting The Guardian article’s fear of populist sloganising, rather than a base of evidence. That is one reason for my decision to stand, and why all parties interested in the matter need to ensure, given that the legislation has gone through and that we will have police and crime commissioners, that they are people who can add value to the process and address the public’s experience. I hope very much—perhaps we all need to contribute—that the outcome desired by the hon. Gentleman will be the one that we see.

The same leader referred to me as more of a builder of partnerships and consensus than a rat-catcher. I think that I take that as a compliment, because it goes back to Peel’s principles of trying to build consensus, reflect the public will and ensure that crime is reduced.

It is of course important that the police and crime commissioner should hold the chief constable to account. There is the responsibility of appointing the chief constable; there is the responsibility of deciding the budget and the policing plan. All those things are vital and need clear leadership. The commissioner will also need to take a lead in connecting and reconnecting the police and the public, as well as the police and the local authorities and other organisations. One of the biggest lessons that came out of the report of the Select Committee on Justice, “Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment”, was that most things that affect offending are not only outside the aegis of the police, but outside the criminal justice system. Therefore, connecting that, looking for evidence of the real problems experienced by the public and ensuring they are addressed through a partnership approach, must be an absolute priority for the commissioner, as well as for the chief constable and those who lead policing locally and lead local authorities.

Some of the costs of policing cannot be avoided, even if it is possible to reduce crime locally. I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me and Chief Constable Peter Vaughan of South Wales police. I stress that that meeting took place long before I decided to stand as commissioner. When we met the Minister, we focused on the capital city challenge that the south Wales police force faces, as well as policing the two great cities of Swansea and Cardiff. It also faces the challenges of a top-slice to its finances, to assist other police forces in Wales. The Minister listened carefully and promised to take away the points that we made. I hope that that will be reflected at some point in a reconsideration of the police funding formula.

I was on the streets of Cardiff when we had a visit from the English Defence League, a much larger demonstration and march by Unite Against Fascism and an element of conflict, with some people wanting to turn it into a pitched battle, which good policing prevented. That took place on the same day as South Africa was playing Wales at rugby at the Millennium stadium, the West Indies were playing England—and Wales, if I can put it in those terms—in the SWALEC stadium, and the Stereophonics were in concert in the city. That was an enormous addition to the normal day-to-day work of policing. Both Cardiff and Swansea are doing well at sport and seeking to grow and expand as cities. Given that set of capital-city challenges, a formula that gives Cardiff and therefore the South Wales police rough equivalence to the policing of similar-sized cities that do not have those capital-city responsibilities places an additional burden. I ask the Minister to continue to reflect on that and find out whether he can develop the formula to help meet that challenge.

The police have to plan in the light of the riots that took place in a number of cities, including a number of parts of London, last August. The Select Committee produced a good report, which I hope will inform Government policy and assist the police in planning and responding to such matters, but I still have a concern. Although our approach is evidence-based, we still do not have the sort of in-depth report that Lord Denning produced in response to riots in the 1980s. That report was enormously important and influential. [Hon. Members: “Lord Scarman.”] I apologise. I am sure that I am referring to two equally distinguished Law Lords. It was Lord Scarman’s report, and I am grateful for that correction.

It is important to note a lesson coming out of the riots. There was an initial concern that social networks might have played a part in accelerating the activity and some of the damage. The question was asked whether something should be done to control or even close down the social networks for a period. That was answered by chief constables who appeared before us, including the chief constable of Manchester. They thought about it for about two minutes and then realised that what they had to do was engage and not try to control. There was very intelligent use of networks by some forces, again particularly in Manchester. Networks were used to warn that, if there were riots in certain places, the police would be there to deal with them, and to encourage people not to be on the streets where there were clear dangers.

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend has been consistent. He has felt all along that there ought to be a much more in-depth study into what happened during the riots. Darra Singh’s report is due out shortly—next week, I think—and does my right hon. Friend not agree that it would be appropriate to look at that first, along with what the Select Committee has done? The police are undertaking their own review. Once all that information is available, we can see whether anything further needs to be done.

