Rural Crime and Public Services

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 6th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House is concerned that the level of rural crime remains high; notes research by the National Famers’ Union that rural crime cost the UK economy £42.5 million in 2015; recognises that delivering public services across large, sparsely populated geographical areas can be more costly and challenging than in urban areas; agrees with the National Rural Crime Network that it is vital that the voice of the countryside is heard; calls on the Government to ensure that the personal, social and economic costs of crime and anti-social behaviour in rural areas are fully understood and acted upon; and further calls on the Government to ensure that rural communities are not disadvantaged in the delivery or quality of public services.

In the public imagination and in international reputation, rural Britain is a place of near meadows, still streams and sleepy villages, but the challenges facing it and its police forces are significant and unique. Although media coverage and our political attention this year has, understandably, focused on metropolitan areas, particularly London, given the horrifying spate of serious violence and of growing crimes associated with mopeds, that is not to say that the crimes experienced by victims in our rural communities do not matter. Indeed, one of the greatest challenges our policing model faces is its ability to provide a consistent service to every victim, and indeed offender, regardless of where they live.

There is perhaps a sense that has crept in, as budget cuts bite, that rural crime is more trivial, but as we will hear today from many Members representing rural constituencies, not only do we face the traditional types of rural crime, but crime is mutating and rural communities are no longer immune to serious crime. In the most recent year for which figures are available, more than 88,000 farm animals were snatched by thieves, amounting to more than £6 million in lost stock to farmers, with the consequential impacts on our rural economy. Last year, Humberside police spent 1,200 hours battling hare coursing, with more than 500 reports of the crime in the 2017-18 season. The pursuit has been illegal since the Hunting Act 2004 and it involves “sighthounds” such as lurchers, greyhounds or salukis being set on hares, often with large sums bet on the outcome. Dealing with this is resource intensive for rural forces but it is necessary to respond, as the practice intimidates local communities and has significant criminal and antisocial behaviours associated with it.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an important speech. County Durham is a large rural area—my constituency comprises 300 square miles—yet our police have been cut by 25%. Is she satisfied that the formula for policing adequately takes account of the difficulties of pursuing policing in a rural area?

[Louise Haigh]

It may not surprise my hon. Friend to know that I am deeply unsatisfied with the resources available for policing and with the funding formula on which we base our police funding at the moment. She makes an important point. On recent visits to forces in the south-west, I was particularly struck by the challenges facing police in huge rural areas, such as those in her constituency.

In the Devon and Cornwall force, not only is the chief constable responsible for an area of almost 4,000 square miles, but he—and in this case it is a he—is also responsible for 500 miles of coastline and for 10 miles out to sea. That is an incredible challenge when we consider that my old force, the Met, has 44 officers per square mile, while Devon and Cornwall has 0.7 officers per square mile. In that context, it is useful to discuss the proposed merger of Devon and Cornwall with Dorset police force and the strong belief of both forces that the move would produce better working, better connectivity and a better presence in communities and that neighbourhood policing would become more of a priority.

I have had similar conversations in Warwickshire and West Mercia. Given how significantly crime is changing, perhaps it is time to look at the structure of policing in this country, particularly at how we can ensure a consistent approach across the country. It has been fantastic to see innovations in forces such as those around drones, the development of tech solutions in forces such as Avon and Somerset, and the use of tri-service officers—officers who are trained as police community support officers, fire officers and paramedics all in one. However, we must ensure that where best practice is evidence-based and effective, it can be rolled out across the country, so that we are not reinventing the wheel time and again.

