Police Grant Report

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

No. I accept no part of what the hon. Gentleman says. We are talking about in-year cuts in relation to police forces of less than 1.5% of their Government funding, and we do not believe that that will mean that police forces have to cut front-line services. We believe that forces can make efficiencies, albeit in in-year services, so we do not believe that it will impact on crime levels. Indeed, I should say that the reason we have to make these savings is this Government’s inheritance from the previous Government, which left us with a budget deficit. It is our responsibility to tackle it, and if the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends have concerns about future police funding levels, they should address them to their right hon. Friends who were in charge of the country’s Exchequer and finances, and who supported the misjudgments that have left us all in this position.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Obviously we want an honest debate that is essentially focused on the evidence. Is it therefore noteworthy that on 20 April the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), specifically ruled out guaranteeing that police numbers would stay the same or increase? That is important for Opposition Members to take into account.

[Nick Herbert]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. On 20 April, in a “Daily Politics” general election debate, the right hon. Gentleman, now the shadow Home Secretary, was asked in terms whether he could guarantee that police numbers would not fall if Labour formed the next Government. He replied, “No.” He could not offer any such guarantee. But more than that, we know that the Labour Government were planning—indeed, we inherited spending plans—to cut departmental budgets by £44 billion a year by 2014-15. That would have been £44 billion of unallocated spending cuts. Where did they think they were going to get that money from? What services were they going to cut? They would not tell us, but the figure implied an average real reduction for unprotected Departments of 20%. Let us be clear: where cuts have to be made to police forces, they are Labour’s cuts; they are the cuts that Labour bequeathed to us because of its financial mismanagement.

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[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister to his position. He will know that it is an excellent job to have, and it is one that I certainly enjoyed in government. He has great support in the Home Office from a fine team of officials and staff in doing that job.

Having got the niceties out of the way, I come to the crunch. I am disappointed and unhappy about the approach that the Minister has taken to the in-year funding cuts for allocations to police authorities in England and Wales for 2010-11. There are a number of new Members in their places, and I do not think that they will realise that this debate was held, done and dusted, in the House in February. We had a debate then on the 2010-11 police grant. I stood at the Government Dispatch Box when we debated the third year of a settlement for the police in England and Wales. We had already announced the three-year settlement two years before, and the House was to confirm the third year on 3 February.

At that time, I challenged the Liberal Democrat spokesman, who sat where my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) is sitting today, and the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), who was sitting where I am now. I asked whether, if they were in government in any way, shape or form—much to my surprise, the Liberals have found themselves in that position—they would reduce or change this year’s grant. The answer was that they would not. In fact, the Liberal Democrats called for more spending on the police—a point that I shall return to later. Our proposals for the third year of the agreed settlement were supported by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in opposition but are now opposed and torn up by them in government.

One of the most distressing aspects of the debate is the fact that the third-year settlement has been agreed, is known and has been put to police authorities across England and Wales. Police authorities went into their precept-setting meetings in February, March and April based on that grant and on what they expected their income from Government to be for 2010-11.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

The right hon. Gentleman is moving to the crux of the issue, despite his engaging and emollient beginning. We would take his protestations slightly more seriously if his own Government had brought forward a comprehensive spending review last autumn, and specifically if the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) had ruled out cuts in police numbers during the election campaign. Neither happened, so we have to take the right hon. Gentleman’s protestations with a pinch of salt.

[Mr Hanson]

I look forward to the hon. Gentleman voting today to reduce Cambridgeshire’s policing grant by £1.2 million. That is what he will be doing. He needs to go back to Cambridgeshire and explain to the residents of Peterborough why he is voting to reduce the budget by £1.2 million this year. I and my 257 colleagues on the Labour Benches stood on a manifesto commitment to ensure that policing resources were maintained after the general election. We won our seats on that basis, and we are being consistent in putting forward our arguments today. The hon. Gentleman is voting to remove money from his police force.

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[Mr Hanson]

I am trying to be helpful to the hon. Gentleman. I agree with him that there are savings to be made on, for example, uniforms, vehicles and air support. We were trying to do that, and I will fully support the Minister’s attempts to get those contracts. However, that does not detract from the fact that the core grant for this year, which we agreed in February—without a vote, with Conservative and Liberal Democrat support—is being cut today. And we face further cuts down the line because of cuts in the Home Office grant.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

The right hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. He was candid earlier when he said that the Labour Government were burned over the mergers. They were burned because there was no consultation and a top-down approach was forced on individual forces. Ten, eight or six years ago, the previous Government could have given police forces a fiscal incentive to share back-office functions, procurement, equipment and so on, but they failed to do that. That is a fair point to make to inform today’s debate on budget reductions.