[Alun Michael]

My concern is that the trail will have gone a little cool by the time that we arrive at that position, but my right hon. Friend is right that it would be best to get all that information. I ask the Minister, however, to accept that we should not rule out the need for an in-depth look at the causes by a body that could do more such work than the Select Committee. The report does credit to the Select Committee and to the Select Committee system, which is developing in positive ways.

I am not criticising, but I believe that we are still in danger of many individuals thinking that they know what caused the riots, when we do not. We know a lot about the riots. We know more as a result of the reports and we will know more as a result of further reports, but we will not have a single, comprehensive analysis that can inform us for the long term.

There is now agreement on the enormous importance of the policing protocol. I have some concern that the protocol has been written when the Home Office has every right to say what it expects from the new arrangements and when the Association of Chief Police Officers is in existence and able to play a significant part, but not when the commissioners are in place. When they are, there will be a need to revisit the protocol. I am sure that there will be many interesting discussions between different organisations and with the Minister. In a sense, what we have is a framework, and what will be needed for the longer term is more along the lines of conventions, agreements and building on experience.

In particular, I agree with the comments made about the professional body. It is important that it is not only a successor to ACPO. I note the agreement in the Government response to our report that the body ought to be inclusive from the outset, with a separate chiefs’ council, but what is not clear from the response is whether such a council would have any policy-making function for professional activities. Such a body ought to be separate from the professional body, and the professional body needs to be owned by all police. A new body is needed, starting with a fresh, clean sheet and a focus on the professionalism of the police, rather than its becoming confused with the variety of different functions currently held by ACPO.

I was one of those who argued for the establishment of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which continues to need our cross-party support. I urge the Minister to look again at the serious suggestion of extending its role and its flexibility to look at service improvement. Often, when people make a complaint, they do not want someone to be hung out to dry or suspended from work for six months or six years—it is sometimes for very extended periods. What they want to know is that their concerns will be addressed and that they will get a proper response. A lot is about how the police respond to customers and about quality control and quality management. Giving more flexibility to enable the IPCC to address such issues might help to avoid some of the expenses arising from complaints that fall into the sort of category to which I refer.

As a suggestion for the Minister to take elsewhere in the Government, it would be good for the police service if the Ministry of Justice looked again at the composition of the Sentencing Council, which is too focused on judges and legalities and not sufficiently focused on what works. What in sentencing makes a difference to the likelihood of reoffending? I am repeating something that I said as a member of the Justice Committee under a Labour Government, but I commend it because I still believe it to be right and true, now as then.

On collaboration and IT, I urge the Minister not to be overambitious in thinking of IT schemes as a quick solution or providing major savings. I have some experience in Government IT procurement, such as of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’s e-nabling DEFRA programme, which no one hears about because it was a success—that is why I am proud to refer to it—but there are many examples of central Government procurement, in particular by the Home Office, I am sad to say, that do not inspire confidence and were perhaps over-engineered and ended up not delivering as expected but being more expensive and late coming into place. Learning lessons and ensuring proper procurement are enormously important. The IT company might or might not be the right vehicle for delivery, but the Minister would need to take a keen interest in how a project develops—the question is about not so much the vehicle as the processes adopted and the expertise brought to bear to ensure that the right work is done, the right things procured and the objectives actually met.

I have touched on a limited number of aspects of the Select Committee’s work on the landscape of policing, as well as a number of other aspects of policing. An enormous amount of change is going on. I look forward to being a part of that process of change and ensuring that the initiative, which is now in law, results in us improving the quality of policing and the service given to the public, to ensure that we continue to drive down crime and reoffending and, in particular, to drive up public confidence in the police.