At the heart of our policing model is, and must always be, community policing, but that is what has been most affected by eight years of austerity. Those rural community policing beats are essential in preventing, detecting and tackling crime in rural areas. Community officers are treasured in all our communities, and yet, in many rural forces, neighbourhood teams have been completely abolished or merged with response teams, which effectively means the same thing.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend is making a really, really powerful speech that will resonate in many of our rural communities. I know that she will want to pay tribute to the great work of organisations such as Farm Watch. Those of us in rural areas are not scared of voluntary action working alongside statutory services, but where we do get angry is when there is not enough neighbourhood policing.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. True community policing and neighbourhood policing work very effectively with Farm Watch, Neighbourhood Watch and other voluntary organisations in our communities. We are not just talking about a police officer walking down the street with his hands in his pockets. True neighbourhood policing requires officers to engage and build relationships with communities and to grow trust in the police. Having grown up in South Yorkshire, I know that the policing of so many communities, particularly the hardest-to-reach communities, requires that approach in order to be able to police by consent. On top of all that, we have seen numerous rural police stations close—the symbol of a rural community’s relationship with its local police service and a symbol of the police’s commitment to those communities. There is strong evidence that they have contributed to the legitimacy of the police in the eyes of the public. Little wonder then that the National Farmers Union has found two worrying trends: first, that four in 10 people in rural areas fear crime, double that of individuals in urban areas; and secondly, that two thirds think that the local police fail to deal with the problems that matter to them—twice as many as the national average. Those figures show that the ability of the police to interpret and respond to the needs of rural communities is fading away, leaving those communities isolated.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

As always, my hon. Friend is giving a very well-informed and impassioned speech. On this point about rural communities, does she agree that it is also very important that we think of rural communities not just as places such as Somerset, Devon or Cornwall, but as seats such as mine, former heavy industrial areas? For example, the Ogmore and Garw valleys in my constituency no longer have police stations, but what they do have now is high levels of rural crime. They are isolated and cut off because of deindustrialisation. That must be put into the mix of how we see rural crime moving forward.

[Louise Haigh]

I could not agree more. It is exactly the same in my own home force of South Yorkshire. The pernicious and long-term effects of deindustrialisation in communities are often the same issues that other rural forces and areas experience and are affected by.

The feelings of isolation can be strong and overwhelming, particularly for vulnerable individuals in rural areas such as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore). If police do not have the ability to reach out, they will feel ever more vulnerable. The Conservative party used to be clear on this. A leaked internal communiqué said that

“police-stations are important to local communities and the sheer number of closures is worrying.”

But since that communiqué, closures have rocketed. Nearly 400 police stations have closed in England and Wales, with the number of front counters open to the public falling from over 900 in 2010 to just over 500 today. It is harder to ignore the knock-on effects that sales of police stations and closures of custody suites have had on policing. Particularly in large rural areas, officers now have to drive for long distances to take offenders into custody, taking them off the streets for a considerable period of time.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady actually saying that she would reopen those police stations?

[Louise Haigh]

No. I am saying that we would properly resource the police to be able to do their job, unlike the Conservative party. In reducing the police, as the Conservatives have done, to nothing more than a flashing blue light that only arrives when the absolute worst has happened, not only have they destroyed the police’s ability to prevent crime from happening in the first place; they have rolled back all the progress of the previous generation in building trust with the police in the hardest-to-reach communities. That is the danger of the loss of community officers from rural police forces.

The devastating assault on the strength of our police service as a result of decisions taken by the Conservatives has undermined the fundamental foundations on which policing in this country has been based. Chief among these is the notion that every community matters and every community deserves a police service that is able to respond to the challenges that it deems important. Although the challenges and risks for each community may vary, each is deserving of a community police service, and the priorities of local communities are of equal merit.

The independent inspectorate of constabulary laid bare the breathtaking pressure that the police are now under thanks to the financial constraints imposed on them by the Government and by rising demand. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary said that

“policing is under significant stress. On occasions, that stress stretches some forces to such an extent that they risk being unable to keep people safe in some very important areas of policing.”

Not only have we lost more than 21,000 police officers; thousands of emergency calls are waiting in queues with not enough officers to respond. Some victims facing an emergency get no response at all. The police have yet to assess risk posed by more than 3,000 individuals on the sex offenders register. We do not know whether those individuals are a threat to the public. There is a shortage of more than 5,000 detectives, as unsolved crime rose to 2.1 million crimes last year.