[Mr Hanson]

Let us revert to the subject before us. I think that there is scope for mergers of police forces. As a Minister, I encouraged the provision of a grant of £500,000 to help move that process on. I agree with the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) that we were burned by forced mergers. I wish the Minister a fair wind if he can continue to encourage forces that, with local support, want to merge. Mergers should not be forced from the centre, but agreed locally. Let us not disagree about that.

Labour supported mergers and procurement measures when in government, and I support the Minister for Police on them in opposition. The key is that we still require resources to undertake policing. This year, resources are being cut in-year, despite an agreed settlement; the 25% that might be cut in future years will also be damaging. That will have a serious impact on crime generally. I do not very often agree with the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), as I am sure the Minister does not, but he knew what he was talking about on DNA, CCTV, appropriate prison sentences, reducing reoffending and investment in police. He is right on those issues, and the Conservative party will be proved wrong.

All MPs value the increases in police officers in their constituencies in the past 13 years. Today’s cut could result in the loss of about 4,100 officers from our streets this year alone, according, I should tell the Minister, to House of Commons Library figures.

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[Caroline Flint]

I am interested in the coalition Government’s attitude to the way in which information is given to the public in order to ensure that there is transparency about the provision of public services. They seem to think that that is not an important part of the compact between the people and those who enforce the law. Regardless of the debating points that are made between the Front Benches, it is clear from the findings of all the surveys in various force areas about public attitudes to the police and crime statistics that crime has fallen. However, as a constituency Member I often find that the public do not know about those figures—or, indeed, about the monthly meetings held by the police, the activities of the safer neighbourhood teams, and who is working with whom. When I give them that information in my surgeries, when I am out on the doorstep or in my newsletters, they are very pleased to receive it. I am not saying that a blank cheque should be handed to those who deal with communications. The issuing of information must be thought through properly. It must be established why the information concerned is important, and sometimes we have to pay for that information to be issued.

I will say this to the hon. Gentleman. We currently have some 43 police forces. All of them have communications departments and press officers, and I believe that that is one of the functions that could be managed better across police force areas. The most important element of local policing for the residents of Don Valley is at borough command level, and the most important public face for people in Doncaster is our borough commander. Most of those people do not know the name of the chief constable; they are interested in what is happening in the Doncaster borough. Discussion about what is the most appropriate organisation and structure at force level, and about the elements beyond local crime that require particular attention, should be part of a debate about efficiency savings, value for money and outcomes that genuinely deal with organised crime better than we are able to at the moment.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

The right hon. Lady is making a passionate case, but I fear that she is demonstrating one of the worst aspects of the record of new Labour governance, namely an obsession with processes and the policing pledge. Is not the real issue, and the real driver for elected officials, the fact that there is currently a huge gap in accountability? At present accountability operates only between senior police officers and the Home Office, and elected officials and residents are squeezed out. That is why local people across the country support elected officials, and why our manifesto commitment has been such a success. The police family, as it is called, is hostile because vested interests are being challenged by ordinary people and elected officials.

[Caroline Flint]

One of the most dramatic changes in the nature of police accountability has been brought about by neighbourhood policing teams. In various parts of my constituency, local people can attend monthly meetings to engage in discussion and hold the police to account. Information from those meetings—along with other information about where antisocial behaviour is happening, which is collected and captured on computers—is tasking the police in a far more intelligent and accountable way than we have ever seen before. However, that did not just happen; it had to be driven by Government, and it was driven by a Labour Government.

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[Caroline Flint]

We already have elected councillors as part of the police authorities, and I think that model could be improved. At the local level through the safer neighbourhood teams, we already have monthly accountable meetings which the public can attend and talk about their local policing priorities. This is not about being against accountability; it is about what is right and what is fit for purpose—and, to be honest, what is good value for money, which is part of the debate we are having this afternoon.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

rose—

[Caroline Flint]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I am speaking for what I think is the third or fourth time in a police grant debate. As the legendary American baseball star “Yogi” Berra said, it is déjà vu all over again.

[Mark Tami]

Brilliant!

[Mr Jackson]

Thank you. Except that on this occasion, of course, I am on the opposite side of the Chamber. I remember the debate on 3 February with the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who delivered his lines in a typically amenable way.

It is appropriate at this point to welcome my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) to his position. He is a seasoned reformer, and if anyone can get to grips with delivering more for less, it is he. I also wish his predecessor as the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), all the best of luck in returning to good health; I am sure I speak for the rest of the House in that respect.

The key word in this debate is “legacy”: the legacy of the fiscal disaster we inherited from the previous Labour Government on 6 May. The shadow Minister made a good fist of synthetic outrage and faux anger at this “swingeing cut” by the coalition Government—the precursor to a plague of locusts and all things doom-laden in the state. However, it is actually a funding cut in-year of 1.46%.

