Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Marco Longhi and Kit Malthouse

Thursday 14th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I have learned over my years in government, national and local, that one of the key factors that we should have in mind is balance. While the hon. Lady is right that we should always have in mind the ability to assist those who are struggling most in our society, we have to balance that against the health of the economy and our ongoing ability to provide exactly that assistance. North of the border, as far as I can see, the Scottish Government concentrate on one and neglect the other. I am sure that there are many people who drive the wealth creation effort in Scotland who rue the day that the SNP Government took office, because Scotland has undoubtedly performed worse economically than other parts of the United Kingdom over the past 10 years.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

5. What progress his Department has made on reducing the cost of Government projects to help ensure value for money in public spending.

Neighbourhood Policing: West Midlands

Debate between Marco Longhi and Kit Malthouse

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Kit Malthouse]

I am sorry if the hon. Gentleman missed it, but as I explained earlier, his predecessors blew the credit card and broke the bank in the country. Difficult decisions needed to be made, and the police and crime commissioner David Jamieson made a certain set of decisions about how he and the chief constable were going to prioritise spending.

The hon. Member for Croydon Central is probably tired of hearing this, but I was Deputy Mayor of London for policing between 2008 and 2012. We faced precisely the same budgetary challenges as the west midlands. It was extremely difficult; we had a £3.5 billion budget, and in two years I had to take something like 10% out of it, which is an enormous cut, but we chose to prioritise police officer numbers. We fought tooth and nail to maintain those police officer numbers above 31,000, and we were successful in doing so. As a result, our crime performance was better. That was also because of the tactics we pursued; it is not all about numbers.

Different decisions were made by police and crime commissioners during that period, and that has resulted in different outcomes for each of the forces. It would be foolish and, to be honest, financially illiterate, not to recognise that. We can see that in police forces’ reserves position, in the disposition of the property portfolio, and in the balance between police staff and police officer numbers. Every year, police and crime commissioners, who preside over all those things, have to produce a result from that quite complicated combination.

[Marco Longhi]

Can the Minister help me out with a point made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Croydon Central? Dudley Council is ready to sell the land right now if the police and crime commissioner decides to sign the contract. Also, planning permission is not contingent on property ownership. This is about local decision making. We could shorten the long time that it would take to get planning permission and get things going now.

[Kit Malthouse]

Sir Edward, I feel like a Foxtons representative here, negotiating a property deal across the Chamber. How dynamic we can be when we put our minds to it.

There is significant extra funding going into policing, and there has been over the last two years. We now have a three-year funding settlement that gives us an enormous uplift in resources. For the west midlands, that means £655.5 million next year, which is an increase of £35.1 million. That is a very large increase, and I hope the west midlands spends it well. We can all agree that neighbourhood policing is a significant priority, and that we would like more investment in it. It is welcome that the police and crime commissioner is doing that in the west midlands.

We agree that the funding formula is out of date and a little old fashioned. It has not been reviewed for some time, and we are working on a replacement. I have given an undertaking at the Dispatch Box that we expect to hold that review before the next election, assuming that Parliament runs its full term. Finally—I will give the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) time to wind up—there has been much debate about what position the 20,000 police officers will put us in. Hon. Members make all sorts of claims about where we will be. They forget that in the final year of the Theresa May premiership, there was a recruitment drive for 3,500 police officers; that can be added to the number as well. When we get to the end of the 20,000 uplift, we will, I think, have the highest number of police officers the country has ever had.

Criminal Justice Review: Response to Rape

Debate between Marco Longhi and Kit Malthouse

Tuesday 25th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady makes an important point which, as I am sure she appreciates, is not within my ministerial ambit to comment on. However, through the work of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on the online harms Bill and of the Department for Education, we are all very much aware that young people take their signals and learn their behaviour from the adults around them. We all have a duty to ensure that they grow up as right-thinking members of society.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

It is a fact that victims of rape and sexual assault are deterred from reporting these crimes. The combination of very low conviction rates, reporting requirements and a societal view of victim blaming combine to contribute against these feelings of deterrence. What can the Government do to ensure that the voices of victims are right at the heart of the review?

[Kit Malthouse]

I hope that, given his obvious conviction and commitment to this issue, my hon. Friend will volunteer to be on the Committee that considers the victims’ Bill when it enters the House. It will be a critical part of the architecture of ensuring that we build confidence in the system among victims, and I look forward to its passage through the House.