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

I do not want my hon. Friend to move on from this incredibly important point. It is not only the cuts to resources and the loss of police stations that are important issues that have had a terrible and adverse impact on rural crime; she is also absolutely right to point out the changing nature of the demands made on policing, including trafficking, modern slavery and some of the sex offenders to which she refers. That makes it even more important that police forces across the country are properly resourced.

[Louise Haigh]

I could not agree more. The police have been cut to a level at which they are unable to prevent and respond to crime, and the demand on them is completely unprecedented, not only from new crimes, but as a result of other services being cut.

The police are now unable to respond to the basic task that we ask of them and that the Prime Minister asked them to do at the Police Federation conference eight years ago, which is to prevent and respond to crime—nothing more, nothing less. Police chiefs have warned the Government about the issue time and again. They have warned that local policing is under such strain that the legitimacy of policing is at risk, as the relationship with communities is fading to a point at which prevention, early intervention and core engagement are ineffective. This is a stark warning. Never before have police chiefs, usually incredibly reticent to enter political debate, spoken out so plainly about the risks facing public safety. Only yesterday, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, told the Home Affairs Committee that it would be “naive” to dissociate police cuts from rising levels of crime.

While the lack of resources has hampered the police, there is no doubt that crime itself, and the demand on rural police forces, is changing. County lines is a clear and growing threat for rural forces. It has been partly responsible for a serious increase in violent crime in areas that do not traditionally suffer from it. County lines dealers from the cities are exploiting hidden poverty and a cohort of vulnerable youngsters in rural areas. With the numbers of looked-after children and homeless children rising, this is of significant concern. The exploitation of young and vulnerable persons is a common feature in the facilitation of county lines drugs supply, whether for the storage or supply of drugs, the movement of cash, or to secure the use of dwellings held by vulnerable people—commonly referred to as cuckooing.

As the Home Office’s own analysis of the rise in serious violence states, childhood risk factors, including economic stress, mean that interventions with vulnerable young people such as those excluded from school and looked-after children would be successful in reducing violence and drug demand. The Government are aware of this, but so far their response has been muted, and their continued refusal to fund the police properly is felt across the country.

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not agree that it is our job as constituency MPs to stay in touch with our local police forces and to address their concerns? That is what I did, and that is how I managed to raise the precept in our local area and increase the police force there.

[Louise Haigh]

Raising the precept in the way that the Government have done is a fundamentally unfair way to fund police forces across this country. [Interruption.] I am sorry—I do not know which police force area the hon. Gentleman represents, but I am almost positive that raising the precept by 2% will result in significantly more in his force area than in my area of South Yorkshire, or in Northumbria, Cleveland, or many metropolitan areas that have significant demand.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

In my own police area of Derbyshire, we have seen a drop of over 400 police officers. Yes, we have raised the police precept, with £12 a year from every resident on top of the 5% increase in council tax for social care, but that will fund 25 officers, while we have lost over 400. There is absolutely no comparison in terms of what can be achieved.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend puts it much better than I did. Last year, the precept was able to raise £270 million. That is a drop in the ocean given that this Government have taken £2.7 billion out of policing over the past eight years. The force in the area of the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) may have been able to increase numbers from their existing point, but I am sure that they will not have been driven up to the levels that we saw in 2010, and will certainly not account for the level of demand or the cuts that we have experienced.

There are other demands on rural forces—if not unique to them, then certainly more pronounced. From cyber-crime to hate crime, from domestic violence to historical child sexual exploitation, the Government keep stating that crime is falling, but the experience of the police on the ground could not be more different. Nowhere is that more obvious than in non-crime demand that falls on the police. Non-crime demand makes up about 83% of calls to command and control centres, and in rural forces that is likely to be higher. Over the past eight years, because of the sparsity of social, mental health and more general health services, rural police forces have taken on an increased role as an auxiliary social and emergency service. I know of one rural county in northern England which, at the weekend, has one social worker on duty for the entirety of its social services, including for children with learning difficulties and those living with dementia. From 5 o’clock on a Friday, the police are the only service available to fill the gap.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there has been a massive increase in the number of calls to 101 that now go unanswered? That just proves how stretched our police forces are.