I certainly commend to the House the Select Committee’s report, and I very much hope that the Minister will continue to listen to our consensual and cross-party comments and suggestions. In Committee, during our discussions, we challenge each other, sometimes quite vigorously, but our findings—as with the Justice Committee recommendations on justice reinvestment—give food for thought, which Ministers and the Government as a whole would be wise to heed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

I bow to the hon. Gentleman’s American knowledge. It may be that it is Thursday by the time I wake up after watching the elections and receive the results. That is an additional pressure. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth is participating in the election for police and crime commissioners. For clarity, the Minister knows that although we oppose the principle, we will contest the elections and will see what happens. I hope that whoever is elected, we will have a series of competent, effective individuals who manage big budgets and big chief officers with experience, and who deliver a measure of accountability to the public. I disagree with the approach; I think that we can find accountability in different ways, and we considered the ways of doing so in police authorities. Those are some of the key concerns that we face as regards the policing landscape.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East discussed the new National Crime Agency. I welcome the appointment of Keith Bristow, former chief constable of Warwickshire, as its head, and I welcome its broad direction. My hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) and I, when exercising our responsibility for the Serious Organised Crime Agency, considered some of the concerns and believed that changes needed to be made.

I welcome the broad direction of travel, but the Minister must answer certain points raised in the Select Committee report and in this debate. The design of the National Crime Agency is still—I will give him the benefit of the doubt—emerging. We need legislation for it, and the detail of how it will operate. When will that be forthcoming? Keith Bristow is now in post, and it will be 12 or 15 months before he will begin to have a real impact. What are the key elements of the design of the National Crime Agency? I understand that e-crime and fraud still sit outside the new agency. Are they likely to be brought in? What will be the clarity of approach? What will be—again, members of the Select Committee touched on this—the governance arrangements? What will be the status of the head of the National Crime Agency? How will the Minister, Ministers or the Home Secretary have an impact on the day-to-day operational issues for the agency? What objectives will they set? What budget will they provide? Those are big vacuums regarding an issue that is of importance to me and my constituents, and of importance to how we effectively fight crime, nationally and internationally, at a time when the terrorist threat is significant.

[Keith Vaz]

The points that my right hon. Friend raises are similar to those raised by the Select Committee, and I welcome what he says about the Opposition supporting the general thrust of having an NCA and the appointment of Mr Bristow as its head. Our concern—and, it seems, my right hon. Friend’s concern—is that the timetable may be too short; too many gaps in the landscape may not have been filled in before the agency is asked to do its work. The issue is not the principle, but the implementation.

[Mr Hanson]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I wish the Minister well on these issues; I know how difficult they are. There are real issues of international crime, ranging from drugs to terrorism to people trafficking. There are real issues of inter-regional crime, which the crime agency can deal with. There are issues of e-fraud, too. There are things that I have not thought of that, in four years’ time, will be major crime issues and will have an impact on my constituents and the Minister’s constituents. I wish Keith Bristow well, in the sense that I hope that the Minister will provide clarity on the objectives and the mission, give an indication of the budget and the areas of responsibility, bring forward the legislative framework and give an indication of the outcomes and the governance of the agency. That would be very helpful.

I say that because at the same time that the Minister established the National Crime Agency, he gave a firm indication of notice to the National Policing Improvement Agency, which did a very good job in some areas, although—as with all of us—in other areas, there was the potential for criticism. It is one thing to have a bonfire of the quangos and to remove the NPIA from the policing landscape, but that announcement was made in July 2010. Fourteen months on, what progress is being made on the definition of the transfer and on the protection of the public as a whole? The NPIA is due to vanish in December 2012. Perhaps it is me, but I am still unsure where the home is for police training, leadership development, forensics, the police national computer and the DNA database. As I said, that might be me. I will give the Minister credit. I do not have the information flow that he has. Perhaps that information has been provided, but I would like to know from him what is happening on those points. I say that because the uncertainty means that staff are leaving. Staff will not stay on the ship when they are not sure where the ship is going.

Whatever its difficulties and challenges, the NPIA did bring together, for the first time, national support for change in people, processes and technology. It did deliver some technology and change programmes; it helped with the development of neighbourhood policing, for example. I am not sure where that strategic view is for the future. The NPIA is due to go in December 2012. Police and crime commissioners will be elected by their local communities, but anyone could be elected. We do not know what the individual qualities will be of each person elected. Where is the strategic examination for the future?

