Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

2. Whether she has considered bringing forward amendments to the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill to ensure that proposed police panels are representative of the geographical area they will serve.

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

The Government have set out plans to ensure that police and crime panels are representative of the places they serve. We tabled an amendment to the Bill in another place, allowing many panels to co-opt further members. This will enable local authorities to address geographical imbalances.

[George Eustice]

I thank the Minister for that response and welcome the amendment, which is obviously a step in the right direction. However, he will be aware of the particular concerns of people in Cornwall that they might not get a fair geographic representation. What additional reassurance can he give that the Home Secretary will ensure that Cornwall is fairly represented on Devon and Cornwall police panel, and will he agree to meet a delegation from Cornwall council to discuss this issue?

[Nick Herbert]

I understand my hon. Friend’s concerns—they have been put to me by other hon. Friends. The amendment that we moved in the other place will allow for the nomination of an additional five members to the panel. Approval for that will lie with the Secretary of State, although there must be regard to geographical balance. I hope and believe therefore that we can reassure the people of Cornwall that they will be properly represented on these panels.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

The Minister will agree on what lies at the heart and success of British policing—it should be by consent, local and rooted in the community. That is why I welcome what he has just said. Will he also agree, however, that it is vital that our senior police officers have spent a year or two on the beat in the local community? Will he hit on the head these ludicrous press reports that the Government are thinking of bringing in an elite group of officers—super-duper graduates, Bullingdon club boys—to be slotted in straight away to run our police services? Policing should be local, and every chief constable should have served on the beat.

[Nick Herbert]

That is a travesty of the Government’s position. We have asked Tom Winsor to consider these matters. The right hon. Gentleman should pay more attention to the views of the chief constable of Devon and Cornwall, which he expressed in an article in The Times today, co-written by me. He points out that the police have not made sufficient progress on diversity and that one way to address that might be to consider additional points of entry. We also point out that operational experience would be necessary.

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

With permission, Mr Speaker, I will take this question together with question 10 on the Order Paper.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. If I am mistaken, I shall be happy to acknowledge it, but I thought that the Minister wished to group this question with questions 9 and 18.

[Nick Herbert]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am happy to group it with question 18 as well, if that is acceptable. [Hon. Members: “And 9, not 10.”] I said 10, then I realised that it has been moved to 9 because of a withdrawal. I apologise.

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

9. What assessment she has made of the scope for increasing efficiency within police forces.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

18. What assessment she has made of the scope for increasing efficiency within police forces.

[Nick Herbert]

The Government are clear that police should be focusing on police work and not paperwork. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary’s report has shown how forces could save £1.15 billion, and there is scope for even greater savings.

[Stephen Barclay]

Cambridgeshire police currently have one inspector for every three sergeants, and one chief inspector or more senior grade officer for every inspector. Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the chief constable’s streamlining of senior officer grades in order to recruit an extra 50 officers in addition to the existing head count? Will he place a copy of the relevant information in the Library to allow us to benchmark the number of officers at each grade in each force?

[Nick Herbert]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is important that these kinds of overheads are reduced so as to protect the front line. I note that HMIC’s recent report also congratulated the chief constable and the authority on committing to a strategic alliance with the Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire constabularies. That is exactly the kind of partnership that can help to drive savings and protect front-line services.

[Mr Cox]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the unique office of constable is one that should be jealously safeguarded? Will he reassure me that in the drive for efficiency and in the implementation of the Winsor report, we will not throw the baby out with the bathwater?

[Nick Herbert]

I agree with my hon. and learned Friend about the importance of the office of constable and the independence that it preserves. He will know that the Winsor report, whose recommendations are currently being discussed, also recognised the importance of the office of constable.

[Tony Baldry]

For most of our constituents, efficiency is associated with visibility. Will my right hon. Friend take the opportunity to commend Sergeant Adrian Thomas and PC Paul Froggatt who last week ran a mile and a half and, without regard to their own safety, jumped into the Banbury canal to rescue a 71-year-old lady who had slipped into it? With that sort of visibility evident within the Thames valley, it must be possible to have it in every other part of the country.