[Louise Haigh]

There has been the same level of demand from 101 and 999 as, just a few years ago, the police would have experienced only on new year’s eve. As I say, that is coming not only from traditional crime but from the demand on other public services.

This is not only wrong for the police, who are not trained or equipped to deal with the responsibilities of other public services, but, most importantly, wrong for the people struggling with their health needs, who are met with a criminal justice response rather than a health one because the proper provision simply is not available.

The result of all this is that criminals have recognised that our rural communities do not have the protection they need, and they are exploiting that. One reason why we are now hearing calls for all rural police officers to be armed is that the response time is unacceptably high for police and armed officers in significant swathes of the country, but arming all officers fundamentally undermines the principle of policing in this country: to police in communities and by consent.

While all forces experience seasonal variations, the minimum relative to maximum variation, especially for daily crime and antisocial behaviour, is far greater in rural forces with national parks and coastal areas attracting tourism. The seasonality of demand must be recognised, to ensure not only geographic equity but that minimum levels of service can be maintained throughout the year.

Clearly the police funding formula needs to take into account the real picture of demand and pressure facing every police force. We know that the current funding formula is broken. It uses age-old data and does not reflect the needs, demands and pressures on forces, nor the modern demands of policing.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way; I am listening to her with great interest. One of the worst aspects of the centralisation of police services in England and Wales over the last few years has been the centralisation of air support services and the creation of the National Police Air Service. That has removed dedicated helicopters from Dyfed-Powys, for instance, which covers two thirds of Wales. Would it be the Labour party’s policy to scrap NPAS or to keep it?

[Louise Haigh]

The issue with the centralisation of services such as NPAS is that those decisions have been made for all the wrong reasons. They have been made to drive cuts, rather than being genuinely about where provision should be. We would certainly keep NPAS and other services like it under review, but those decisions need to be made on the basis of the efficiency and effectiveness of that service, not solely to drive cuts for ideology’s sake.

The police funding formula cannot be reformed from a position of ever decreasing budgets. We saw what happened when they tried to do that with schools; it just shifted the pain elsewhere. It has to depend on need and take into account all demands for policing services. Though crime levels are important, we know that some rural forces face other unique challenges, such as the cost of policing a huge area, modern slavery and seasonal influxes of tourists. That has to be reflected in the funding formula.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

It felt like the hon. Lady was describing Lincolnshire—a huge, sparsely populated rural area with a huge coastal influx. Given what she says, why did Labour vote against a fairer funding formula that would have benefited Lincolnshire and against £450 million extra for the police? I am still waiting for the bit in her speech where she pays impassioned tribute to the hugely brave work that police officers in Lincolnshire do, in difficult circumstances, when they are battling all the issues that she has raised.

[Louise Haigh]

If the hon. Gentleman had not chosen to interrupt me at that stage of my speech, I would have got on to the bit where I praise police officers. I am a former police officer, as he may well know. We voted against the Government’s unfair funding formula because it did not deliver the funding that our police services so desperately need. As I have already explained, funding our police through the precept is unfair and distributes funding disproportionately away from the areas that need it most.

I would like to close by thanking the NFU for its support in preparing for today’s debate and, of course, the tens of thousands of police officers and staff across our country who work tirelessly to keep us all safe. Our conversations so often in this place cover the pressing challenges of our urban centres, but we can demonstrate how to deliver a consistent policing service for everyone, no matter who they are or where they live. The Government’s reckless and ideological approach to policing has not only left our inner cities rocked by serious violence but has left every single one of our communities exposed to crime. Only a Labour Government will keep the public safe and give the police the resources they need. I commend the motion to the House.