The main point made by the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), was that there is nothing mutually exclusive about driving forward shared services and back-office functions across different police forces on an administrative basis, while at the same time dealing with serious organised crime through such collaborations. The problem with the previous Labour Government was that their approach was all about compulsion and a lack of proper accountability and consultation. Fundamentally, Labour did not trust people to make the right decisions, which is why it still does not trust them now and is so hostile to police commissioners.

As I pointed out in an intervention on the right hon. Lady, there is no point in focusing moral outrage on a process-driven issue such as the policing pledge, which people in the Dog and Duck in Peterborough are not talking about at length. What people actually care about is real accountability and whether they have some say in local policing priorities. At the moment, they do not. At the moment, the accountability link is simply between the basic command unit and the chief constable, and upwards to the Home Office. Whether the right hon. Lady likes it or not, what actually drives local policing is what local police forces have been told to do by the Home Office.

I should have prefaced my comments by pointing out that I am biased, in that I made my maiden speech, in June 2005, on the issue of elected police commissioners, the headline in the Peterborough Evening Telegraph being, “We need city sheriff says city MP”. However, it was not as simple as that. It is a question of accountability, but also of understanding that the police authorities model is probably not fit for purpose and does not command the support and respect of the many people who pay taxes and are also afflicted by crime. These are not just people in middle-class neighbourhoods and gated communities who can afford to push crime away; they include people such as those in my constituency who are perhaps not on good incomes and do not live in the most salubrious of neighbourhoods. Such people are afflicted by drug dealing, antisocial behaviour, burglary and other serious crimes. There is absolutely nothing wrong in giving those people a real say by allowing them to influence not day-to-day operational issues, but the strategic overview of the priorities taken by the local police service—in my case, Cambridgeshire constabulary.

That was the problem of 2006, and the shadow Minister will know that it contributed, among other things, to the early departure of his erstwhile colleague the former Member for Norwich South, Charles Clarke, whose successor is in the Chamber today. The problem was one of not listening and forcing things on people, in the typical top-down regional model imposed by the Labour Government, which we have seen in fire control, and in the ill-fated campaign and referendum on the question of a regional assembly in the north-east.

There are a number of key strategic issues that this Government are tackling head on. They are focusing, for example, on the efficiency and efficacy of what is actually done on the ground. Only 14% of police time is spent on the beat; 22% is spent on paperwork. One of the issues we need to look at—hopefully, it will be examined during the Government’s review in the next few months—is the inspection regime that police services are subject to. Not only the police service but local authorities and others are subject to too much onerous, unnecessary and unnecessarily frequent inspection. Constabulary and police authority officers spend inordinate amounts of time preparing for, going through and reviewing inspection, when in fact they should be concentrating their efforts on tackling crime and putting criminals behind bars.

I must take issue with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs, in that this is not a question of getting a key, opening the jail and letting everyone out. However, we do have a massive problem with recidivism and we must deal with it in an innovative way. I should declare an interest, in that Kalyx, which runs the 840-bed category B private prison in Peterborough, has been awarded a contract. It is a very interesting social experiment, and I believe that it will deliver the goods. Kalyx will receive 40% of the indicative cost of incarcerating a prisoner for one full year if it keeps that prisoner from recidivism and reoffending.

I am no tree-hugging lily-livered liberal on this issue—[Interruption.] Well, I guess I am compared with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, whose many contributions on penal policy I fondly remember, not least his comments on prisoners having access to ping-pong tables and Sky television, for instance. I believe it was Albert Einstein who said, “If you keep doing something over and over again and it doesn’t work, try something else.” He probably put it much more eloquently. Our approach has not worked; it costs a fortune to incarcerate people.

When I had lunch with the senior judges at Peterborough Crown court some months ago, they made the point, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) has, that there is no point incarcerating people for very short sentences—for instance, serial burglars—if we cannot teach them to read, write or add up, if we cannot give them meaningful work to earn money and if we cannot give them a position where they feel socially useful. Punishment is important, but rehabilitation is too. If we can give them a way forward to be decent members of civil society—Kalyx will do that with the scheme at Peterborough prison—that is good for society, because it will, in the end, save money for my constituents, and those of all hon. Members, in the form of taxpayer funding.

[Caroline Flint]

I agree with some of the points that the hon. Gentleman is making—illiteracy among prisoners is a big problem—but what I do not understand, and what I ask him to clarify, given that we have tried everything else with many of these burglars, is why they cannot learn to read and write during six months in prison.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

May I just remind the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) that we are dealing with the police grant? We have strayed into discussing prisons, and although I know there is a connection, we are stretching it.

[Mr Jackson]

I know that we could wander the byways and highways of penal policy for ever, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I graciously accept your admonition on that particular point and I shall return to the police grant, before you rule me out of order.

We have to be realistic about what we are being asked to accept today.

[Mr Hanson]

May I refer the hon. Gentleman to the last words of his speech in the grant settlement debate on 3 February? They were:

“I hope that we get a better settlement when we have a Conservative Government in the next few weeks.”—[Official Report, 3 February 2010; Vol. 505, c. 360.]