I worry about a changed landscape in which new police and crime commissioners are coming in, finding their feet and getting up and running at a time when crime is not just finding its feet, when the NPIA is exiting the stage, when the functions have not necessarily been finalised, and when the crime agency is not yet up and running. I worry that crime and criminals will continue to find ways to seep through the gaps. We need to be ever vigilant; criminals will be. I worry about the speed at which things are happening and the lack of clarity about the journey’s end.

We also have a concern about information and communications technology. Again, I can be helpful: the Home Secretary, on 15 December, confirmed that

“the Government…intend to establish an information and communications technology…company. The company will be responsible for the procurement, implementation and management of complex contracts for information technology”.—[Official Report, 15 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 126WS.]

Indeed, I saw a tweet—that new modern technology—only two hours ago from the chief of the NPIA, who says that he is in a hot room in London talking about ICT as we speak.

[Mr Hanson]

I say “good”, too. I would appreciate an update.

[Keith Vaz]

Is it wise for the head of the NPIA, which deals with organised crime, to tell all those organised criminals outside exactly where he is and what he is doing?

[Mr Hanson]

I think that the information he gives—“I am developing a computer system to close you down, and to help support policing”—is not necessarily operationally significant. The point that I am making to the Minister is that we are in January 2012, and he has said that the elections for police and crime commissioners will be in November 2012. He wants police authorities to be signed up to the integrated computer technology, and he wants the police and crime commissioners to be signed up to it in due course, yet months after the initial announcement, we are still at the stage of the Government saying, “We intend to establish a company.”

Let me ask the Minister this: how many police authorities have signed up to that company? Does he intend to force collaboration with the Government if they do not sign up to it? What does he anticipate the company doing differently in the next 12 months? What will be the two-to-three-year plan for the company? To whom is the company accountable? When the company is formed, what happens if someone stands for election as a police and crime commissioner on a platform of wanting an independent police computer system for a police authority, and is elected? Will the Minister compel them to take part?

We need to explore those issues as part of the ongoing policing landscape. I just wonder about the pace and scale of the changes. I wish the Minister good luck in establishing the computer system, but will he please help us to give him that good luck by giving us answers? Will he give us the when, where, why, and how, and say who has signed up, what will happen and what will be the pace of the change?

With the NPIA going, I wonder who will be the value-for-money arbiter. Who will undertake the role of establishing the overall scheme of policing for the future?

Let me deal with the Winsor proposals, because the police arbitration panel has this week produced its report. Traditionally, police arbitration panels have always been difficult places for Policing Ministers to go. I will not disguise the fact that I, my predecessors and others have had occasion to engage in a hand-to-hand way with police arbitration panels. That is not a national secret. However, I would welcome the Minister’s saying today when he intends to respond to the current police arbitration panel report. Given the letter that the general secretary and the chairman of the Police Federation sent to the Home Secretary on 10 January saying that they are willing to abide by the arbitration panel’s decision, even though it causes them some difficulty, as the Minister knows, I would particularly welcome a response from him.

Without giving us too much information today—although if the Minister is able to give us information, that would be great—is he minded to let us know whether he intends to abide by the police arbitration panel decision? More importantly, if he does not abide by it, will he give the House of Commons, as he promised before the election, an opportunity to debate and, potentially, vote on that decision? I would hate him to break an election promise. That was what the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) did when he promised 3,000 extra police officers and then voted to reduce the number by 16,000 over the next three years. I would love the Minister to stick with his election promise and accept the police arbitration panel decision—or, if he does not, allow a vote in the House of Commons.

I would like further information on how the Minister will monitor the police and crime commissioners in the new landscape. In a written ministerial statement from just before Christmas on the National Policing Improvement Agency, he said that it currently advises on value for money, and that it will continue to do so until November 2012. Is it his view that after that date it will be part of the policing landscape for police and crime commissioners to be solely accountable for value-for-money issues relating to policing in their area? They will be accountable for that, but I would like to know who will monitor that. Who will monitor their performance, and will there be targets or guidance from the Home Office? In the written ministerial statement, he said that

“police and crime commissioners will drive value for money in the police service with further support where necessary.”