[Nick Herbert]

I am happy to join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the police officers for their acts of bravery. I am sure the whole House would agree that many such acts of bravery on the part of our police officers and our police community support officers are going on every day. We see that reflected each year in the police bravery awards. I believe that many of us are humbled by the selflessness and heroism of our police officers.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

Given that the previous Labour Government planned efficiencies of about £1.3 billion—including on back-office staff, on procurement, on mergers such as the one between Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, on overtime and on officer deployment—will the Minister be clear about where the extra £1 billion he proposes is going to come from, if not from officer numbers, like the 200 losing their jobs in north Wales?

[Nick Herbert]

First, I note that the right hon. Gentleman confirms that the Labour party is committed to reducing spending on police forces by more than £1 billion—but, of course, they did not deliver those savings when they were in government; it cannot be done without reducing the work force. We have identified additional savings, including those that will accrue from pay restraint, and indeed the £350 million a year that will accrue from better procurement of goods and services. In fact, the total savings are well over £2 billion a year.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Does the Minister welcome the news from Birmingham that officers are being taken off the street to answer the phone and deal with other administrative tasks? Is that the kind of efficiency that the Government are striving for?

[Nick Herbert]

The hon. Gentleman should know that, in police forces generally, a third of human resources are not on the front line. Well over 20,000 police officers are in back and middle-office positions, with a higher than average proportion of them in the West Midlands constabulary. It should be possible to drive savings while still protecting the front line. That is what we ask and expect chief constables to do.

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

Given the Minister’s numbering problems at the outset of these questions, he probably now recognises the importance of having a good back office.

I have read again a copy of the HMIC report, “Demanding Times”, which was published in June 2011. He will know that a table on page 4 states that only 5% of police officers and PCSOs perform back-office functions, many of them necessary. With more than 16,000 police officers to be cut during the next few years of the spending review, does this not show what we already know—that there is and will be an impact on the front line from these cuts, with the loss of uniformed and neighbourhood officers and detectives?

[Nick Herbert]

First, I should say that what the hon. Gentleman mentioned at the outset shows that I need a better pair of glasses. As to his question, he always mentions the number of officers in back-office positions—the fact that there are thousands of them will, I think, surprise the House—but he never mentions the considerable number in middle-office positions, are not on the front line. I repeat that well over 20,000 officers are not on the front line, with 16,000 of them in the middle office. Savings can be driven while protecting front-line services—something that Opposition Members neither understand nor accept.

[Mark Lancaster (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

8. What steps she is taking to reduce the burden of health and safety regulation on police officers.

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

We have worked with the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Health and Safety Executive to publish new guidance, in order to support police officers to do the right thing by taking a common-sense approach to health and safety rules.

[Mark Lancaster]

As we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), some jobs are dangerous, and being a police officer is certainly one of them. As a bomb disposal officer, I have some empathy with a police officer who told me recently that by the time he has filled out the mountain of paperwork required for health and safety, all he has done is delay the point at which he gets on the street to do his dangerous job. Although I commend the Government on tackling this area, can we not do a bit more?

[Nick Herbert]

Working with police forces, we continue to attack bureaucracy. I pay tribute to the work of the chief constable of the West Midlands, Chris Sims, who drives these efforts by leading our reducing bureaucracy programme board. We have identified that 2.5 million police hours could be saved through improvements to form filling and other means of reducing bureaucracy. In addition to those substantial savings, we have already announced savings in relation to reducing the burden of the stop-and-account form, and scrapping the stop form, saving another 800,000 police hours a year.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I inform the Minister that on my regular visits to Huddersfield police station, John Robins, the chief superintendent, has never mentioned a problem of health and safety, but he is worried about the glib talk about getting rid of back-office functions, such as the crucial intelligence unit, without which police on the beat would not know where to go and what to tackle?

[Nick Herbert]

We are clear that intelligence functions are part of the front line. However, as I keep trying to point out to hon. Members, a third of all those employed in police forces, and all the resources they command, are not on the front line. It is, therefore, possible to drive savings without damaging or affecting the kinds of services to which the hon. Gentleman refers. Those are the questions that he should be asking his local force.

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[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

T2. Due to Government cuts, Worksop police cells are to close this month. Local police officers have asked me to ask the Home Secretary this: how exactly will that closure contribute to crime reduction in Bassetlaw?