Police National Computer

Debate between Marco Longhi and Kit Malthouse

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As I say, the whole of UK policing has been involved, through the National Police Chiefs Council, in the effort both to comprehend the scale of the problem and then to put in place mitigation. The hon. Gentleman is quite right; as usual, victims of crime are uppermost in his mind, as they are, hopefully, in all of ours. I will be able to tell him later in the week, hopefully, what the precise impact might or might not have been and what the mitigations that we put in place will do to ensure that victims are not impacted while we recover this data and get ourselves back on an even keel.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con) [V]]

I thank the Minister for his statement. Can he confirm that the human error that caused this problem is being designed out of the system and that it would be more helpful for the Opposition to hold to account their own police and crime commissioner in the west midlands, who recently saw more than 16,000 crimes go unrecorded?

[Kit Malthouse]

It is often hard to design out human error in a system that interacts with humans, but my hon. Friend is quite right that one of the lessons that we need to learn from this process—and we will in time—is not necessarily just how the human error occurred so that we can prevent that from happening in the first place, but how the quality assessment system that should have picked it up over time before it ran did not do so. I suppose the reassuring bit of this incident is that the moment that script did run on the system, it rang alarm bells in the Home Office and a rectification plan swung into place. That should give some assurance that we are at least on top of problems where they occur; the next step is to ensure that they do not occur in the first place.

As to my hon. Friend’s wider point about the conduct or otherwise of the west midlands police and crime commissioner, I think it will become pretty clear in the run-up to the police and crime commissioner elections in May, as people focus on crime performance, where they should put their cross in the box.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Marco Longhi and Kit Malthouse

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

  What steps are the Lord Chancellor and his team taking to address the widespread perception among my constituents that detention arrangements in prisons are not sufficiently robust to act as a deterrent?

[Kit Malthouse]

I understand that my hon. Friend is concerned about the perception of his constituents, but I hope he will explain to them that we have quite interesting and clever plans to deal with offenders, not only in prison but after prison. For example, from early next year, we will GPS tag every single burglar who leaves prison on licence so that we are able to locate them, particularly when a burglary takes place in their community, so that we can at least rule out those prolific offenders in the future. There is lots that we can do in the criminal justice system that is much more smart than severe.

Birmingham Attacks and Extinction Rebellion Protests

Debate between Marco Longhi and Kit Malthouse

Monday 7th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be a little confused. Holding a joint statement on two issues does not necessarily conflate them. It is a single departmental statement because I have had to deal with both issues. We could have had two statements, but it might not have been an efficient use of your time, Madam Deputy Speaker, or indeed the Chamber’s. There has been no attempt to conflate the two.

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has positioned the SNP outside mainstream opinion. [Interruption.] Well, you’re all expressing consternation, and speaking, smiling and laughing. I do not know why me expressing concern is worthy of derision. In truth, the vast majority of people in this country, and all mainstream parties in this country, have expressed alarm at the tactics of Extinction Rebellion over the weekend and its stated aim of disrupting newspapers’ ability to distribute their views and opinions because they do not agree with them. One of the first things that happens in extremist states and takeovers is an attempt to grip the television station, the radio station or the newspapers. Control of information is key so we need to take care with these things. I hope he will agree with me in time.

On violence and public health, the hon. Gentleman is quite right that we want a 360° approach to combating violence. As somebody who worked at City Hall between 2008 and 2012 fighting the last spike in knife crime, I know only too well the value of that approach. I held many meetings a decade ago with Karyn McCluskey, who was then running the knife crime efforts in Glasgow, in parallel with those in London, and at the time we were both successful in driving numbers down.

Finally, on the right to protest, as I said in my statement, we in the Conservative party absolutely and fundamentally grasp the fact that our individual liberty is based on a series of freedoms—freedom to associate, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, property rights—that are fundamental to our view of the world and which will remain so into the future.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

I, too, extend my condolences to the family of the person who died in the early hours of Sunday morning, and wish a speedy recovery to the others injured in the senseless knife attack in Birmingham. Will the Minister join me in condemning the suggestion by the West Midlands police and crime commissioner almost excusing the attack as resulting from pent-up frustrations from lockdown, and reinforce the message that violence of any kind is completely unacceptable and that those who break the law will face the full consequences of their actions? May I also invite the Minister to make an assessment of all the additional greenhouse gas emissions that arose from the demonstrations by Extinction Rebellion? I am thinking of the helicopter that hovered from dawn to dusk and of all the additional cars.

[Kit Malthouse]

I find the remarks of the police and crime commissioner inexplicable. We are in a sorry place if we ever accept that the primary responsibility for a crime does not lie with the criminal. While individuals have complex backgrounds, in the end, the primary responsibility has to lie with the individual who commits the crime; that is the only basis on which we can proceed sensibly in this area.

My hon. Friend is quite right. During the protests now and last year, I have often wondered what the carbon footprint is of the helicopter, which is fundamentally required in a public order situation, or the miles and miles of stationary traffic pumping emissions into what is an already difficult situation from an emissions point of view. Those who are involved in these protests would do well to think about those issues.