What does he mean? Is he going to set the ship of state sailing, or will he have some central examination of the issue?

Finally, I have two responses on the issues of policing. The first relates to leadership. I echo what the hon. Member for Cambridge said in his speech about the police constable, whose name I have forgotten at the moment. What struck me about the hon. Gentleman’s case study is that it is about leadership. In April, I will have been a Member of Parliament for my area for 20 years, as will you, Mr Betts. In my 20 years, I have had 14 or 15 inspectors in my area. Most have passed through like ships in the night, on the way to either retirement or promotion. The ones who have been very good are those who have really shown leadership. The performance of the police on the ground—the police constable example makes that explicit—are the people who have the best leadership skills and who show vision, commitment and energy and therefore deliver an energising impact. I welcome the focus on leadership that has been discussed by Peter Neyroud and others in relation to improving the skills and qualifications of police officers, because it is very good to energise the police in that way. I ask the Minister how that will be done at a national level. There are real issues that we should examine, so that we can have a flavour of how that will be done in future.

I had a last point, which I will make when I find the right piece of paper—it appears to have slipped my notice at the moment. To conclude, we cannot consider the changes to the policing landscape without looking at their financial implications. The speed and pace of changes introduced by the Minister is, in my view, damaging to police morale. That is the end-point of this experiment—I use the word advisedly—in changes to policing that the Minister is making. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East and his Select Committee have reflected concerns about the demise of the NPIA, the approach of the new National Crime Agency and the damage-to-morale issues.

Helpfully, I have recalled my final point, just before I finished. It relates to the wind-down of the National Policing Improvement Agency, and to the new policing professional body. In principle, that is a good thing, because it relates to the leadership point that I mentioned. Raising standards, skills and investment in policing, and looking at professional standards and at how the Association of Chief Police Officers interfaces with the rest of the policing world is important. I would welcome clarification from the Minister on whether Police Federation members are signed up to the new professional body, and on how he will bring those important participants with him on his journey to his final nirvana. What consultation has he or the Secretary of State had with them to date on that issue? If we are to achieve an effective police force, we need not only the confidence of the public and to ensure that criminals are borne down on, but to take the staff who work in that service with us.

My contention is that although we share some views with the Minister, and our desired outcomes are probably the same—reduced crime, increased confidence, better efficiency and valuing the staff in the service—the Minister and I have a different approach. The Select Committee has raised some concerns that the Opposition share, and I look forward to hearing the Minister answer not only my questions but those asked by the Members gathered here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

I do not consider that to be an alternative. I pay attention to all views expressed on the issues, but I certainly have no intention of placing a Member of Parliament on a working party for the development of the professional body. The working party consists of policing professionals and representatives of policing organisations. I have sought to add, in a way that is entirely sensible, those who hold police forces to account. Of course, we will continue to discuss with the Committee and with hon. Members the development of a policing professional body, which is an entirely sensible thing.

That brings me on to the second part of my speech. The first phase of the police reform agenda was about structures and that work will continue as we set up the National Crime Agency.

[Keith Vaz]

I am sorry to take the Minister back to an earlier point in his interesting speech, but a number of us who were involved in the Committee report have raised the issue of where the functions of the NPIA will go, and he has said that he will announce the destination of the rest of those functions shortly. Can he be more specific than that? Some of us have been around for a long time and know that, when Ministers say that something will be announced in spring, summer or winter, the issue tends to go on beyond the season mentioned. Can we have a definitive date—perhaps the end of February or January—or something more specific?

[Nick Herbert]

I am sorry, but I will not be able to give the right hon. Gentleman a definitive date. I can give him three words in due course, and we will announce the destination of those functions. It is important to consider and consult on these matters carefully, and that is the approach we have sought to take.