How does he square that with the cut that he is going to vote through today?

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[Mr Jackson]

Having run up the largest deficit in peacetime history, and having got us into a position where we are spending more on the interest to service the Labour party’s debt legacy than we are on school buildings, policing and many other areas, it is a little cheeky of the right hon. Gentleman to pray in aid my own, no doubt eloquent, soaring oratory of 3 February. Funnily enough, I was doing what most Members of Parliament are elected to do, which is speak for their constituents.

The right hon. Gentleman tees me up nicely to return to discussing the situation in Cambridgeshire, which, again, relates to the legacy. The reason why I have spoken about the police grant on a number of occasions is that my local police authority was systematically underfunded during the whole period of the Labour Government. Our area has particular issues to address, although I must pay tribute to the outgoing chief constable, Julie Spence, who has done a superb job, at some cost to her reputation with the previous Government. They probably did not like the fact that she was socking them between the eyes and telling the truth about the actual pressures that she has been under in delivering a first-class police service. I pay particular tribute to the fact that she was willing to tell it how it is, although that may have made her slightly unpopular with Ministers, and I also pay tribute to chief superintendent Andy Hebb of the northern basic command unit.

Labour’s legacy of deliberate underfunding means that Cambridgeshire has 408 fewer officers than the national force average, and Cambridgeshire’s force has 185 fewer officers than similar forces. I make no apologies for saying this, because this Government have been in power for only eight weeks. If anyone has to take responsibility for underfunding the police service in Cambridgeshire it is the Labour party, which so egregiously underfunded my Cambridgeshire constabulary and my constituents’ police service. However, because we have excellent police officers in Cambridgeshire, work is already in train to make the necessary savings to accommodate the £1.2 million in-year budget cut, to which the right hon. Gentleman helpfully referred, while minimising the impact on front-line services.

My area has particular issues to address, which Ministers have known about because I have often articulated them to this House. Between 16,000 and 20,000 EU migrants have come to Peterborough since 2004, but under the previous Government precious little attempt was made by the Home Office to do anything about that, or to recognise the particular policing and crime issues that it brought. For instance, we have had to deal with people who are driving drunk, people who think it culturally acceptable to carry knives, and people who do not have insurance for their vehicles.

People trafficking has also been an issue in my constituency, and I shall give the shadow Minister one example of that. In 2004 Cambridgeshire constabulary noted that there were three sex establishment brothels in Peterborough, whereas by 2007 there were 47. This was one of the big growth areas in the economy under the Labour Government, before they plunged the economy into the disastrous mess that we inherited.

I was a voice crying in the wilderness, despite all the issues that I raised. Such issues included the fact that 10 of the wards most vulnerable to a breakdown in community cohesion are in Peterborough, according to the vulnerable localities index, which was developed by the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, and which assists police forces such as Cambridgeshire’s in identifying the communities most at risk of breakdown, tension and fragmentation. Some 27% of Peterborough’s primary pupils have English as a second language, with more than 80 languages being spoken. That is a clear reflection of significant demographic changes, which feed through into the challenges on crime and policing: for instance, Cambridgeshire constabulary’s translation and interpretation bill is more than £1 million a year. However, we received no specific help from the previous Government to assist us in dealing with those problems. More than half of Cambridgeshire’s prolific and priority offenders in the catch and convict scheme in August 2009 were in Peterborough. The northern basic command unit has dealt with more grade A incidents in this financial year to date and has also arrested more suspects in June than the other Cambridgeshire command units. This is because Peterborough is the largest urban conurbation in the county. Those are the challenges. It would be remiss of me not to admit that I see the police grant report and the debate through the prism of being a constituency Member of Parliament. Had the right hon. Member for Delyn been on the other side of the Chamber I would be saying exactly the same thing, so I make no apologies.

New thinking is coming along the tracks. It is acceptable, and it is to be wished for, that the new Government should focus on what is being done in local government and with the Total Place concept. They should carefully examine shared functions, shared purchasing and procurement, training, human resources, payroll and other such issues, and bringing in civilians to do the jobs that front-line uniformed officers hitherto would have done, so that those officers can be put on to the front line. There are plenty of good ideas about.

We all regret the fact that the budget has to be reduced, and we know the reasons for that. My hon. Friends will doubtless rehearse those arguments in respect of their local police authorities before the end of this debate. I do not like to say it, but I will be accepting the argument of the Government that this has to be done and that we have no choice. But it is my belief that when we have got the fiscal deficit under control, and when we are in a position really to tackle these issues after four years of innovative thinking in terms of working together across police authorities and having new police commissioners who focus principally on local people’s priorities, we will be in a position to deliver a better police service at lower cost for our constituents. That is what they elected us to do.