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

It is entirely a matter for the chief constable and police authority how they deploy their resources. There has been some rationalisation of custody and we are also very supportive of those forces that seek to contract out custody facilities and in so doing improve their service and save money.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

T4. The Equality and Human Rights Commission posted qualified accounts in 2009-10 and the auditors found poor financial management, poor record keeping and poor leadership. What specific actions will the Minister take to rectify this problem and to ensure that taxpayers’ money is not wasted by that organisation?[Official Report, 14 September 2011, Vol. 532, c. 9-10MC.]

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[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

T5. I am sure the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice will agree that police officers need the best and most professional training. Does he therefore welcome moves by colleges such as Loughborough college in my constituency to offer a police, law and community course, which is already being used by at least three of our police forces?

[Nick Herbert]

I commend Loughborough college for taking the initiative in this important area. We are committed to improving the professionalism of the police. I understand that the course is not accredited at the moment and that the college should seek that accreditation before it can be treated as appropriate learning for the minimum qualification for a police officer.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

The chairman of Cheshire police authority, Margaret Ollerenshaw, has written to me to say that by March 2012 we will have 217 fewer police officer posts and that by 31 March 2015 a further 151 officer posts will have to be cut. She says:

“These cuts need further consideration in the light of the service demanded of the police”.

How will these cuts, combined with 446 staff posts that will be cut, help combat crime and antisocial behaviour in Halton and Cheshire?

[Nick Herbert]

Tomorrow I will take part in a conference that has been organised by Cheshire police to consider those precise issues and to identify the opportunities that arise from adopting a leaner structure. The chief constable of Cheshire is as convinced as I am that it is possible to reorganise in a way that protects front-line services.

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

T6. Will the Home Secretary join me in congratulating Thames Valley police on halving crime at this year’s Reading festival compared with last year and, more generally, on demonstrating that it is possible to protect visible front-line policing while finding budget savings?

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[Nick Herbert]

The hon. Lady knows that this is a matter for the leadership of the Metropolitan police and for the Mayor. The Mayor has made it clear that he seeks to maintain the number of police officers in London at above 32,000, which will be more than he inherited from his Labour predecessor, and to protect neighbourhood policing.

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

T9. In Torpoint and other parts of my constituency, police response teams are finding that their times are restricted by the geography of the area, which means that some officers are forced to cross the River Tamar on a ferry or to drive for at least 30 minutes. Does my right hon. Friend consider that that is acceptable?

[Nick Herbert]

I understand my hon. Friend’s concerns about this issue and I also appreciate the particular geography in that part of her constituency. These matters of deployment are for the chief constable to decide and it is better that Ministers do not try to second-guess those, but I am happy to draw her concerns to the chief constable’s attention.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Do Ministers believe that a local police station is a front-line service?

[Nick Herbert]

I think that what is important is the visibility and availability of police officers, which is variable between police forces. In many cases, it can be significantly improved. I have said to the House before that if police forces can find innovative ways to increase their presence in communities—for instance, by being in supermarkets—that can often be very much better than maintaining empty or underused offices that are rarely visited.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Will the Home Secretary place in the Library a definition, with examples, of what constitutes police back-office and, as we have heard this afternoon, middle-office facilities? Does she accept that part of the front line is 24-hour policing with 24-hour police stations in our major urban centres?

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Crime levels in north Wales dropped by 45% over the 13 years that Labour was in power. Over the past year, crime levels have gone up. Do Ministers accept any responsibility for the increase in crime?

[Nick Herbert]

As there has barely been any reduction in front-line police officers in the period that the hon. Gentleman describes, I think that what he tries to imply is false. What matters is how effectively police officers are deployed and how efficiently they are working. What Opposition Members do not accept is that we have to deal with the deficit. We must find the savings because of the mess they left this country in.

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[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Is the Minister aware that in the police service a centrally procured box of 100 wipes for electronic equipment costs £19, whereas it can be bought on the internet for £1? What can the Government do about that?

[Nick Herbert]

Overall, we believe that huge savings could be accrued through better procurement by the police, but we have to remember that the costs of procurement are not just the cost of goods. They are the cost of the separate organisations in 43 forces that are individually procuring goods and equipment. On those calculations, we think we can save £350 million a year by more effective procurement.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Youth workers up and down the country were asked to work on the streets during the recent disturbances, but many of those workers are being made redundant. Has the Minister examined the probable impact on crime and antisocial behaviour of these cuts to youth work?