An issue relating to the next phase of the police reform agenda that is so important and relevant to the discussion we were having on the professional body is that of people. Of course, people—police officers and staff—are the greatest asset of any police force. It is those people who enable us to fight crime, and it is important that we ensure that they are remunerated appropriately. We also need to ensure that they are motivated and are working in employment conditions and structures that reflect the demands of today’s age, that are up to date and that ensure that resources can be directed to the front line.

It is in that regard that we established a pay and conditions review led by the independent rail regulator, Tom Winsor. He reported in part one of that review and made proposals for changing pay and conditions. The Government accepted the principles that he set out. Those proposals were remitted to the Police Negotiating Board, which failed to reach agreement, so they therefore went for arbitration. As the right hon. Member for Delyn has pointed out, the Police Arbitration Tribunal has this week made recommendations in relation to the Winsor proposals. He will know that I cannot be drawn into giving him any indication of the Government’s response to those proposals, other than to say that the Home Secretary will consider them very carefully in line with her statutory duties.

Police officers do an immensely important job. They often do difficult and dangerous work, they are unable to strike and it is important that the country values them. They are relatively well-paid, and it is important that they should continue to be so and that they continue to be valued. I appreciate that this is a difficult time for those who work in the police service, given that there are budgetary reductions, to which I will come shortly, and given that police officers are being asked to accept a two-year pay freeze and changes to their pension, which is also true for other public services. I therefore appreciate the issues about morale that were raised by hon. Members from all parties. However, it is important that the Government take action to deal with the deficit and ensure police forces are equipped to deal with challenges and that resources are directed appropriately.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

With the leave of the House, I would like to respond very briefly to the debate. The Minister is absolutely right that we have had a good debate about a number of issues. I want to thank those members of the Select Committee who are here this afternoon: the hon. Members for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael). I thank the Minister, the shadow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), and the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), the Liberal Democrat spokesman on Home Affairs—we miss him at our Select Committee deliberations, but we always see him at these debates.

The Government have set an agenda that is, in effect, going where no person has gone before. It is rather like being on the Starship Enterprise, with the Home Secretary as a 21st-century Captain Kirk and the Minister as Mr Spock—only with much nicer ears than Mr Spock could offer us. What I can promise from the Select Committee is that we will continue to keep a watching brief on these developments. We look forward to seeing the Minister on these and other matters in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Independent Police Complaints Commission

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to debate the Independent Police Complaints Commission, an organisation that has taken on increasing importance in recent months. It is right in such a debate to begin by thanking all local officers in Tottenham for the work that they do day in, day out. The vast majority of them serve us very well indeed. Some of those brave men and women serve their own community, and it is clear that they put others ahead of their own needs. All of them put their lives on the line to keep Tottenham safe, and I thank them for that.

However, for all the bravery of those officers, things very occasionally go wrong, and when they do individual officers must be held to account for their decisions and actions. There is no way of escaping Tottenham’s recent history: there is a history of people in Tottenham dying during or following police contact. I wish to God that this were not true, but anyone who has lived in Tottenham knows just how those deaths have strained the relationship between some of our residents and the police. With the death of Cynthia Jarrett in 1985, Roger Sylvester in 1999, and Mark Duggan this August, Tottenham’s history has been punctuated and measured by these tragic events.

Of course, deaths in police custody or following police contact are not only a Tottenham issue, as, for example, the unexplained death of Christopher Alder in Hull more than a decade ago shows us, and they are not just an issue for the black community. Recent years have seen the deaths of Ian Tomlinson and Jean Charles de Menezes due to police actions. But in Tottenham we do seem to bear our share of these tragic events.

It takes years—decades—of effort to build community relations and to foster a two-way sense of trust between residents and the people who should be their police. Despite a lot of good work, it is the list of deaths that everyone remembers. It is not just the fact that a person has died following contact with the police that is important; how the death is investigated and who carries out the investigation are just as important. That is what I want to discuss this evening.

