Oral Answers to Questions

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

11. What assessment she has made of the accessibility of police (a) stations and (b) services.

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

It is important that the services that the police provide, whether digitally or face to face, are all accessible, so that everyone can come forward to report crime and interact with police officers in any way that suits their requirements. We are committed to giving the police the resources they need to fight crime and keep the public safe. That is why policing will receive up to £16,900 million in the coming financial year.

[Justin Madders]

Does the Minister agree that the police and crime commissioner for Cheshire needs to reconsider his priorities when he is talking about closing down Ellesmere Port police station to the public and getting rid of 40 police community support officers while, at the same time, giving his deputy a 33% pay rise despite their having been in the post for five months?

[Kit Malthouse]

As I understand it, there is a consultation ongoing about how the Cheshire police should interact with the public they serve. I would hate to jump to any conclusion about what may or may not be decided, but, Mr Speaker, you will be aware that all police and crime commissioners should be reviewing their property strategy in the light of the massive expansion in police officer numbers that they are seeing at the moment, to the extent that, in the next 12 months or so, we expect to see the highest number of police officers that the country has ever seen.

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

12. What steps her Department is taking to tackle catalytic converter theft.

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

We are working with police and manufacturers through the national vehicle crime working group to tackle the theft of catalytic converters.

[Sir Robert Neill]

In many areas of the country, crime is going down. It is going down in many areas in Bromley and Chislehurst, but one area where it is not is the explosion in catalytic converter thefts in my constituency. Ours has been identified by the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead as one of the highest areas for this crime. These are not opportunistic thefts. Does my right hon. Friend agree that these are thefts by organised crime gangs seeking valuable metals that are sold for considerable amounts of money—platinum and palladium—carried out by men armed with baseball bats, threatening violence? Will he ensure that much greater priority is given to this crime and that we clamp down on the handlers of these stolen goods by greater enforcement of the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013?

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend, with his usual acuity, has put his finger on the button of this issue. It is cause for significant concern in parts of the country, and he is right that it is a product of prices in the metal market. He will be pleased to hear that just this month the British Transport Police co-ordinated a national week of intensification on acquisitive crime, looking particularly at catalytic converters, and that the work we have done on scrap metal dealers will go some way to dealing with the problem. However, we need to work much more closely with manufacturers to ensure that they do as much as they can to design out the theft of converters. Let us hope that in the years to come, as we all convert to electric vehicles, it will become a problem of the past.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

13. What steps she is taking to tackle hate crime against the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.

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[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

T6. North Wales police in my constituency of Clwyd South does an exceptional job in keeping the public safe and tackling crime. Could my right hon. Friend comment on plans to recruit and retain the best and brightest to join our police force, and would he join me in praising our local policing initiatives?

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

I am more than happy to lavish praise on North Wales police, which does a fantastic job along the coast there, as do all our police officers up and down the country. I am pleased to say that we are making enormous progress on our recruitment programme. As I hope my hon. Friend knows, we are well over 11,000 now, and I expect to hit the 20,000 target shortly.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Jo, a constituent, came to Britain in 2001 and served for five years in the Army, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he developed post-traumatic stress disorder. He served time for drink-driving offences, but he sought help for PTSD, stopped drinking and rebuilt his life. He now has two children in Coventry and no connections in Zimbabwe, his birthplace, where he was tortured the last time he was there. However, on Wednesday Jo is set to be deported to Zimbabwe, and I have had no reply from the Minister to my urgent correspondence on this case. So will the Home Secretary step in and stop Jo being deported from the country he has served and where his family lives to a place where he will be at risk of torture?

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[Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con)]

T9. Dorset police is at the bottom of the funding league table for police forces, coming 40th out of 41 forces, and we continue to battle issues of rural crime, including county lines drug gangs. Will my right hon. Friend commit to ensuring that Dorset gets its fair share, so that we can get more police officers—I particularly want to see the rural crime police team doubled, and I know those aspirations are shared by our police and crime commissioner?

[Kit Malthouse]

I have committed before, and I am happy to do so again, that before the end of the Parliament we will produce a new funding formula to ensure that my hon. Friend’s constituency gets exactly what he deserves, as indeed he should.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does the Home Secretary accept that many Members of this House are dismayed that she did not make a statement in the normal way, so that she could have been questioned in the normal way? Does she further accept that that is not just disrespectful to the House of Commons, but it shows a lack of real concern for those desperate people escaping Ukraine?

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[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

Another young life has been tragically lost to a knife in Milton Keynes. Does the Minister agree that as well as record numbers of police on the streets, the courts and the Crown Prosecution Service need to work with the police to ensure that there are real deterrents to carrying a knife on our streets?

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend is right, and I am very sorry to hear of the crime that took place in his constituency. As he will know, the fight against knife crime is at the forefront of the Government’s priorities, and as he said, alongside deterrent sentencing and assertive and extensive policing, we need to work on long-term solutions to turn young people’s lives away from crime. I am pleased that I was able to visit the Thames Valley violence reduction unit last year to look at the extensive work it is doing to put in place exactly those kind of programmes.