Before describing how I think the IPCC can be improved, it is important to recognise that the journey to the creation of an independent complaints authority has not been short or without controversy and resistance, because we have come a long way indeed. In 1985 Lord Scarman produced his groundbreaking report on the Brixton riots four years previously. He was deeply concerned about the total breakdown of trust between the police and some of the communities they were supposed to serve. His report called for an independent body to be set up to investigate police complaints as a means of restoring trust.

Unforgivably, it would be another 19 years before the IPCC opened for business. Instead of the Government agreeing to what was so obviously needed, deckchairs were duly rearranged and the old Police Complaints Authority was set up to replace the Police Complaints Board, but it proved just as hapless. Changing a word in the title proved easier than changing the way of working, because in those days it did not matter whether it was the Police Complaints Authority or the Police Complaints Board that conducted the investigation. They were not investigations for the victim, their family or the concerned community; they were investigations by the police and for the police.

The opening of the Stephen Lawrence murder trial yesterday again brings the failures of the Police Complaints Authority into sharp public view. The Macpherson report on Stephen’s death highlighted these failures perfectly. It noted that the authority’s report on the Metropolitan police’s handling of the death was known as the Kent report, principally because the Kent police handled the inquiry into the Metropolitan police. The Kent report began making excuses for the Metropolitan police in its preface:

“The depth of detailed scrutiny applied in the complaints investigation could have found fault in most police criminal investigations. The reader of this report should bear in mind that the benefit of hindsight and the luxury of having time to assess all of the information that was available to the MPS is bound to reveal errors, omissions and flawed judgement.”

The Macpherson report highlighted the shocking extent to which the Police Complaints Authority examined whether racism impacted on the Met’s investigation, stating:

‘Many officers were asked directly whether racism had an impact upon their activities in the case. Predictably they replied in strong terms denying such impact. The result was the finding by Kent that: “Kent Police have found no evidence to support the allegation of racist conduct by any MPS officer involved in the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence.”’

Scarman’s warning in 1985 about the lack of independent oversight of the police had become, 12 years later, the whitewash of the Kent police’s so-called investigation of racism in the Met. Like the Scarman report, the Macpherson report called for an independent body to investigate police complaints.

Thankfully, one Home Affairs Committee report later, the Government listened that time and the IPCC was set up in 2004. Make no mistake: the IPCC is certainly an improvement on what went before, as the police are not investigating themselves. We are pleased about that, but not very pleased, and certainly not content. The death of Mark Duggan tells us why we should not be content with what we have, because it is not yet good enough.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this important and timely debate. Does he share my concern, and that of members of the Home Affairs Committee, that several months after the current chair of the IPPC announced that he was leaving, there is still no replacement? We now understand that the job is to be advertised again. Does he agree that there needs to be a permanent chair to provide that organisation with good leadership?

[Mr Lammy]

I totally agree with my right hon. Friend. I was surprised when I found out that that important role in our country had been vacant for so long. I hope that when he comes to the Dispatch Box to reply to the debate, the Minister will explain that.

The IPCC has two roles, police scrutiny and public guardianship. It is charged with investigating complaints independently, and with the fullest scrutiny, but its role does not stop there. Given that it investigates on behalf of all of us, it must communicate and work with the public.

In the case of the death of Mark Duggan, it remains to be seen whether the IPCC fulfilled its primary duty to scrutinise the actions of the police on 4 August, but it is vital that the commission does all within its power to convince the Duggan family and the wider Tottenham community that its investigation is thorough, impartial and independent. Without that, we will be back to the bad old days of the Kent report and the police investigating police, and I hope that the IPCC do not take us there.

We wait to see whether the IPCC will fulfil its primary duty, but even in the days immediately after Mark Duggan’s death it was clear that it had failed completely and utterly in its secondary duty—that of guardianship. Mark Duggan’s family were forced to learn of the death of their son and father from watching television. That is beyond unacceptable. Why did nobody from the IPCC contact the family on the day of his death, when it had opened its investigation? Despite warnings from people throughout the community, the IPCC failed to communicate with the family until two days after the shooting, and even then it was unable to communicate anything of substance to them. That is not good enough.

Despite employing 15 media officers, the IPCC failed to make an appearance in the media to reassure a sceptical public—certainly in my community—that it would investigate Mark Duggan’s death thoroughly, impartially and independently. Its inability to fulfil that responsibility is difficult to explain. There was no direct communication by the IPCC to the affected communities in Tottenham in the hours and days after Mark Duggan’s death. Would it have been too difficult to hand-deliver a letter to residents of the affected areas, reassuring them of the investigation, explaining the known facts and appealing for calm and co-operation? No, it would not—but yet again, that did not happen.

In the absence of any word from the IPPC, a dangerous vacuum was allowed to open up, and rumours were allowed to take hold in the place of hard facts. That is not good enough. When the supposed facts were released to the media, they were quickly retracted. It was put out that there had been an exchange of fire in the incident that led to Mark Duggan’s death, but that turned out not to be true. Why did that happen? Again, that is far from what we would expect of an organisation with the role of public guardianship.

To this day, communication between the IPCC and Tottenham residents, as well as with the wider black community, appears sparse at best and unthinking at worst. That has to change. The magnitude of the IPCC’s task is immense, and some of the signs leave little hope in the strained community that I represent. Two thirds of people have heard of the IPCC, a number that has barely budged since the body was founded seven years ago, but one third of those think that it is part of the police—again, a figure that has barely budged. Ethnic minorities are even less likely to have heard of the IPCC, and they are more likely to believe that it is part of the police. That is the scale of the challenge awaiting us.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on securing this debate. I appreciate his long-standing interest in this topic and his immediate concerns about the ongoing investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission into the events surrounding the shooting of Mark Duggan in his constituency on 4 August. The whole House will recognise the passion with which he speaks on these issues and, I believe, will share his overriding concern, which is to secure community confidence in policing. That confidence is essential to ensure policing by consent, which we so prize in this country.

I join the right hon. Gentleman in praising the police for the work that they do, including that to secure order on our streets in the summer. That work is often difficult and dangerous. It is nevertheless imperative that when there are instances where police action goes wrong and there is culpability, there must be a robust system to ensure that that confidence in policing is maintained. That is as much in the interests of the police themselves as of those of us who guard the public interest to ensure that it happens.

I should like to address two key issues that the right hon. Gentleman raised. First, I will set out the background to the IPCC, including how it is set up and the way it operates, and deal with some of the issues relating to budgets and staffing. Secondly, I want to turn to the future and set out the issues confronting the IPCC in the context of the Government’s overall programme for reform of the system to ensure that we can maintain confidence in the police complaints system and that it plays a key role in the new policing landscape.

The police are a monopoly public service and their officers exercise coercive powers over citizens. They are expected to, and must, uphold the highest standards of behaviour and provide a policing service that enjoys the confidence of the public. The police complaints system is an important safeguard in holding the police to account. The complaints system should focus on allowing people who are dissatisfied with the provision of a policing service to make a complaint, and that complaint to be responded to appropriately.

There needs to be public confidence in the integrity and independence of the complaints system. It was the importance of that independence that gave rise, for the reasons the right hon. Gentleman described, to the establishment of the IPCC, in preference to the bodies that preceded it, in 2004 under the Police Reform Act 2002. It is worth reiterating that the IPCC is independent by law and makes its decisions independently of the police, Government, complainants and interest groups. This means that all complaints must be dealt with in accordance with legislation and the guidance issued by the IPCC and agreed by the Home Secretary. All complainants who have their complaints dealt with by the police in the first instance have a right of appeal to the IPCC. It independently investigates the most serious incidents and complaints. It regularly reports publicly on the outcome of investigations and it makes local and national recommendations as appropriate to ensure that the same things do not go wrong again. Its reports have to stand up to the scrutiny of inquests and courts.

The Government no more direct the IPCC than we direct police forces. It is essential that it remain an independent body.

[Keith Vaz]

When do the Government intend to appoint the new chair of the IPCC and why has that position been vacant for so long?